Bonus Podcast (with Transcript) 2023 March: Light Novel Recommendations

Apologies for the delay, folks! Toni, Cypress, and Vrai are here to talk about their favorite recent light novels.

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VRAI: Hello, patrons. Welcome to another round of the bonus podcast! Thank you so much for your generous donations that help us do what we do. This is Vrai. And with me today is Cy and our newest staff member, Toni, who y’all may remember as a previous contributor. Wrote pieces about Sarazanmai and Madoka Rebellion. Please give them a warm, warm welcome in the comments.

TONI: Hello, everybody.

VRAI: Yay!

CY: Yay!

VRAI: We are doing another installment of bonus recommendations of a sort today. A lot of folks have asked us to do novel or light novel recommendations. And it is tough to get a main-feed episode of those lined up just because that usually requires seven or eight titles. But three, we thought we could manage. So, we are going to be throwing a couple different novel suggestions at y’all across genres, and hopefully you’ll be able to find something you like. Did one of you want to start?

CY: I can kick it off. Yeah, okay, so today, I’m coming at you with a little bit of nepo-babyism. I don’t know if the kids are still talking about this, but this is a novel I actually edited. And that’s right: it’s Qualia the Purple! Qualia the Purple is a legacy yuri title. I believe it was published in 2009, and Seven Seas acquired it recently. And it is about quantum physics, string theory, girls, girls, girls, how you perceive the world. And it’s a yuri!

VRAI: Yay! I think before Otherside Picnic came out this was like one of four recommendations, this and First and Last Idol [sic] [Editor’s Note: the title is Last and First Idol], for genre yuri light novels that you would get, and it hadn’t been licensed for the longest time.

CY: Yeah, I’m still not quite sure how Seven Seas got it because this is a really precious title to a lot of people. And I loved editing it. I had so much fun editing it. And it’s a really, really… The plot twists, the turns it takes are really good, and I can see why people like it so much.

VRAI: Definitely one that I have wanted to read for a good, long time.

CY: You gotta read it. It’s so good. It’s so good! It’s so good.

VRAI: I was gonna say, Toni, you mentioned off recording that this was relevant to your interests.

TONI: Yes. This apparently is about my middle school hyperfixation, string theory. Is that true, Cy?

CY: It is! It’s got so much string theory. A little behind-the-scenes: I had to do a lot of research on string theory for this one because it does get very technical at some points, which can be enjoyable. But it’s got lots of string theory. And it’s only, like, $14.99.

[Chuckling]

TONI: Wow. I feel like this is made for me. It’s gay, it’s science fiction, and it has string theory, too!

CY: And it’s well edited. Yeah.

VRAI: By a very talented editor, I’m told.

CY: Yes. [Chuckles] Yeah, no, that’s my recommendation, easily. And it’s complete in one volume. So, you just buy one and you’re done!

TONI: I’m curious. How does it integrate the string theory into the story or make it interesting or relevant? Because I could totally imagine it just having infodump. You know how some isekai light novels have these infodumpy things about the magic of the world? Does it infodump it like a lot of light novels do, or does it do it more like how Philip Pullman does in His Dark Materials, where it’s integrated really beautifully?

CY: I think it’s integrated really well. The big thing it infodumps about, that I feel like won’t alter— I should say this is a novel that the less you know about going in, the better I think the effect is, but the one thing it does infodump about is what a qualia, or a quale, is, because that’s not a term that I knew before this book. But I feel like it’s pretty well integrated. Once it slides from slice-of-life to romantic psycho-thriller, it really enmeshes the hard science that it’s doing with the plot in a really, really engaging way. I really love it. It’s a very, very good thriller. It’s so enjoyable.

TONI: I am thrilled and excited.

CY: [Chuckles]

VRAI: How accessible is it for folks who are, like me, maybe not so much into super hard sci-fi? Like, is the other stuff also really present once it gets into the string theory stuff?

