April 2014 KLNs

I know what you've been trying to ask: "Now that I reached 999,999,999 Imouto Power and bought the translation releases, can I see the new translations?" The answer is, of course, "yes!" Thanks to your efforts in the Imouto Petter, you now have the opportunity to read every single translation release that will be posted on April!

...When we have them.

But until then, here's something else to read! These are just as good, right? Right?

Click on the images to see their respective teaser ads.

April 2014

New releases:

 

Title: 고스트 메신저 (Ghost Messenger) Author: 김지연/유은지 (Kim Jiyun / Yu Eunji) Artist: 진하 (Jinha) Publisher: Seed Novel Premise: Spinoff to a Korean animation and comic series. In a world where souls can refuse the afterlife and cause problems in the material realm, the Ghost Messengers must claim these souls and send them away. A powerful Ghost Messenger accidentally traps himself into his Soul Phone, a weapon that is used to capture souls. One day, a boy discovers the phone, and driven by his childish eagerness, he decides to use the phone to continue the mission of the Ghost Messenger trapped within. Pre-Read Thoughts: I gotta go see the animation before I actually judge this book.

 

Title: 여자친구는 동시발매 안 되나요? (Do Girlfriends Come in Simultaneous Releases?) Author: NZ Artist: 조이뿅 (Joypyonn) http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=841188 Publisher: Seed Novel Premise: The protagonist is a game maniac who had long decided that he will never marry anyone but his own games. His precious little sister, however, suggests that he get a girlfriend. He gets help from the class president to become closer to two girls: the "Rich Girl," a spoiled, friendless classmate, and the "Paint," a young genius painter with little expressions. Strangely, his halfhearted proclamations for love succeed on their first tries, and he realizes that he never really planned for what needs to happen next. Pre-Read Thoughts: The fact that they made a Flash teaser is good enough for me to buy it. Interestingly, all characters are (almost) never referred to by their real names. The little sister is always the 'little sister', the artist prodigy is the 'Paint', and so on. Post-Read Thoughts: There was some love triangle in there somewhere. I couldn't really tell, because every character refused to break out of their single personality trait. The part where all characters are called by their nicknames ended up being a trap, because that just enforced everyone into a particular character role. It wasn't too bad when the author had fifty or so characters in his previous work, The Dog and the Princess, but the lack of personalities really shows when the main character count is just four. The pictures look nice, though. Post-Read Low-Quality B&W Image: It has a little sister character, though! Long time no see, KLN imouto.

 

Title: 달의 공주와 죽지 않는 병기 (The Princess of the Moon and the Undying Weapon) Author: 크레파스 (Crepas) Artist: Mx2J Publisher: Novel Engine Premise: In a land split into many different countries, a powerful kingdom had crushed most of its foes with the power of advanced weaponry. The protagonist, a young mercenary, gets hired by a former enemy to resist the kingdom. In his mission, he meets the young princess of the country who bears the tremendous responsibility of saving the country from its destruction. Pre-Read Thoughts: The story might sound like a generic action LN, but hey, this is the first time that a KLN involved both traditional Korean themes and heavy focus on fanservice. That's worth some points in originality. Post-Read Thoughts: Here comes the next Dawnbringer. The book turned out to be a high-action mecha story with multiple unique characters who all had understandable, explainable motivations for every action in the volume. Like Dawnbringer, the author was careful to not turn the first volume into a 300-page infodump to set up for the sequels. Instead, the story followed the 'show, don't tell' rule and managed to explain the backdrop (the war between two nations) by actually having the main characters participate in a battle. The only problem was the overuse of timeskips, as if the book was an FPS game where the protagonist often becomes unconscious and conveniently awakes at the next important area (à la Crysis). When timeskips are overused, it makes the book read like a lazy collection of shorter stories. Post-Read Low-Quality B&W Image: It's now proven that lolis can beat humongous mechas in a one-on-one combat.

 

Sequels:

 

Title:용사 + 마왕은?! 4 (Heroes + Demon Lords?! Vol. 4) Author: 산바람 (Sanbaram) Artist: TARUK Publisher: Seed Novel Premise: The final volume of Just Another Maou Series. Pre-Read Thoughts: Those eyes...

 

Title: 초인동맹에 어서 오세요 13 (Welcome to the Overhuman Alliance Vol. 13) Author: 반재원 (Ban Je-won) Artist: Eika http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=35131 Publisher: Seed Novel Premise (for the series): "Overhumans are for entertainment!" With this slogan, the world had been treating humans with superpowers as celebrities. Superheroes are like professional wrestlers; they must actively advertise themselves, or risk becoming unpopular and losing everything in their lives. The protagonist discovers that he has a superpower of his own -- an unfortunate ability that only activates by taking hits -- and he is forced to enter the harsh world of superhero (or Overhuman) media. Thanks to the 'help' of an eccentric production manager, he becomes popular in the worst ways possible. Pre-Read Thoughts: This is one of the longest-running KLNs, alongside the Dog and the Princess and Miyal series.

 

Title:퀸즈 나이트 카엘 7 (Queen's Knight Kael Vol. 7) Author: 토돌 (Todol) Artist: fratolm Publisher: Seed Novel Premise: {SPOILER PREVENTIONS} Pre-Read Thoughts: The teaser images for this novel have a long history of being completely inaccurate, so don't mind them.

 

Title: 불행소녀는 지지않아! 3 (The Luckless Girl Will Never Give Up! Vol. 3) Author: LawBeast Artist: 영인 (Youngin) http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=122497 Publisher: Novel Engine Premise: Loli count rises to six.

 

Title: 언리쉬드 앤솔로지 : AREA2 (Unleashed Anthology: Area 2) Author: NEOTYPE and others (TBD) Artist: sila and others (TBD) Publisher: Novel Engine Premise: Second compilation of various stories that deal with the world of Unleashed. Pre-Read Thoughts: Super dangerous levels of loli half-nudity. Post-Read Thoughts: A few of the authors were thankfully nice enough to explain more about the characters, rather than throwing them in and hoping that every single reader knows their entire background. Now I can be less confused when I read what looks like a dialogue between two really old men, only to find out that they're both loli characters. Post-Read Low-Quality B&W Image: Do catgirls go to heaven?

 

Title: 울티메이트 크로스 3 (Ultimate Cross Vol. 3) Author: unlock Artist: Henshako http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=1064669 Publisher: Novel Engine Premise (for the series): Some sort of mecha series. Pre-Read Thoughts: I'm sorry, but promo images never, ever say enough about the story for me to write a proper premise out of them.

 

Title: 몬스 패닉 6.5 (Mons Panic Vol. 6.5) Author: NEOTYPE Artist: RN Publisher: Novel Engine Premise: A collection of side stories from a parallel universe, where terrible, world-ending events from the previous novels never really happened. Also, a bunch of infodump about the setting, characters, and general lore. Pre-Read Thoughts: 4koma artist RN shows that he won't lose to Gilse in illustration quality. Post-Read Thoughts: Really? Half of the book was filled with infodump about the series. And no, it's not an unintentional infodump where the narrator of the characters become too wordy. The author actually wrote down all the infodump like a page straight out of Wikipedia. Please, keep that stuff in limited edition specials.  Post-Read Low-Quality B&W Image: Graphic representation of how much of a disaster this volume was.

 

Title: 검술학교의 연애사정 4 (The Love Problems of a Swordsmanship School Vol. 4) Author: elle Artist: cocorip http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=688570 Publisher: Novel Engine Premise: This is a delayed release. See the March 2014 post for the descriptions.