What are you reading?

[Jason_Miao]

Merc posted about Tate No Yuusha No Nariagari in the manga thread.  I've been reading the web novel translations.

Also stumbled upon a Ranma xover with it, but it's nothing to post about, so I won't.

[thepanda]

Dreaming of Sunshine updated.

[Merc]

Merc posted about Tate No Yuusha No Nariagari in the manga thread.  I've been reading the web novel translations.

On a similar vein, I've been reading web novel translations too, though for a different series: Moonlight Sculptor

Fair warning in advance before anyone clicks on it: A fair chunk of it was machine translated or had VERY minimal quality checking done. Names sometimes change slightly due to different translation groups too (as an example, a character called Pale through most chapters suddenly became Fail in a later chapter).

Cringes aside from the above issues, I'm still enjoying this series. Story is about a gamer who at the start of the story had just achieved the goal of having the most powerful character in an older MMO. He then sold the character for a surprising $3 billion...only to lose almost all of it due to lingering debts from his dead parents and an absurd interest rate.

So he decides to start over in the latest and greatest MMO...except instead of gaining a powerful combat class like he intended, he somehow ends up a sculptor.

In spite of that, with a class that everyone sneers at, he's slowly making his way up the ranks for that game and becoming pretty famous as well (some of it due to his fame from the previous MMO too).

Overall, I like it because the author spends a fair amount of time trying to develop side characters, as well as their relationship with Weed (the main character). The main character is also the sort of guy one -should- hate, but he has just enough redeeming qualities that its hard to hate him. And the author really likes to foreshadow and spend a lot of time with the world building too. A lot of it doesn't seem relevant at first, but 3-5 chapters after mentioning something, it will often end up having an impact on the current events. The building story line is pretty neat.

My biggest complaint is really not against the author, but the translation. I just really, really, really, REALLY wish there was a more solid/uniform quality check of the translation.

[Merc]

...and I hit volume 18, and I can't stand the translation quality anymore.

[Jason_Miao]

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10710606/15/A-Demon-Lord-s-Hero updated.

[Dracos]

Looked through that but it felt...eh.  "Here's a new character who's a twin stalker of the shirou.  We don't know really why.  She says like 2 words total in the entire chapter.  Her dragon gets more screentime than she does.  But every cast member is already terrified of her."

The ilya scenes were cute.

[Jason_Miao]

Looked through that but it felt...eh.  "Here's a new character who's a twin stalker of the shirou.  We don't know really why.  She says like 2 words total in the entire chapter.

So that's not a canon DxD character?  The writer has mentioned the name "Karasuba" in the last chapter without explanation, so I'd just assumed that it was a canon character that didn't need explanation.


https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6319617/1/MITHRIL-Report-Female-Ops-Booklet

Ranma x FMP, with aquatranssexual Sosuke.  Ran across it recently, and haven't gone through enough of it to determine whether it's worth reading or not (I tend to be pretty bored of school settings, and FMP fics tend to be very focused in that setting, so I'm also probably not the best judge).

[Dracos]

No.  I know of a Sekeirei character, but pretty sure that Issei doesn't have a twin in cannon.

I...

mmm.

I think that's supposed to be Karasuba from Seikerei.  Of course, there's not enough physical desc to really go on, not even as a 'twin' since her hair an eye color got changed too and she really has no active motion.

[Merc]

It is definitely the Sekirei character. Issei doesn't have any family besides his mom and dad in canon.

I wish an OC (or some other DxD character) was used rather Karasuba. The backstory given to her in this is incredibly weak, and seems to be that the only goal of the chapter is all about just selling 'Clearly she is a badass because everyone instinctively fears her.' And it tries to do so through what are clearly meant to be humorous scenes...but really, they just aren't.

Issei having the personality he does with a sister like her also just makes very little sense. Those sisters are the kind that make their little brothers into women-haters! Not women lovers!

I bought the character reinterpretation of Kokabiel. That he sold well.

I don't buy the presentation of Issei's long lost sister at all though. It feels more like author fanwank than anything.

That it's done as a followup to a well done character reinterpretation makes its weak handling that much more apparent.

[Dracos]

Kokabiel is probably the shining part of the fic.  It's an interesting layer of added depth to a usually 'for the evilz' character.

But really the rest of the fic has pretty bad problems.

[Jason_Miao]

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5403007/1/Worst-Day-Ever
Haruhi and Dr. Who.  Spoiler: Involves Dairy Queen and a Times Lord.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7657235/30/Path-of-the-King updated.
I'm not looking for FSN fanfics, but seem to run across updates for FSN fics anyway.

http://untuned-strings.blogspot.com/p/allison.html
Evidently, this was made into anime; I have not seen it, so can't provide any meaningful comparison.  Adventure story that doesn't contain absurd powerlevels or anything like that.

[Dracos]

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4939873/1/Rise-of-Namikaze-Naruto

Got a couple chapters in on this.  While the notion is a bit interesting (Naruto being given better early direction), it goes a bit too far, has too much author judgement coming through, and when Gai was saying his student of a couple of weeks would surpass Lee at Taijutsu, I dropped it.  Basically handwaving Gai's main student indicates they're not really building the setting up.

[Dracos]

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8082923/30/Give-It-Your-Best-Shot

Kinda neat.  Harry from AU Potter World in other AU potter world.  Interesting Family dynamics with the potters.  Interesting build up of the ancient society tropes.

[Rukatin]

http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/live-die-repeat-the-afterlife.322200/

A multi-crossover fic based off The Edge of tomorrow. Guy dies, gets sent to new universe.

[lolipettanko]

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10225608/20/A-Demon-Among-Devils

Demon Among Devils updated.

Meh chapter. Same complaints. Apart from the few conversations that were only marginally as thought-provoking compared to previous ones, the "humor" struck again. I get that he's going for the Slice of Life vibe, but he has to understand that humor doesn't neccesarrily have to dominate that aspect of a story. The humor comes across as forced and just falls flat on its face for me. It doesn't help that one of the jokes from the last chapter's carried over to this one. It pretty much had no purpose except to serve as a punchline for some gags made throughout the chapter.

I think the only reason I'm bothered is it's all been condensed in these two recent chapters. I'm fine with the gags in between serious dialogue, but this is just....underwhelming. There's a correct way to do SoL, and this really is not it.