CY: Oh, yeah, yeah, it really blends— Because I’m someone who… I prefer softer sci-fi. I just find hard sci-fi hard to parse. But one of the things I found while reading it is it still engages enough with the kind of realism of slice-of-life and the fact that the characters are middle schoolers. And it still pulls in the characterization alongside the science part, which is kind of what makes some of the darker twists and some of the thriller aspects still really engaging without you being overwhelmed by science, because there are a lot of terms. There’s a lot of terms. And I mean, some of them are things that people are probably familiar with, like Schrödinger’s cat. But then, some of them, like qualia, quale, a lot of the string theory, the main character herself, those are terms that I had to, while editing, kind of figure out how are we going to keep it true to the Japanese but also make this accessible? Because that’s a really big thing for me, is that I think every book should be accessible to people. And I found that it blends them together pretty well. You’re not going to be overwhelmed by science… that just wants two girls to kiss. [Chuckles]

VRAI: Well, I definitely would have read it just as a historically relevant yuri novel. But this has definitely upped my excitement for it as a narrative. So, thank you.

CY: Yes, no problem.

VRAI: Yes. Toni, what about you? The title you were describing sounded super interesting.

TONI: Yes. Okay, so, I will now infodump about Lily That Blooms in Another World [sic].

VRAI: I read the preview for this one and wasn’t super jazzed about it, just because the prose felt very repetitive. So, I’m curious to hear how the novel as a whole works out.

CY: Yeah, because this is the Sexiled person, right?

TONI: It is the Sexiled person. I have not yet read Sexiled, but I’m very excited to one day. But so, the reason I started reading Lily That Blooms in Another World was, honestly, if I’m being really real here, because I tried out… I know this is gonna make people angry… I tried out the… what’s the other villainess one?

VRAI: I’m in Love with the Villainess?

TONI: [crosstalk] I’m in Love with the Villainess. And it made me so angry on so many different levels about so many different things.

VRAI: It’s okay. This is the Patreon feed. This is a safe place.

[Laughter]

TONI: And so I was like, okay, there must be good yuri villainess light novels out there. And obviously, we’re getting an adaptation of one right now with Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess, but this one I’m going to sell to you all because what I really love about this one is that it just feels like it’s interested in… Getting my thoughts together. What I really love about this one is that it really avoids a lot of the traps that isekai light novels have. It’s not really so much about the act of being isekai’d so much as it is about kind of learning to create a life for yourself and let go of all these expectations that you’ve been weighted down upon, which is interesting because that’s a theme across a lot of these villainess light novels that I’ve noticed, where it seems to be the implication is that these villainesses are villainesses is because of all the expectations that are placed upon nobility to engage in politicking, to do all of these kinds of manipulative maneuvers to maintain their family’s lineage and legacy. And I think that A Lily Blooms in Another World is really good at navigating “Okay, so what is the actual experience of learning how to just live your life to live your life,” without having some kind of new goal that you have to attain, but just to live and exist simply for the people you care about. And I think that’s what makes it slightly different from Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess (that title’s way too long), because that one feels very much like, okay, we have a new mission, which is to… and they’re still involved in the royal politicking but just in a different way, right? Whereas this one is kind of about the letting go of that and how do you create a new life that is not… how do I put this? Yeah. And also, I just love the characters. I love the way that the… You know, often these villainess light novels, the perspective character can be very pushy, very, very pushy. And I really like how this character feels like she actually respects the villainess character’s boundaries in many ways and is very sweet. And they’re still playing with the trope of “I’m going to convince you to love me,” right? But it’s playing with it in a way that feels—

VRAI: Yeah, what is the— Oh, sorry. I was gonna ask, what is the plot setup?

TONI: Okay, okay. I probably should have said this earlier! [Chuckles] I’m sorry for not saying it earlier.

CY: I love how impassioned you are about it, though.

VRAI: Mm-hm.

TONI: I am very passionate about this one because the number of times I’ve tried to recommend this to people—and sometimes succeeded! The plot is that… It’s actually quite similar to the Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess in some ways, in that the main character, if I remember right, proposes to the villainess, and she makes a deal with the villainess that if she can get, within like 14 days, for the villainess to fall in love with her, then the villainess will drop her royal politicking life and they will… something. I forget exactly what it is. But essentially, the conceit is I’m going to try to get you to admit you love me, but in a way that feels a little bit playful. And so, they go to a very remote estate and they just learn to live in a very simple manner, growing crops and doing simple things, living like simple people, and kind of reconnecting with what everyday life is like for most people, if I remember exactly right.

CY: This sounds like the dream. [Chuckles] Going to the forest or a remote place and just vibing.

TONI: Absolutely. It really is. Now of course, it’s only one volume, right? And of course, the family has to come back and try to ruin everything.

CY: Of course.

VRAI: Yes, yes. Romance novel conventions. We’ve all been here.

