With the 9th volume to be released on Sunday I somewhat feel sorry for how the story and series itself feels to got stretched so much. And the non-linear publications of side stories, prequels, epilogue after the 5th volume somewhat soured my overall experience.

I preordered the upcoming volume anyroads, but I cannot wonder if there is hope for the series to get any better. I personally wish it would have properly ended by now, with spin-offs / bonus volumes concluding the story or even laying ground for a sequel series as seen with Wolf & Spice.

I absolutely love Realist Hero, and at the moment it is my straight-up favorite light novel (though Bookworm is a close second and the main reason I put Realist Hero ahead of it is simply that more stuff has happened in Realist Hero, as far as official English translations go, so they might switch places later).

When it comes down to it, though, Realist Hero is ultimately another feel-good "MC solves all the problems" power fantasy LN, hence why things ultimately come fairly easily for him. The fact that there's an in-universe justification for why things are easy for him just highlights the nature of this series. It's ultimately different in nature from Bookworm, so I wouldn't really make any direct comparisons between the two. If anything, as far as its tone and nature goes, it's closer to Smartphone (albeit with less of the silly stuff, but hey, both have polygamy and country-building so...).

However, the way Realist Hero executes its power fantasy, at least for me, just works so well. Of course, it helps that Souma has no real OP powers and largely has to rely on his smarts and making good use of the more OP people around him. But I think what makes Realist Hero so good is how the story ultimately revolves not around "saving the kingdom/world" (despite the title), but rather about the characters' feelings and how they all have their own stories within the larger story. The frequent changes of POV helps a lot in this way, and I really like how many side characters have their own relationships outside of Souma's harem.

It's very telling that the very first scene of the story is Souma's grandfather telling Souma to find a family to care for. The first scene of a story should set the tone for the rest of the story, so why have a scene like this rather than, say, Souma talking about Machiavelli with friends or something actually related to "rebuilding a kingdom"? I think it really shows how the focus is really on "family", with the "rebuilding a kingdom" part being the framework that feeds into this theme. And that's what makes Realist Hero such a great series for me; it is a power fantasy that goes beyond just "doing stuff" and feels more like a personal story.

@legitpancake my bad then I didn't realize they were separated.

@MidnightTemplar

Hi there, we don't ever update the schedule with future volumes until the day it's going to be released. This is to avoid emergencies or last-minute problems from causing delays and upsetting people's expectations. In general, there is a 2-3 week delay between the last part of one volume of a given series and the first part of the next volume, but that can be affected by various factors as well.

Quof, the translator, posted in the part 2 volume 2 discussion with the following:

There probably will be a week gap before the next part due to some internal stuff, though the TL itself will still be going on and there will probably be a double-part again at some point.

@terabyte @LegitPancake thank you, much appreciated

@doublemangekyo Ah sweet!!!

@durask The first volume just came out in Japan like 3 weeks ago, so it might take some time to negotiate. J-Novel's biggest obstacle is definitely the publisher, Shinchosha, which JNC may not have any ties or contacts with (Sam may, but I've never seen him talk openly about it). Explaining JNC's digital-only nature, with paperbacks reserved for only best sellers, is particularly a difficult selling point for JP publishers that have never made a deal with JNC before.

@ayush-deep said in How Many Parts for Volumes do you Prefer?:

I prefer 7 parts...
10 parts(70 days)+ Final proofreading (20days) take way to much time.Then we have to wait longer for next volume.

Well, doesn’t help when the next (Japanese edition) volume isn’t even out...

But over all, I have to agree. Weekly parts should be roughly the same page count +/- 2 or 3 pages.

@terabyte Believe it or not, I make contact lenses for a living.

Well if they're free, no harm in that.

Edit: I'm reminded why I stopped using bookwalker in the first place. That and it's sad that these are JNC titles without the premium bonuses.

Iirc it was that

@melissa Yea, if you notice a typo in a prepub but the volume is already published, the editors would rather you didn't report it since it could have already been fixed in the final epub. If you own the ebook, though, and see a typo, they do encourage you to email them.

So it's faraway then? 😀 Sorry couldn't resist.

@jjch102296 said in How many Arifureta volumes will there be?:

@antipathy what about the after stories from the web novels will they be apart of the series or will they keep it out

The publisher has said as long as Arifureta keeps selling ok/well they will keep publishing it. So there is a very good chance the after stories will get Volumes of there own once the main story is done.

Personally I hope they get put into LN form b/c I really want to read the 2 Lord Abyss arcs in LN format. Those arcs are already great and just thinking what could be added given all the extra stuff in the main story makes me giddy.