Holy cow, 12 Kingdoms is awesome

No, really, holy cow, 12 Kingdoms is awesome.  I had two volumes saved up, and I was right to save them until things calmed down because they have consumed most of my weekend.  Yes, the copy-editing errors are still there (some of them just embarrassingly bad), and the author is still kind of clumsy handling the timeline with multiple point of view characters, but did I mention how awesome this series is?  Because it's awesome.

You know what's not awesome?  That Tokyopop licensed this series, so it is very possible that I will never ever see another volume of it ever since TP is gone now.  And we were just getting to the new content!  (Insert rant about wishing publishers would start publishing these novel series where the anime that's already been released left off to keep interest in the franchise from dying.)  Totally not awesome.  I could seriously read several more volumes right now and not get bored.

If you like epic fantasy with an increasingly sprawling and highly complex world and content that makes you pay attention or risk getting lost, buy these books now.  Since they're out of print, who knows how high the price will soar?  The good news is that, to some extent, each book stands alone, so if you didn't know there were more volumes, you might be better able to cope and just enjoy the story you do get.

I don't think I can drag out volume four much past tomorrow because I don't have that kind of self-control right now, but what can I possibly read after this that won't feel like a letdown?  Maybe I should try some of the classic Tezuka I have on my "literature" shelf.  Anyone have any other suggestions?

Hey, they like our light novels, too

I'm a fan of sci-fi writer John Scalzi, and so is Japan.  I got quite a kick out of him (and his fans) getting a kick out of the Japanese cover of one of his books that sort of straddles YA and adult sci-fi because it's the other side of the same story told in told in the definitely adult The Last Colony only this time from the POV of a teenage girl.  (It's actually vaguely similar to the parallel story with different POV thing in Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow.)

Yes, I'm a huge geek, but I find it sort of sociologically fascinating to see an American book I've read and enjoyed re-interpreted, re-covered, and re-marketed in another culture that I also happen to be fascinated by.  Something to think about, anyway.

Chilling and beautiful summer reading

Dear Yen Press,

Have I told you how much I adore Kieli?  I really, really do.  I can't figure out if it's the atmosphere of sweet, awkward melancholy or the dreamy quality of the storytelling (interrupted by brief and disturbingly clear instants of graphic violence and action).  Is is the reflective mood?  The detached but sad tone?  The brisk pacing that seems languid at the same time?  The spine-tingling weirdness that creeps in sometimes?  The amusing and crotchety relationship between the lead characters?

Well, a lot of it is the characters.  I love the idea of a beat-up old radio possessed by a foulmouthed, dead, young soldier as the sidekick/mascot.  Nothing cute and cuddly here.  It fits with the story surprisingly well, though.  As much as I wished him peace, I was glad the Corporal decided to stick around and play fairy godmother/conscience/voice-of-reason/brow-beater/babysitter.  And I still giggle every time he calls Harvey Herbie. 

Harvey is great.  He's hardly a hero anymore if he ever was; he's too tired and grouchy for that.  There is so much potential when you're dealing with a character over a hundred years old who has seen every imaginable horror of war and its aftermath.  He's been on the run for 80 years; he can't stay in one place because people will notice he doesn't age, or he'll end up getting hunted down.  He's really tragic and also really crabby.  Who wouldn't be?  And of course he doesn't deal well with people, and is especially out of his depth with fourteen-year-old girls who start following him around and causing trouble for him by being so dang young and curious all the time.  What about her could possibly make him choose to continue living his pathetic existence?  He sure doesn't know, but you feel that connection, and it feels so real and right and realistic, if I can use that word about a book set on a post-apocalyptic world where perpetual motion machines exist as part of the premise.  What is it about Kieli that makes it impossible for Harvey to really leave her alone?  It's not like he doesn't understand her loneliness; he just doesn't understand why she needs him.

Neither does she, really.  Like most fourteen-year-olds, she can be kind of annoying, but this is her first time seeing anything outside her hometown, and there is so much to see outside the walls of that convent school.  Is she tagging along because Harvey's the first person she's met who can also see ghosts?  Because he represents a sort of freedom and escape?  It can't be pity; I don't think pity could cause someone to risk life and limb and future to save another.  Is is co-dependence?  Doesn't really feel like it.  Who needs who more?  I don't know, but I really can't wait to read volume 3.

