Good Starts, Bad Continuations

[Serah]

Sorry, I could not come up with a better thread title.

I am feeling frustrated about some titles like Flung into a New World? Time to Lift the 200-Year Curse! and The Amazing Village Creator: Slow Living with the Village Building Cheat Skill.

Context: since I wanted to read the continuation of Pens Down, Swords Up: Throw Your Studies to the Wind so badly I started using Shosetsuka ni Narou more and more with Google Translator / DeepL Translator. I tried the same back then, 5-7 years ago and that was no good, but the technology has advanced so much that together with my little knowledge of Japanese culture it has become readable at the level closing in to fan translations.

As a result it was a little like "a whole new world opening up" where I could read nearly all of my favourite series as soon as new chapters gets released, years ahead of the translations.

With that knowledge I cannot understand why some series got translated which seems no good to me - or rather - I have seen better, but those better ones did not get licensed or are seemingly overlooked.

I wanted to like the two mentioned titles as well, but it gets so bad for my taste and I just keep wondering - why not the other stuff which are more fun?

Of course, of course... it is always a matter of personal taste and so on - and I could accept that with one or two titles which I "perceive bad" because of personal taste. But it does not feel that way and I rather get the impression something is wrong with the licensing or picking ups of what is supposed to be good.

I know not many else here reads at 小説家になろう like I do, but if some do maybe they can relate?

I keep thinking: is it really good to license series which might turn bad later on? I am not sure if there are good examples of such already, and I know it is still a matter of taste. Like when I dropped In Another World With My Smartphone after volume 28 I just thought "this again, and again and again - by now it is just stretching out things but the content feels soulless for many volumes already".

Maybe some fans of In Another World With My Smartphone can convince me that it gets much better again and I am missing out. But I just do not feel the sort of "hook" to continue like e.g. in Invaders of the Rokujouma!?

sigh

If you read this far - I thank you. Probably just want to "steam off" some frustration about why this or that series is somehow licensed/popular/pushed in the west why some other gems are seemingly tossed aside/ignored.

JNC has a good hand in picking good stuff early on - normally. But I cannot get away the feeling that something changed recently, where suddenly a lot of the picks feels like "mass produced mainstream content". And I feel somewhat triggered by content which have especially that Square Enix marker...

[kuali]

The first thing that comes to mind when people talk about how the selections used to be better is... well, were they? There's a thing called Survivorship Bias - basically, the tendency to judge entire populations by the ones the 'survive' long enough to be measured. So when you're judging the early series by which of them you remembered into the present day, well, there could have been a lot of early slop and you wouldn't exactly remember most of it, would you?

So, let's see if the early licenses actually were better. I've copied out three 25-series blocks of JNC's output. The first 25, 25 from near the middle of the series list, and a set from early this year (probably not fair to use the series that are still mid-first-volume for the comparison).

