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Journal of Geek Studies

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My light ’s title can’t be this short! The evolution of titles in world!!!

João V. Tomotani Universidade de São Paulo; São Paulo, Brazil. E-: [email protected]

Light are a subculture of Japanese novels’, one of the earliest examples of the primarily targeting the young use of this term (then still a neologism most- adult demographic, with the average length ly restricted to online communities). of 50,000 words, a dense publishing sched- ule, and usually illustrated with an / art style (Wikipedia, 2020). Due to their demographic, light novels are general- ly written in a simpler, more approachable fashion, and there is often an overlap be- tween them and novels classified as young adult, middle grade, and children’s liter- ature. This is most evident when you find translated foreign novels, redesigned into a light novel style (English Light Novels, 2020). Still, a more clear-cut definition of light novels has not yet been achieved, as they contain a lot of different features. Japanese literary critic Enomoto Aki, for instance, defined light novels as “entertaining liter- ary work for readers in junior high school or high school”, while the publishing house Nikkei Publications defines them as “books using anime pictures as covers and aimed at young readers” (Teipei Teen Tribune, 2020). The term ‘light novel’ originated from Figure 1: Cover of the light novel Onsen ni Ten- sei shita Ore no Kounou ga Tondemosugiru (“I was Rein- “user participation” and was coined around carnated as a Hot Spring in an Alternate World, and 1990 by Kamikita Keita, the system operator I’m way too Effective”; Kadokawa, 2017): shallow or of the Science and forum in deep content? ( intended). Image extracted from the Nifty Serve BBS (Saito, 2014). The light MyAnimeList. novel trend in juvenile novel markets was Ōhara’s negative when using the testified by the writer Ōhara term indicated her ambivalent position to- Mariko in a book review for a newspaper wards it, criticizing the proximity to manga in 1994 (Saito, 2016). Ōhara was impressed for prioritizing characters over story, unre- and confused with the increasing populari- alistic settings, and shallow content (Fig. 1). ty of a group of novels referred to as ‘light She concluded that those works could not be

119 Tomotani, J.V.

categorized as novels (shōsetsu) and should franchise mimics this participatory culture be only consumed as a passing entertain- of the digital age, was ment that did not produce lasting - born out of the actual user participation in al impact on the readers (Saito, 2016). the creation and dissemination of the media content. The success of Sword Art Online has Light novels are an evolution of pulp contributed to the creation of many write- magazines in . In the 1970s, many your-own-fiction websites in Japan over the pulp magazines began to put illustrations past years. in their stories and included anime, movies and articles to cater to their au- dience. Arai Motoko, a science fiction and fantasy writer active mainly in the young adult market, is considered one of the har- bingers of the breathless, chatty style of lit- erature, typical of light novels (SFE, 2020). She is also credited with the popularization of the term ‘’ in Japanese popular cul- ture by using it in her works. Other famous work from this period is the heroic fanta- sy novel Guin , by Kurimoto Kaoru, in continuous publication since 1979 (though the original author died in 2009, at which time this novel was the longest single-writ- er’s work in the world). Other very famous light novels (also in the West) are: and , published in the , which con- tributed to the development of the fantasy and in Japan; Boogiepop and Full Metal Panic, published in the , that mixed the , fantasy and military themes with everyday student lives; the Figure 2: promotional art. A phenomenon , published show featuring characters from the popular isekai se- ries , Re:Zero, KonoSuba and The Saga of Tanya in 2003 and possibly a turning point the Evil. Image extracted from Wikipedia (Studio Puy- in the light novel and anime industry, by ukai, 2019). playing with the tropes of the time, reflecting otaku culture, and A similar phenomenon was identified by being wildly popular on the ; and Hansen (2016) with the ‘cell phone novels’ Sword Art Online, initially published as a (or ‘keitai novels’), that became a signifi- web novel in 2002, that vastly contributed cant commercial success in Japan. Keitai to the popularization of the ‘isekai’ novels also generated considerable literary (literally “different world”, a genre that re- criticism, but that had little impact on their volves around a normal person from Earth continued success, which is presenting being transported to or reborn in another challenges not only to traditional critical fantastical universe) – a commercially suc- interpretation of fiction, but also to the cessful genre today, as seen in novels like very manner that literature is created, dis- KonoSuba, Overlord and Re:Zero (Fig. 2). seminated and received. For an interesting analysis on the Japanese pop culture trends As argued by Saito (2015), with the par- of fiction since the 2000s, with the- popu ticipatory culture of the Internet, story writ- larization of themes like sekaikei (“end-of- ing became the major source of small nar- the-world crisis”), sabaibukei (“survival”), ratives for its ease in creating consumable and nichijōkei (“slice of daily life”), refer to media content. While the Haruhi Suzumiya Tanaka (2014).

