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ConanThe3rd posted:Read Dawnbringer #1 and, yeah Korean YA authors are just as likely to engage in stupid bullshit as their Japanese compatriots. I read volume 1 and I have to greatly disagree that there is a good story there. It is just harem bullshit with a generic op mc.
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Aug 29, 2015 23:16
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Serious Frolicking posted:I read volume 1 and I have to greatly disagree that there is a good story there. It is just harem bullshit with a generic op mc. I will admit that I am probably seeing more promise in the whole to-do with a military state gone rouge than is probably due. ConanThe3rd fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Aug 30, 2015 |
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Aug 30, 2015 06:06
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darkgray posted:Thought I'd inform you that there's a new reincarnation web novel that's popular in town -- Tensei Shitara Slime datta Ken. From a couple pages back but I read this cause I was bored and it was linked in this thread (well, read to the current translations) and I dunno I feel some really weird cultural dissonance or some poo poo. The main character is a slime, and is explained as a predator, like eats other things to get stronger predator, but the novel just constantly entirely skirts around death of any sort. Which is cool, not every story has to be monsters grimly chowing down on each other and exploding each other with ultimate techniques or whatever - if the author wants to tell a light-hearted story more power to him. The main character gets increasingly powerful throughout the story without ever really having to 'dirty their hands' to use a dumb cliche. And the whole 'slime eats things to gain their form' is dropped pretty early on after he acquires like 5(?) forms (including a human form from a peron who wants to be eaten for reasons; read: author wants a human form but doesn't want a murderer MC) and the whole consumption angle is just a power-stealing mechanic from then on (like 'eat a guys hand > steal his powers') which is still pretty morbid but played in a very shounen type of way. And the whole story is constantly throwing around these massive numbers of monsters warring with each other and just being insanely optimistic (the army of 10k fights the army of 200k for 4 days and there are 0 casualties) I mean how else can you read that but the author not really wanting to write about any of the depressing poo poo an actual war entails - which again cool whatever. Then at a certain point the slime is the head of a monster city and a human army is coming to purge them because racism so a group of fanatical humans goes into the city, declares war, and then kill 100 monsters while making their escape. In response MC loses their poo poo and singlehandedly massacres the 15000 humans that are en route to invade, just one-sidedly wipes them all out from the sky before they're even aware they are being attacked. Then through some shounen mumbo-jumbo he powers up and resurrects all the monsters the bad humans killed and the novel takes a little break to jerk itself off with some torture porn involving the king of the human army and the group of fanatics who killed the subsequently resurrected monsters. It's just so loving weird. Like the novel is clearly written so as to say that the MCs actions are perfectly justified and not at all morally reprehensible and.... Ugh it made the thing no fun to read after that, like I can deal with light hearted and fun monster, I can deal with spooky evil monster but the whole 'I just genocided some folks, but I'm STILL the good guy, promise' type monster is just weird as hell. Like playing all these shounen tropes (power of friendship type stuff) completely straight all the time with a brief detour down genocide lane is just odd and uncomfortable. Anyone else read this poo poo? I'm not crazy right? That was some weird as hell tonal dissonance wasn't it?
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Aug 30, 2015 14:51
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Sinking Ship posted:From a couple pages back but I read this cause I was bored and it was linked in this thread (well, read to the current translations) and I dunno I feel some really weird cultural dissonance or some poo poo. The main character is a slime, and is explained as a predator, like eats other things to get stronger predator, but the novel just constantly entirely skirts around death of any sort. Which is cool, not every story has to be monsters grimly chowing down on each other and exploding each other with ultimate techniques or whatever - if the author wants to tell a light-hearted story more power to him. The main character gets increasingly powerful throughout the story without ever really having to 'dirty their hands' to use a dumb cliche. And the whole 'slime eats things to gain their form' is dropped pretty early on after he acquires like 5(?) forms (including a human form from a peron who wants to be eaten for reasons; read: author wants a human form but doesn't want a murderer MC) and the whole consumption angle is just a power-stealing mechanic from then on (like 'eat a guys hand > steal his powers') which is still pretty morbid but played in a very shounen type of way. Haven't read it, but I'm a little confused. How is killing the soldiers of an invading army genocide?
