Midweek discussions - Looking back on 2024
Happy New Year everyone! Looking back on 2024 what was your LN Year like? What stood out? How many novels did you read and which were your favorites?
Let's see...
The Awards are the most recent so I start with them: I'm away from work over the holidays so I wasn't able to make some graphics for the award winners, but I have a consolidation price of sorts. While working on the nomination graphics for way too long, I started to get somewhat annoyed with looking at them and that might have been mirrored when adding the name banners at the last step. When finishing work on them the next day with a clearer mind I fixed them up for the actual post, but I kept the originals as a testament to my state of mind at the time. I hope you can get a chuckle out of them.
The next thing that comes to mind looking back on 2024 is that Ascendance of a Bookworm has come to an end. It's been my favorite piece of media for the last 5 years and every time a new volume came out it was like my own personal Christmas. On several occasions I even took a vacation day to read it right away. It's just 5 years but I still feel like something important has come to an end. I'm still not really sure how I feel about this. Am I sad that it's over, happy that it has been brought to a satisfying end instead of fizzling out after it has been beaten to death for too long, or just existed for what might come next from Miya Kazuki... All of the above I guess.
Lastly, I've just checked my bodycount and I've read 129 LN this year.
More than last year (117) but less than 2022 (178), 2021 (203), 2020 (173) and 2019 (177). Let's see if I can get closer to my usual 170 in 2025. (the 203 in 2021 are an lockdown outlier and don't count).
As for the community, it has grown somewhat but that's something I'll be looking back on in February when the community has its birthday.
Anyway, I hope everyone has a great 2025 and few paper cuts ;)
Love the alternative titles, I’m just concerned for your safety from a certain someone for that Garfield comment… And the Vending Machine Anime wasn’t too bad! But no where near as much charm as Fran.
I am looking forward for the “I Swear it’s not a harem” to becoming “Goddess Harem” next year.
Please make my dream happen Hiro Ainana, A harem of Goddesses walking about going :
“Morsels? Morsels? Morsels? Morsels? Morsels? Morsels? Morsels?”
“Karion Agrees, No I don’t it was Urion, No I didn’t it was Parion, Actually I think you will find it was Garion, No it was Maid Marion. Wrong story Tenion”
“Morsels? Morsels? Morsels? Morsels? Morsels? Morsels? Morsels?”
I read that in the voice of the seagulls in Finding Nemo.
Wait...so is Death March Rhapsody a harem or not? It has the harem tag on AniList and the anime synopsis literally says "So begins his 'heartwarming, occasionally serious, and harem' adventure in another world." Is it one of those cases where, just because there are a bunch of female characters it got the tag even though it isn't really romantic?
To him they are his family like daughters.
The one is his type but nothing is happening between them.
He keeps saying that they are not old enough for him, instead he likes the eternal 1,000,000+ year old high elf. It feels like the author is edging the line, all the young girls like him but he only likes extremely old women.
At this point it's something of a running gag for source readers since it gets the harem allegations thrown at it every time the series comes up.
At a glance it looks like every other harem show. But MC has absolutely ZERO interest in his party. There aren't any "ups I just stumbled and happen to enter the girls bath" shenanigans and MC has a single target of his affection who isn't in his party. He never tries anything with the girls in his party and as a LN reader we get the inner thoughts of the protagonist as well and know that he never even thinks about trying anything.
There are a few things that doesn't help though. While it doesn't exactly break the source canon, I believe that the anime adaptation was deliberately ambiguous about MCs thoughts regarding the party in order to make it more compelling to the horny otaku audience. That just might be my prejudice speaking but a anime only watcher never gets that definitive "not a harem" that a LN reader gets. I think that this decision hurts the source. Then there is one girl that likes to make lewd suggestions to MC that can be easily clipped out of context to further the harem narrative. The girl is a reincarnate herself and was in her past life an old granny. Her personality is basically a slightly more sane version of Dan Dan Dan's Turbo Granny. She makes inappropriate jokes and comments all the time. The gap-moe is funny in context but out of context it can be used by someone who wants a gotcha moment.