What Were Your First Novels and/or Alternatively Manga?

Japanese Reading
33

I’m curious why you think that. I don’t recall it feeling like a light novel at all (but it’s been years since I read it).

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34

Because of its setting (in a high school) and its protagonists. And there are many sites who think so, too:

時をかける少女－英語で読む日本文学 - ライトノベルの先駆けとも言える作品で

時をかける少女　A Girl Who Leapt Through Time | 英語版の漫画で学ぼう - 英語に翻訳された日本の漫画やライトノベルやアニメ and then この作品が発表された時代にはライトノベルという言葉はまだなくて、比較的若い人むけの小説作品は “ジュブナイル” と呼ばれていました。その日本のジュブナイル小説の代表作ともいえる作品がこの時をかける少女ですね。

時をかける少女〈新装版〉(角川文庫)という小説は、ライトノベルで... - Yahoo!知恵袋 - 時をかける少女は現在のラノベの元祖というか先祖に当たるジュブナイル小説

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35

Personally I started with stuff that was way too hard, but that I was interested in. My first reads
(besides Satori Reader and Crystal Hunters) were LNs

After that, I went exclusively manga, series by series

At that point, I switched to easier material for a while (mostly yuri). That would have been the realistic place to start. I read those all alongside translations, besides the last 1/3rd or so of 不登校.

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36

My first manga was ぼくたちは勉強ができない 1 | L25. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you really like harem manga because this was one and a very bland one as well. However I have to give it credit for being one of the only harem manga where I can actually understand why all the girls fell in love with the main character.

I don’t remember what my first novel was, though. I used to read these old serial novel magazines I found so probably something from there?

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37

Your Name was my first novel.
My first manga was My Hero Academia volume 16.

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38

Luckily I started using Bookmeter before finishing more than one book, because for some reason I totally remember not reading よつばと! (series) | L17 until later. But that was the first manga I read (though I read the series out of order since I bought them out of order), though it was purely because I’d read the series a few times in English and loved it rather than because it’s recommended as being easy. After that, I read 舞台に咲け! (series) | L25, which was quite a step up in difficulty. The next couple I read (極主夫道 (series) | L25 and GREEN (series) | L25??) were also that level, and then I completely coincidentally mostly stayed in that vicinity for a while with the occasional spike up or down.

The first book I ever started was a novel/LN (I usually just throw them in the same bucket since that’s easier, but also this is one of those fuzzy ones) 空への助走 福蜂工業高校運動部 | L28??, though I only read the one story from it before switching to and finishing the first book of the main series, 2.43 清陰高校男子バレー部シリーズ (series) | L28. They definitely would not typically be recommended for a first book since they’re intermediate-level and contain a lot of colloquial speech and dialect and I was shaky at best on both, but I managed it somehow… Probably helped that I’d already fallen in love with it from the anime. After that I mostly read manga with a tiny bit of novel-reading on the side, and it’s really only recently that I’ve been reading novels more.

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39

Dredging up old memories, I’m pretty sure my first manga was ミントな僕ら 1 (りぼんマスコットコミックス 1058 ) | L20?? – at the time I had enjoyed Marmalade Boy in the English translation, and wanted to read this by the same author. I found fan translations online for the first couple of volumes and only as scripts, not scanslations, so I read the first few volumes with the aid of the fan translation when I needed it as a ramp up to working through the last four volumes unaided.

Second manga was probably 魔法騎士レイアース 新装版 1 | L23 .

First book I think was 不思議の国のアリス | L22?? or クマのプーさん | L22?? though my early records for books are a bit vague. First book for adults was うたかた/サンクチュアリ | L22?? .

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40

How did you find 不思議の国のアリス? I’ve considered reading that at some point

41

It’s been 18 years since I read it, so unfortunately I don’t really remember :sweat_smile: I’d read it before in English, so I had the advantage of knowing the story.

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42

I tried reading it in Japanese very early on and at least for my copy, 22 would be far too low. The sentences are relatively complex for a children’s book, there are lots of nonsense words (difficult for a new learner), obscure words (for a new learner. Knight, caterpillar, various unusual animals, etc), and poems to boot iirc. My copy also didn’t have that much furigana - I suspect it was meant as something parents would read aloud for their children rather than young children read for themselves?

I unfortunately don’t have it any more, but I do think familiarity with the story would help, though at least for my edition it would have been closer to maybe ~27.

Edit: Just found this page though! Free bilingual book Japanese / English, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,    目次 —    CONTENTS

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43

I managed to find an old blog post from back then (November 2004, an idyllic time when I was actually living in Japan), where I wrote:

I do now have a copy of Alice in Wonderland which I’m slowly wading through. Handily it
doesn’t tend too much to obscure vocabulary the way most fantasy does (‘prince’, ‘dragon’, ‘enchantment’, ‘crystal tiara’ etc).

So although past me was rather unhelpfully brief they didn’t seem to be struggling too much (or else I was just accepting a ton of vocab and grammar lookups and skipping over the hard stuff because I knew the plot…). I think looking at the book again now I agree it’s not super easy.

My copy (岩波少年文庫 paper version) is moderately high furigana (eg furigana on 穴 and 夢 but not 本, 夏 or 金色). It says on the back 小学５・６年以上 so that’s probably where they’ve set the furigana boundary.

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44

@cat thx for the link!

It’s interesting that there’s different versions wrt furigana. I’ve read the original in English many years ago, which is part of the appeal. I’m a bit curious about how the poetry sections come out in Japanese. I haven’t really read any poetry yet.

In any case, I’m currently paying through Final Fantasy X, and only on book 6 of 19 in 灰と幻想のグリムガル. I’m probably gonna continue with FF IX after that. So if I do end up reading Alice, it won’t be anytime soon lol

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45

Can you share how you’re playing the Final Fantasy games in Japanese? I’ve only played them on consoles where English is the only option on the versions I have.

46

I’m playing on Switch. Most of them have full Japanese available on Switch (digital or physical) and Steam nowadays. Also I think FF 7 remake on PlayStation does too. FF 9 doesn’t for some reason, but 7, 8, 10/10-2, 12, 14, and 15 all do (I haven’t confirmed 15 on switch). You might have to change your region or console language, but don’t have to buy a copy from Japan specifically.

Idk about pre-7 since I’m not really interested in those

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47

Okay, thanks. Unfortunately I don’t have a Switch or a computer powerful enough to play on Steam (I’d guess), so probably not an option for now.

By the way, if you don’t mind 2D graphics, FF6 is totally worth playing. Many (including me) consider it the best game in the franchise. FF4 is also pretty good. The others pre-7 games aren’t worth playing in my opinion.

48

Ah gotcha. Fwiw you can use a service like https://shadow.tech/ to play via remote computer. I had to do that to play FF14, since I also can’t run Steam on my computer (it’s a cheap Chromebook that’s not compatible… Ironically if it was a proper Linux distro I could).

Honestly I have trouble with the 2D and the older style gameplay, especially the ATB system. I’ll keep that in mind tho, and maybe watch a playthrough on YouTube someday.

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49

switch emulators exist, but if your computer can’t run steam, it will probably not be able to run the emulator. :smiling_face_with_tear:

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50

I would be surprised if you can’t run 7,8,9,(10) unless your computer is 15 years old. I was also emulating ps2 with a crappy computer over ten years ago. What kind of computer do you have?

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51

Might want to move the convo to the video game thread, guys; looks like it’s gotten sufficiently off-topic.

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52

Oops, I thought this was the “what are you reading” topic :laughing:

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