Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.
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@KopiCAT A loli? Akatsuki was described as a mature 20-year-old female college student of short stature (150 cm), that's all. The world has short women like that. My own mother is one of them... and she's legal.
The chapter about the world's bank vault was not about getting rich; It was about breaking the world's rules. They didn't get anything out of it, not a single gold coin. I think you misunderstood that volume.
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@RobD Guess I'm too hung up on her appearance from the Anime then. Because there she sure as heck isn't a mature 20 year old but short. My older sister is around 150 herself, maybe a bit taller, and she's 37. I know what a short but mature adult woman look like. So again, guess I got too hung up on her looks from the anime which transferred over to the LN. Because in the anime she looked like a little child. Btw, I started reading the LN because of the anime, so anime came first for me in the case of that series.
Also iirc wasn't the whole point of raiding that place because they were having serious trouble paying all their upkeep?
I seem to remember part of the motivation for it was that if they succeeded, they would no longer need to fear being unable to fully pay all the upkeep costs for owning the entire city. But maybe I did misunderstand, and what they instead aimed to do was to stop having to pay it in the first place?
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@KopiCAT said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
I seem to remember part of the motivation for it was that if they succeeded, they would no longer need to fear being unable to fully pay all the upkeep costs for owning the entire city. But maybe I did misunderstand, and what they instead aimed to do was to stop having to pay it in the first place?
Having just recently reread that section of the LN...
The goal was to purchase and then transfer ownership of all the crucial zones to the Yamato Server itself, so that no Adventurer could wield the power that Shiro demonstrated when he took down Hamelin, and also that the Round Table Council not spend well over 50% of its total budget on fees maintaining their ownership of various zones.
Ownership transferred to the server means the Round Table Council's expenses go down, yes.
Eventually all zones would be transferred this way.The major downside of the Zone Ownership system was that only Adventurers could purchase Zones.
The People of the Earth couldn't, yet were still subject to any changes to Zone regulations the Adventurer owning the Zone applied...and everything is part of a Zone.
By transferring control to the Server, all regulations are the default settings.
So long as no one can do anything to the Zone settings, the property ownership system used by the People of the Earth can be used by everyone, keeping such matters on a level playing ground for People of the Earth and Adventurers alike.Anyway, to purchase the various Zones they wanted to transfer first required more money than every Adventurer combined possessed, so since Shiro f'd up his attempt to negotiate with the Clan managing the flow of 'money' they were left with no option but to obtain control of that themselves... upon which they did the various transactions and handed it all back to said Clan.
There was a significant level of altruism involved.
They ended with less power than when they set out to do this due to no longer controlling the Zone containing the Guild Hall and the Bank.
But it was a recognition that the Adventurers had an unhealthy advantage over the People of the Earth due to being able to purchase their land out from under them at will, and tweak the Zone settings controlling acceptable actions; this was just too dangerous when it came to interaction of societies to be maintained.
As for Akatsuki, her description within the LN, and the illustrations, are in line with her appearing possibly younger than Minori...who is a middle schooler with a typical middle schooler's physique.
It's not just that she's short, she's also flat, thin, and no curves.
She herself relates in her PoV that she was frequently mistaken for an Elementary student prior to the Catastrophe.
The only non-slimy character to have asked her out was an elementary schooler who thought she went to a different school... -
@Geezer-Weasalopes Thanks for that. So it seems I was wrong or at least remembered wrongly about the whole bank raid.
But it seems I wasn't about Akatsuki. If you are mistaken for an Elementary student, you are the very definition of a loli in my mind, no matter your age. And any romance between an actual adult MC and such a person just.. well disgust would be much too strong a word. But I certainly dislike it strongly.
Besides, Henrietta was always my favorite. She also showed clear signs of liking him. I will simply never understand the obvious appeal of a legal loli. Obvious because it seems so popular.
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@KopiCAT said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
@Geezer-Weasalopes Thanks for that. So it seems I was wrong or at least remembered wrongly about the whole bank raid.
But it seems I wasn't about Akatsuki. If you are mistaken for an Elementary student, you are the very definition of a loli in my mind, no matter your age. And any romance between an actual adult MC and such a person just.. well disgust would be much too strong a word. But I certainly dislike it strongly.
Besides, Henrietta was always my favorite. She also showed clear signs of liking him. I will simply never understand the obvious appeal of a legal loli. Obvious because it seems so popular.
Bear in mind that Shiro is not pursuing her.
It's not his fetish.
He does recognize her as an adult.Should Akatsuki be denied a stable relationship due to her appearance?
