February 2014 KLNs

  Is there a better time to talk about February KLN releases than on... February?

  Okay, the books haven't been shipped to me yet and I didn't have the chance to read any of these, but is that stopping me from talking about them? No! C&Ds won't stop me from translating, so why should I let non-possession of the books stop me from judging them? Yeah, I thought so.

  Post-read reviews will probably get attached later, when I actually get to read them.

  If anyone is confused as to why I sometimes explain the "series premise" instead of the particular volume's premise, I do that if the particular series was never mentioned within this website, so it would be unhelpful to explain the latest volume only.

Updated 17/2/2014

  Click on the images to see their respective teaser ads.

February 2014

New releases:

 

Title:흐리거나 비 아니면 호우 (Chance of Clouds, Rain, or Storm) Author: 반시연 (Ban Shiyun) Artist: Tahra http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=921917 Publisher: Novel Engine POP Premise: The protagonist is a failed detective whose life is in the gutters after messing up an important case. He is given another chance at life when his ex-girlfriend, her boyfriend, and a strange lady detective give him a case. Pre-Read Thoughts: Detective stories are the thing of Japanese literature at the moment. Novel Engine is trying to take part and make money by... making a detective novel in Korea? Am I missing something here, or are they forgetting a key component in their logic?

 

Title: 소녀 스펙트럼 (Girl Spectrum) Author: Blasting Artist: 영인 (Young-in) http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=122497 Publisher: Novel Engine Premise: The society changes after the discovery of Reiners -- people who have special powers that allow them to manipulate the world around them by, for example, forcing unlikely chemical reactions or changing the vectors of objects with kinetic energy. Those without special powers fear the Reiners and try to control, segregate, or destroy them, and a high school is made to do exactly those. In it, the protagonist must survive his high school life. Pre-Read Thoughts: Add magic for instant Index.

 

Title: 용사가 마왕을 무찌를 때 우리들도 있었다 (We Were There When the Hero Defeated the Demon Lord) Author: 맑은 날 오후(A Clear Afternoon) Artist: Tob http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=316471 Publisher: Seed Novel Premise: After failing his first test to become a hero in seven seconds flat, the protagonist finds a nine-year-old girl (please go look at the teaser image and come back) being chased down by a monster. He saves the girl, but learns that she is actually the Demon Lord, a hated being whose label as the great Evil led to her being killed repeatedly for the last thousands of years. Pre-Read Thoughts: ...Wasn't there another book with the exact same premise extremely recently? Post-Read Thoughts: You know there's something incredibly wrong when a light novel reads like a copy of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Just about the entirety of the first section was about the 'rules' of the world, which would be normally okay if the infodump was cleverly hidden as parts of the story. But no, for some awful reason, the author decided that it was okay to blatantly have a character go, "Hey, who's that strange man over there?" and then have a character explain, "Well, you see, that man is a Summoner. And Summoners do this and that, gain powers from where, and these powers come from..." Post-Read Low Quality B&W Image: It's good to be king.

 

Title: 마흔여덟 번의 고동이 멈출 때까지 (Until the End of the Forty-Eighth Heartbeat) Author: 송성준 (Song Sung-Joon) Artist: Naye http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=1096611 Publisher: Seed Novel Premise: An earthquake ruins the protagonist's first date at a shopping mall. The shopping mall crumbles down, trapping the protagonist, his new girlfriend, and everyone else inside, along with a terrifying monster from the depths that awoke from the quake. The monster hunts, mercilessly killing the trapped. In the midst of chaos, the protagonist vows to keep his girlfriend safe, no matter what the cost. Pre-Read Thoughts: Seed Novel's attempt at a light novel that supposedly targets adults. From the premise alone, it sounds like some B-movie slasher flick.