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Aug 30, 2015 14:56
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Silver2195 posted:Haven't read it, but I'm a little confused. How is killing the soldiers of an invading army genocide? Well I guess it's not technically. But the army is marching toward the monster town, and our hero descends from the heavens and murders all of them in like a minute flat - so genocide might be too strong a word but it's clearly slaughtering a bunch of people completely unnecessarily since they haven't the tiniest hope of fighting back or posing any threat at all to the monster side. It's just the extremely self-congratulatory tone that bugged me I guess like I'm the good guy meting out justice from someone who just killed a bunch of people with no ability to defend themselves (except the ones he spares to torture). Maybe it's just me but I felt like that made him at least as bad as the people he was fighting 
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Aug 30, 2015 15:10
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No, you're definitely right, that arc definitely did do a lot bring Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken towards "Hmm, this is actually bad." And with how a few things went with the arc after that, I would actively advise people not to read it,  unless you're okay with major good guy characters torture raping a lady for information in which case fuckin go for it i guess
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Aug 30, 2015 15:59
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Adelheid posted:No, you're definitely right, that arc definitely did do a lot bring Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken towards "Hmm, this is actually bad." And with how a few things went with the arc after that, I would actively advise people not to read it, lol
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Aug 30, 2015 16:03
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drat, that sounds bad.
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Aug 30, 2015 17:23
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It was going so well as a happy go lucky slime story and then it sort of went off the rails, shot off the cliff and slammed into the abyss in very short order.
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Aug 30, 2015 17:31
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I'm surprised there isn't more talk and translations of legendary moonlight sculptor, isn't it really popular?
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Aug 30, 2015 18:24
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DeafAsianQT posted:I'm surprised there isn't more talk and translations of legendary moonlight sculptor, isn't it really popular? It is pretty awful reading, even among the poo poo we consume in here. Doesn't help that the translation quality went from good to unreadable to worse half way through what is currently translated. It's an MMO story where the only motivation(and most of the character) of the MC is greed. Which might be interesting if greed in an asian MMO wouldn't mean absurd amounts of grinding. Most of the time it perfectly recreates the mindless tedium of grinding in early asian MMOs, so it channels its roots pretty well. At least it is better than Ark, which is the same story, just dumber and worse.
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Aug 30, 2015 18:35
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Cynic Jester posted:It was going so well as a happy go lucky slime story and then it sort of went off the rails, shot off the cliff and slammed into the abyss in very short order. Agreed. It feels like the author wrote themselves into a corner at some point and decided the best solution was to blow a hole in the wall, or something. There could've been an interesting story about turning the standard formula of monsters=villains humans=heros on its head or something by having the humans all being jerks, but then we started getting into systematic sacrifice of souls, turning into superbeasts and sending an elite group of assassins back to their master as a single, shambling undead horror covered in faces. At this point, I pretty much lost all interest.  I think the core problem was that the writer had an interesting initial idea, but didn't stop at a natural point. Instead they just kept going, without a break, and everything kinda went weird.
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Aug 30, 2015 19:26
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Cynic Jester posted:It was going so well as a happy go lucky slime story and then it sort of went off the rails, shot off the cliff and slammed into the abyss in very short order. "What is Japanese Young Adult Novel Writing, Alex?"
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Aug 30, 2015 20:04
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DeafAsianQT posted:I'm surprised there isn't more talk and translations of legendary moonlight sculptor, isn't it really popular? It's another of those stories like Ark where the main character is kind of an unlovable piece of poo poo but you are supposed to be really invested because reasons. Amazingly, most people don't stay invested.
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Aug 30, 2015 20:17
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ConanThe3rd posted:"What is Japanese Young Adult Novel Writing, Alex?" I'm not sure web novels count as "young adult". Slime is actually classified as R-15, so it's probably aimed more at adult otaku who never quite grew up on the inside.
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Aug 30, 2015 20:34
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At least it's still better than the other Web novel series about a disillusioned 30-something worker dying and reincarnating as an overpowered slime monster, Slime Tensei Monogatari, which I believe is by the author of re:monster
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Aug 30, 2015 20:37
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DeafAsianQT posted:I'm surprised there isn't more talk and translations of legendary moonlight sculptor, isn't it really popular? Yes, let me rant about Legendary Moonlight Sculptor. I stopped reading after 8 volumes. Long before that point, everything became so predictable the whole thing seemed to write itself. Whenever the author introduces other people, they always misunderstand the MC's awesomeness, then either get killed by him or fawn on him for the rest of the story. Whenever the author introduces a difficulty for the MC to overcome, the MC always comes up with the perfect plan that never backfires or just wins because of being awesome. Whenever the author introduces a new statistic or mechanic, the MC already has way more of that statistic when compared to everyone else because of being awesome. If that doesn't somehow irk you, the author then also has the gall to make the MC continuously complain about being awesome, which really only gives the impression of a guy making $500k a year complain about being 'poor and destitute'. He is also awesome in real life and for some reason his sister probably wants to gently caress him or something. The whole thing reminded me of that anime about technical magic with the guy whose sister also wanted to gently caress him and he also was superduper awesome at everything and also in the military and also a famous magical thingamabob creator. For some reason I kept watching that train-wreck for far too long, but I can't even remember the title. Moonlight Sculptor would've been interesting if the MC's greed would actually bite him in the rear end more often. Like when crafting the tomb for the king, the MC basically turns into a corrupt contractor who uses subpar materials to safe costs, pocketing the rest of the money. I would've loved it if the drat tomb collapsed, killed the last king, or melted with the first rain. Hell, something other than 'oh god how amazing you build a tomb incredible, here have more rewards' 
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Aug 30, 2015 21:37
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Fleve posted:He is also awesome in real life and for some reason his sister probably wants to gently caress him or something. The whole thing reminded me of that anime about technical magic with the guy whose sister also wanted to gently caress him and he also was superduper awesome at everything and also in the military and also a famous magical thingamabob creator. For some reason I kept watching that train-wreck for far too long, but I can't even remember the title. You're probably thinking of Mahouka.