TONI: But it is very… I don’t know. I like it. It’s hard really to describe more than that.

VRAI: That’s neat. It’s kind of a meeting of the villainess mode and the sort of slow-life isekai that’s very popular right now, which is neat.

CY: Yeah, I like that.

VRAI: Where the ultimate goal is to not have to be burdened by societal expectation, which I think is sort of a gendered version of what villainess stories are often reaching towards and this idea that the villainess as an archetype is maybe the societally cast version of “We must punish ambitious women,” I think, coming out.

CY: Yeah, yeah, more and more as more villainess stories keep coming out, it kind of makes me think of how spinsters have been positioned, particularly in Western society, and the villainess trope just feels like the kind of modern form of the narrative of the unwed woman or the young girl who’s a little too headstrong, and I dig it. I like it. I like the pushing back against, like` “I don’t want just to kind of fall into my duty. I want a life that also is lived for myself.” I really like that, and I especially like it when it is a queer narrative.

TONI: Yeah! And what’s really cool about this one is that these are not the only queer people in the story. And that’s also something I like about Magical Revolution, which… But [this podcast] isn’t about that. But, you know, they get to meet other queer people. I think they meet this traveling salesman who’s kind of a recurring character, and it’s revealed halfway through that the traveling salesman is a lesbian. And they’re like, “Whoa! Older lesbians exist, first of all, and they build these lives for themselves that have deep meaning. And there’s a place where we can have a future for ourselves that’s separate from the royal politicking and from compulsory heterosexuality.” And I remember reading that moment in particular, where that’s revealed, and I was just so moved by it because I was like, this is how… You know, as a young queer person, especially in New York City, who’s spent a lot of time in gay male spaces, even though I’m nonbinary and stuff, there is this really strong generational divide. And I really love… narratives of cross-generational queer exchange, cross-generational community-building make me very happy, especially in the wake of the AIDS epidemic and stuff like that.

VRAI: I mean, I think that’s why everybody really loves the ring-of-keys image, right, from Fun Home.

TONI: Oh, yeah.

VRAI: That moment of seeing an adult who expresses a mode of living you didn’t think was possible when you’re very small.

CY: It’s very powerful.

VRAI: That’s nice.

TONI: Oh, yeah. For me, that moment was when I was growing up and I had a gay pastor at my church. And I was like, “What? A 50-year-old gay man is my pastor?” And it’s these moments that actually shape us and potentially can give us a vision for our future, right? For a long time I wanted to be a pastor after that, because I was like, “Whoa! That’s a future I could have. I could run a church as a gay person.”

CY: [Chuckles] I love that!

TONI: Which is absolutely insane on so many levels, but you know. But, you know, it speaks to the power of those narratives. And I really feel that in this one. Yeah, I really feel that in A Lily Blooms in Another World.

VRAI: Maybe I’ll try and circle back to it. And I think the fact that it’s only one volume will make it easier for people to go to, and the fact you mentioned that it’s a consensual… What I read of just the opening chapter I recall, that the villainess is sort of acquiescing to “Okay, go ahead and try and make me fall in love with you if you can,” as it were. I know that I bounced off I’m in Love with the Villainess because—

CY: [Chuckles] Same!

VRAI: —Rae starts off so very, very pushy. I need to give it another shot because people love it so much, but, boy, it’s a high hurdle.

TONI: And listen, I like a bratty sub/disciplined dom dynamic. I’m here for that. I mean, in another podcast that we’re probably going to record, I’m going to talk about how much I love Mitsuba and Minamoto-kun from Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun because they are that exact dynamic and I adore it. But no! I think if it’s taken too seriously and too literally, it stops feeling like a fantasy or just a throwaway joke. Then it’s a little uncomfortable, and especially when it’s involving children.

VRAI: Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to talk about I’m in Love with the Villainess in depth because it’s getting an anime adaptation. So, hopefully by then I’ll have had a chance to read the novels, and we will see, we will see, folks at home.

We are… That’s about 20 minutes in, so I will aggressively throw my recommendation at you now.

CY: Yeah, Vrai, what are you gonna rec?

TONI: Excited!

VRAI: Yay. So, I am recommending (I have to pull up the full title; it’s long) From Truant to Anime Screenwriter: My Path to “Anohana” and “The Anthem of the Heart”, a.k.a. Mari Okada’s autobiography!

