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Evidently, TokyoPop's sales of manga/anime-related text-novel translations are going well enough that they're licensing more of them. The first installment of "Crest/Banner of the Stars" is coming out this fall. The first installment of "Twelve Kingdoms" is coming out next spring.
I bought the first "Love Hina" installment earlier this year since the wombat-consort is a big fan of the series, but I'm not sure if he's actually read it yet. I found it enjoyable but lightweight, though that's what I thought of LH in general. More pertinently, while I have no idea what the original novels were like, I thought the translation had a very natural flow, felt consistent with everything else I've seen of the series (I watched most of the anime with him, though I don't think I ever made it through the entire manga), and was generally easy and enjoyable to read.
The big question is going to be how things work the other way around-- the LH novel was a spin-off (pretty much a non-illustrated filler interlude) from the manga, but C/BotS and 12K both began as smashingly popular book serieses before being animated. Their text seems slightly more likely to've been more complex/sophisticated, esp. considering various fansites' descriptions of elaborate conlangs and social hierarchies; in one of the TokyoPop discussion forums, the C/BotS translator was talking about the complications of dealing with the Abh language without the benefit of furigana (they'll probably switch over to parenthetical followups or footnotes, with leftover bits tucked into a lengthy index in the back)... I suppose her task will be complicated by needing to stay consistent with previous transliterations from the anime and manga instead of using perfectly accurate equivalents, so "Jinto" instead of "Ghintec" etc.
I bought the first "Love Hina" installment earlier this year since the wombat-consort is a big fan of the series, but I'm not sure if he's actually read it yet. I found it enjoyable but lightweight, though that's what I thought of LH in general. More pertinently, while I have no idea what the original novels were like, I thought the translation had a very natural flow, felt consistent with everything else I've seen of the series (I watched most of the anime with him, though I don't think I ever made it through the entire manga), and was generally easy and enjoyable to read.
The big question is going to be how things work the other way around-- the LH novel was a spin-off (pretty much a non-illustrated filler interlude) from the manga, but C/BotS and 12K both began as smashingly popular book serieses before being animated. Their text seems slightly more likely to've been more complex/sophisticated, esp. considering various fansites' descriptions of elaborate conlangs and social hierarchies; in one of the TokyoPop discussion forums, the C/BotS translator was talking about the complications of dealing with the Abh language without the benefit of furigana (they'll probably switch over to parenthetical followups or footnotes, with leftover bits tucked into a lengthy index in the back)... I suppose her task will be complicated by needing to stay consistent with previous transliterations from the anime and manga instead of using perfectly accurate equivalents, so "Jinto" instead of "Ghintec" etc.
no subject
on 2006-05-18 05:03 pm (UTC)