A pity it has been four months. Twas quite entertaining.
I did google this series in interest and saw a reddit comment about how the MC makes a gated community and explicitly prevents black and hispanic people from entering though. So, uh, I kinda wanna make sure this is going in a place that is at all where I want to read. Reddit being reddit, that comment could literally be entirely fabricated.
A pity it has been four months. Twas quite entertaining.
I did google this series in interest and saw a reddit comment about how the MC makes a gated community and explicitly prevents black and hispanic people from entering though. So, uh, I kinda wanna make sure this is going in a place that is at all where I want to read. Reddit being reddit, that comment could literally be entirely fabricated.
Sorry, yeah, might as well some signs of more life. I am working on things, but I just graduated uni, am working on post-grad apps, and beating the NEET allegations has been pretty tiring. I've also been uh Working On Some Other Things on this website evidently haha...
In any case, I've gotten back into the swing of writing (wrote 16k or so words in the past month or so!) but this Let's Read is like, unironically a couple full evening's worth of work per update, and getting back into the swing of that has been somewhat tiring. I'll do my best to drop an update before I start handling more hazardous materials again though, and I'm very much glad you've enjoyed it so far!
In any case, yes, that happens. I'm gonna throw the context under a spoiler, but yeah, the author does touch on some extremely touchy things -- volume 3 and 4 are directly involved with 9/11 and the War on Terror, and it does not shy away from how absolutely rabid America felt in the early aughts. But the author so far has bought faith because while they feel casual (why is this in an otome novel???) there's a very strong element of research and care into this -- but a lot of this stuff is in fact involved in a "2008 Revenge Fic" -- there's so much horseshit tied up into that crisis and honestly so much in US and international politics in general leading up in the late 90s to early 2000s that they can't do justice to the narrative without touching on it. It's pretty interesting how it tries to grapple with how CEOs and other corporate entities crashed out with golden parachutes in that period while abusing their workers (Enron Ho!) and the absolute devastation wreaked among the working class while still trying to portray Runa, a veritable zaibatsu princess as a relatively solid protag -- "a good capitalist," if you would. Who was in fact a former office slave in their past life.
(Part of the fun game is figuring out what exactly Runa is, and how many filters are going on between that and the author's viewpoints. Note that Runa died due to overwork and such after the 2008 crash, but she somehow managed to play an otome game somehow connecting to it. Note like I said... a couple months earlier that a lot of corporate Japan is somewhat technologically behind, and that Facebook and Xitter were founded in 2004 and 2006 respectively, for example, and god knows when they hit international penetration. The first iPhone came out in 2007 but the first few gens were extreme luxury items. It's entirely possible that Runa knows intellectually about a lot of things, maybe knew that Barack Obama was the American President in that time, but how much exactly would an office slave know about how deep the rabbit hole goes for Republicans and such. But the author most likely does, as they go in on things like gun control and stuff later on in the series, and playing with that double-filter is part of the appeal of deciphering this insane series)
Anyways --
So there's actually a big homeless veteran problem thanks to the Gulf War, and Runa's in the need for manpower for her frankly fragile and crash-built organization, and well-trained and well-armed manpower to that fact. Naturally, she works together with a military leader who has a bleeding heart for those veterans who can't hack it in peacetime and starts forming up a PMC, but she still needs to make them profitable somehow -- things are still extremely touch and go. She also has plans with Florida (and extending influence into America) since it's such an important state for American elections, among other things, so she finds a great customer base there -- American snowbirds / retirees who want the basically ultimate gated community. Like there is an actual no-shit statement about how America is a multiethnic nation, and how there are certain groups of "very rich white people who didn't like their taxes being spent on other groups."
Taking advantage of their racist tendencies, she makes an artificial island I think? Been awhile, need to review, and basically employs a significant amount of veterans as guards for that community. The series is extremely clear about these implications and potential consequences: setting up these 'resorts' will also create other 'towns' and 'communities,' and in turn, so will effective slums. There's a few notes about "America's darkness" -- and also how this is a short-term solution to a problem of homeless veterans that will ripple out into further consequences that must be mitigated. But it's also a trial run on being able to construct high-quality housing with amenities like running water and electricity to prevent a potential Germany-style rise of neo-Nazism, which is need because "Northern Japan" is still being integrated, complete with a number of other minorities like Russians, Chinese, and Koreans, who are all potentially under Runa's aegis as one of the pillars of her powerbase.
