One of the big distinguishing points between “light novels” and “regular novels” is that light novels are born into a multimedia ecosystem. They aren’t made up of text alone—they have insert illustrations and distinct anime-esque character designs, making it easy for them to make the leap from book to screen. Kadokawa’s business strategy revolves around streamlining this process as much as possible, which is why we often see anime adaptations of popular light novels within 2-3 years of their original publication. “Regular novels” don’t get this kind of fast-tracking.
If you’re a strong believer in the power of words, one might argue that light novels don’t have confidence in themselves. Great novels don’t need illustrations to stimulate a reader’s imagination, after all. Personally, I don’t think that’s a good reason to insult light novels, though. The illustrations in a light novel only take up a small fraction of the page count—even if they inspire a reader to pick up the book in a store, the story is what makes you stick around.
The relationship between light novels and their illustrations has remained more or less the same for decades. The reason I’m writing this blog post is to comment on a newer trend: writing novels around the video format.
You can actually see this at play in three popular light novel anime this season.
Let’s go through each of these titles one at a time. Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian is a romcom about a Russian girl who is prickly to the guy she likes but says sweet things to him in Russian. He is a Japanese guy, so she assumes that he doesn’t understand her. The twist is that he actually does understand her but is afraid to tell her so.
This story began as a series of vignettes posted on the Shousetsuka ni Narou website. When it got picked up by Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko, it got a short audio drama to promote the first volume. This came out a few days before the volume’s publication, and it went viral online. You can watch it below:
The audio drama features the same voice actors who would eventually appear in the anime: Sumire Uesaka as Alya and Kouhei Amasaki as Masachika. Notably, Uesaka is famous among Japanese voice actor fans for being practically the only person in the industry who can speak Russian, so she was considered the perfect casting. Her popularity was no doubt a huge factor in propelling the novel’s simple yet charming premise to a larger audience.
VTuber Legend: How I Went Viral After Forgetting to Turn Off My Stream is another web novel which got a viral video promotion days before its print debut. The theme of this novel is VTubers, so naturally the ad took the form of a VTuber stream, complete with an anime girl Live2D avatar. Much like the Alya ad, the VTuber Legend ad pretty neatly encapsulates the premise of the novel: Kokorone Awayuki starts the video acting as a “seiso” (wholesome) streamer before getting drunk and going off the rails.
A big part of the appeal of VTubers these days is the spontaneity of their content. While early pioneers like Kizuna AI and Kaguya Luna released short, scripted videos, the majority of modern VTubers are streamers who interact directly with their audiences. Although it might sound contradictory to replicate the unscripted nature of a VTuber’s content in a scripted work of fiction, the result feels fresh and interesting. It’s very much a story that reflects the internet zeitgeist.
It’s also worth noting that for the web novel serialisation, the author took reader comments into consideration when deciding on “collabs” between Awayuki and her genmates. In that way, the novel retained a strong sense of interactivity between the performer and audience.
Finally, Days With My Stepsister might be the most interesting case of all. The series actually began as a series of YouTube videos in 2020, exploring the premise of “what if two teenagers suddenly became stepsiblings?” Writer Ghost Mikawa, already an established light novel author, scripted the conversations, which were voiced by Kouhei Amasaki (who coincidentally also plays the guy in Alya) and Yuki Nakashima.
The idea wasn’t to tell a straightforward plot, per se, but to provide a snapshot of these two characters’ lives. Like with most YouTube channels, the videos are self-explanatory and you don’t need to watch them in chronological order. A year later, Mikawa adapted the characters to the light novel format, fleshing out the story and introducing a more traditional narrative structure. Meanwhile, the YouTube channel continued, often referencing events and conversations from the novels.
What these three titles have in common is that they didn’t just use the video ads to sell their names—they adapted their stories to fit the YouTube format. All three of them are highly character-driven stories with a simple concept that you can easily distill into a three-minute video. Whether it’s two characters bantering or a VTuber breaking character, you can get the gist of who they are just from watching the videos embedded in this blog post. The novels go into more depth about the characters and their stories, of course, but they don’t overcomplicate their plots. They’re quick and easy reads, as light novels should be.
If you ask me, it takes some really good writing skills to hook your audience like that. You can have the coolest story idea in the world, but if you can’t do an elevator pitch, you’ll struggle to get others on board.
Perhaps the true mettle of a modern writer lies in how effectively they can make their words shine in a multimedia environment. Through no fault of their own, novels in particular face a lot of trouble with getting word of mouth. Traditionally, when a light novel has made the transition to another medium, like an anime or a manga, it’s in the form of a straight retelling of the novel’s story. This works very well as a signal boost, although not everyone who enjoys an adaptation necessarily goes back to experience the original work. Alya, VTuber Legend, and Stepsister all demonstrate new ways in which literature can transcend the written word.
So what does this mean for the future of light novels? Words alone might have their limitations in terms of selling a story, but light novels remain at the forefront of Japanese media subculture for a very good reason. The clever writers are adapting to and responding to the times. I think we’ll be seeing even more kinds of stories that are only possible because they’re light novels. Neat, right?
