Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.

Folker46

@unknownmat Marvel and DC comics are guilty of the same thing so it's not just the Japanese who are guilty of "spicing up" the cover art. Super hero women have always had unrealistic proportions, clothes so tight they might as well be nude that show off their tits and ass, and covers that have nothing to do with what happens inside the mag. When it comes to teenage boys and young lonely men, sex sells.

Kalani

@unknownmat
I love the covers of Bookworm, I've also started to collect the physical editions. I do wish they'd do a physical edition of Apothecary (the LN, I don't read manga).

80s romances though are notorious for horrible covers as well. (and 90s ones aren't much better)

salientmind

@folker46 so do romance books and harlequin. It might not be an exclusive problem, but it doesn't change the fact its a problem.

poisonedbite

@unknownmat said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:

I should note that anime figurines and posters are also right-out for similar reasons (or would be if I liked collecting such things, which I don't and never have).

I literally have a naked Rias Gremory on a stripper pole figure in my office ;)

@kalani said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:

@unknownmat
I love the covers of Bookworm, I've also started to collect the physical editions. I've also started to collect the physical editions. I do wish they'd do a physical edition of Apothecary.

I've been trying to get apothecary diaries physicals for...well, since they licensed it.

@salientmind said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:

@folker46 so do romance books and harlequin. It might not be an exclusive problem, but it doesn't change the fact its a problem.

What, you don't like Fabio?

Kotenmaru

My biggest gripes are when the MC's powers interact sensually with their female companions. This was a big thing with Holy Knight's Dark Road, and seems to be a thing with Zero Believers as well. It just feels so unneeded.

Also, when they give an exposition dump hyping up the villian's power only for them to get killed a volume later. Holy Knight's Dark Road did this too with the Founders of Chaos. They were supposed to be so powerful that even the God and goddess couldn't kill them, only seal them away and yet next volume the MC and his new ally kill one.

WaterDweller

@unknownmat said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:

The cover art for a significant majority of LN series is so raunchy that I can't even support series I like by purchasing the physical volume.

My solution to this, besides avoiding the worst offenders, is keeping my entire light novel collection hidden away in my bedroom, reserving the bookcase in my living room for "serious" books (which, granted, is a luxury not available to everyone). That said, I have no posters or figurines or anything like that in my collection. Only light novels and a couple of manga series, and fortunately, while they're on their shelves, the covers aren't on display.

Still, avoiding the worst offenders means that I've ended up with a lot of series with female main characters and no romance on my shelves, even if those only make up a portion of everything I read.

salientmind

@poisonedbite said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:

What, you don't like Fabio?

He is a murderer.

unknownmat

Lot of responses here. I think I might have misspoken by mentioning "raunchy" covers. While overtly sexualized underaged girls is a problem for me, it's nearly as bad even if the girls are just the primary focus of the cover.

Look at it this way. If I had one or two racy covers in my library then this could be dismissed as an anomaly - maybe I just picked them up in a garage sale assortment or something. But if I have shelf, after shelf, after shelf filled with completed series of carefully sorted volumes that prominently display underaged girls - even if tastefully - people are going to start looking at me funny. After a while, the pattern becomes so clear that it stops mattering whether the covers are technically "raunchy". You might think this is an ironic concern given that my eBook collection actually does contain such volumes, but in my defense these elements are something I tolerate rather than enjoy.

By contrast, a series like Bookworm is less problematic because there are enough additional background elements that the protagonist isn't the sole focus of the art, and although she's prominently displayed she isn't obviously being "posed".

@kuali said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:

Hmm... Looking down the volumes in my subscribed series list, there's actually not a lot in the way of raunchy covers.

It's very possible that you have better tastes than me. Just going through my eBook collection: Altina, Arch Demon's Dilemma, Arifureta, I'm a Behemoth, Bofuri, Classroom of the Elite, Demon Lord Retry, Demon Slayer, Didn't I Say To Make My Abilities Average, Gabriel Dropout, Goblin Slayer - and that's just alphabetically up to "G" - all have at least a few covers that I would not be comfortable displaying in my home.

