Well, I loved the game (although I never finished it) and I like the style of 宮部 みゆき, and the book is currently available at my local library. Guess I’ll just have a look.
With respect to difficulty, I’m also on team “give up for now.” There’s only one book I successfully pushed through (図書館の魔女 第一巻 | L37), and that’s because I could just ignore the (unbearable for me) 5~10 look ups per page that I needed at the time.
Wait, I guess こころ | L39 also fit? But that was in a scenario where I was abroad for a couple of weeks with nothing else to read. I don’t know how actionable that is, but having no choice but to go ahead probably helps
I’m currently trying to read the manga version of this and finding it utterly baffling. I can’t tell if it’s missing context or the story also just makes no sense
Edit: and I also own 図書館の魔女 but haven’t tried to read it yet
For a while, I thought 私 was a woman (I guess that issue would not be a thing with the manga). Like, you randomly meet an older guy at the beach and want to get to know him better? Relatable! Except it was not.
I liked it! It’s proper fantasy too. I really wanted to continue the series, but thought I’d wait until I can read it easily. Then I tried reading volume 2 last year and realized that I don’t remember much from volume 1 (there was a lot of world building + politics toward the end… and that’s all I remember). Tried to reread volume 1, but I still remember enough of the plot to make it boring I need a book club or something to push me through.
OMG I can’t believe I didn’t. I was so sure I had added it already (like, why would I not do that), but it seems that it fell through the cracks. Thanks!
That happens to me not infrequently, even just reading light novels fwiw. One time it was even a French loanword (French → English, though I’ve encountered plenty of フランス語 too)
Wasn’t aware that had premium. What’s the difference?
I’ve going Google lens to be quite reliable - tho less so with older kanji
I just grab pages or sections on the fly with Google lens, and then paste into Akebi (dictionary app that shows a lot of words at once) or Takoboto. Uses phone camera, but without needing to save a picture
Is it hard to turn the pages tho? Seems cool if it’s not
Apperantly I got it wrong, the custom lists are a premium feature. But I also remember the kanji handwriting lookup being what spurred me to subscribe…? But either way I get heavy value from the app, I’m happy to support it’s development
It’s more than I find dragging out my camera to force it to focus on a page I may be reading in low light, then selecting it, then copying it to a dictionary app (because Google translate is awful for Japanese) to be an annoying and clunky process compared to just writing the kanji directly into my dictionary app
Nope! It’s a bit more annoying with very small books (I had a sub-300 page bunko that kept trying to close itself as I got near the end) but for larger books and normal length paperbacks I haven’t had any issues. Just move one arm to free page, replace, remove other arm to press that page down, replace arm.
It’s probably a tiny bit slower than if I were holding it in my hands, but for all the other benefits I get it’s absolutely worth it to me, especially for heavy books or books with lots of lookups
Good to know re: Takoboto - though I wouldn’t use any of those features personally. I don’t use the app a whole lot, but good to know about.
Gotcha. I don’t write a lot (almost never), so for me it’s much less disruptive. Helps that Android lets you select all & copy very easily.
I’d have to try it, but that sounds pretty annoying to me, especially since I’d only really consider it for LNs in the first place. So probably not for me. Thx for the info tho
So what’s interesting is that I knew of the game, found out about the books, wondered how one could possibly write 600 pages about it (based on what I knew about the game), and then finished the game before the books came in. Even just based on the 4 pages I read, it’s very far from the game. The whole first 3rd of the first book is nothing that was in the game at all.
The whole reason I got it was to figure out what story they made out of what little is in Ico. I mean 600+ pages for a 6 hour game where the main characters don’t even talk to each other is insane.
I’m not sure if that’s just your experience or an opinion based on what you’ve heard. Because in my experience, google translate is the best online translator for japanese now. DeepL used to be and in the past couple of years they’ve gotten absolutely terrible for learners. DeepL definitely became an “interpreter” rather than a translator.
It may be because it didn’t have context for the word. It tends to to really well with full sentences now. I use it every once in awhile to make sure I’m understanding the grammar in a sentence. Usually for single words I use Yomitan or Jisho too.