Journal of Geek Studies 7(2): 119-129 (2020). Evolution of Japanese light novel titles

GOD’S BLESSING ON THESE WON- who compiled a list of English titles from DERFUL LIGHT NOVELS the website MyAnimeList and counted the number of words, in order to identify the A very peculiar feature of light novels moment in which titles became so long. She is their titles. The titles are (in)famous for concluded that the movement started be- being unusually long, often composed of tween 2009 and 2013, but really caught on large sentences that give a summary of the in 2014. , interjections, and filled with excessive punctuation marks such as exclamation and The objective of the present work is to interrogation marks (Fig. 3). An article from expand on those studies, following a more the satirical anime news website Anime structured and scientific protocol and ana- Maru, even joked about the possibility of lyzing results via statistical tests. Using the the release of a light novel composed solely original Japanese titles, we will evaluate of a 196-page-long title (Anime Maru, 2016). the progression in title size by counting the number of characters. In addition, we will try to identify whether the larger title sizes are related to the novels’ . Fi- nally, we will identify which are the most common themes and words among the ti- tles.

LIST ART ONLINE – BUILDING A LIST OF LIGHT NOVELS Our light novel list was composed from two complementary online sources: the website English Light Novels (https:// englishlightnovels.com/list-of-light-nov- els-alphabetical/) and Wikipedia (https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_light_nov- els). While the titles acquired from the former website were restricted to novels officially published in English, Wikipedia listed all titles (regardless of publication in English) that have their own Wikipedia page (mostly due to having a sufficiently successful anime or manga adaptation). For each title, we extracted the following Figure 3: Cover of the light novel Me, a Genius? I was Reborn into Another World and I think they’ve got the information: Wrong Idea! (J-Novel Club, 2018). One can only won- der what the plot for this light novel entails. Image • Original title of the light novel, in extracted from MyAnimeList. the Hepburn Romanized form. For al- most all cases, the Romanized form was Two analyses of the increase in the size provided by the website itself. In case of light novel titles have been done in the this information was not available, we past. The first one was conducted by Twit- searched for a Romanization in either ter user @GenreCodeLovers, who compiled Baka Updates (https://www.mangaup- a list of light novel titles from the website dates.com/) or MyAnimeList (https:// Ranobe Mori and analyzed the number of .net/). Whenever the titles Japanese characters (apparently not correct- contained words originally in English, ed for polysyllabic ) in them (reported they were left unchanged ( by Parker-Dalton, 2019). The second one forms of foreign words, however, were was made by YouTuber Red Bard (2019), Romanized as usual). Punctuation was

121 Tomotani, J.V.

also left unchanged. nal novels from sequels, side stories or spin- offs, such as The Reprise of the Spear • Translated title of the light novel to (from the Shield Hero series), Is It Wrong to English. Whenever the light novel was Try to Pick Up in a Dungeon? On the formally released in English, the official Side: Sword Oratoria (side story of the Dan- title was used. Otherwise, a literal trans- machi light novel), Wolf and Parchment: New lation was used. Theory (sequel of Spice and • Year of publication (in Japan) of the Wolf light novel). After this, we conclud- light novel’s first volume (or the year the ed that 406 out of the 498 listed titles were first chapter was published online, in the original light novels, while the remaining case of web novels). 92 were not. • Genre(s) of the light novel. For most novels, the was provided by the two websites mentioned above; Re:SULTS – STARTING AN ANALY- otherwise, they were obtained from SIS IN THIS ARTICLE MyAnimeList. For our analyses, we used only those 406 The list was compiled on August 9th, light novels that were original titles. Since 2020, and had a total of 498 different titles. many of the novels that were sequels or spin-offs included the title of the original From those, we distinguished titles that novel in their own titles (e.g., Is It Wrong were not originally light novels. For in- to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the stance, light novels based on a manga (e.g., Side: Sword Oratoria) and thus, were natu- and ), anime (e.g., rally longer, they would have biased the Eureka , Anohana, ), OVA analyses. or movie (e.g., FLCL, , and those by ), video game Firstly, we evaluated how the average or (e.g., Hearts, Dan- number of characters in the title changed ganronpa, Higurashi, and the Fate/Stay Night from year to year. For this analysis, we used franchise). Also, we distinguished the origi- the original Japanese title in romanized

Figure 4: Average number of characters from the novels’ titles, and number of light novels published per year, considering only “original” novels.

