How is one format that favors Newbie Protagonists over Veteran Protagonists and that facilitates immersion not an example of a format that will be "limiting yourself to newbie protagonists" when the reverse would not be true in an entirely different format: the LitRPG format that favors Veteran Protagonists over Newbie Protagonists. I really don't know how to render this down to a more simple single sentence bite sized piece of information. I tried supporting exactly what I said with an argument based on your post, which appeared to show a favored narrative perspective and that you clearly enjoy in regards to the "exposition" methods available. You totally ignore my point, after having set the conditions yourself, that if it could be done it would be fun, and continue to either ignore what I've written or just didn't care to read it or even review your own writing to see if it colored my response. I'm not arguing here, I'm telling you man. I get how the exposition favors Day One stories, but personally I also love stories where there aren't newbies around at all, there is an entire literary world of characters that don't start with hand holding in fantasy, and they get by with veteran teachers, and zero game prompts. In immersive worlds. Often when the author likes a character type (damsel in distress say) and wants to be lazy, they get along by bringing her along as the inexperienced fellow companion in a large cast of characters: using them to shoe horn in large blocks of exposition when such a revelation isn't favored by fun and fast paced immersive action. Action which explains (showing and telling) exactly what the protagonists have accomplished in that moment. Explaining a Veteran's strategy after and the best way to use abilities and their mana cost or cool downs etc is a uniquely LitRPG reader or Gamer line of inquiry. Luckily we now have a genre where writers that enjoy that stuff can have fun focusing on it, more-so than was ever required previously within fantasy, creating a more demanding standard for their stories exposition to be considered complete. Arguing against me here is arguing against that tried and true fantasy format which eschews game features to literally immerse people with just words, and the "Crunchy" game stuff almost always gets in the way of accomplishing exactly that task when its not interwoven into someone learning about the game. In the process, it favors first time players who are often Day One protagonists. We agree on that point at least, though repeatedly you have refused to give me credit for understanding it for some reason. As for not knowing where some of my points that I argued for came from... I mentioned objective narration (pretty sure this is what "Just the facts" narration is called) and third person perspectives with limited insight into the minds of a single character because of this line. It appears you thought this was exactly what you were talking about, but Combat Logs use a Second Person perspective "You do", or the implied "You do" for anyone familiar with MUD based games, and so other than First Person in the present, everything else is an accounting of information that is be necessity a narrator's voice, or some weirdoe thinking in the third person: some narrators are just more active than others and it appears this is what you were thinking of (like Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett). I had thought your point was that YA (inexperienced protagonists) and fast paced First Person stories that were your preference, but apparently you are of the opinion that literally every type of story telling perspective and view favors inexperienced protagonists within LitRPG, because of the need to explain a game and all its features. Once again, we agree on that point, because crunchy LitRPG requirements add a handicap not present in regular fantasy novels. Now you've taken that stance a step further and ignored the massive body of fantasy and sci-fi that accomplish Veteran Perspectives effectively, by doing the work it takes to make the stories good. Game-lite LitRPG, or "LitRPG Lite", doesn't have an impossible format for this task in LitRPG, as its far closer to fantasy which pulls it off all the time. Though I hate to describe it as "Lite" because that gives the crunchy side of the debate more credit than they've earned. Spreading your view across all of fantasy is just your preference and your opinion. I'm keeping my points to LitRPG because thats the format that I'm writing in... If your comments were also meant to be restrained to LitRPG, then once again we are in agreement. The Game feature filled standard of LitRPG does not favor Veteran Protagonists. I also happen to think that third person narration and less immediate narrative accountings also favor Veteran protagonists once the unneccessary game elements present in futuristic games are done away with. But thats just my opinion.
The various books I've read in the LitRPG genre lead me to believe that many of the authors are either young themselves and that they are really, really, really into anime/manga. It's either that or that they believe their audience is that way and so they are writing books that will appeal to those individuals. It's not true of every book I've read, but there are definitely some authors who give me that vibe.
I grew watching a lot of anime. Not so much anymore, though I catch some of the more popular ones. It has definitely influenced me. Though I can't say any of my stories resemble anime/manga per se. Not sure how that would read. (Have you read light novels? I hate the !!!??!?!??!? you find in there. Or the sound effects in mid sentence, lol).