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Aug 30, 2015 21:41
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Fleve posted:I stopped reading after 8 volumes. Why Please read some good novels
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Aug 30, 2015 21:43
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As in, nothing in this thread
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Aug 30, 2015 21:43
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Linnaeus posted:Why I don't know! I think I just kept reading hoping that the author would at some point get better and learn how to craft an engaging story, if only even by accident. It never happened. I stopped reading the moment the MC thought it would be a good idea to have a warrior hit him on purpose, and the author then pulls out of his rear end that the MC had all along gained huge amounts of fortitude, and had also gained a new stat that was even more overpowered, and of course nobody else could compare. I should've stopped reading the first time this exact same scenario happened somewhere around volume 1. Silver2195 posted:You're probably thinking of Mahouka. Yes, Mahouka. I'm glad I never read the novels of that show.
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Aug 30, 2015 22:01
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I'm not sure why you'd even read LNs if you're not going to just enjoy the first few stretches of (hopefully) enjoyable content, then bail when the author shows he has no idea when to end the thing.
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Aug 30, 2015 23:03
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Well, I liked the game-world, when things were focused on crafting things, finding out new properties and skills, or advancing what apparently was the 'main story' of the sculptor class. And as long as the MC was just exploring poo poo on his own, there wasn't much opportunity for him to be eulogized by everybody else. The more things opened up, the worse that became. The whole thing could've been much more interesting if being a sculptor hadn't meant that he somehow turns out to be amazing at everything else as well, and that he'd actually have to compensate for being weak in some areas.
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Aug 30, 2015 23:19
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Boogaleeboo posted:It's another of those stories like Ark where the main character is kind of an unlovable piece of poo poo but you are supposed to be really invested because reasons. Amazingly, most people don't stay invested. Fleve posted:Moonlight Sculptor would've been interesting if the MC's greed would actually bite him in the rear end more often. Like when crafting the tomb for the king, the MC basically turns into a corrupt contractor who uses subpar materials to safe costs, pocketing the rest of the money. I would've loved it if the drat tomb collapsed, killed the last king, or melted with the first rain. Hell, something other than 'oh god how amazing you build a tomb incredible, here have more rewards' It's probably a cultural thing but I've noticed that in a lot of Korean or Chinese novels it's often portrayed as an admirable trait when the MC is a complete piece of poo poo and takes every opportunity to cheat someone else. It's sort of like a Robin Hood thing except it stops at "rob from the rich" and never quite gets to the "give to the poor" part.
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Aug 31, 2015 02:58
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i think it's more that web and light novels are scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel as far as literature goes
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Aug 31, 2015 03:00
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This is pretty much a cursed genre, filled to the brim with horrible power fantasies and grade schooler-level writing. That said, it's hypnotizing seeing the self-inserts grow more and more powerful. My favorite is Kono Sekai ga Game da to, Ore dake ga Shitteiru. It's about a dude that gets trapped in a buggy game and he has to exploit glitches to level up. Thanks for introducing me to Kumo Desu Ga..
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Aug 31, 2015 07:44
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poo poo, if you want to read about nerds living the game, Quan Zhi Gao Shou is probably your best bet. Instead of this full dive true VRMMO "oh noes, the company can't control the game" drama that makes no sense, have a story about the terrible world of pro World of Warcraft players(they're not playing actual WoW, but something like it).
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Aug 31, 2015 08:03
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Cake Attack posted:i think it's more that web and light novels are scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel as far as literature goes Well this is the anime forum after all. 