 

Title: 언리쉬드 앤솔로지 : AREA1 (Unleashed Anthology: Area 1) Author: 류세린 외 (Ryu-Serin and others) Artist: 라티세 (Ratise) http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=263924, dingu http://blog.naver.com/dingunim, cozy http://blog.naver.com/kpee1009, Jade Flute, KOKA http://blog.naver.com/kokarain Publisher: Novel Engine Premise: A collection of side stories by multiple writers and artists that detail the world of Unleashed. Pre-Read Thoughts: Novel Engine switches boat for a new TCG that they could get theirs hands on, now that Sword Girls is pretty much dead. Post-Read(?) Thoughts: Stopped reading halfway. This book was clearly not meant for a reader who has not yet played Unleashed, because they don't explain a single damn thing about the background and even less about the characters. It's really hard to get into the characters when there's zero characterization as far as I'm concerned. Post-Read(?) Low Quality(?) B&W(?) Image(s): Since they were incredibly stingy with illustrations for this book (four illustrations only?! In a book with five short stories?!!) I'm instead gonna have these in-game character arts instead, which I assume I'm meant to have these in my head as I read through a hundred nondescript name drops from the game. No, I didn't pick out the lewdest pictures I could find, these are actually all of the characters from the last chapter that I read.

 

 

Sequels:

 

Title: 마이 다크로드 시스터 3 (My Dark Lord Sister Vol. 3) Author: 윤정 (Yun-Jung) Artist: 모브 (Mauve) http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=564736 Publisher: Seed Novel Premise (for the series): The protagonist's sister turns out to be the Dark Lord. Pre-Read Thoughts: That's all there is to it.

 

Title: 숨덕부! 8 (Clotaku Club! Vol. 8) Author: 오버정우기 (Overjungwoogi) Artist: Anmi http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=212801 Publisher: Seed Novel Premise: Yeonji arc-- JUST KIDDING! The cover is a complete lie. It instead expands on the story behind the maid and the butler. The cause of the Sul family's crisis returns to their lives (which may or may not have been hinted in the first volume), and the final days of Clotaku Club seem to be near... Pre-Read Thoughts: Yes, the series is actually at volume EIGHT now. I'm sorry that I'm so slow. Isn't it enough that Yeonji consistently had the lowest votes in the character popularity poll? How much does the author want to kill the character? Post-Read thoughts: What the hell, it turned into a goddamn bloodbath. Bones were broken, blood was spilled, joints were dislocated. Also, a character got shot with a gun. And Yeonji still barely made any progress with only a single volume left. Even the author admitted that he wasn't sure if this volume would be accepted by the editing team. He was pretty surprised that the story made it through at all, and so will be anyone who reads this thing. Post-Read Low Quality B&W Image: The most fanservicy fanservice of the series to date.

 

Title: 살짝엉큼?! 3  (Just a Little Perverted?! Vol. 3) Author: 시은 (Siun) Artist: Hakusai http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=1589657 Publisher: Seed Novel Premise (for the series) On a popular social networking service that heavily resembles Twitter, a popular, attention-starved girl (of the nudes-posting type) and the protagonist meet. The protagonist seeks advice to improve his relationship with a crush at his school, and the girl discovers that she is the crush that he is talking about. Pre-Read Thoughts: Lewd loli in the cover.

 

Title: 아빠하고 나하고 yo! 4 (Daddy and Me! Vol. 4) Author: 아웰 (Awel) Artist: NEAN Publisher: Seed Novel Premise (for the series): A huge collection of extremely short stories, centered around the lives of a grown man and his adopted daughter, both of whom are hardcore gamers. Comedy / Slice of Life. Pre-Read Thoughts: I had to send Seed Novel an email to make them fix that typo in the background ("DADY AND ME"). They fixed the writings in the top half of the image, but the problem still exists in the bottom rows. Those bastards. No other comment.

 

Title: 중2병 데이즈 4 (Chuunibyou Days Vol. 4) Author: 김월희 (Kim Wol-Hui) Artist: Nyanya http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=195891 Publisher: Seed Novel Premise (for the series): The protagonist, a former member of the assassin's guild Raven's Nest, tries to return to a normal lifestyle that is more fitting for his age. He begins his high school life, and soon after his honest, truthful self-introduction, he is labeled as a sufferer of Chuunibyou. His school life becomes even more complicated when a real sufferer of Chuunibyou, a girl who calls herself Black Lilith, gets in his way. Pre-Read Thoughts: The Korean pronunciation is actually 'Chuunibyungh', but the whole concept is mostly Japanese, anyway. Fun fact: The first volume originally had a dialogue where Goebbels is praised, which caused some uproar in the community, and Seed Novel has since omitted the section entirely. That didn't really stop some mean people from calling this the "Nazi light novel", however.