CY: Yeah.

TONI: Oh my.

VRAI: It’s really good! It’s a pretty short, breezy read. It’s extremely readable in English. Kim Morrissy did the translation, a.k.a. Frog-kun, and she did an excellent job. My understanding of Japanese prose is kind of limited, but my understanding is that there is a very heavy burden on light novel translators to essentially pick up English-language conventions of style and tone and writerly voice, basically whole cloth. So, I really applaud folks who do it well.

CY: Yeah, chiming in on that, as a light novel editor, a lot of the characterization has to be somewhat created on the localization side because their tone just reads differently in different languages. Yeah, it’s very emotional! [Chuckles]

TONI: It really does have the quality of a book that’s essentially answering the question “Why are they like that?” And…

VRAI: It really is!

TONI: Here’s your answer! [Chuckles]

VRAI: Yeah. If you have ever watched a Mari Okada show and wondered, “Why is she like that?” you may have an answer.

CY: [crosstalk] It’s because she went through it. [Chuckles]

VRAI: It’s this book. She really did! And for those of you at home who may not know, Mari Okada is an extremely prolific screenwriter who has recently started dipping a toe into directing. She has done eight million adaptational works of varying quality and also… “Legitimacy” isn’t the right word… “Sketchiness” is too punitive. But you know what I mean, you know? Savoriness. There we are. She was a series composer for Wandering Son and for Toradora, but she also did the adaptational screenplay for Kodomo no Jikan early in her career—

CY: [shocked] Hoh!

VRAI: —which, even after reading this book, I don’t have an answer to! I don’t know why—

CY: Hoh, I didn’t know that! I didn’t know that! [Chuckles]

VRAI: Yeah! I… I assume it’s “needs job to pay rent,” but man.

CY: I’m gonna assume that with you. Hoo!

TONI: Can you just give a very quick summary of why that’s bananas, for those of us at home or myself who have not read it or know anything about it?

VRAI: Well, let me give you the potted story of how the manga was twice banned, was almost licensed and then banned in English because the original pitch for the title of what it would be called in English was Nymphet. If that gives you any idea of the content.

TONI: Oh my God! Not Lolita references!

VRAI: Except not good like Lolita, a novel that knows what it is.

CY: [crosstalk] Oh, no. It’s very bad.

VRAI: [crosstalk] No, it’s about sexualizing grade schoolers. So…

TONI: Well, in any case…

VRAI: In any case, that aside, Mari Okada’s most famous original works are probably, most recently, Maquia: Where the Promised Flower Blooms, which she directed in addition to writing, as well as O Maidens in Your Savage Season, which she wrote the adaptive scripts for and wrote the original manga for. I don’t always like her work, but I will always check it out because when she hits it out of the park, she goes big. Like, when she succeeds, she succeeds hard.

TONI: Like Woman Called Fujiko Mine.

VRAI: Yeah, which Sayo Yamamoto in an interview basically said that that series was Okada’s baby. And boy, can you tell. So, yeah, I would liken reading this book to reading a Nagata Kabi manga. It’s about on that level of intensity.

CY: Yeah.

VRAI: Because Okada was… So, she didn’t go to school for a good chunk of middle school and high school. She stayed at home. She had a verbally and emotionally abusive mother, who at one point tried to strangle her to death, which is mentioned in the book. Her mother also had abusive boyfriends, which spilled over onto affecting her life as well. And so, in addition to stuff about bullying and body image issues, there’s a lot of that simmering in this book and it can get pretty intense. But if you are a fan of Okada’s work, there are a lot of moments in here that, like you said, Toni, is very “Oh, that’s why you’re like that!” I think one of my favorite little anecdotes is… she’s talking about in high school, where she basically did correspondence book reports with her teacher so that she would be able to graduate. He would send her books, she would write a report on it, and then he would critique her writing. And at one point, she describes that he wrote her something with the line “You know, as a girl,” and she has this bolt of clear blue euphoria where she had always thought of herself as this disgusting shut-in, not like the feminine, beautiful, dainty clean heroines of shoujo manga. And so, she had this thought that, “Oh, I am a truant,” as she calls herself, “but I’m also a girl.” And I feel like that moment of non-conforming feminine euphoria is very of her work. You know?

TONI: Well, like this interpolation into femininity in that moment, right? Like being hailed in that sense. Not to make it all theory-theory, but it’s an interesting moment where it’s like “Oh, yeah, this is a role that I can inhabit. It is possible for people to see me in that way.”

