as i was cruising the online "lending library" of light novels, sorted by number of kanji (ascending of course), i stumbled upon this, which appeared to be an honest-to-goodness light novel with a comfortably low kanji count. by comparison, a lot of other books in that region seemed to be targeted towards children. or children on the young side, i guess. the reason for this was soon to become clear...

as a grizzled vet with two light novels now under my belt, i feel i can finally comment to some extent on the quality of the prose in them. by comparison to the other two light novels, the prose in otaria was pretty clearly a step below. the low kanji count i mentioned above, i learned, was because the word choice was limited and thus somewhat repetitive. the same was true of the grammatical structures, by the time i had finished the first half i'd pretty much seen the full extent of the gramma and vocabulary, which made the remainder a breeze. everything becomes clear in the afterword where the author talks about his experiences writing the light novel: he was a complete novice writer, your average japanese salaryman by day, who had by some miracle won one of the numerous light novel writing competitions publishers hold every year to dredge up talent, or at the very least writers who write the sort of stuff light novel readers want to read. on the other hand, the other two light novels i read were by seasoned professional writers who have already had quite a bit of success. as a shoddy writer, the author goes on to explain in the afterword, he had to consult the dictionary constantly as he wrote the light novel, his first long written work. in that we are brothers, as i had to do the same thing while reading itthe illustrator's afterword, meanwhile, has him drawing the narrator's little sister undressing and saying he'd like to make out with her. from the other illustrations, i get the feeling like he's one of those artists whose fetish comes out very clearly in his art. for example, even the "moe anime loli" character has absolutely luscious thighs of the sort that take decades to sculpt. the latent horniness in most of the illustrations and the relative chasteness of the actual text was a slightly jarring juxtaposition. now that i mention it, i really should start commenting more on the illustrations in light novels, as they're a cornerstone of the medium after all....

there was still some modest difficulty though, which came mostly from deciphering the extensive slang that was deployed in place of a, err, more sophisticated lexicon. slang is always more difficult to look up in dictionaries and the like, and the fact that some of it was now outdated by over a decade didn't help. there was some expressions that i ultimately gave up on that i suppose i could've figured it out if i had been more diligent, but i'm a suboptimalist after all so i'm not super worried about understanding every last word of a book in a notoriously-difficult foreign language.

as for the plot, well, it's not really much to write home (or web) about. it started out with some classic cliché contrived coincidences to get the polar-opposite main characters to meet, but was somewhat self-aware about it and started off in some novel directions with the characters from there. especially welcome were the "reality checks" that female lead was giving the male narrator with regards to his feeble attempts to woo his crush that were mostly grounded in wishful thinking from years of consuming unrealistic otaku media. for a while, it almost felt like it was a stealth self-help book for otaku, teaching them how to clean up their act and that all the relationship "knowledge" they think they are getting from dating games and the like is completely unrealistic.

then again, there is the issue that the book is itself is a light novel, the very sort of otaku media we are supposed to distrust on the topics of relationships and reality. it's warning us about itself, and whether or not it was intentional, the warnings are appropriate because as it continues, the repetitive jokes and light novel-specific wish-fulfillment clichés begin to outnumber the novel, if you will, gags and developments. i guess the writer used up his entire store of fresh ideas at the beginning and had to fall back on the genre mainstays to shore up the rest. to give an example, it turns out that the seemingly-slutty female lead, the opposite of the type of girl the narrator is into, is actually secretly pure, innocent, and also rich (wow!)they are ostensibly only cooperating to help each other get with their respective crushes, but i'm sure by the end of volume 17 or whatever, they'll end up together.. after a while, you also realize that pretty much the only "joke" in the book is the narrator introducing the female lead to some piece of otaku media/culture, she reacts by being super disgusted, he defends it, she insults him by calling him a gross otaku or something, and so on. it's the sort of repetitive reaction "humor" that is all too common in animanga/light novels, so i guess if you're having to fall back on common tropes for your writing, it's a natural inclusionthere's a subtle undercurrent that suggests she may actually secretly like whatever she's being shown. can you be tsundere for media? maybe. i can certainly think of a few examples where i have been.... the only other thing that could generously be called humor was this really shoehorned-in escapade involving hair dye, and in the afterword it turned out it was something that had actually happened to the author during his high school years that were an inspiration for the book. plagiarizing events from your own life is fine and pretty much every writer does it, but at the very least make sure it fits in well. and of course, it's fiction, so you can always spruce it up and make it more interesting or funny.

my final verdict is that it's a good starter light novel for beginners. where the lover of japanese prose or original plots may be disappointed, the learner rejoices. thanks to the repetitiveness of the vocabulary and grammar structures, by the time you've finished it, you've seen the author's pet words and grammar constructions so many times that you'll never forget them. plus, the fact that it's so cliché means that if you're having difficulty understanding some part, you can fall back on your knowledge of tropes to help puzzle things out. however, if otaria seems like it's below your reading level, i wouldn't bother. it was only a little bit below mine so i might read some of the later volumes for additional practice, but once i'm up to snuff it will just become another forgotten, crudely-built step on my long climb to japanese mastery...