 

Title: 손만 잡고 잤을 텐데?! 2 (But All We Did Was Hold Hands! ) Author:류호성 (Ryu Hosung) Artist: 유나물 (Yunamul) http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=470779 Publisher: Novel Engine Premise (for the series): Alternate Korean-given English title: "No Sex, Yes Baby" The protagonist sleeps with his childhood friend in the most innocent way possible. However, in the next morning, they find a little girl amongst them who claims to be their daughter. Pre-Read Thoughts: The image to the left isn't actually the cover, it's just one of the colour illustrations within the novel. I just couldn't find the full cover image. The series gathered some huge attention from Korean communities for reasons unknown, which spawned a whole bunch of parody images. As far as I can tell from community reactions and my own judgment, the book is neither amazing nor horrendous, so it will forever be a mystery as to how this book managed to become popular enough to be the 5th best selling light novel in Korean bookstores. Post-Read Thoughts: It reads like it was intended to be a sci-fi thriller, but it ended up being a slice of life story with sci-fi elements in it. At least it managed to focus on a single problem throughout the entire volume and never stray too far from it, which is a nice break from other light novels that seem to suffer from plot-attention-deficit-disorder, but the whole story was tarnished by the fact that the original problem is basically a kid's tantrum. Post-Read Low-Quality B&W Image: Being a loli comes with unnatural talent at video games. Never challenge a loli.

 

Title: 우리집 아기고양이 5 (Baby Cats At Our Home Vol. 5) Author: 가랑 (Garang) Artist: DS 마일 (DS Mile) http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=795196 Publisher: Novel Engine Premise (for the series): The protagonist is an average high school boy, other than his amazing lack of strength and stamina, and that he is constantly attacked by animals wherever he goes. The only friendly animal he finds is a black cat who visits his house every now and then. One day, he finds the cat dying in the rain, along with her kitten. He takes them to a veterinarian, but he is only able to save the kitten in time. He decides to raise the kitten himself, and then he learns the existence of animal spirits... Pre-Read Thoughts: Spoilers: animal spirits turn into humanoids. Not obvious from the covers, right? They had a visual novel developed for mobile devices a couple month ago (Link). It seems to be received well enough that they decided to include a drama CD this time, using the same voice actors from the VN. Post-Read Thoughts: That's some overly long Christmas episode. How long can you write about a single Christmas party in a light novel? The author says: about 200 pages worth.  The latter half of the volume was heartwarming as usual, but I  really wish that the author would stop mentioning things like loli and traps in a perfectly innocent story about raising children, though. That's just too real, man.   Post-Read Low-Quality B&W Image: She's grumpy because being a loli isn't really a special thing to be for this month.

 

Title: 매관매직 스크램블 3 (Bribery Magic Scramble Vol. 3) Author: 차민하 (Cha Minha) Artist: BF. http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=90570 Publisher: Novel Engine Premise (for the series): In an alternate-history version of the Joseon era of South Korea, the entire nation falls in love with the magical-girl theme after a little girl dethrones a corrupt king. The protagonist, one of the many light novel writers of the country, tries to take advantage of the latest craze, but fails due to his terrible tastes. He comes across a village with a little girl as its mayor, and the mayor forcibly makes him her aide since she feels that it's better than leaving him as a starving writer. But his life does not seem to get any better, especially when the mayor is a self-proclaimed magical-girl who claims to have the power of bribery. Pre-Read Thoughts: To explain the title: 1. the first word, 매관매직, is an old term for bribing one's way to nobility, and 2. the latter half of the same word is written in the same way as the Korean phonetic spelling for "magic" -- thus, "bribery magic". The author claims that he felt that the pun was so clever, he decided to write an entire light novel around it. I believe him. There's maybe a million more of these puns, which probably means this series will never get translated solely because of the difficulty in doing so. 매관매직: 탐관로리의 페도정치 Post-Read Thoughts: Turned out to be a semi-imouto arc with actual importance to the main plot of the series. The whole TERRIBLE SECRETS BEHIND MAGICALGIRLS thing is really taking off in this volume. Post-Read Low-Quality B&W Image: The perpetually angry loli sister.