Marching into New Worlds with Catchups!
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We've got a smorgasbord of fantasy worlds on our agenda for March's catchups!
After facing a personal betrayal, our protagonist wakes up as Jack, the protagonist in a fan game who's got even worse treachery to face. With knowledge of future events, Jack is determined to overturn them all and enjoy a new life of luxury in Survival Strategies of a Corrupt Aristocrat!
In Back to the Battlefield: The Veteran Heroes Return to the Fray!, humanity has vanquished the demons, and the world is at peace. Twenty-five years later, the former hero Alan receives a report that the demon army has returned! Can Alan and his former companions, now in their forties, revive the power and drive of their youth to save the world again?
Alphina has been living the same scenario over and over again: executed for a crime she didn't commit, the time rewinds to experience it again. However, after 99 beheadings, she suddenly gets a special power and finds out everyone actually loves her! Apparently The 100th Time’s the Charm, and this could be her chance to finally escape her headless fate!
The Great Cleric stars a salaryworker who suddenly died just before getting his long-awaited promotion. Waking up in another world, he takes the name Lucius and vows to life a full life this time. Can Lucius master the power of healing and secure his path to a comfortable new life?
Have you been watching the anime of I'm a Noble on the Brink of Ruin, So I Might as Well Try Mastering Magic? If you're not sure about it, check out the manga adaptation first! Liam was just a commoner, but wakes up as the son of a noble family! Is this his chance to learn magic as he's always wanted, or will he be roped into reviving his collapsing family first?
Finally, if you want the best of both worlds, then you'll need to split your time between the two, like Kazuhiro and Marie! The leads of Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf! know how to take advantage of the modern conveniences of Japan while also enjoying the adventures of an unexplored fantasy world!
Where will your imagination take you this month? Join our members in exploring nearly 30 volumes of content!
Whoever said nothing's impossible never tried slamming a revolving door.
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Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf! is sweet and fun. Some people think the other world parts are a little boring in the early books, but they get much better in the later volumes.
The Great Cleric started strong but lost steam for me after it turned into a city development sim with the MC as a "good slave-master" with his happy passel of well-tended slaves.
Survival Strategies of a Corrupt Aristocrat is interesting, isekai'd into a broken fan-made strategy game. Edit: and it will continue later this year after a gap. JNC volume 2 was released September 2023, Japanese volume 3 was released January 2025.
Back to the Battlefield didn't work for me, but that is just me. It's one like High School Prodigies Have It Easy where each of the characters is implausibly competent in one narrow area, but with personality quirks to match.
I'm a Noble - I've only read the first couple of volumes of the LN, which I consider trash but somewhat entertaining. YMMV.
The 100th Time’s the Charm - I haven't read it.
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@HarmlessDave said in Marching into New Worlds with Catchups!:
Survival Strategies of a Corrupt Aristocrat is interesting, but was canceled before it fully developed. I'd say give it a try if you have time but as a lower priority.
It's not canceled.
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@myskaros said in Marching into New Worlds with Catchups!:
@HarmlessDave said in Marching into New Worlds with Catchups!:
Survival Strategies of a Corrupt Aristocrat is interesting, but was canceled before it fully developed. I'd say give it a try if you have time but as a lower priority.
It's not canceled.
Nice, after a year and a half I'd figured it was "on hiatus" forever. I'm looking forward to JNC starting the epubs later this year.
Since it was released in January 2025, maybe by June or July? (JNC statement on future releases - https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/3478/future-volume-release-schedule/1 )
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Sorry in advance for the wall of text:
I know that LN readers want to have some sense of guarantee, like weekly or monthly manga chapters, but sometimes authors just take longer to write for whatever reasons, whether it be other work or personal life. Personally, I think it's unhealthy for the LN community to put so much importance on "calculating whether X series is canceled or not."
I grew up on western books, and it's very common for there to be a 1-2-3-5+ year gap between volumes. It doesn't mean a series got canceled once a magical number of years has passed, it just means the author's next book isn't ready yet. Light novels tend to have shorter gaps between volumes, but that's often because the author has an existing web novel version they can simply adapt to novel format. Once the novel catches up to the web novel, now they have to write from scratch, and that can take longer depending on the person. Look at Arifureta, for example; the author already had the after stories ready to go in web novel format, but it still took 2 years to publish volume 14.
