naivette

One thing that has really annoyed me about Anilist (and maybe MAL?) by extension is the fact that they have such strict requirements on what is deemed a “light novel”.

Manga can be published online, in magazines, or self-published as a doujin, and it’s considered manga as long as it’s Japanese (or Chinese/Korean and follow the same style).

But God forbid a Japanese novel has anime art on the front, and is licensed by U.S. LN publishers. If the JP publisher doesn’t call it a light novel, it isn’t considered one!! And they specifically call out JP publishers that aren’t allowed to be considered as LN publishers.

Nevermind that those same books are already marketed as LNs in the U.S., and some even have anime!! By that same vein, why the hell is Legend of Galactic Heroes, and Twelve Kingdoms considered a Light Novel, but Otherside Picnic isn’t?? They all got anime!!

I’m just really annoyed cause that means my Anilist is incomplete, and I have to use Storygraph to actually track how many JP “light” novels I’ve actually read.

Light Novel is really just mostly a marketing term, it really blows my mind that those sites couldn’t at least take the stance that “marketed using anime art next to LNs = LN” or “received an anime/manga adaptation, should be included in the database for posterity”. I don’t actually care if it’s officially a “light novel”, if I watched Moribito and then read the novel, I wanna be able to track it in the same damn place.

2023/05/06 Edit: I created an activity thread on anilist as a stopgap to this issue. It’s not a real solution, but at least it’s on the same profile. I still have storygraph too, which I’ve been using to track my novel reading.

Maybe one day I’ll get fed up with having all my lists separated, and build my own tracking website, not that I have the technical expertise to do that currently…