I don't give a shit about whether it's a deliberate appeal to a certain type of fan, because it is part of the storyline from the first chapter and the only point where it's being an issue is Henrietta using her as a dress up doll despite her resistance; if anyone in-story has a fetish and is abusing their position, it's Henrietta. That one is a trope I don't particularly enjoy.
Akatsuki has decent reasons to think well of Shiro, and he isn't displaying any of the signs she's learned to be wary of.
Shiro, for his part, isn't noticing either Akatsuki or Minori being into him that way until a long way into the storyline; I'm not sure he really does register it with Minori, who he knows is a Middle Schooler.I won't say that there isn't a trope being examined, given that the young lady rescued from Susukino has a strong case of 'like' for Nyanta.
But the ones with the case of 'like' are the younger in actual age and/or appearance, and the older folks who are the focus of said affections are responding by not responding.
In all three cases there was a bit of a rescue involved early on; Akatsuki with the appearance reset potion, Minori with rescue from Hamelin, and the young lady who's name is totes escaping me just now due to Nyanta sheltering her in Susukino and escorting her back to Akiba as part of the Shiro-led rescue party.So there isn't any lolicon activity involving anyone in-story.
I'm not sure that "loli" or "lolicon" has even showed up as a concept in-story. -
@Geezer-Weasalopes Hmm. Akatsuki always seemed like the main romance partner here for me though. I mean, in almost any shounen that doesn't purely focus on romance, nothing really happens until the very end of the show. But you can almost always pick out the main romantic interest from the start. It's usually the first girl introduced that the MC interacts with all the time. And once they start having positive feelings for each other, it's almost set. And at least in the anime, it seems rather clear that Akatsuki likes Shiro. And he can be as oblivious as he wants, doesn't change the trend of how shounen series usually go. That is ofc if they bother with romance at all. But Log Horizon does seem to be rather filled with it. Not to mention the times he seems rather embarrassed interacting with her. But I'm mainly talking about the anime more then the LN. Been way to long since I read anything about it.
Heck, you even have your typical Harem Protagonist being a side character here.
So until someone who's read this one to the very end tells me they don't end up a couple, I have little interest in the series.
Also I have no issue with her getting a romantic partner. But I don't want that to be the main character. Because that's the person I want to relate to. That's the person that brings me into a show. That's the person I root for. That's the person I sometimes might even wish I was.
So that's the person I want to fit my own tastes. That's the whole reason for me to read for entertainment purposes.
I don't mind that they do things I don't like, it simply means I won't read it. That simple. And because of that, I wish they did not do things I don't like. Aren't we all like that?
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@KopiCAT
I totally get not reading things that you don't enjoy; this isn't a school or work assignment.
While at the end of the 11 translated volumes it can't be said that they're a couple, there have been clear signs of mutual regard and affection.
It's pretty inconceivable that either will end up with anyone else at this point.The eleven volumes run you through Season Two of the anime; season three appears to indicate where volumes 12 and beyond will be going. Volume 12 has yet to be released in Japan, or so it appears.
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Well, one thing is for sure. The author made her small on purpose.
The reason being: she had this potion to change back from being a tall guy back to her small form.
She hated being short, so the author could've written something along the lines of, that she turned back to being female, but a little taller than before.
He didn't choose that route, so he turned her back to the small form on purpose, because it has a role to play in the story.
What role? That's up to your interpretation.
I think it's to add a funny note (short-stuff and so on followed by a knee to the chin).
Maybe it's to capture a younger audience so that they could identify with this tiny but super-strong and smart assassin.
Or maybe to create polar opposites: one is the small flat and role-playing but easily provoked girl, the other is the sensual voluptuous woman. And then there's the tall, super-serious protagonist.
Or, you might think it's because the author liked lolis? I don't think he did, though. There was 1 story where a couple of kids took center stage, having their own exciting adventure. It was just innocent, nothing happened except their road to discover how to live in that new world. -
@RobD
Part of it was to underline what had already been mentioned concerning Shiro and Nautsugo; Naut's the same size as in Real Life, and moves just fine. Shiro is adjusting to being a little taller than he's used to, with concomitant clumsiness for a bit. But still kinda no biggie.Akatsuki? Looks like she's falling down drunk when attempting to move around as a result of just how far off her reflexes are due to the major change in size.
Given their circumstances, can she afford any problems with reflexes at this time?
If there was another character design potion available to her, she might have tried something a tad taller and more developed knowing that if she couldn't adjust in a timely manner she could try again... but so far as she's aware this is it, her one opportunity to undue a mistake.
So she went for the form her autonomic system is used to, despite all the other problems inherent with it.