Just cool it with "canceled" talk, especially if you're making a guess based on an arbitrary amount of time has passed. We had something like 10 series get new releases in Japan after 2-3 year gaps in the last 6-12 months.
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@myskaros - that's all true, but if something has a long delay after just 2-3 volumes instead of after 4+ it seems more likely that the Japanese publisher canceled it for low sales.
Also, LNs are on average about half as long as modern English fantasy novels (50,000 vs 90,000+) so an author writing at roughly the same speed would release them twice as fast even without a web novel to adapt them from.
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@HarmlessDave Perhaps, but at the end of the day, you're just making assumptions and coming to conclusions that... at least in this case, and the 10 other cases I mentioned, end up not being correct. And the bigger problem I have is that these conclusions are then being picked up by people who don't do their own research and both spread around ("I hear it's canceled") and used as reasons to convince themselves and others not to read a book.
"It's been [amount of time] since the last book" is information that the public has; you can check publication dates. "It's been canceled" is a) something decided by the publisher, not the customer, and b) not information given to the public in the first place, particularly not for light novels. I believe "cancellation" is also terminology adopted from behind-the-scenes for manga production (such as Bakuman), which is also mostly based on publishing in a weekly magazine and not as full books.
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@myskaros fair points, and I've corrected my original post.
I'd love to be proven wrong about Deathbound Duke's Daughter and The Sidekick Never Gets the Girl too. Pretty please Japanese publishers?
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Great Cleric is an enjoyable title, and I'm sure the people who only prepubbed it appreciate the ability to refresh their memories since v11 has come back after a more than 2 year break.
Cool to see Corrupt Aristocrat available again and I hope some people try it. The MC does a weird balancing act of selfish acts while also improving the lives of those in his territory. Partially because he wants to live a life of luxury and so needs them to be prosperous so that his taxes can afford that, and partially to strengthen himself so he can survive upcoming events.
I've been enjoying the manga for 100th times the charm, and missed the LN initially so glad to see that I get a chance to rectify that.
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@HarmlessDave if you read the afterword in a number of these light novels, you find that writing novels is not the primary occupation of many of these novelists. For many of them, their novel writing is a side gig, and they still have to go to their day job. This usually means they can't sit around every day thinking about what to write next and writing it.
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@myskaros Awesome, this is one of my personal favourites. Very cynical MC, it's not for everyone but if the description sounds good to you I'd highly recommend.
I'm glad I can start suggesting this again. I was checking every few months, but I missed it. I didn't think it was axed, though there was 1 and a half year gap between V1 and V2, and it hadn't even been 2 years since V2 came out.
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@Arcene said in Marching into New Worlds with Catchups!:
though there was 1 and a half year gap between V1 and V2
I see 6 months between them myself (November 2022 and May 2023). Certainly longer than many series, but a lot shorter than 1 and a half years.
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@myskaros wasn't "I am a noble at the brink of ruin" also in last month's catch up? Why is it being repeated? Can't we have something else (better)?
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@wanderer_1204 Last month was the LN, this month is the manga. When they have both, it's not uncommon for them to get run back-to-back, and doubly so if it has an actively airing anime (which Brink does).
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@HarmlessDave said in Marching into New Worlds with Catchups!:
The Great Cleric started strong but lost steam for me after it turned into a city development sim with the MC as a "good slave-master" with his happy passel of well-tended slaves.
Dang. And I was thinking about giving this one another go, since I read vol 1 (it was slooooow) a few years ago.
Ah well. There's still Ms. Elf. I definitely want to try that one.
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I noted this on the forums, and in Discord. After V5 The Great Cleric does come back strong and goes back to its OG roots.
All of the V4 and V5 stuff comes back later on to be relevant in a good way.
Others who dropped it did come back and say the same.
But yes, The Great Cleric is meant to be a slow burn.
