@shiratori-keira said in JNC OLN Contest 2025 Finalists! - Discussion:

I'm just a bit curious about how the judging works. Like, are the judges American or Japanese? From JNC or Kadokawa? Do Kadokawa's editors only read the works that pass to the final round?

We got a bit more information on the judges last year. The initial judges were mostly JNC staff, with Sam himself doing a large amount of reading. But the final judges were Sam, Frog-Kun (aka Kim Morrissy, a long time reviewer and translator for Japanese material and also an author themself), Akiko Fujita (Chief Editor at Kadokawa/Enterbrain) and Carlo Zen (Japanese author whose most known work is Saga of Tanya the Evil). Bookwalker also likely had multiple people from their management committee discussing who got their prize.

Unsure how this has changed this year (probably no Carlo Zen, definitely no Frog-kun) as we didn't have someone taking photos of every slide this year. Maybe once Sam has unwound after the con he'll give us the full presentation with reviewer comments.

Only about halfway through this volume so far, but I find Makina to be the least likable character in this story by far. She knows Yotsuba is dating two other girls but rather than just trying to join as one of her lovers, she wants to kick the other girls down. She's just a homewrecker, and she doesn't belong in the harem.

Finished reading the volume, so far the series is in a kind of limbo where I'm not really looking forward to read it but it's not a chore like Isekai tensei was. We'll see what direction it takes in the next volumes, Allen's promotion and discovery of wind magic seem a good start to make things more interesting. I just wish there was a 3-4 years timeskip because it feels weird every time the story mentions the characters being 12...I wonder if it's meant to be a series aimed at a younger audience.
People mentioned the clever foreshadowing in the title but I want to file a complain for false advertising, I was told swords are up and I got a protagonist who wants to become a mage and fights with a bow.

@Burgerlava Yes, she still remains innocent and outside of fightning strategy, she still remains clueless about human interactions.

Damn I cried for Raielfam Sudra. I know he had it rough but reading it spelled out like this is different. I hope his fortune continues to trend upwards.

Really? The after birth illustration does not include the baby dragon?

Nice job Lay, Misa and the other for being able to minimize the damage done by the solar eclipse. Misa also got a powerup like Eleanor earlier.
Now it's time for Anos to deal with Equis and make him pay for making Sasha and Misha suffer in the next volume.

I just got around to reading thos volume 's ebook. It is amazing to read some of the stories (like Oswald's) without a week's break in between.
I absolutely loved the translator 's notes which was a nice bonus and also gave a nice comparison to how it is on the original. Thanks a lot to the team for that!

@xdbx Neat idea!

@Hylebos

Woops! I've made that mistake a couple times when I read multiple volumes in the same window.

@Phabiohost said in From Villainess to Healer Vol. 4 Discussion!:

@HarmlessDave said in From Villainess to Healer Vol. 4 Discussion!:

@Phabiohost said in From Villainess to Healer Vol. 4 Discussion!:

@HarmlessDave said in From Villainess to Healer Vol. 4 Discussion!:

@Phabiohost said in From Villainess to Healer Vol. 4 Discussion!:

and very evil god.

But well-intentioned, like Stagnate in The Faraway Paladin. They don't want suffering or torment or domination, they want peace. It's just not the kind of peace that most people would sign up for.

Uh, they wanted domination. They believed that by running over all life there would be peace. But that's explicitly wanting to dominate. "For the right reason" doesn't change the action being taken. It's a cop out.

They wanted control to impose absolute order, but I don't think either wanted domination in the sense of bossing people around for their own enjoyment like some human rulers and managers in companies do.

That's a distinction w/o a difference. When it comes to removing free will it's the action that matters more than motive. Because, for evil or good, I'm still shafted.

The god wanted absolute control over the world. That's evil. Full stop.

I don't disagree, I'm just pointing out that Flaudia (and Stagnate) isn't the kind of evil that wants people to suffer, or that enjoys having power over them. Certainly the kind of evil that takes away free will.

@Chervilious I was already thinking that maybe the author, Umikaze Minamino is focusing on the anime adaptation for Kunon The Sorcerer but I guess that make sense if it was on May 1st then that's at least minimum of 6 months until it's on JNovel

I really wanted another chickens POV.. I got the impression that this volume got over pretty soon.

Me at the start: Liliana's story? boo! I wanna read more about Fii and bread!
And then I proceeded to forget about it for months.
But I eventually returned to it, and I do like reading about this hopeless mess of a person. And unlike Fii, she's actually honest.

