Tag: J-Novel Club

May 8, 2022 · 0 comments

By Shelley Pallis. Belying his humdrum title, Hitsuji Gamei’s novel The Magic in This Other World is Too Far Behind kicks off with an original and exciting double-bluff. Using the language of fairy tales, he chronicles the rise to power of Felmenia Stingray, a nobleman’s daughter who masters many magical arts at a young age, […]

April 23, 2022 · 0 comments

By Shelley Pallis. And then he died. In his sleep, because of a particularly powerful sneeze. Ryoma Takebayashi wakes up at tea party in heaven with several gods, and accepts his fate with customary light-novel equanimity. A downtrodden salaryman in a dead-end job, he had seen many of his co-workers die from overwork and a […]

April 20, 2022 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. It’s hard indeed to compete with the sort of granular detail and insight of Shirobako, but Animeta does a fine job from the very first pages, in which cynical staff at an anime company bicker over the poor quality of new hirelings. Facing a bunch of talentless drudges, the go-getting director Kujo […]

April 11, 2022 · 0 comments

By Shelley Pallis. And then he was struck by lightning, and it was a mistake, but it was too late, and he was dead. Well, that’s not a customer complaint that the Guardian is going to be able to deal with in a couple of phone calls. Fifteen-year-old Touya Mochizuki has indeed just been killed […]

February 15, 2022 · 0 comments

By Shelley Pallis. And then she died. Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey – a man in a toga who calls himself God shows up to tell Kaoru the Office Lady that she’s accidentally wandered into a spatial anomaly, and (sorry about this) she’d dead. Well, her body’s dead, his not-all-that-godlike powers couldn’t keep her from stepping into the […]