Journal of Geek Studies 7(2): 119-129 (2020). Evolution of Japanese light novel titles form, also including any punctuation and spaces, and considered the year of the nov- els’ first publication in Japan. The results can be seen in Figure 4. From this first analysis, we can -clear ly see an increase in the number of novels published and a clear increase in the av- erage number of characters since the late 1970s. The years of 2018, in particular, had a whooping average of over 45 characters per title. The longest title award, though, goes to the R18 novel published in 2016 Yami Zokusei no Mahoutsukai daga, naze ka Yuusha ni Natte Shimatta ~Sore wa Tomokaku Yome ni Ii Kurashi wo Saseru Tame ni Ganbatte Nariag- arou to Omou, or “Busy Wizard: This War- lock Just Wants to Provide for his Wives!” (Fig. 5). In order to identify the precise year when the increase in title length started, we used a continuous piecewise linear model, popularly referred to as broken-stick mod- el. In regression models, it is often assumed that the regression function has the same parametric form throughout the domain Figure 5: Cover of Yami Zokusei no Mahoutsukai daga, of interest. However, it might be possible naze ka Yuusha ni Natte Shimatta ~Sore wa Tomokaku that a regression function is composed of Yome ni Ii Kurashi wo Saseru Tame ni Ganbatte Nariag- a sequence of submodels, that is, multiple arou to Omou (Panty Press, 2018; yes, that’s the name of the publisher), our wordiest title, and probably linear segments (Das et al., 2016). The seg- the lewdest novel in our list as well. Image extracted ments can form a continuous function, but from Goodreads. with discontinuities in slope at “transition points” between each segment. After applying this procedure in our data, we see two possible transition points It is relatively easy to fit the segmented with the same fit: 2004 and 2010 (Fig. 6). curves when it is known in advance where Looking at the results, with the error bars each transition point is. When the transi- for each year, we can see that until 2010, tion points are unknown, as in our case, the average number of characters per title the problem becomes more difficult and we changed very little – one could say that it need to use the data to estimate where the almost remained unchanged, considering transition points are. Hudson (1966) devel- the error bars – but that an increase is very oped an algorithm to obtain the best fit it- noticeable after 2010. The transition point in eratively. With a large number of transition 2004 being a good fit, though, is most like- points, this iterative procedure can be very ly due to 2005 being an outlier with some complex, but as we are assuming the exis- very short titles (including the shortest one tence of a single point (that is, a specific year in our list, the novel Esu or S, Fig. 7). when the trend started), it is much simpler Thus, it is more likely that the transition to proceed testing every point for the best fit point is truly 2010. This result is aligned for the method of least squares. with the one estimated by YouTuber Red Bard (2019), who eyeballed the start of this trend between 2009 and 2013.

123 Tomotani, J.V.

a) b) 50 50 40 40 30 30 20 20 10 10 Average number of characters number Average Average number of characters number Average 0 0

1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

Year Year Figure 6: Results of the broken-stick model with a) the transition point in 2004; and b) the transition point in 2010.

ones with the largest number of novels. The ten most popular genres were: fantasy; ; romance/romcom; action; adven- ture; isekai/; ; science fiction; ; and mystery. One could argue that some of these are not really lit- erary genres, such as isekai or harem (and one would most likely be right according to most literary experts), but the source material at hand, we obviously had to con- sider them.

Table 1: Average number of characters in the title per genre.