	Oldest Series (451-427)	Middle Age (215-191)	Recent Set (51-75)
1	Occultic;Nine	Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte (Manga)	Isekai Walking
2	My Little Sister Can Read Kanji	A Cave King’s Road to Paradise: Climbing to the Top with My Almighty Mining Skills! (Manga)	The Countess Is a Coward No More! This Reincarnated Witch Just Wants a Break
3	Brave Chronicle: The Ruinmaker	I Parry Everything: What Do You Mean I'm the Strongest? I'm Not Even an Adventurer Yet! (Manga)	Disowned but Not Disheartened! Life Is Good with Overpowered Magic
4	My Big Sister Lives in a Fantasy World	Reincarnated Mage with Inferior Eyes: Breezing through the Future as an Oppressed Ex-Hero	A Cozy Life in the Woods with the White Witch
5	Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash	A Cave King's Road to Paradise: Climbing to the Top with My Almighty Mining Skills!	Imperial Reincarnation: I Came, I Saw, I Survived (Manga)
6	I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse	Ascendance of a Bookworm: Short Story Collection(s)	Mercedes and the Waning Moon: The Dungeoneering Feats of a Discarded Vampire Aristocrat (Manga)
7	Mixed Bathing in Another Dimension	Survival Strategies of a Corrupt Aristocrat	Meals Made to Order: How to Domesticate Your Dragon with Delicacies!
8	The Faraway Paladin	I Only Have Six Months to Live, So I'm Gona Break the Curse with Light Magic or Die Trying	Shannon Wants to Die!
9	Paying to Win in a VRMMO	A Pale Moon Reverie	Knock Yourself Out! The Goddess Beat the Final Boss in the Tutorial, So Now I'm Free to Do Whatever
10	How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom	A Royal Rebound: Forget My Ex-Fiance, I'm Being Pampered by the Prince!	They Don’t Know I’m Too Young for the Adventurer’s Guild
11	In Another World With My Smartphone	The 100th Time's the Charm: She was Executed 99 Times, So How Did She Unlock "Super Love" Mode?!	From Villainess to Healer
12	Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest	The Apothecary Witch Turned Divorce Agent	Mercedes and the Waning Moon: The Dungeoneering Feats of a Discarded Vampire Aristocrat
13	Bluesteel Blasphemer	Young Lady Albert is Courting Disaster	Imperial Reincarnation: I Came, I Saw, I Survived
14	Invaders of the Rokujouma!?	Fake Saint of the Year: Toy Wanted the Perfect Saint? Too Bad!	The Hero-Killing Bride
15	If It's for My Daughter, I'd Even Defeat a Demon Lord	Dragon Daddy Diaries: A Girl Grows to Greatness (Manga)	Pens Down, Swords Up: Throw Your Studies to the Wind
16	Demon King Daimaou	Villainess Level 99: I May Be the Hidden Boss but I'm Not the Demon Lord	Ascendance of a Bookworm: Hannelore’s Fifth Year at the Royal Academy
17	Infinite Dendogram	Only the Villainous Lord Wields the Power to Level Up	Flung into a New World? Time to Lift the 200-Year Curse! (Manga)
18	Clockwork Planet	Magic Stone Gourmet: Eating Magical Power Made Me The Strongest	My Fiancé Cheated, But a New Love Rings! (Manga)
19	Outbreak Company	Earl and Fairy	The Tiny Witch from the Deep Woods
20	How Not to Summon a Demon Lord	Make it Stop! I'm Not Strong... It's Just My Sword!	Bullet Hellion: The Gunslinging Demon Prince Crushes Another World with Modern Arms
21	Walking My Second Path in Life	Accidentally in Love: The Witch, the Knight, and the Love Potion Slipup	Abducted Princess Running Rampant: Wielding Forbidden Magic in the Demon King's Castle
22	Yume Nikki: I Am Not in Your Dream	Safe & Sound in the Arms of an Elite Knight	The Villainess Is Dead! Long Live the Empress! Redoing the Story After a Poisonous End
23	Ao Oni	Thompson	Three Cheats from Three Goddesses: The Broke Baron’s Youngest Wants a Relaxing Life
24	Arifureta Zero	Monster and Parent	My Fiancé Cheated, But a New Love Rings!
25	The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar	The Magician Who Rose From Failure (Manga)	My Tiny Senpai

Now, I can't really answer how those lists compare (I've only read one series from the 'early' list - Walking My Second Path in Life - a once-good comedy that utterly ruined itself with its third book), but the presence of titles like Mixed Bathing in Another Dimension suggests JNC wasn't exactly free of mass produced mainstream content even in the beginning...

[Serah]

@kuali heh, while true that list only enhances my impression, considering I favour many more titles from the early dates than from the recent time.

Though, I never did take manga into consideration.

With manga the recent time does not look so bad, especially considering that a lot of manga based on light novels were made years after the initial release of a light novel.

The only defense for JNC I can imagine is, that the overall amount of "slop" has exponentially increased - but still - those early days picks where mostly good/better ones from an already large pool, while nowadays it feels like lack of quality control and a focus too strong on maybe cheap licenses or sale numbers or package discounts aka anime.

The bad about those "if an anime exists, the LN gets licensed" cases is often that the anime is often of horrendous quality in comparison to actual original anime, and that the anime often serve as a "prolonged trailer" for a LN series. Like, there have been anime for series where the actual LN has either been cancelled already or put on infinite hiatus. In addition to the already bad quality of those anime.

At least that is the impression I am getting considering a lot of "newer" series. As if the licensing only look on the first initial sales but do not care about what comes after.