This is sort of a spiritual successor to my earlier rant posted here about Light Novels and tracking websites like MyAnimelist and Anilist.

I was really annoyed about the inability to track certain Japanese novel series, such as Onmyoji and Tengu Eyes, and Otherside Picnic as light novels, given that anybody with eyes could see that they pretty much look and quack like a duck (light novels). They have a similar art style for the covers, and Otherside Picnic even contains illustrations. Since then, Legend of Galactic Heroes was removed from the Anilist website (it’s still on MAL??), deemed to be not a light novel (with hardly any warning). I barely noticed when I was filtering light novels on my page and realized it was missing.

If you ever mention Lord of Mysteries or Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint (two very popular web novel series which have been turned into published works in their home countries of China and Korea, and published in the U.S. by Yen Press, owned by Kadokawa), prepare to get jumped by some rando who will “nicely” remind you that those series are NOT light novels.

For list tracking sites, they draw the line at books published in Japan under a Light Novel imprint. Okay, fine. But what about Original English light novels published by J-Novel Club, which are contest winners who were evaluated by KADOKAWA???! Are you arguing that the panel of judges, which includes Japanese industry professionals, doesn’t know what the heck a light novel is??? Kadokawa does business in China and Korea as well under different subsidiaries.

This exclusionary definition of what light novels is stupid and annoying from both a tracking and fandom point of view. You get people turning their nose up at the mere mention of a very popular novel series just because it’s not from Japan. You can’t track your favorite published Korean/Chinese novels alongside Raildex or whatever. That lack of visibility means it’s harder to find similar works, and fans of the same stuff.

Why are people so adamant about this line in the sand that they think they’re defending? In reality, there is no definition for what constitutes a light novel. Not to get into earlier frustrations, but this kind of bullshit is why I started my own blog, and started keeping track of “light novels” on my own using tags on Storygraph.

“Light Novel” is a marketing term ¹. It was never meant to be more than vague description of the ongoing trend at the time for sci-fi and fantasy works with not exactly serious literary ambitions that are marketed with art from famous illustrators, many of them mangaka. In the west, we used to call similar works “pulp fiction”.

If you wanna call your favorite Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or English novel a light novel, be my guest. It’s really not that serious, we’re just trying to share our passion for the books that we love.