Average Number Number of Genre of characters Titles All 28.990 406 Fantasy 33.079 215 Comedy 31.421 152 Romance / 27.291 127 RomCom Action 26.565 92 Figure 7: Cover of Esu (Taiyoh Tosho, 2005), the nov- el with the shortest title in our list. Image extracted 27.679 84 from Wikipedia. Isekai / Virtual 39.329 82 Reality NO GENRE, NO LIFE Drama 24.075 67 To analyze how the genre of the light Sci-fi / Science 23.782 55 novels affected the expected number of Fiction characters of the title, firstly we identified Harem 30.221 68 the 10 most “popular” genres, that is, the Mystery 21 26

Journal of Geek Studies 7(2): 119-129 (2020). Evolution of Japanese light novel titles

Once the “most popular” genres were that the wordiest titles are by far in the is- defined, we calculated the average number ekai genre, followed by fantasy. This was of characters per title for each genre. The re- not really a surprise, considering how many sults are shown in Table 1. of the longest titles were classified as isekai or fantasy, as seen in the longest titles (Ta- From the results in Table 1, we can see ble 2).

Table 2: List of the top longest novel titles.

Year of first English Name Genres Nr characters publication Yami Zokusei no Mahoutsukai daga, naze ka Yuusha ni Natte Busy Wizard: This Warlock R18, Fan- Shimatta ~Sore wa Tomokaku Just Wants to Provide for his 2016 tasy, , 149 Yome ni Ii Kurashi wo Saseru Wives! Harem Tame ni Ganbatte Nariagarou to Omou Omae Gotoki ga Maou ni Kateru ROLL OVER AND DIE: I Will to Omou na’ to Gachizei ni Fight for an Ordinary Life Action, Fan- Yuusha Pāti wo Tsuihou Sare- 2018 121 with My Love and Cursed tasy, Horror ta node, Outo de Kimama ni Sword! Kurashitai Oda Nobunaga to Iu Nazo no Fantasy, A Mysterious Job Called Oda Shokugyou ga Mahou Kenshi 2017 Kingdom 111 Nobunaga yori Chīto Datta node, Oukoku o Building Tsukuru Koto ni Shimashita Shin no Nakama ja Nai to Yuu- Banished from the Hero’s Fantasy, sha no Pātī wo Oidasareta node, Party, I Decided to Live a 2018 Comedy, 104 Henkyou de Surō Raifu suru Quiet Life in the Countryside Romance Koto ni Shimashita I’m a Behemoth, an S-ranku monsutā no “Behīmo- Adven- S-Ranked , but Mis- su” dakedo, Neko to Machiga- ture, Ecchi, 2018 101 taken for a Cat, I Live as an warete Erufu Musume no Isekai, Elf ’s Pet toshite Kurashitemasu Comedy Woof Woof Story: I Told You Wanwan : Kanemo- Isekai, to Turn Me Into a Pampered no Inu ni Shite to wa Itta ga, 2017 Fantasy, 92 Pooch, Not Fenrir! Fenriru ni Shiro to wa Itte Nee! Comedy Tatoeba Rasuto Danjon Mae no Suppose a Kid From the Last Mura no Shōnen ga Joban no Adventure, Dungeon Boonies Moved to 2017 88 Machi de Kurasu Yō na Monoga- Fantasy a Starter Town tari My Instant Death Ability is Isekai, Sokushi Chīto ga Saikyou Sugite, So Overpowered, No One in Fantasy, Isekai no Yatsura ga Marude 2016 86 This Other World Stands a Adventure, Aite ni Naranai n Desu ga Chance Against Me! Comedy

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Table 2 (cont.)