Light novels as in LitRPG Light? Or is that some kind of anime reference? I have tried getting into anime and manga, but it's never clicked with me. The closest I got was when I was like 5-7 years old. Back then, they used to run English translation (I think they were dubbed, but I might be wrong) of Science Ninja Team Gotchaman and Spectreman on one of the networks. I think Spectreman was on the brand new station TBS. I don't remember who ran Gotchaman. I probably could have gotten into anime at that point, but it was impossible to access. I don't think I even saw a Manga book until I was in my late teens and didn't watch actual anime (Akira-- good show) until I was in my early 20's. So, basically, I'm an old fart who doesn't understand you kids with your teardrops floating above your heads and all the other crazy (to me) symbols.
Wait, are people adding random anime art/symbol descriptions to their books? Haha! A light novel is a cross between manga and novel. It's mostly prose, though written in a unique style. Very popular in Japan. Some of this may be due to the translation, though I'll retype an example from Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon. "Miiiiissssssssssssss Eina!!!!!!!!" "Hm?" Eina Tulle, a reciptionist for the "guild" that manges all dungeon activities, looked up from the book she held loosely in one hand. ... Second page: Someone covered in black blood flew into the guild?!?! Is that him?!?! "EEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!" "Tell me everything you know about Aiz Wallenstein, please!!!!" I liked the anime so I bought the first two light novels to see how they wrote it. Sadly... I couldn't get that far. This writing style is way too distracting, lol. As for anime, I'm sure there is a lot of anime you may like, though just like novels, there's great diversity. I don't like dubbed anime. I like the original voice actors and hearing it in Japanese. There's silly stuff and serious stuff. If you want to give some of it a try, let me know what type of shows/movies you like and I'm sure I can recommend something you may like.
Gah. I had no idea novels like that existed. No, I haven't read anything like that. I'm talking about things like Blaise Corvin's cat girls and stuff like that in his Welcome to Ludus book. I know just enough about anime to recognize that cat girls are a popular trope and it made me think he's really into anime. I've had several people try to shepherd me into the anime fold. I have found a few shows I've enjoyed, but man it's just too much work to track them all down and the rewards aren't guaranteed enough for me to do the work or spend the money.
No worries. I used to have a Crunchyroll subscription, though find that Hulu and Netflix has plenty of anime, and it doesn't cost anything extra. I think there are cat girls in jRPG games too, right? Like Final Fantasy? There are actually cat girls in a ton of things, now that I think of it. No cat girls in my stuff, so I guess I'm fine.
Hulu dumped about 85% of their catalog anime shows. I was disappointed. I keep my crunchyroll sub active and enjoy the genre. I do get what you're saying about the light novel influence in some litRPG novels, but I don't think I'd specify catgirls etc as coming from that. They're more of a pop culture thing than a "because Japan" thing anymore. Same thing with harem elements, although the clueless MC who collects a harem by stumbling into it is still a very much Japanese convention.
I don't doubt that you're right, Cheshire. I'm by no means an authority on anime. I was just relaying my thoughts as I read his book. Then, I've seen him make comments about how much he loves that genre. That's not to say that this was the inspiration for his cat-girl storyline.
It does read an awful lot like an isekai novel. Isekai translates to "parallel world" and is the LN equivalent of portal fantasy, if that clears up some of the confusion? I rather like the genre, but I'm an unrepentant anime watcher as I don't much care for LN writing. They churn out new books too fast and tend to write in haphazard stream of consciousness style. Not really my cuppa, and the turnaround time prevents decent editing from taking place. I admire their abilities to speedwrite, though.
Pretty much yeah, the beaches of Dunkirk as the defeated forces of the European Combined Armed Forces attempt to escape Europe
try watching either coyboy bebop or samurai champloo there by far the best out there and there short and not dumb like most anime PS. make sure to watch the english version (funimation)
I speak Japanese (N3 spoken/written as of my last proficiency test) so generally prefer the subbed anime. But as far as dubs go, they're hit or miss - Cowboy Bebop has a really good dub. Samurai Champloo, not so much. For another good dub and highly recommended anime, go with Trigun. In the sword fight genre, Rurouni Kenshin is absolutely better than Samurai Champloo (Champloo has the better soundtrack though).
There was a reason I picked those two 1 because they have great sound and visual design without the jarring difference of most anime from more western stuff as for dubbed if someone dosent like anime there not going to like subbed.
Sometimes it's the dub that turns people off. A bad dub wrecks things easier than anything else. Still, if someone doesn't like anime they don't like anime. It's kinda pointless to keep recommending things to them, really. It's like recommending different cuts of meat to a vegetarian because they just "haven't had the right kind of meat yet."