I might have unintentionally exaggerated when I said "signficant majority", but it's at least common enough that there are plenty of examples.

@folker46 said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:

Marvel and DC comics are guilt of the same thing so it's not just the Japanese who are guilty of "spicing up" the cover art.

Fair enough. FWIW, I also don't purchase or read western comics.

I dunno. Given my limited exposure I'm on shaky ground here. My impression is that the women - despite all the problems you mention above - are not so obviously underage, and they often share the cover with equally stylized male characters. Somehow, a middle-aged man owning a bunch of DC or Marvel comics comes off as juvenile rather than as creepy. But this may just be my own bias.

@kalani said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:

80s romances though are notorious for horrible covers as well. (and 90s ones aren't much better)

Good point. 80s romance comes off as very low-brow, but the actors are not underaged, and the focus is as much (or more so) on the male lead as on the female lead. I would be embarrassed to have a library filled with romance novels but for a completely different reason.

I, too, would be willing to display the Apothecary Diaries books in my library.

@salientmind said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:

So do romance books and harlequin. It might not be an exclusive problem, but it doesn't change the fact its a problem.

Fair point. None of these books would be in my library. I suppose the only thing that makes JPN LNs different is that I actually enjoy reading them and actively seek them out.

@poisonedbite said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:

I literally have a naked Rias Gremory on a stripper pole figure in my office ;)

Geez. That would be a hard "no" for me. I think it might even lead to a divorce.

@waterdweller said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:

My solution to this, besides avoiding the worst offenders, is keeping my entire light novel collection hidden away in my bedroom, reserving the bookcase in my living room for "serious" books (which, granted, is a luxury not available to everyone).

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, because there is no temptation) with a wife and child in the house, there's no such thing as a private space where I can collect such material. I suppose my eReader is the sole private space left to me.

kuali

@unknownmat For the record, I was just talking about my subscriptions list on j-novel club. There are some more... dubious... covers in my wider ebook collection - including some of the ones you mentioned (specifically Bofuri, Average Abilities and Gabriel Dropout). And no, I wouldn't really want to fill a bookshelf with those (even if I was inclined to get a bookshelf).

WaterDweller

This discussion about the acceptability of light novel covers has got me thinking that perhaps I should just buy whatever series I want to without even giving covers more than the briefest of considerations, as the people who are liable to judge me for it would probably judge me regardless of how carefully I select my light novels (or manga).

And anyway, it's unlikely that I'll ever show my collection to anyone who isn't already into the "trinity" of Japanese media (anime/manga/light novels), and who as a group would probably either be accepting, or at the very least understanding of the issue with all the unfortunate cover art.

GeorgeMTO

@kuali Weird. Bofuri covers don't even proc my concerns, they seem fairly ordinary to me. It's such a weird thing to see how much my opinion of problematic covers can differ from others, because I do agree with most of those other series listed.

WaterDweller

With all the discussion about physical releases and their covers, I've thought of another grievance, mostly against a certain publisher: too little text per page, making volumes way thicker and heftier than they need to be. Even if I want to start collecting more series, I'm really starting to hit the point where I'll run out of shelf space just by continuing to collect my current series. If every publisher could fill the pages with text the way j-novel does, I could probably fit 50% more volumes in the one bookcase I've reserved for light novels.

For illustrative purposes:

alt text

Guess which volume has the higher word count.

The answer: Ascendance of a Bookworm - 84k words, Reincarnated as a Sword - 79k words. It's ridiculous.

(Back when I bought my first light novel volume, I did so with the intention of stopping once I had filled one smallish bookcase (80cm wide, with 6-7 shelves, three-and-a-half of which have been filled so far). If I want to stick to that, I really can't start collecting any new series. Moreover, finding room for another bookcase in an out of view place would be a pain in the rear. Having more compact volumes would be a big help.)

