Oh I’ve been meaning to try a book from that author for such a long time! I’m thinking of starting with 月光ゲーム―Yの悲劇'88 | L36 which looks like it’s landed in the mid 30s which does usually suggest the author likes to flex their vocab 
He’s famous for his mysteries and I’m trying to at least dabble in all the big names to see who I like.
Who would have thought, but みりむ・ナーヴァ can also wear other things than bikini and protectors 
In the volume where she is introduced, she gets a bunch of clothes from シュナ. She is wearing a sundress in the illustrations after that and is said to just love those clothes. She uses a quick change skill to get back to her original “outfit” just before the fight against the flying thing (カリュッブディス? A name in that vibe Edit: fixed)
I just finished the last book of はなにあらし!!! 
It was so good!
I’m still in vol 8 (reread), but I loved the ending so much, back when I first read it 
Glad you enjoyed it!!
Sooo, after calming down a bit (thanks to 僕らの食卓 | L20), I decided to trust comments that things get better in the slime LN. I went with the audiobooks, since it’s just readily available (I’m still going to count those as “reading” since it would be annoying to keep track of them in a different way), reached yet another part where the main character goes to the in-world equivalent of a キャバクラ/strip club and rage-quitted.
In particular, beyond the fact it’s annoying, it just makes no sense. The main character keeps saying that they have no sex drive but keep going to places like that or looking at women’s breasts. The gender of the main character also makes no sense: リムル looks very feminine and people first meeting them (him?) keep calling them お嬢さん and the like. Yet, no guy expresses interest. You know. Men, well known for not being interested in women. On the other hand, women do express interest?? But why though? Another thing was that リムル mentions taking baths with シュナ and シオン, but changing back into a slime form so that it’s “okay”. But リムル’s human appearance looks feminine and has nothing down there. By default, if I had to pick a side, I would put them on the women’s side anyway, why is it presented as a trick? And also, why is リムル so keen to go to “adult” places in that context (making those two angry in the process)?
Then, I tried to read 吉原手引草 | L30?? for my bingo card. And boy did I get sucker punched on this one. I’d say it’s somewhere between L40 and L45. It feels harder than 雪国 | L46
I read like 40 pages and was like okay no back to easy stuff and just finished 転生したらスライムだった件 4 | L33. And it ends on a cliffhanger, so of course I just kept going, finished 転生したらスライムだった件 5 | L33 and am now on 転生したらスライムだった件 6 | L33. I would say the plot went from okay to good to great, and then dropped a bit back done to good, but that’s fine. I would really enjoy it if it wasn’t for the rant I mentioned above. Anyway, as long as it remains good, I’ll probably just keep going, unless another ragequit happens.
Well, that wasn’t in the cards, I guess, but I’m glad ヨウム did get in a relationship.
I finished 異神千夜 | L34 last night. (@bungakushoujo , you were interested in that one I think?). I liked it a lot. It’s four vaguely linked short stories in the 怪談 ghost story kind of vein (reminded me a bit of きつねのはなし | L32 though it’s not exactly the same kind of linkage). The author has written horror novels, and although I wouldn’t classify this as horror and nor did the publisher, it does have some of those “ominous and deteriorating situation” vibes going on. If the Kamakura era setting described in the book blurb seems worrying from a difficulty level point of view, be reassured that only the first of the four stories is set then; the rest are more contemporary settings.
Edit: also I really like the cover art; it’s probably at least 50% of why I read this. (Most of the other 50% is that it has a JPDB deck.)
Rimuru is a re-incarnated salaryman. Before his death he envies his friend who is about to marry, so he is interested in women. He keeps his memory of his prior life, and I would say, of course, he is further interested in women that look at least somewhat human, and especially in real human women.
In his slime body he can only take forms of bodies that he has eaten and thereby analyzed with his special skill. Having scruples to go around and eat just any human, he finally incorporates the body of Shizu, which offers it to him. As she is a girl the only human form he can take from thereon is that of a girl.
So for the time being he, mentally a man, ends up in a girl‘s body if he wants to appear in a human form, with all the complexes that follow from that for him and the expectations from other people that see him maybe for the first time. Well obviously I don’t find this annoying, but interesting.
People who see that woman form, re-act to that form and call him お嬢さん, some who know him longer, also react to his inner thoughts, based on intuition or his reactions to them. He bathing with the Ogre-girls in girl form feels for him as cheating, I’d assume, in the sense that on earth some male friend of him would for sure accuse him of cheating as it looks like he uses his girl form to be able to bathe with them. So to drive off this kind of irrational thought, he uses his slime form.
That does not work though. First of all, attraction is a physical phenomenon, so due to his (?) asexual body he shouldn’t be able to feel attraction. Plus, that’s not just me saying so, it’s mentioned by the character at least twice, which is consistent with the explanation we get about reincarnation from Yuki(? Transmigrated guild master). Either リムル is lying/wrong or the writing is inconsistent.