If you have nothing more to say about that, I do have a question for you all that kind of riffs on this.

VRAI: Yeah, the only other thing I would add is that if you are interested in the technical process of how anime is made, it doesn’t go into that a lot but the last couple chapters do kind of talk about screenwriting, writers’ room, and how she got her start working on direct-to-video adult films and a bunch of other neat details like that. But yeah, so it’s kind of interesting on a technical level as well, but mainly it’s just a very impactful, well-told personal narrative that I really liked a lot. You were saying?

TONI: Oh. I was just gonna ask, if you had to choose any other big wig in anime, big anime director, writer, anime person to write a tell-all memoir explaining their vision—

VRAI: [crosstalk] Ikuhara.

CY: Urobuchi.

[Laughter]

CY: Sorry! Sorry! I want to know how that man is like that! What happened. To you. My guy! [Chuckles]

VRAI: [Chuckles] Other than the obvious, my other pull might be the woman who has so far, I think, done all of the scenarios over at Nitro+chiral. I want to know about her and what her whole deal is.

TONI: Over at what?

VRAI: Nitro+chiral. They’re the game company that does, like, Dramatical Murder and Slow Damage and Sweet Pool.

TONI: [crosstalk] Gotcha. Didn’t Urobuchi use to work there?

VRAI: He did. He worked for Nitro, and then Nitro+chiral is like their BL-exclusive line. But he was also a producer on several of the Chiral games.

TONI: Gotcha.

CY: Yeah, that’s who I want a tell-all of. Like, what is going on in his head, what happened in his childhood? Or is he just like this? Is he just like—

TONI: I want to know what happened— Oh, sorry. You were saying?

CY: [Chuckles] Oh, no, you go on, go on.

TONI: I want to know what happened in between Madoka and Thunderbolt Fantasy?

CY: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

TONI: What happened in his head that just made him a little bit less fucked up? Did he go to therapy? Is he okay? I hope he’s okay, especially given that we’re about to get a Madoka Rebellion sequel.

CY: Oh, God.

TONI: And I do want it to be fucked up in the way that Madoka Rebellion was, but I also want it to be… I’m the few, the proud, the Madoka Rebellion stan, but I also want it to, like…

VRAI: Somebody has to.

TONI: Yeah.

[Laughter]

VRAI: Kabura Fuchii. That was her name. That’s the Nitro+chiral lady. Sorry, I wanted to shoutout her properly. Continue.

TONI: Great! No, I’ll look up her work. That makes me want to explore all of her work.

VRAI: So many trigger warnings.

TONI: What did you say her name was again?

VRAI: It’s Kabura Fuchii.

TONI: Okay, thank you. But yeah, I think for me it would be Ikuhara, but I almost don’t want to know if he’s a straight man.

VRAI: Yeah, Ikuhara is one of those people that it’s like “You are an Iconoclastic, Eccentric Artiste,” capital letters, and those people tend to have hurt some people in their creation of great art. And I want to believe in my heart that it’s just minor inconsideration and working your artists too hard and not sexual-harassment-of-your-staff shit.

CY: Yeah. I—

TONI: Yeah! Well, there is— Sorry.

CY: I was gonna say, as someone who one of their favorite authors came out a few years ago having beaten his wife, I was, I mean… Eh, I’m not someone who’s good at separating the art from the artist, so I always pray that people’s favorite never is a horrible person. That author, by the way, is Ubukata Tow, and he wrote (Oh God, why did I just…?) Mardock Scramble. And that’s one of my favorite novels, and it turns out he’s a horrible dude! So, no longer the favorite.

TONI: Well, in the meantime, we have that burn book that the Sailor Moon staff wrote about Ikuhara, which I have been thoroughly enjoying reading.

VRAI: [crosstalk] It’s so much.

TONI: It is delightful.

VRAI: [crosstalk] It’s so much. That is a whole topic for another day. I unfortunately have to wind us down now because we have reached the half-hour mark. But yeah, go look that up on Sakuga Blog. It is there. It has been uploaded. It’s wild. And please tell us your thoughts if you’ve read any of these, or chime in with your own recommendations down below. Thanks again for all your support, AniFam. We couldn’t do this without you. And we’ll see you next month.

CY: Bye.

TONI: Bye!