Although the focus on our site is anime, our staff loves to dive into other types of Japanese media, like games, visual novels, and live-action films. And now, we’re jumping into another anime-related medium: the light novel! Throughout this year, a group of us will be reading through light novels and discussing them. We invite you to join us as we open Beneath the Tangles Light Novel Club!
Unfamiliar with what a light novel is? They are simply novels, but also distinct due to the audience (adolescents), inclusion of manga-style illustrations, and serialization. Many have become the basis for anime series (ex. Sword Art Online, Re:Zero, Oregairu).
We’ll be taking on one of the most beloved light novels for our first chapter of the Light Novel Club: Spice and Wolf. The story, which has also been animated and also reworked into a manga, describes the encounter between Lawrence, a young merchant in an agrarian, European-like world, and Holo, a wolf deity, and traces their travels together.
So how can you participate? Just read along! We’ll be posting our thoughts for volume one on April 6th. If you finish by then, you can comment on that post or through our Facebook or Twitter accounts. We are absolutely excited to know your thoughts as we jump into this famed series. Come be a part of our club, won’t you?
I will definitely join the club! ^-^
Yay! 🙂
Lovely idea! May I ask, what is your preferred method of accessing light novels? Do you buy them on Amazon, borrow them from the library, find them online, translate them yourself, etc? As a newcomer to LN’s, I’d love to know.
Well I don’t read too many! The only series I’ve completed is Oregairu, which I first read as a fan translation but am now purchasing through Amazon. I’m not sure how the others read their light novels—I think that stafdf29 is the only one of us left that consistently reads light novels.
Thanks! 😎👍
I definitely want to be a part of this! I’ve wanted to read Spice and Wolf for a while now, so this seems like the perfect opportunity! I’m actually in the middle of a pretty cute series right now called The Knight of The Falling Star. It’s about a man from the fae realm who’s studying to become a knight. His final test before he can become a knight is to travel to the human world. When he travels over, he’s expecting to see that nothing has changed since the medieval era, so he’s surprised to find a modern world.He also meets a girl while he’s in the human world who’s his opposite in pretty much every way. The story is focusing on his time in the human world, and on him building a relationship with the human girl he met. It’s been a really unique and interesting story so far, and I definitely recommend checking it out when you have time!
Im in love spice and wolf for sure on of my favorite anime of all time and my favorite light novel has great dialog and even better world building and even better characters think it isnt too hard to find some good morals and ideas if you look into it a bit overall fantastic read!
Thanks for the rec—I’m excited for it!
[…] first post was back in March of 2018, when we announced the club’s first novel, Spice and Wolf Vol. 1, […]