Light novel

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A light novel (ライトノベル, raito noberu^?) is a novel with anime- or manga-style illustrations, primarily targeting teens and young adults. The term "light novel" is a wasei-eigo, or a Japanese term formed from words in the English language. Light novels are often called ranobe (ラノベ, ranobe^?) or rainobe (ライノベ, rainobe^?) for short.

Despite their association with anime or manga, light novels are prose, the equivalent of a young adult novel. In recent years, light novel stories have been popular choices for adaptation into a manga or a TV anime series. Light novels are often serialized in literary magazines like Gekkan Dragon Magazine and The Sneaker, Dengeki hp, or media franchise magazines like Comptiq and Dengeki G's Magazine. An example of the light novel would be the Slayers novels written by Hajime Kanzaka. Slayers was made into a manga series as well as a very popular anime of the same name.

Light novels have become very popular in Japan, and the publishing companies are constantly searching for new talent with annual contests, each of which earns the winners a cash prize and publication of their novel. The Dengeki Novel Prize is the largest, with over 2000 submissions annually.

Licensed English translations of Japanese light novels are few, due to low demand and the amount of translation needed being far higher than for manga. The few light novels that have had English translations are reformatted into standard mass market paperbacks or similar to manga tankōbon, but starting in April 2007, Seven Seas Entertainment will be the first English publisher to print light novels in their original, Japanese format of 10.5cm × 15cm.^[1] Other English-language publishers that produce light novels are Tokyopop, Viz, DMP, Dark Horse, and CMX.

1 Writing style
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Writing style

The writing style for light novels is often very different from novels aimed at adults. Some of this style may be lost in the process of translation.

In the original Japanese light novels, furigana are used occasionally for two main reasons. First, they are intended for young adults who do not have a strong command of kanji. Second, many light-novel writers prefer to invent new application of furigana to their own liking, which are not seen in common usage of Japanese.

Light novels also frequently have very short paragraphs, often only one or two sentences in length, and are usually driven by dialogue. The overall effect is for a very fast read.