Haunting Halloween Creepy Catchups!
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It's October, and you know what that means: Halloween is coming at the end of the month! To get members in the mood, we've got just the catchup series!
Based on the well-known horror RPG game, Ao Oni follows a group of kids trapped in an abandoned mansion. When a giant blue monster starts chasing them, one thing is for certain: if they're caught, they're dead!
Rentt is exploring a dungeon when he is suddenly killed by a dragon... and wakes up as The Unwanted Undead Adventurer! Can he evolve his way back to being human again? Newly available in print!
Watching the anime this season? Read the manga if you can't wait for the next episode! Will reincarnates into another world, where he finds himself being raised by a skeleton, a mummy, and a ghost. Who is he, and how did he get there? As he unravels the shocking truth, he takes his first steps into becoming The Faraway Paladin.
Finally, we've got the sordid chronicles of the Library Ghost (Bibliophile Princess), a regular office worker encountering a strange woman in the rain (Middle-Aged Businessman, Arise in Another World!), and a terrifying future world where kanji is extinct and all literature is about little sisters (My Little Sister Can Read Kanji)!
Get spooked with over 30 volumes of content to devour by Halloween!
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Godsdamned catch-up! So many things to read, so little time
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I've been waiting for My Little Sister Can Read Kanji to be on catch-up because I heard it's one of Sam's favorites and I believe he did the translation
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I appreciate Siskan being represented as horror.
@lily-garden said in Haunting Halloween Creepy Catchups!:
I've been waiting for My Little Sister Can Read Kanji to be on catch-up because I heard it's one of Sam's favorites and I believe he did the translation
I'm not sure if it's Sam's favorite, exactly, but he did do the translation.
On an unrelated note, Middle-Aged Businessman is ridiculous and I love it.
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@saffire said in Haunting Halloween Creepy Catchups!:
On an unrelated note, Middle-Aged Businessman is ridiculous and I love it.
The author didn't seem to be planning for only two volumes so it kind of just stops, but it's at a decent pause point not at a cliffhanger. I'd be happy to read more but I enjoyed the volumes we have.
Unwanted Undead is a good fantasy non-isekai series if you can put up with many digressions and some redundancy in the writing. Good characters, interesting happenings, occasionally tedious over-explaining.
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After a tour de force last month with Wortenia and Fushi no kami I'm kinda glad I already read all the series on catchup that I'm interested in. For people who haven't, there are a number of nice series to try...and let's hope that with the anime adaptation we'll get more volumes of Faraway Paladin.
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@lex said in Haunting Halloween Creepy Catchups!:
..and let's hope that with the anime adaptation we'll get more volumes of Faraway Paladin.
It's one of my favorite LNs (though this catchup is the manga) and one of my top two favorite portrayals of a paladin in literature. The other is Elizabeth Moon's Deed of Paksenarrion trilogy which I highly recommend.
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I'm a couple volumes behind on Bibliophile Princess so I'll have to catch up on that. Probably check out the manga of the month but undecided on anything else for now. Lol.
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Well Faraway Paladin was cool. Now someone go hound the publisher for more manga.
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@mortcs Well J-Novel Club just released chapter 35 and there are 39 chapters in Japan (volume 8 of the manga just came out last week so that may take some time to get the license for English translation). So we're getting pretty close to Japan. And it releases a chapter every month in JP so it's not like it's stalled or anything, at least until they run out of novel content.
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For anyone thinking of checking out Bibliophile Princess - if I had to describe it with one phrase, I think it would be “it gets better.”
Mind you, that’s not a knock at the beginning of the series, although V1 is admittedly my least favorite. But looking at how V1 starts and how V5 leaves off, I think it’s an acceptably objective statement to say dang does it get good.
Been wanting to read Faraway Paladin and UUA for some time (curse the me of October 2020 for not reading Faraway Paladin’s LN when it was on catchup!), so I’m happy these are available.
Faraway Paladin does a good job of very quickly endearing you to its characters and engrossing you in the overall mood of the story. I binged all seven manga volumes in one night lol.
UUA... If I had to compare it to anything, I think it’d actually be Cooking With Wild Game; they have a similar sense of pace. CWWG’s granularity isn’t quite as deep as UUA’s, but it covers a more consistent day-to-day progression, so I end up getting the same vibe from both. Probably not to everyone’s taste, but it’s the sort of storytelling that makes me want to curl up on a couch with a blanket and just read relaxingly. It doesn’t have the tear-jerking highs and lows you see in Faraway Paladin, but it’s a comfortable ambling along.
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@masterlillyclaw said in Haunting Halloween Creepy Catchups!:
For anyone thinking of checking out Bibliophile Princess - if I had to describe it with one phrase, I think it would be “it gets better.”
Mind you, that’s not a knock at the beginning of the series, although V1 is admittedly my least favorite. But looking at how V1 starts and how V5 leaves off, I think it’s an acceptably objective statement to say dang does it get good.I'll just say that once they both realize their feelings for one another are legit, the ride gets a lot smoother. I do certainly recommend it.
Which I don't mind saying here simply because we the readers - with our access to their inner thoughts - know this right from the get-go. It's them that this would be spoilery to.