Edited to add an illustrative photo, and again to add the math:

spoiler

poisonedbite

@georgemto
I was just thinking that. They're literally wearing, like, armor. well, book 4 has the twins hugging, but they're fully covered.

kuali

@poisonedbite / @GeorgeMTO So, when I mentioned Bofuri, this is what I was responding to:

@unknownmat said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:

Lot of responses here. I think I might have misspoken by mentioning "raunchy" covers. While overtly sexualized underaged girls is a problem for me, it's nearly as bad even if the girls are just the primary focus of the cover.

Look at it this way. If I had one or two racy covers in my library then this could be dismissed as an anomaly - maybe I just picked them up in a garage sale assortment or something. But if I have shelf, after shelf, after shelf filled with completed series of carefully sorted volumes that prominently display underaged girls - even if tastefully - people are going to start looking at me funny. After a while, the pattern becomes so clear that it stops mattering whether the covers are technically "raunchy". You might think this is an ironic concern given that my eBook collection actually does contain such volumes, but in my defense these elements are something I tolerate rather than enjoy.

Bofuri may be relatively tasteful with how it displays its stars, but it is still a bunch of 'young female' covers.

Incidentally, to add to the list of things that annoy people: Have you seen the armor they use? In medieval times, you wouldn't walk into battle in plate armor deliberately made to expose your upper arms and upper legs. That's basically saying to the enemy "I have too many limbs! Why don't you relieve me of one?" Or lighter armor that has 'tasteful' cutaways on the sides of the torso to show off how toned your abdomen is ("Why yes, sir, I do have too many kidneys! Help yourself!").

This is hardly a Japan-exclusive issue, of course, but it does still irritate me when you see sets of armor (even in video games) that are so clearly designed as costumes rather than armor. Honestly, I'm happier to see people walking around in regular clothing saying that they're protected by their character level or strengthening magic or something...

Raitoiro

@folker46 Personally, I really like when series with a rather op MC do that (The girl who ate a death god, is another example). Because it let us know that despite how powerful those characters are, defeat is coming, which help keep the tension hight.
Obviously it's a problem if those future parts starts spoiling the plot, but as long as it stays vague enough on the MC whereabouts and how major events unfolded it's fine.

poisonedbite

@kuali

I guess I just don't see the problem with having the characters on the cover. Unless they're like, loli's. I don't judge sao for having kirito on the front. I judge it for a lot of things, but not that.

And it's well known that bikini armor gets more effective the smaller it is. That's just basic magic.

kuali

@poisonedbite Take that up with @unknownmat, they're his criteria!

And as we found out in Sexiled, that thing about showing more skin helping with the magic was actually a lie! Turns out the guy in charge just wanted to make women wear degrading outfits, go figure...

unknownmat

@poisonedbite No worries. You're welcome to collect based on whatever criteria makes sense to you.
@kuali Thanks for providing the context of my remarks. You had indeed responded in the spirit that I had intended.

FWIW, let me just give one example of the kind of awkward interaction I'd be afraid of given room full of even "tasteful" images of young 2-D girls.

I have a daughter who is on the cusp of entering middle-school. I can just imagine one of her friend's parents getting a good look at something like this while dropping their kid off at our house:

Example Home Library
(NOTE: Just a random image from the internet).

In that case, do I say nothing and just hope they understand and appreciate anime subculture? Somehow, preemptively defending myself seems even worse: "Oh! I just read light novels for the plot. It's not at all like I have an unhealthy obsession with young girls or anything. Don't worry! You're daughter will be completely safe at our house. Really! See you at six. Goodbye."

unknownmat

@raitoiro said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:

Personally, I really like when series with a rather op MC do that (The girl who ate a death god, is another example). Because it let us know that despite how powerful those characters are, defeat is coming, which help keep the tension hight.

I didn't respond to @Folker46 because I took them to be specifically focused on Tanya the Evil. But I agree that revealing the outcome ahead of time can be a useful story mechanic when used well. Another example that comes to mind is The Boondock Saints where this technique is used to turn an otherwise suspenseful action scenes (Two people vs. all those trained killers, will they be OK?) into humorous a one ("Stupid fucking rope.").

kuali

@unknownmat grin As I said, those flash-forwards are a real dramatic-tension-killer. But hey, if you want your tension killed...