The series will slam through things like this because it's sort of the nature of working in the halls of power -- ugly politics and big money are indelibly intertwined, and it probably isn't as handled as sensitively as we'd appreciate, but again, so far, the author has bought a significant amount of faith from me, even if the series is like a sliding glass door, completely unhinged. You will see Runa shaking hands with scummy lawmakers, you will see her effectively profiteering off the Iraq War, and so on -- because as a "noble" and a billionaire her class interest and those she can easily access are those kinds of people, even if she pours billions down the effective drain trying to build up infrastructure, sustainable jobs, and prevent people from going down the downward spiral she did. The dissonance between her new position and her loyalty to the working class is one of the underlying themes of the series, IMO
But no legit there is a lot of out of pocket shit going on in this series, absolutely no shame in saying this isn't the one for you.
I mean, iunno, I'm not sure a protagonist should really go there in "Yeah, I'll cater directly to rich racists to abuse minorities for their money" if you are writing
I, especially, am unsure a JAPANESE author should have their protagonist go there considering how xenophobic japan notably is and how the early story can really come off as nationalist (at least in the early manga chapters I read). She's very focused on saving her nation and the japanese worker. And, like, that can come from both a noble and a very very very dark place.
I mean, iunno, I'm not sure a protagonist should really go there in "Yeah, I'll cater directly to rich racists to abuse minorities for their money" if you are writing
I, especially, am unsure a JAPANESE author should have their protagonist go there considering how xenophobic japan notably is and how the early story can really come off as nationalist (at least in the early manga chapters I read). She's very focused on saving her nation and the japanese worker. And, like, that can come from both a noble and a very very very dark place.
Yep, I agree, this novel series can be pretty tough to tackle -- I had that pingpong of "hey is this GATE-style ultranationalism or is something cooking...?" especially as I grow older (I got into this series back when it was being TL'd in Yado Inn, so it's been... a couple of years) and consume more media with a more critical eye.
That being said, I don't think the author being Japanese is a barrier here (and I have some suspicions of them having a lot of American contact as they grew up, like living near a USMJ base or something) -- the author isn't coming from an unresearched sort of thing. It's because of the significant portions of xenophobia and discrimination that lies in Japan in other countries stuff like this comes up IMO, there's little reason for the author to specifically point out places like Tokyo explicitly becoming multicultural thanks to the immigration and integration of people from Northern Japan, for example, except to try to tackle those themes.
And like I've said before, dealing with the 2008 crisis inevitably means dealing with America, and as much as people have memoryholed racial issues (and other fights for equal rights) between the 60s and 70s until now (look at how people reacted to BLM for example), the 90s and 2000s have a number of serious events regarding that that very much influenced politics. Like the 1992 Rodney King beating and resulting riots, the 1994 Crime Bill, the 1995 Million Man March, 1996 Californian Proposition 209, etc. Let alone 9/11 and the enormous wave of discrimination and backlash against Muslims, so on and so forth. Is writing about this the wisest course of action? Frankly IMO, no, I don't think so -- but I can see why the author is trying to write about it anyways.
That being said, I think you're correct to be concerned -- like, this is an otome villainess novel (can't wait for her denunciation event to be in the fucking Hague lmao), there's a lot of faith you have to apply with the author for them to handle those themes. And because you hand faith towards the author actually researching and trying to respect these things, you hold them to higher standards, which makes you queston them further, etc. So if you think you gotta bounce, once again, no shame. The series is pretty batshit, haha -- but for me, I think it's something I like about it because being willing to frankly talk about these things in a silly otome game novel is a breath of fresh air, and it's honestly something as an American makes me more interested in reviewing history. A lot of primary school history classes gloss over the 90s and early aughts if they even get to them, and like, these things are very relevant to understanding how things are today (like shit, Fox News came into being in 1996), and so as out of pocket as the series is I think reading it gives a surprising amount of value in a bite-sized package.
