Hello everyone! Today, I propose you a particular article, since I’m not going to speak to you about a work, but about a support. And in this case, this medium is the Light Novel! A medium for the moment not very widespread, which struggles to be known, but which nevertheless, deserves that we are interested in it. So, in this article, I’m going to do everything I can to make it happen.

But by the way, what is a Light Novel?

Although Light Novel is primarily an A6 format support, it often has its own structure. The Light Novel Light has a more oralised narrative style than a Western novel, and the dialogues are in the majority. Thus describing in a different way certain details related to speech, such as the sound of a voice or a language tic, for example.
The main target of a Light Novel is mainly Young Adults (with a few exceptions), but the kind of story is variable, we can find fantasy, fantasy, but also Slice of Life or Thriller. So there’s something for everyone, isn’t there? All in all, in Japan, the Light Novel is an ultra-popular medium, with an incredible number of new releases every month.

Why read Light Novel?

Let’s say right away, this part will not be really objective, it will be inspired in large part by my personal feelings.
On the one hand, I think that your interest in Light Novel would allow you to know the original support of a series you appreciate. Indeed, most of the time, seasonal anime, when they are not adaptations of manga, are adaptations of Light Novel. Yes, very popular series like Sword Art Online, Re:Zero or High School DxD are at the beginning of Light Novel. And then as it is the original material, you will not have any loss or modification due to adaptations necessary to stick to the media! And that’s priceless! Moreover, you will also have the right to pretty illustrations punctuating your reading, which is quite nice, let’s admit it.

But more seriously (although the previous paragraph was), as far as I’m concerned, the Light Novel allowed me to find a taste of reading that suits me. Even if it’s less true now, when I was younger, I didn’t like reading novels, even the ones I was the target of. I found it very boring to read, I found that there were too many descriptions for not much, supposedly to encourage immersion. But for me, that only made my reading slow. Plus, I felt like I was always reading the same kind of story, which didn’t help. (But I liked Voltaire’s Candide) Do you think that even Harry Potter, I found it long sometimes?

With the Light Novel, I discovered something else: First of all that 300 pages suited me very well, and then I discovered a dynamic story, marked by a lot of dialogue and without superfluous description. Thanks to this, I enjoyed every Light Novel I read and I didn’t feel like wasting my time. However, to give all the credit only to these elements would be in bad faith. I think that if I enjoy Light Novel so much, it’s also because I find a lot of elements that I like and that I find in Japanese manga and animation … So it may be something completely Japanese, but I can not explain it … A kind of familiar feeling …

If you are a manga reader or an anime lover, by reading a Light Novel you will not be out of place, finding what you like in the other two media mentioned, but in a different way. Of course you’ll see less pictures and hear fewer voices. But on the one hand, there is an illustration in each chapter, which can result in a beautiful page, but on the other hand, you can always use your head to imagine voices that you have already heard in the anime version. Because I repeat, many anime and manga are adaptations of Light Novel. So you can also have fun making the comparison between the original material and its adaptation. And maybe even discover additional information that would have been overlooked in the 30 frames per second version.

And if you are rather a fan of Western novels, this is the opportunity for you to discover stories that are different from your habits, to discover Japanese popculture. While avoiding as much as possible what could put you off in manga or anime. To discover another style of storytelling and why not to discover new artists.