Staying with the form she was in was not an option if one desired her to stay sane; she wasn't trans, didn't have gender dysphoria, it was just the character she used in Elder Tales so that folks would treat her as someone competent; fine in a game, but when it becomes Real Life not fine at all.The author didn't go on and ignore the situation.
Whether one finds some of the character interactions humorous or not depends upon your worldview, but he didn't ignore the reality that there would be some reaction to the disparities in apparent age due to size, and even if she'd had a mature physique at that height there'd have been a lot of shit coming her way.My sister is around 4'8" or so, two years older than I am, and hasn't grown an inch in over fifty years. She has a mature figure, so hasn't had that issue...other than the folks thinking she was a mature looking kid. But most of her clothes are custom made or carefully altered, and have been since her teens.
And our society does discriminate based upon height as well as all the other shit that can define someone as 'different,' with the distinction that it doesn't matter what race or creed or whatever, short isn't easy when attempting to function in a world of mass produced goods aimed at the 'norm.'.My impression is that she's around Shiro's age, as both are in college still?
Shiro was, I think she was still as well.
So the only thing that would make a relationship weird is how others perceive their respective appearances in conjunction.I must admit that my problem with Akatsuki is how others view her, readers and in-story; I really dislike Henrietta's thing for taking girls she can dominate and using them as dress-up toys because they're so cute. Akatsuki, Raynesia, a couple of others who are fairly main cast. And the folks who let her do so, who look aside going, "Not my problem."
Which is irritating as otherwise it's one of my favorite series.
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@Geezer-Weasalopes Having people try out clothes is really a woman thing. They buy clothes for you as a gift and then 'ask' you to try them on, but there's no room to refuse. It happens to me sometimes and I'm a grown up guy. I think it's just one of those things, maybe the writer wanted to vent about it in some way.
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@RobD said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
@Geezer-Weasalopes Having people try out clothes is really a woman thing. They buy clothes for you as a gift and then 'ask' you to try them on, but there's no room to refuse. It happens to me sometimes and I'm a grown up guy. I think it's just one of those things, maybe the writer wanted to vent about it in some way.
Not what's going on in this instance.
It's a trope that shows up a lot in Japanese LNs and such.
It's along the lines of the shota obsession, only aimed at the same gender and the implication of not actually crossing certain lines unless it appears in doujins.If you haven't come across it elsewhere... you've successfully avoided those works.
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There's a pattern I saw with two villainess light novels (adventurer and taming final boss) that really disappointed me:
They introduce the main character of the game to actually be similar to the novel's protagonist, who is supposed to be the prime villain of the game. It's not a bad thing at all; it makes it kind of interesting, with how the story can take it from there. What ticks me off the most is not just that they just couldn't be bothered to try and warp the story to coexist and instead take down the other, but that we never hear a thing with the game protagonist's motives or true history; they're just this overly righteous and arrogant personality that doesn't have a real purpose in the world besides being a villain. Who are they, to be able to manipulate the world with their knowledge of winning their hearts, more knowledgeable than the protagonist? The author? A devout fan? We will never know...
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Speaking of villainesses, there's a lot of fresh light novels out there that really bend into the keywords. Last boss, demon lord, adventurer, villainess, levels (I really don't enjoy the very stat heavy aspect of isekais, where you have this skill or basically never be able to have or perform that skill for the rest of your life. Mana levels also suck in that regard), tamer... not to mention the features, like slimes (I get that the template here is really malleable in more ways than literal, but it is so oversaturated to the point where even the kind of story aspects that uses slimes to satisfy certain parts of the story just breaks the immersion of why such a creature exists (and why not everyone and their mom has one)), adventurer's guild (I tune this one out a lot, though it's usually so much like a game where it doesn't feel like a real occupation anymore), mana systems... the list goes on forever, but you can really feel the keyword meta going on that is very much overshadowing the quality of the story.
I can get all salty about this, but at the end of the day the novels do seem to be in the realm of "my first level" in mario maker kind of quality, not to mention that it can be purposefully written to be designed for tv shows (konosuba, slime, realist hero, and more) with superficial coverage of certain aspects and heavy emphasis on tropes to invoke certain responses or thoughts favoring the character and its purpose. But when you really think about it, if these are within the realm of "my first level" kind of substance, how are these getting the approval to go so much further than what the content can spare?
Also, for the tv oriented stories, is it weird to say that it doesn't feel like the characters actually change at all? In a way, a lot of the characters are secluded into tropes and are probably intended to retain that image till the days forgotten, and any events that should've made permanent change just finds that character going back to what they were previously. This notice is probably part of something greater than just light novels, but I wonder if this hinders the quality of the cast because of the inability to turn out differently than the way they started off.