I am just concerned that, uh... racial segregation is a feature, not a bug. As it were.
Like, iunno, she throws away billions of yen to save haikkado bank because she is empathetic to the son of one of her maids and decides to save the japanese economy. But when it comes to put upon minorities in America? Well guess they are fair targets to exploit? Not gonna be going out of your way to help them huh? Of course there's novels of context that I don't know as of yet.
And, I mean, there's only a few volumes of the manga out and, uh... I find Ln translations to usually be very bad (I tried reading ascendence of a bookworm and my eyes glazed over at the formatting and quality of the prose), or the source they translate from to be so bad there's no saving it (A lot of LN authors are... bad writers), so I avoid them in favor of mediums that translate better like manga and anime. So I don't really have much more to follow of the story for now XD
I am just concerned that, uh... racial segregation is a feature, not a bug. As it were.
Like, iunno, she throws away billions of yen to save haikkado bank because she is empathetic to the son of one of her maids and decides to save the japanese economy. But when it comes to put upon minorities in America? Well guess they are fair targets to exploit? Not gonna be going out of your way to help them huh? Of course there's novels of context that I don't know as of yet.
And, I mean, there's only a few volumes of the manga out and, uh... I find Ln translations to usually be very bad (I tried reading ascendence of a bookworm and my eyes glazed over at the formatting and quality of the prose), or the source they translate from to be so bad there's no saving it (A lot of LN authors are... bad writers), so I avoid them in favor of mediums that translate better like manga and anime. So I don't really have much more to follow of the story for now XD
Aha, that's fair yeah. I think the localization of the novels is pretty solid but I've been in the content mines for quite awhile.
I think that's a fair cop, but imo I think there's a difference at least in her perspective (as a Japanese woman) in that she's not directly taking part in the harm. She's not writing segregational legislation, she's not funding KKK groups, etc. Racist rich white people are going to exist anyways, and these types of gated communities already exist and are in fact already used by those sorts of people (the story of Florida transitioning from a swing state to a pretty solid red state is pretty interesting) — she's just taking them to the logical conclusion. In exchange, she gets to drain them of money, have them in concentrated areas she can influence, and get homeless veterans or people who are unable to adjust employed — often including minorities and impoverished individuals who are directly targeted by the military right out of high school for recruitment. She's empathetic and sympathetic but she's only beginning to be able to extend her influence in the USA — and she's still barely able to hold her ground in Japan, much less the good ol 50 countries in a trench coat. She may very well think that it's worth it because this is a stepping stone and gaining this advantage can help her help others despite the despicable origin.
Is she right? Does the author think she's right? I don't know — but I honestly agree with Ori on a significant portion of the appeal of the series being figuring what the hell the author is cooking, so we'll see. I constantly question my life choices when reading a new volume of this series haha
I mean, iunno, I'm not sure a protagonist should really go there in "Yeah, I'll cater directly to rich racists to abuse minorities for their money" if you are writing
In The Answer, Jake orders the murder of 17,372 civilians.
I swear this is relevant.
Animorphs is a series of proto-YA novels about five or six teenagers (including Jake) who fight alien slugs with the power of animal morphing. In the penultimate book, while boarding one of their spaceships, Jake orders one of the other animorphs to flush 17,372 of the slugs into space. I don't want to get into a tangent about the justifications fans have come up with for this act, so for the sake of argument let's assume that flushing seventeen thousand civilians is at least as bad as catering to the racism of rich assholes.
Is this something K.A. Applegate shouldn't have had Jake do? I'd argue not. For the entire series, the animorphs have been arguing with each other (and themselves) about how much violence is justifiable in their secret war. It's been a running theme, starting with the protagonists getting used to killing people who are trying to kill them and festering as the series continues. Killing 17,372 civilians for flimsy reasons is perfectly in line with that.
Also, the murder of 17,372 civilians is given the appropriate weight. (Or as much as it can, since there's only like 1.2 books after the flushing and five teens' stories to wrap up.) One of the alien leaders accuses Jake of being a war criminal, which the relevant authorities dismiss, but it shakes Jake. That mass murder (on top of 56.8 books of escalating war trauma, counting Megamorphs) drives Jake into depression, and he comes out of that depression in a worse place.