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Aug 31, 2015 13:18
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Anime is good, actually
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Aug 31, 2015 13:22
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There's also the fact that the crazy fetish poo poo is more likely to get translated, rather than the middle of the road 'Just an entertaining story stuff". So some story about a dude that bangs straight up zombies during a zombie apocalypse? That gets a translator, of course. Crest/Banner of the Stars? Man, have to loving knife fight people to get that poo poo translated.
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Aug 31, 2015 14:09
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I've enjoyed reading the Slayers novels a number of years ago, and while it's not high literature was still easily better than 99% other junk out there. I don't see how a medium matters to what's inside. Fake edit: also what ^^^^ said
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Aug 31, 2015 14:14
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Cynic Jester posted:poo poo, if you want to read about nerds living the game, Quan Zhi Gao Shou is probably your best bet. Instead of this full dive true VRMMO "oh noes, the company can't control the game" drama that makes no sense, have a story about the terrible world of pro World of Warcraft players(they're not playing actual WoW, but something like it). I tried reading that before, but it was too boring and dumb even for me. Also, while they go on and on (and on) about how tricky Weed is in lms, he never actually screws people over unless they screw him over first. At worst, he isn't very nice to his npc pets, and who gives a gently caress about those? gimme the GOD DAMN candy fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Aug 31, 2015 |
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Aug 31, 2015 15:09
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Serious Frolicking posted:I tried reading that before, but it was too boring and dumb even for me. Yeah he's not that bad. I like the family aspect of his character. He's just really overpowered and gets given too much stuff. The part where he starts using his game skills to start messing around with his sister in the real world and win all of the competitions at their high school festival is where it went off the deep end for me.
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Aug 31, 2015 20:09
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Caught up with Kumoko (ch 196 as of today), and it really, really makes me itch to play a dungeon crawler with tons of evolution trees. The author posted a blog thing around ch 130, saying we'd reached the halfway point, and I guess with all the insane power inflation lately, this little series could be over by next month or so.  Kind of unusual in a scene where everything seems to go on forever.
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Aug 31, 2015 21:30
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Honestly, while we'll all miss Kumoko a lot, the fact that there's clearly an overarching plan for the series has been one of its strengths. If this means that the story never takes the giant quality dive that most of these series seem to go through, then I'm fine with it. Now it just needs a manga or anime adaptation. If Re:Monster and Slime Tensei could get them, it'd be criminal if Kumoko couldn't.
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Aug 31, 2015 22:20
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I was very surprised when they revealed that Shiro was also Kumoko. I mean, she was introduced as a matched set with that black administrator guy but apparently has nothing to do with him.
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Aug 31, 2015 22:30
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The Lord of Hats posted:Now it just needs a manga or anime adaptation. If Re:Monster and Slime Tensei could get them, it'd be criminal if Kumoko couldn't. Kumoko started 3 months ago, so it's a bit early for it to get very far into adaptation talks, I'd imagine. That said, it only took half a year for Kenja no Mago to get picked up by a publisher, and Kumoko actually just passed it in the yearly ranking...
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Aug 31, 2015 22:47
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Has anybody checked out Play to Live? It's written by a Russian, and professionally translated. On the one hand, it's pretty much exactly a MMO webnovel - guy finds out he has a month to live, and uploads himself into a fantasy VRMMO. On the other hand, it departs from that formula pretty drastically - instead of getting an overpowered class because reasons, he sits down with a spreadsheet and works out that he gets more levels of Summon Undead if he goes with a hybrid class and skill bonus gear instead of going straight Necromancer. His personal power isn't the focus, though - he ends up leading a faction, and that's where the series focuses as it goes on. I think my favorite thing, though, is an overall lack of of the objectionable content that kind of becomes white noise in the genre. Sexual assault is not played for laughs. There's no harem situations - MC gets a girlfriend early on, they're sleeping together, no others need apply. Nobody wastes breath telling the MC how great he is. On the other hand, Book 4 had a weird three-paragraph rant about gypsies stealing babies. Overall it's a breath of fresh air. Book 1 is free from Amazon if you have prime+one of their devices, or with Kindle Unlimited. He charges for the rest of it.
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Aug 31, 2015 22:54
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Tsubasa2004 posted:Has anybody checked out Play to Live? It's written by a Russian, and professionally translated. I started reading this and 10 pages in I was faced with this unsettling feeling of wrongness. 10 pages later I finally realized what it was. No typos. No tense errors. I could just read, without having to parse everything several times. How strange
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Aug 31, 2015 23:48
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Tsubasa2004 posted:Has anybody checked out Play to Live? It's written by a Russian, and professionally translated. That's not a light novel then
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