Yes, he is considered the ショートショート の神様 in Japan.
I started with 世にも奇妙な商品カタログ, and I consider that one a bit harder for the reasons explained.
-
The situation/environment/characters are constantly changing.
-
The main character interaction is minimal (at the beginning / end of the book, and briefly for each item), making hard to follow the story in general.
In this one instead, you are sticking with the same setup and characters through the whole book.
So yes, if you are up to challenge yourself, I think it’s a good start if you like these kind of stories. As always, I think it’s important to read something that interests you, so it doesn’t become a chore along the way.
Recently finished レンタルおにいちゃん (1) | L18 which is a nice change of pace from all the chill slice of life I’ve been reading (well, starting), and at a good difficulty for my level as well. Can’t wait to read the next volume. I’d ignored it in the rec lists in the past because for some reason I kept misreading/thinking it was Rent-A-Girlfriend (彼女、お借りします (series) | L25) which I’ve heard gets pretty questionable at times
Also went to my local library and discovered that they actually have Japanese & Chinese language manga. I picked up 猫と紳士のティールーム 1 | L20?? (which is more like ~L25 so far) and it’s the third series I’ve seen starring “a distinguished gentleman and his cat” which is a great trope and I want more of it. The other two (おじさまと猫 1 | L19 and グッドモーニングレオン GoodMorningLeon 1 | L24??) are also on my to read list.
I also borrowed the Chinese translations of ダンジョン飯 1巻 | L29 and 弟の夫 (series) | L21 and even though Natively doesn’t support Chinese right now, I wonder if I can still use the existing gradings as relative difficulty guidelines especially for manga where there’s less translation wiggle room.
Over the week end, I mostly dealt with book club stuff, like reading this week’s part of 痴人の愛 | L43 and catching up with medium 霊媒探偵城塚翡翠 | L33. I actually have to return the latter to the library soonish, so I just kept reading ahead I am a bit beyond halfway through the book.
I was not planning to, but I also read a couple of manga, some of which are never coming to Natively (I guess? Sometimes, I see people adding spicy stuff… but manga are probably too visual). Among those which are on Natively, I ended up reading 腐男子家族 1 | L23 because @DIO-Berry tempted me. By vaguely gesturing at it. How dares.
I also “randomly” read 魔入りました! 入間くん 7 because it covers my favorite part of the anime I actually enjoy the anime better, though I wonder if it’s because I saw the anime first.
With novels I feel like the spicier the book the blander the cover
The covers aren’t really the problem here; a lot of 男性向け light novel are showing a lot more skin/suggestive poses on the cover. Some are even really pretty, like
The problem is mostly that it’s like more than 50% 18+ material inside For those who don’t like BL, do not look at the first page after said pretty cover above.
EDIT: WAIT HOLD ON, SOMEONE ADDED ララの結婚 (series) | L31 TO NATIVELY?!?
It’s not even marked as “adult content”
Well… in that case, maybe I could add a few things, then?
Guilty on several accounts
I was so preoccupied with tagging cat content that I forgot to add tags for adult content.
I could be misremembering, but I think @brandon 's objection was more to explicit covers than explicit content, given the covers would show in searches and make the site an issue for younger audiences and public browsing. I do think adult content should be tagged as such though so it can be filtered out (or in )
My current marker is if amazon doesn’t allow it I won’t add it (not that I can read that much smut… YET). Given the amount of 0y free download 1 chapters that are… very close to porn… that’s not a huge hurdle though.
I know there’s an adult content marker, is there (or even should there be) markers for ‘fade to black’ style sex scenes where it’s not the focus of the work but it is present? I’m leaning towards it’s not really that important, but maybe it would still be appreciated for tagging purposes.
This is correct. Hopefully adult content starts to be tagged… but I really should do the quick ticket to get better adult content handling.
What about doing something like Mandarake? They blur the cover and put a warning over it and you have to click through to see it.
They take the additional step of making you confirm to be over 18, but if you just replace explicit covers, that could be an ok solution right?
edit: idk if this will be seen in time, but I mean as an easy solution Natively could not have the explicit covers at all and they’re all replaced with the censor version.
Understandable. There are priorities in life.
Okay. I might be misremembering myself. I thought I remembered a discussion from a while ago saying that if there’s a bit of smut on Natively, it’s fine, but we should keep it down, which made me think that I shouldn’t be adding things all willy-nilly. I remember talking with one of the cats (I guess @Biblio?) and describing stuff as not being Natively proof.
If there are no particular rules against adding stuff like that, boy oh boy are we in business. I like seeing my stats increase, line goes up, and I have no shame (by being anonymous on the internet).
Trying to think about the worst book cover I own, would something like this hungry rabbit (R15; seriously don’t look if you are not ready for it) still be fine?
(If not fine, I’ll remove the link ). As per @Jintor standard, Amazon is showing that cover, so it’s fine? Question mark?
If there are no particular rules against adding stuff like that, boy oh boy are we in business. I like seeing my stats increase, line goes up, and I have no shame (by being anonymous on the internet).
While this excitement somewhat frightens me, yes you can add them lol.
TBH, even if we open the floodgates a bit I’m not too worried. The only real concern is the activity feed, but as long as there’s no nudity on the cover that’s fine. I actually don’t think that cover you showed was particularly bad… there’s much worse on the site already…
But yes be sure to tag it adult content please!
As per @Jintor standard, Amazon is showing that cover, so it’s fine?
I’ve seen some truly questionable things on Amazon fwiw. Enough real human nudity in suggestive poses that I won’t tempt Brandon getting mad at me by linking it*
*If you think it’d boost your Amazon sales though…
That is true - for the record, I prefer the blur standard than the so-called Jintor standard!!! It doesn’t help that Amazon’s library/control is complete ass and there’s no way for me to hide stuff from my active library without starting truely massive collections and the sorting is completely shit so I can’t have a shelf of “I’m reading this” alongside a shelf of “I want to see what this first chapter is about oh I guess this is basically porn” … actually custom shelves with custom sort orders would be great. Fucking locked down digital rights management systems.
there’s much worse on the site already…
I for one really dislike things like this showing up in my acitvity feed (suggestive covers) – For example, 女子更衣室 | L17 made me switch to a “me only” mode in the activity feed after I tried to even block the user who interacted with that on my activity feed to make it gone (which didn’t help, sadly.) To me, those look like minors in a sexual setting (idk what it is really, but I think many people could draw this conclusion from how they look + school uniforms) which is not ok in my book.
Edit: IF this is really lolicon (I really don’t want to investigate this further because it gives me the ick), then there’s an additional layer of this being illegal in some countries too.
Good point. I don’t want to flood the activity feed of people who follow me with weird BL covers.
I guess I’ll stick with tasteful (YMMV) covers.
If there would be some function to blur explicit cover I would never unblur them anyway and everyone could add whatever they want, because I would never see it anyway
If there are no particular rules against adding stuff like that, boy oh boy are we in business. I like seeing my stats increase, line goes up, and I have no shame (by being anonymous on the internet).
Thanks for making me spit my morning coffee I guess
I like seeing my stats increase, line goes up, and I have no shame
You. Me. Both. Though for me it’s more the titles that give stuff away. (セックスしないと出られない部屋から出られない話 | L26 guess what the plot is? [though, there was surprisingly little smut for that title…] the cover is harmless, though.)