I'll also recommend Undead. I don't really notice the the "digressions" that folks grumble about a bit until they are pointed out in the forums, but the fact that 9 volumes in folks are still reading it does speak volumes for how good it is even if it does bug them, @HarmlessDave being a great case in point. I will say though that it has its own rather deliberate sense of pacing, and refuses to be rushed. I'm good with that though, since it allows the world building time to breath.
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@masterlillyclaw said in Haunting Halloween Creepy Catchups!:
For anyone thinking of checking out Bibliophile Princess - if I had to describe it with one phrase, I think it would be “it gets better.”
Mind you, that’s not a knock at the beginning of the series, although V1 is admittedly my least favorite. But looking at how V1 starts and how V5 leaves off, I think it’s an acceptably objective statement to say dang does it get good.
I admit, I stalled out on Bibliophile Princess during vol. 3 - the series went to 'Something sends Eli into crippling self-doubt' too many times for me. It's a shame, because I like the concept and the characters; but it felt like it was repeating the same plot beats over and over.
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@xdrfiredogx said in Haunting Halloween Creepy Catchups!:
I'll also recommend Undead. I don't really notice the the "digressions" that folks grumble about a bit until they are pointed out in the forums
I think it's much more visible when you're reading it week by week, because your weekly allotment of content is sometimes largely taken up by digressions. It's probably less of a problem when reading the entire book in a couple sessions.
Whoever said nothing's impossible never tried slamming a revolving door.
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@myskaros - like this week's part, all about a mage's robe :)
short part + 80+% digression = more annoying.
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A'ight, wathed the first episode of Paladin, then read the manga through the catch up. I really should've picked up this series earlier, it's fucking awesome. I always had my reservations since it's an orphaned series from what I could gather, but I don't care anymore, gotta read those novels.
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@paulnamida - the Paladin LN ends at a good pause point, there were no cliffhangers just more adventures to be had.
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@myskaros While that does make sense, I've only ever read it in parts I think.
Maybe it's just because I'm prone to digressions myself...
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@masterlillyclaw said in Haunting Halloween Creepy Catchups!:
For anyone thinking of checking out Bibliophile Princess - if I had to describe it with one phrase, I think it would be “it gets better.”
Mind you, that’s not a knock at the beginning of the series, although V1 is admittedly my least favorite. But looking at how V1 starts and how V5 leaves off, I think it’s an acceptably objective statement to say dang does it get good.I read V1 and V2 and my biggest issues was 1) that each book covered two ministories and neither had enough time to develop much depth for any of the characters involved and 2) that the main princess character had little to no agency, and what little agency she had seemed artificially manufactured and totally unbelievable.
Does this become less of an issue for V3 onward?
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@DjinnFor Overall I'd say yes, it becomes less of an issue! It's been a little while since I actually read the books, but I'll try to give my honest thoughts from what I recall + some skimming.
@djinnfor said in Haunting Halloween Creepy Catchups!:
- that each book covered two ministories and neither had enough time to develop much depth for any of the characters involved
V3 is basically where the "real" plot begins - as in, a major thread starts there and continues to be woven for multiple volumes. Though there are indeed important pieces from V2 included moving forward as well, but just looking for a certain relevant keyword, its first appearance is in V3.
There's definitely a sizeable handful of names tossed around in V1, but I think the major cast's character count is acceptably stable after that, so you get more used to them as time goes on. They don't necessarily all get the same levels of depth given, but where in V1 you might be like "Show you the difference between Alan and Glen? ... They're the same picture," they'll be more distinguishable as individuals later.
To some extent, the "ministory" feeling won't leave entirely, because the author likes to put a side story at the end of each volume. And I won't deny sometimes I wish there was more of the main story instead of a side story. But there is indeed a main storyline that I've found considerably more gripping the deeper into it we go!
- that the main princess character had little to no agency, and what little agency she had seemed artificially manufactured and totally unbelievable.
This is exactly the reason that V1 is my least favorite. For the most part she sits around while the plot happens around her, which isn't the best of reads. Looking back on the volume from the perspective of knowing Chris and Eli will be happy and lovey-dovey together, it's a fun lighthearted read, but I think the content was possibly more suited to having been an end-of-volume side story than the central focus.
Anyways, it's not like Eli's confidence issues poof away in a plume of smoke suddenly, but she does get chances to speak her mind - to discuss, disagree, and then decide for herself what she thinks she should do. She grows (both in terms of her as a person and her believability as a character!), and it's nice to see.
Skimming back over the volumes, I think if I were to say "read to here before you make a decision to continue," it would be to get through V3's main segment. If you read all the way through that and think "Eh, the story isn't for me," I wouldn't recommend continuing - but if you get there and say "Oh?? It's getting good??" then you should continue. Of course, three whole volumes can be a bit of a hurdle depending on the person, but alas, that's just how it is.
With that in mind, now that I've thought it out a bit more, @travis-butler said in Haunting Halloween Creepy Catchups!:
I admit, I stalled out on Bibliophile Princess during vol. 3
If you ever find the desire to check out the series again, I'd recommend trying to get through that volume's main segment in full and seeing how you feel ^^