One quibble I have is about your marketing tag-line, the part about it being an uncommon romance.  I've read the first two novels, and I'm glad to see it's really not that, although there were some hilarious and endearingly awkward questions in volume 2.  The author is kind of genius about this because we as the readers know what Kieli knows and why she is asking, but Harvey doesn't, and the sheer snort-inducing power of that scene was kind of staggering.  I would like to hope that before any actual romance happens, Kieli is allowed to grow up a little more.  (And Harvey, too, though it seems odd to want a 100+ year old man to be more mature.)  That's hardly your responsibility, though, since you're just providing great translations of a haunting story.

I just hope volume 3 comes out on time because I need it to still be warm outside when I read Kieli.  If I can't sit outside in the sun while reading it, the horror and bleakness can get to be too much because I'm not much of a horror fan normally.  So please bring it out in September as planned.  I have it pre-ordered.

Thanks for keeping the series going.  I can't wait to love on the enticingly-titled volume 3.

Sincerely,
TMIA

Out of order publishing

For the record, I'd like to thank Yen Press, Tokyopop, ADV, Funimation, Geneon, and Viz for publishing things I can ponder, discuss, and complain about.

Apparently, some "fans" complain that they don't want to buy the same thing more than once.  Putting aside the question of how many versions of Evangelion (or DBZ) they have bought and trusting that their memories are so good that they can't stand the same content even in different forms (manga vs. anime vs. light novel), I would like to muse about this.


I've often wondered why publishers slavishly put things out in order even when the first X volumes are retreading the already released TV or manga series.  Take, for instance, Beck.  The anime was not completely slavish to the manga, but I know that as soon as the anime came out, there was a big market for the manga that picked up the story where the anime left off.  For whatever reason, Tokyopop didn't take advantage of that situation, and now . . .  Other (less law-abiding) citizens probably just read scanlations, even if they had intended to buy the manga because now it isn't available legally and may never be again.

Haruhi would be a great example.  After that first TV series was released with no sequel in sight, and the novels got licensed, I was surprised that the first novel was published first by several months.  I would think more of the fans might have been willing to plunk down cash for volume 2 or even volume 3 of the original novel series because it was stuff they hadn't seen/read yet.  Maybe that's not a good example because I think Haruhi is selling decently (even the manga, which most reviewers aren't too fond of, even though it's the same thing) because, you know, it's Haruhi.

Trinity Blood would be a bad example.  What with the two different series and the different story order and the different everything, this series did have to be published in order, but it's coming out so slowly, I wonder if those who liked the anime when it was broadcast and first sold possess the will-power to be patient.  Then again, maybe illegal light novel translations are scarcer online?  I don't know . . .

Another example that comes to mind is Kieli.  The manga covers the first light novel's contents pretty thoroughly.  Publishing the second light novel first might have been a better idea to keep the buzz and the story going after the Kieli manga made some popular lists.

I do love Kino no Tabi, and by the time the first light novel came out, it had been a long while since I saw the anime.  I didn't mind the retread of the content because that translation was awesome, and the nuances of what can be done in prose vs. what can be done in film made it well worth reading more than once.  Other people were probably just wanting the light novel volumes that picked up where the anime left off (or left out).

Kodocha (where the manga came out way before the [incompletely released] anime) and Kyo Kara Maoh (where the anime was released way before the manga) also come to mind.
It seems to me that in most series--especially an author's first series--the storytelling gets better as the story goes on and the artist/writer gains skill, so it seems to me that publishing later volumes might also help pull in people who might have been turned off by, say, the early (I hope) clunkiness of Spice and Wolf.

It may be that the American publishers/localizers don't get to make these choices.  I've heard some people say that the Japanese companies selling the licenses often have stringent contract requirements that make little sense in the American market.  Maybe this is one of them.  But if companies do have flexibility here, it might behoove them to take advantage of cross-marketing opportunities and give the whiner "fans" less to whine about by providing them with what they claim to want sooner.

Of course, as some have pointed out, some of these "fans" just want any excuse not to actually put their money where their mouths are (be it "bad" covers, "poor" translations, offensive back cover summaries, or whatever they're complaining about these days), so no matter what a publisher does, some fans just won't pay.  But I do like the idea of cutting their feet out from under them whenever possible. 

To be fair, there are fans who genuinely don't like retreading the same territory (though I can think of a lot of reasons why it's worth it to buy the Monster mangaand anime,) who would actually plunk down the money if, say, volume 13 of Beck came out the month after the DVD release ended.  I'd like to give them a chance to do so.

Any insights, knowledge, or arguments for, against, or about these ideas?