Around 40 Eigyou-man, Isekai ni Isekai, Middle-Aged Businessman, Tatsu!: Megami Pawa de 2017 Slice-of-Life, 81 Arise in Another World! Nidome no Nariagari Fantasy Mapping: The Trash-Tier Hazure Skill “Mapping” wo Te ni Fantasy, Skill That Got Me Into a Shita Shounen wa Saikyou Pātī 2018 Adventure, 80 Top-Tier Party to Danjon ni Idomu Action Uchi no Musume no Tame - Fantasy, If It’s for My Daughter, I’d ba, Ore Moshikashitara Maou 2015 Adventure, 79 Even Defeat a Demon Lord mo Taoserukamo Shirenai. Slice-of-Life Comedy, Video Otome Gēmu no Hametsu Fu- My Next Life as a Villainess: Game ragu shika nai Akuyaku Reijou ni 2015 79 All Routes Lead to Doom! Isekai, Tensei shite shimatta… Romance, Otome Comedy, I’ve Been Killing Slimes for Suraimu Taoshite Sanbyaku-nen, Isekai, Fan- 300 Years and Maxed Out Shiranai Uchi ni Reberu Makku- 2017 78 tasy, Slice- My Level su ni Nattemashita of-Life Of and Fae: Is a Kamiyuishi wa Ryuu no Tsugai ni Fantasy, Ending Possible Narimashita (Yappari Machigai 2019 77 Romance for the Princess’s Hairstylist? Datta Sou Desu) Dareka Kono Joukyou wo Setsu- Fantasy, Can Someone Please Explain meishite Kudasai!: Keiyaku kara 2013 Romance, 76 What’s Going On?! Hajimaru Uedingu Shoujo The White Cat’s Revenge Fukushuu wo Chikatta Shironeko Isekai, as Plotted from the wa Ryuuou no Hiza no Ue de 2016 Shoujo, 75 King’s Lap Damin wo Musaboru Romance Ascendance of a Bookworm: Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho Isekai, Fan- I’ll Do Anything to Become a ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo 2015 74 tasy, Drama Librarian! Erandeiraremasen Do You Love Your Mom and Tsujo Kogeki ga Zentai Kogeki de MMO Her Two-Hit -Target Ni-kai Kogeki no Okasan wa Suki 2017 Isekai, Com- 73 Attacks? desu ka? edy, Fantasy Seriously Seeking Sister! Ul- Tonikaku Imouto ga Hoshii timate Princess Just , Com- Saikyou no Kyuuketsuki wa Mu- 2018 73 Wants Little Sister; Plenty of edy, Fantasy jikaku Gohoushichuu Service Will Be Provided! WorldEnd: What Do You Do Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasuka? Drama, at the End of the World? Are Isogashii desuka? Sukutte Mor- 2014 Romance, 72 You Busy? Will You Save Us? atte Ii desuka? Fantasy My Mental Choices are Ore no Nōnai Sentakushi ga, Comedy, Completely Interfering with Gakuen Rabu Kome o Zenryoku 2012 romance, 72 my School Romantic Com- de Jama Shiteiru edy

Journal of Geek Studies 7(2): 119-129 (2020). Evolution of Japanese light novel titles

Due to the expected intersection between IS IT WRONG TRYING TO PICK UP the fantasy and isekai genres, we excluded CONCLUSIONS IN THIS ARTICLE? isekai novels from our analysis, expecting a sharp decrease in the title length of fan- To identify some common themes in tasy novels (Table 3). However, the fanta- light novel titles, we used an online word sy genre remains the one with the longest cloud generator (Davies, 2018) to highlight titles, dropping from an average of 33.1 the most common words used in the titles, characters in the title to 31.2. The comedy in both English and Japanese (Fig. 8). and adventure genres, though, were the By looking at the word clouds, the pres- ones most affected by the removal of isekai ence of the fantasy and isekai themes is ev- novels (respectively, decreasing from 31.4 ident in both languages. It is easy to iden- to 26.8, and 27.7 to 23.7 characters), hinting tify words related to (1) a magical , that a larger number of characters in isekai such as: magic (mahou in Japanese), mag- novels’ titles might be related to a more co- ical (majutsu, more literally ‘magical arts’), medic tone (Table 3). witch (majo); (2) words related to dungeons & to dragons: dungeon (danjon), monster Table 3: Average number of characters in the title per (monsuta), demon (maou), alongside elf genre, excluding isekai novels. and vampire in English translations of the titles, and megami (goddess) in the original Japanese titles; (3) words related to medie- Average Number Number of val settings, such as: princess (), hero Genre of characters (no Titles (yuusha), alongside king and knight in En- Isekai) glish translations of the titles; and, finally, All 26.373 324 (4) words directly related to the isekai con- Fantasy 31.167 156 cept, such as: another and world (typically used in tandem), reborn, reincarnated in Comedy 26.783 120 English and sekai (world), isekai (another Romance / 26.593 118 world), tensei (reincarnation) in Japanese. RomCom It is important to note that the titles of is- Action 25.272 81 ekai novels sometimes have those specific Adventure 23.7 60 words as a self-referential joke or , Drama 23.317 63 thus skewing this word cloud. Sci-fi / Science Other very common themes are school 22.54 50 Fiction settings. This includes the words school (ga- Harem 28.118 51 kuen) and words related to girls/women in general (considering that the majority of the Mystery 21 26 is expected to be male teenagers and young adults). The latter includes the

Figure 8: Word clouds with the most common words in light novel titles: a) English titles; b) Japanese titles.