...or so I thought.

until part 7: "I've carried this despair with me for fifteen years"
whoa, hold up. 15 years? That means from the very start. I thought it was only recent! Has she been lying too? And the reason she was so hyperfocused on Seth and being happy was to distract herself from her perpetual sorrow?

And then basically confirmed near the start of part 9.
Oh so that's why she said she couldn't taste chocolate earlier. She couldn't taste anything.
Ah, and then explicitly confirmed at the end of part 9.

Also, what the heck? As an aside, this is the second LN I've read where the (isekai'd) protagonist seems to think that 3 hours of sleep is sufficient. Is this some kind of Japanese thing? Though unlike in the other instance, she does end up passing out from exhaustion. So it seems the author at least knows (hopefully) that 3 hours is absolutely nowhere near enough.

After Liliana's reincarnation incident was described, specifically the part where she tried to save a child from the truck, and then she approached Nana for the first time in the church and noted that she was childlike, I suspected that that child was Nana. And indeed revealed to be true later.

Makes me wonder, what if this whole place is some sort of purgatory, and everyone is reincarnated?

Though, from what I can tell, all the remaining unexplained strangeness is connected to Nana, so maybe it's just the three people.
There could be another volume, Nana's PoV, but it would have to be a very different story, and possibly even a different genre. So I doubt it'd get made. I would like to see the remaining loose ends tied up though. Maybe a few short stories or extra chapters would do it.

@Lex I'm for die an ignomious death.

@Paul-Nebeling Yeah, maybe. It's hard to say with different universes. In D&D, elves don't become adults until age 110, so 50 would still a pre-teen. In Frieren, adult elves start at around 100.

How long is it going to take to collapse this country?

@rgray9 said in By the Grace of the Gods Vol. 16 Discussion!:

Volume 17 out in JP on July 19, 2025; judging by how long it takes after that, maybe we'll get a translation around December 2025

I guess it's out now, as of June 19, 2025 according to
https://firecross.jp/hjnovels/product/2037

@SalmonJones Neither time Iris 'increased the family debt' was Iris' fault - her initial mauling wasn't a case of her being careless, the party she was with were attacked by a monster well above the area's usual difficulty level without any warning. And it wasn't even her that signed off on the crazy expensive potion use - that was Kate.

And the rescue, as I've said before, should have been charged to Shirtless McDumbMuscles in its entirety. It was his expedition, there's no good reason why his hired guards are accruing personal debts for its rescue!

@SalmonJones said in Management of a Novice Alchemist Vol. 5 Discussion!:

her boobs that not gonna lie seem about five times too big for an alleged 13 year old

If I wanted to, I could make the argument for why they're more unlikely than impossible. But I really don't have that kind of faith in this author anymore (their understanding of the topics they tackle has seemed lacking a time too many), so my actual theory about Lorea's build is that he just filed the serial numbers off of Lenny (i.e. the overly 'mature' and business focused 12-year-old daughter of the innkeepers the party usually stays with) from Didn't I Say To Make My Abilities Average In The Next Life?!, and gave her design little more thought than that.

@SalmonJones said in Management of a Novice Alchemist Vol. 5 Discussion!:

Also, jeez did Fuumi not get the memo that Iris was supposed to be "nothing special in terms of looks", that chick is a 10/10 supermodel.

I think its supposed to be showing a dissonance between how Iris perceives herself and how everyone else perceives her. Sarasa's narration does occasionally admit she's beautiful:

Iris-san was beautiful enough that I thought she'd find enough takers if she made her debut in polite society

@SalmonJones said in Management of a Novice Alchemist Vol. 5 Discussion!:

the story of five friends that don't really like each other at all getting summoned into another world

...Honestly, I would have described it as the story of three girls who only put up with Touya because his best friend is hot getting summoned into another world...

The dynamic of a party scapegoat that gets the worst of every exchange and gets dumped on by the rest of the main cast seems to just be how the author thinks friend groups work; Iris here, like Touya there, gets flak for basically everything bad that happens, no matter how stupid it is for them to take the blame.

Wow. The plot moved a lot in this volume and since we are talking about Grimgar, everything became worse. I spent the entire volume expecting Haruhiro to become the new No life King, and I guess in the end I was close.
The positive is that there might still be a chance for Haruhiro and Merry to be together, but I wouldn't put past the author to let us build some hope just to crush them later.
Looks like the series will keep going for a while, but between the almost all new cast and the possibility of long wait between volumes, I'm not sure how long I'll sta interested. Which is shame, because there are still a lot of answers I'm looking forward to...but there is only so much despair I can bear to read.