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@22144418 tvtropes calls it Status Quo Is God, and its far from an Isekai or a Light Novel thing. In a way, I think you might have the causality backwards on that one - I think its the series that obey it that make for better (or at least easier) tv adaptations. Mainly for the same reason written-for-TV shows often use it - episodic TV is easy to watch in whatever order you like, and makes sense even if you miss an episode or two.
Streaming services mean that's not quite as big a draw now as it used to be back in the days when missing a broadcast left you at the mercy of reruns, true...
As for the quality level of Isekais... Yeah, the glut of them is coming from some amateur novelist sites online. The buzzword-heavy titles are needed to draw the attention of people flipping through a list of series with ever-so-slightly-different gimmicks to them. Popularity isn't really decided by the technical skill of the writer; Interesting characters, unique plot points, or giant dollops of wish-fulfilment can all draw an audience to the works of a technically poor writer. The ones that draw an audience start going through the adaptation chain (generally WN->LN->Manga->Anime), with how far they get determined by how big of an audience they build.
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In fairness, you don't read LN's for high literature.
They're dumb fun, sometimes extremely dumb, and are all about read-and-forget and novelty.
At least it's not like Star Wars, where people have convinced themselves it's more than pap.
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@Windsagio - with rare exceptions like The Faraway Paladin. It's better than a fair amount of western fantasy literature.
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@HarmlessDave True although it only got 5 volumes (including short stories).
That's an exception though, generally LN's that try to be literary just suck more and more and more, if they don't go pure grimdark chuuni.
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@KopiCAT said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
But it seems I wasn't about Akatsuki. If you are mistaken for an Elementary student, you are the very definition of a loli in my mind, no matter your age. And any romance between an actual adult MC and such a person just.. well disgust would be much too strong a word. But I certainly dislike it strongly.
I have to disagree, just about as strongly.
Underage age-gap romance is a big NO for me, and I have pretty scathing critique for it; just look at the Private Tutor threads, to name one example. Or my disgust at the way I'll Never Set Foot in That House Again turned into an age-gap romance.
But the key here for me is mental and emotional age. To me, at least, Akatsuki acts like a college student, Shiro's peer - from the very beginning, she shows maturity, competence and self-confidence in just about everything that doesn't link to traumas about her appearance (i.e. being used as a dress-up doll). She takes initiative, assumes responsibility, and acts as an independent adult. That's enough to override her appearance and put her in the same category as adult RL women I know who are short and not particularly curvy.
Besides, Henrietta was always my favorite. She also showed clear signs of liking him.
Henrietta has a sadistic side that bothers me. If anything, I think her interaction with Akatsuki is far more deserving of the lolicon label than anything Shiro does - her attraction and fawning over Akatsuki is based on her appearance, compounded by that sadism when she realizes how much it bothers (and even outright panics) Akatsuki. Her teasing of Shiro in the noble's dance ball also had a malicious edge that was another example, for me.
...Cats are the proof of a higher purpose to the universe.
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@Windsagio said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
At least it's not like Star Wars, where people have convinced themselves it's more than pap.
Oh, good one! I'm not sure if fandom in general can be included in this topic, but Star Wars fans are nuts, and their pathology worsens my enjoyment of the franchise. Star Wars was amazing and transformative for me... when I was a teenager. Not so much as an adult. The movies are still fun, but it's not like they are God's gift to cinema. When I hear Star Wars super fans go on and on (and on and on) about how bad the new movies are, I feel like asking them if they've actually tried rewatching the originals lately.
Also, on the more general topic of anime and LN culture, I can't stand the "Alpha Geek". This is the guy who has the one true opinion about which series are any good, which characters you're allowed to like, and which interpretations are worth considering. To disagree with the alpha geek is to be exposed as a philistine. He gains prestige in his tiny microcosm by hating everything that anyone else likes. Nothing released recently ever compares favorably to the obscure and decades old properties that the alpha geek claims to prefer. All I will say about this weird personality tic, is that hating things is easy. It involves no risk or vulnerability. It must give some weird sense of superiority to look down your nose at the little people with their unrefined pallets But, personally, if you really can't understand that other people might like something that you don't, or might be looking for something other than the one true best series ever, then I think maybe you need to go back to kindergarten or something.
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@unknownmat said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
When I hear Star Wars super fans go on and on (and on and on) about how bad the new movies are, I feel like asking them if they've actually tried rewatching the originals lately.
I've rewatched Star Wars A New Hope recently and it still holds up. It's a very simple story well told. The Sequel Trilogy is a very simple story told poorly.
The Trench Run is amazing. I feel tense every time.