I don’t really know what that has to do with what I complained about, but that’s not how it goes in the book. He gets a special skill, which is different from his usual morphing skill and gives him a completely androgynous (not female) body. He can also use the usual skill to get a male or female (adult) body, but gets the usual downsides (slightly slower reactivity, energy cost), so rarely does it.
That’s the kind of development I would have loved to see. Sadly that’s not what is happening. Edit: 蜘蛛ですが、なにか? | L33 is an example of series that does it right.
Sadly not. And that’s my problem. There’s minor lip service to it (e.g. saying お嬢さん once in a while) but nothing really follows from it.
I’m sorry, I’m incapable to follow your logic here. What is the difference between the Barbie doll body and the slime body in that situation?
Ohhh I forgot about that series. Still need to read eventually
Wow; I feel like that doesn’t normally happen with a lot of these popular LN series you try.
I know! I guess it is popular for a reason.
To be fair, the problems I have with the series are severe enough that I would not buy the books, but since I already have audible 聴き放題…
I can’t help but wish there was a 女性向け LN in that style… Considering the number of women I know who play JRPG*, I feel like there should be a market for that.
* there’s obviously some bias here, since the people I know aren’t probably representative of the whole population.
As one of those women, I feel like we’ve been given crumbs for so long that everyone thinks we’re happy enough with what we have. Which, no. Crumbs are fine when you’re starving, but they are not a meal.
Right? When people ask me why I keep reading stuff like the slime LN if I hate parts of it so much, the only answer is that I don’t have a choice. I wish I did, though.
Per my poll I finished ウスズミの果て 1 today. The last two chapters were an improvement, but not enough to get me to keep reading. That said, I haven’t felt like getting into a new fantasy world, which is probably part of the reason I haven’t been keeping up with 魔法騎士レイアース 新装版 1 | L22.
I did also read a bit of some of the free or sale manga to see what how they felt. The first chapter of ひらやすみ 1 | L22 was fine, but I honestly just don’t feel like rushing to read the whole thing in the next two days. I’m probably better off trying it after catching up on スキップとローファー | L24 since they are supposed to have a somewhat similar atmosphere.
I also looked at 熱帯魚は雪に焦がれる1 | L24 for all of 2 minutes before my brain went “fish names in katakana, does not compute” and closed it. Maybe another day I’ll be more up for that.
Turned out to be a really sweet and wholesome, platonic, yuri drama dealing with loss, meaning of family, etc. The art style is beautiful and very well matched to the emotional tone, and I really Loved the character design as well. It was nice to read something that wasn’t a romance for a change, and it’s making me think I should finally reread
(which has some romance, but isn’t a romance per se) - though I’ll finish 姉の親友 and 百合姫 November first
First of all, I didn’t read the story that far, I stopped when he first met the goblins, and I read it on the web site. All what I said is what I concluded - maybe wrongly - from watching the three series.
He can also use the usual skill to get a male or female (adult) body
Ah I forgot, you are right, he tested it once shortly, after he got the ability to use that body easily. Well, that was shown end of 2018.
Btw: the author said in an interview that he(?) at first wanted the inner voice of Rimuru in the anime to be male, while the outer voice of the slime should be female, as well as the voice of the human body after incorporating Shizu. He was convinced by the production team that this would confuse the audience, so the Rimuru’s voice is completely female.
So despite what is written, the author may actually have a different mental image of the situation, and therefore may sometimes write things differently, maybe as sometimes he doesn’t think long enough if it corresponds to earlier stuff, or consciously to give his male readers some fan service.
I for my part keep thinking that some situations you can only understand if Rimuru has still an internal male mental image with corresponding attraction to women.
Ah, the あとがき mention that the published version is very different from the web novel.
In the book, he uses that skill another time to hide his identity. (Then actually says out loud who he is when asked about it before realizing that by doing so there was literally no point)
Right, that’s also the way I see it (and that’s one of the thing that annoys me, since it’s inconsistent with both the setting and what the character is saying).
I already mentioned those points, but among the other things that annoy me:
Right, that’s what I meant by saying that the writing is inconsistent, which I hate to begin with, but as you say it’s not even inconsistent for a good purpose… Or, more specifically, I can’t see any other reason that fan service.
In one of the あとがき, the author mention that there was an argument during one of the editorial meetings about who had larger breasts between シオン and フレイ. I assume that point is critical for publication 
This reminds me of reading the あとがき to 弱キャラ友崎くん Lv.1 | L29 and the author was going on about how excited he was by the cover illustration and Aoi’s thighs in it, for most of the あとがき 
While it didn’t quite turn me off from reading the series, I’m not sure I wanna read future あとがき from it
One of many reasons why I never read the afterward of any book. tbh I couldn’t care less about an authors thoughts or intentions, only my personal reading of a book.
Also I swear a lot of 男性向け LNs are infinitely better without the illustrations.