That’s not what I was expecting. The person who recommended it to me said it was supposed to delve deeper into the lore the game is based off, so I was expecting something closer to the game but with a lot more indepth background stuff explained. If you don’t mind me asking, what have you found out about 1/3 of the book that is nothing about the game?
I’m starting to wonder if what I’ve been told about the lore/ world of ICO, Shadow of the colossus and The Last guardian being linked is just a fans dream and not actual reality, but original consensus was that they were 3 games across different parts of the time line with Shadow of the colossus being the first one, ICO the second then The Last Guardian being much later down the timeline.
I haven’t read the book personally, but I’ve heard that it delves into Ico’s life in the village pre-game. Not sure if that’s true, though. I’ve wanted to read the book for a while; all this talk makes my book-buying finger twitchy…
OT
So I’m not super up-to-date with where The Last Guardia sits with Ico and SotC, if at all, but I do know Ueda (or one of his team) has definitely stated that the end of Colossus is the reason why children are being born with horns in Ico, so they’re definitely connected in that way.
We’re not even at the castle or with Yorda or anything yet. The first chapter (3rd of book) is called すべては神官殿の申されるまま. I’m pretty sure we’re in the town before the boy is exiled to the castle.
Spoilers
That’s exactly the case. People connected it all themselves. The devs never intended them to be genuinely connected. Apparently, in the 2018 SotC remake they purposefully added in some connections for fans. Though I haven’t played that myself.
I got super lucky and the seller either was having a new years sale or just mispriced the listing. I picked up both books together for $15 with free shipping. It made the decision very easy.
That is partly what I was thinking then (hidden part contains possible spoilers).
I knew about the end of Shadow of the colossus hinting towards the horned ones in ICO.
Potential Spoilers
From the info I had read previously about the developers views on the 3 games, Shadow of the colossus ending shows the birth of the horned ones that are then sacrificed in ICO.
iir the developers had said that TLG was in the same world as the other 2 but set much later. TLG hints towards the big bad in it being the original big bad from SotC, which is what is controlling Trico through the cell tower things and the boy in TLG mentions stuff about the clothing from ICO/ SotC being ceremonial (if you wear it) which hints towards the village he is from being decendants from ICO or the other horned ones line or at least being connected to them in some way. There’s also the fact of the shadow knights in TLG being erily similar to those in ICO that keep trying to capture Yorda (think that’s her name).
I can’t find that info as it was years ago around the time TLG was pre-release, and don’t remember where I read it but yeah, starting to wonder if it was actually true or if it was just made up for the thing I read it in.
Maybe I’ll find out this year. I finished ICO, but SotC made me really motion sick. (though I’ve played through over half of it before) I also had The Last Guardian on my list of purchases this year and have considered getting SotC 2018 to see if the motion sickness issue is any better.
For a single word, yeah, a dictionary is better: asking a machine translator to do a single word is the wrong tool for the job. But for actual translation, i.e. taking a whole sentence or paragraph and rendering it into the other language, the various LLM based services are pretty good now. They still make the occasional flub so you have to be able to tell if they’ve done something odd, but they’re much better than they were even a year or so back. Plus with the chat based ones you can e.g. ask for three versions, or say “this is a book blurb” so it does a better job of matching the style, etc.
Sapporo, Hokkaido. In order to solve the mystery of a strange body found naked in the snow, young detective Hisashi Nakano visits a ‘pervert specialist’ together with his senior, the unnecessarily sexy Negoro. The expert turns out to be a beautiful boy genius named Haru. ・・・・・・
Google Translate:
Sapporo, Hokkaido. In order to solve the mystery of a strange body found naked in the snow, young detective Hisashi Nakano visits a “specialist in perversion” together with his senior, the unnecessarily handsome Negoro. The specialist turns out to be a handsome and talented boy named Haru…
Finally, ChatGPT:
Sapporo, Hokkaido. A strange corpse is discovered—completely naked in the snow. To unravel the mystery, young detective Hisashi Nakano teams up with his unnecessarily handsome senior, Negoro, and seeks out an expert in perversion. That expert turns out to be none other than Haru, a beautiful genius boy…
I think the first of these is the worst, but none of them are awful.
Incidentally the blurb is from what I’m currently reading: 札幌アンダーソング | L30?? – I’m liking it so far…
I need a book club or something to push me through.
