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krpalmerWhen the "A Certain Magical Index" "light novels" started being officially translated and sold over here, I went ahead and bought them where I hadn't started into too many of the other franchises Yen Press was beginning to turn out. There might have been the hope, though, that this would pull me a bit further into the franchise, and say a bit more about the interest of others that had caught my attention years ago, than their anime adaptation had. (For that matter too, the "A Certain Scientific Railgun" manga does seem to throw in references to the larger franchise every so often.) The only problem seemed the feeling that working through the translated prose was as much of a slog as the handful of other light novel series from Yen Press I have read. (To be as fair as I can, I have read a few novels translated from the Japanese that, while probably not considered "great literature" by those who had arranged the translation, were published long enough ago their translations might not have been "quick, cheap, and dirty," and there could be a resemblance between how I reacted to their prose structure and those of the light novels.)
Then, one day I saw the sixth volume of the series on the bookstore shelf, told myself I'd be buying enough manga that week without it, and left it. I did the same thing when I saw the seventh volume and then the eighth, aware by then a frayed thread was coming very close to snapping even with "Railgun" characters on the eigth cover.
On one more regular visit to the bookstore, though, I realised I wouldn't be buying very much new manga that week, and there was still a copy of the sixth Certain Magical Index novel on the shelves. I picked it up, perhaps even with the thought this was a final toss of fate, but also remaining aware it was the last volume to have been adapted into the anime I did see. When I started reading it, though, all of a sudden I was getting through it much more easily than I could remember with the last several volumes. The translation didn't seem to have changed much, but perhaps the story was quicker to get to the action. I even got to remembering an old impression the anime had managed to pick up a bit near its end from "episodes of standing around and talking per plot arc, and then one burst of concluding action." It had also concluded with allusions to events yet to come; there are two more volumes already out over here, of course.
Then, one day I saw the sixth volume of the series on the bookstore shelf, told myself I'd be buying enough manga that week without it, and left it. I did the same thing when I saw the seventh volume and then the eighth, aware by then a frayed thread was coming very close to snapping even with "Railgun" characters on the eigth cover.
On one more regular visit to the bookstore, though, I realised I wouldn't be buying very much new manga that week, and there was still a copy of the sixth Certain Magical Index novel on the shelves. I picked it up, perhaps even with the thought this was a final toss of fate, but also remaining aware it was the last volume to have been adapted into the anime I did see. When I started reading it, though, all of a sudden I was getting through it much more easily than I could remember with the last several volumes. The translation didn't seem to have changed much, but perhaps the story was quicker to get to the action. I even got to remembering an old impression the anime had managed to pick up a bit near its end from "episodes of standing around and talking per plot arc, and then one burst of concluding action." It had also concluded with allusions to events yet to come; there are two more volumes already out over here, of course.