Journal of Geek Studies 7(2): XX-XX (2020). 127 Tomotani, J.V.

words girl and sister in English titles, but is Thus, the increase in title sizes is a some- more varied in Japanese: musume (daugh- what recent phenomenon. So, for now, let’s ter), otome (maiden), imouto (younger sis- observe how this trend develops, while ter), kanojo (girlfriend), and shoujo (girl). hoping for a new Konosuba anime season.

WOLF AND REFERENCES: OLDER THEORY SPICE AND WOLF

Anime Maru. (2016) New light novel consists entirely of one long title. Available from: https://www.animemaru.com/new-light- novel-consists-entirely-of-one-long-title/ (Date of access: 9/Aug/2020). Das, R.; Banerjee, M.; Nan, B.; Zheng, H. (2016) Fast estimation of regression parameters in a broken-stick model for longitudinal data. Journal of the American Statistical Associa- tion 111(515): 1132–1143. Davies, J. (2018) World Cloud Generator. Avail- able from: https://www.jasondavies.com/ wordcloud/ (Date of access: 9/Aug/2020). English Light Novels. (2020) An introduction to light novels. Available from: https:// englishlightnovels.com/an-introduc- tion-to-light-novels/ (Date of access: 9/ Aug/2020). Figure 9: Light novels can have their whole title Hansen, K. (2016) Eletronic literature and youth written in their spine, as well as specific and easily culture: the rise of the Japanese cell phone recognizable colors to make them easy to find. Image novel. In: Hutchinson, R. & Morton, L. (Eds.) extracted from English Light Novels. Routledge Handbook of Modern , Routledge, London. Pp. 301–314. From our analyses, we can conclude that Hudson, D. (1966) Fitting segmented curves the increase in the length of light novel titles whose join points have to be estimated. Jour- is a true phenomenon that can be observed nal of the American Statistical Association statistically. Light novels, as argued by Saito 61(316): 1097–1129. (2016), successfully bridged the increasing Parker-Dalton, J. (2019) Independent study gulf between the expanding visual media shows just when light novel titles started get- and the conventional print media, having a ting so long. Available from: https://www. very strong market in Japan, which is very otaquest.com/light-novel-long-titles-histo- competitive, where successful novels can ry/ (Date of access: 9/Aug/2020). have manga and anime adaptations, while Red Bard (2019) When light novel titles started successful anime and manga can have light to get so long. Available from: https://www. novel prequels, sequels and spin-offs. It is .com/watch?v=pi79l5k8gBM (Date possible that in order to survive in that mar- of access: 9/Aug/2020). ket, publishers opt to invest in increasingly Saito, S. (2015) Beyond the horizon of the possi- larger titles, in order to draw the reader’s ble worlds: a historical overview of Japanese attention and immediately inform them media franchises. Mechademia 10: 143–161. about the genre and content of the light novel through the book’s spine alone (Fig. Saito, S. (2016) Narrative in the digital age: from light novels to web serials. In: Hutchinson, R. 9), while also investing in colorful and ap- & Morton, L. (Eds.) Routledge Handbook of pealing covers. Modern Japanese Literature, Routledge, Lon-

Journal of Geek Studies 7(2): 119-129 (2020). Evolution of Japanese light novel titles

don. Pp. 315–327. Acknowledgements

SFE. (2020) Arai Motoko. The Encyclopedia I am thankful to Rodrigo Salvador, for his help of Science Fiction. Available from: http:// in structuring this article and reviewing the text. www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/arai_mo- I am also thankful to Barbara Tomotani, for her toko (Date of access: 9/Aug/2020). help in the analysis and data interpretation; in Tanaka, M. (2014) Trends of fiction in 2000s Jap- fact, she could actually be an author as well, but anese pop culture. Electronic Journal of Con- told me – while shopping for Astolfo dakimaku- temporary Japanese Studies 14(2): 9. ra and figures online – that this article was way to shameful to have on her CV. Teipei Teen Tribune. (2019) A of “light novels”. Available from: https://taipeiteen- tribune.com/light-novels-history/ (Date of access: 9/Aug/2020). About the author: The melancholy of João To- motani Wikipedia. (2020) Light novel. Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_novel My name is João Tomotani, my calling is that of (Date of access: 9/Aug/2020). a Mechanical Engineer, the strongest of all En- gineers. First off, I’m not interested in ordinary people. But, if any of you are aliens, time-trav- elers, or espers, please come see me. That is all!

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