We can imagine an alternative Animorphs series (Alternamorphs, if you will) where none of this is true. It's mostly standard kid-book fare, but occasionally one of the animorphs commits a war crime. Jake and Ax board the Pool Ship, Jake casually says they should flush the Yeerks into space while they're there, and it's never mentioned again. That would be bad!
In my opinion, there is no action which protagonists should be forbidden from taking. There are only actions which need to be handled with care and actions which can be thrown in there (and a spectrum in between). Catering to the racism of rich assholes is definitely the latter, and I don't blame anyone who wouldn't want to read it either way, but this post doesn't have that kind of nuance. I can see the argument you're trying to make, but you're not making it.
I, especially, am unsure a JAPANESE author should have their protagonist go there considering how xenophobic japan notably is and how the early story can really come off as nationalist (at least in the early manga chapters I read).
Same deal; I can see what you're trying to say and you're not saying it. If people from xenophobic countries can't write stories about xenophobia, who the fuck can?
It would be bad if Japan was depicted as an egalitarian utopia and the USA's bigotry was only mildly whitewashed, but this post doesn't have the detail needed to make that argument. So it ends up saying "Japanese people can't write stories about American racism".
The classic conundrum of Did the author do the homework, what do they believe, what does the character believe and are they (whatever their actual views) giving this a fair shake or not, especially in regards to a touchy issue.
I mean honestly, way it sounds, I wanna give them credit for not like...putting it through 5/6 layers of disconnect and plausible Deniability of EAGLELAND: WHERE THE EAGLES AND OTHER BIRD MEN AND WOMEN OF NOTE HAPPEN TO COME FROM HAS A NOTORIOUS PROBLEM WITH CORVIDS or some such bullshit.
Perhaps a little tasteless to put it in context of an otome reincarnation story, but honestly as a foot in the door to even briefly touching on the subject there are definitely worse out there.
I am mostly concerned that the author thinks that this segregated community is a good thing. Which, uh, would not be an uncommon viewpoint in Japan.
And in greater context, hoo boy, is there a big ol' racism problem in the japanese LN industry (that translates to manga and anime that adapt them). Like... big ol' problem. So, I am always deeply wary of race politics in it cause, well, the track record isn't great for the medium, you know?
I mean at a certain point you're just going to have to read the book to find out how it handles it aren't you? There being a general problem does mean on average you're well...going to have a problem, but if you want to actually know well...There's only one option.
people want a villainness who is evil aesthetically (wears black and heels) and not an villainness who is evil morally (has probably funded and profited from private-sector segregation) smfh
buddy this is the evil woman CEO book series, it's not gonna be the book for you if you're not ready to see a morally 'above average' woman CEO
(also i will note that the author doesn't seem to approve of the gated communities, and I think Runa says something like "it's an opportunity but an unclean one")
Anyways, yeah -- it doesn't tick the nationalism box for me because it treats a lot of things similarly casually like, in order for Runa to maintain power she has to try to protest against the breakups of zaibatsu and infringement of noble power, because it's one of the few things going for her, but also breaking those things up would be honestly much healthier for Japan!
There's an (I'm told) reasonably solid and depressing breakdown of the situation with the Kurds in volume 4 but it's very blase, haha... it's really just one of the ways I figure LNs are written -- they're called LNs because they're a lot easier to read, vis a vis idk, Rashomon or No Longer Human, so it might just be a legacy of that + being written as a hobby as a WN.
Perhaps a little tasteless to put it in context of an otome reincarnation story, but honestly as a foot in the door to even briefly touching on the subject there are definitely worse out there.
Pretty much yeah. Like, if more people figure out exactly what's going on with their finances or investigate what exactly happened in the last 10-20 years, I mean, okay, why not, go otome novels
I am mostly concerned that the author thinks that this segregated community is a good thing. Which, uh, would not be an uncommon viewpoint in Japan.
And in greater context, hoo boy, is there a big ol' racism problem in the japanese LN industry (that translates to manga and anime that adapt them). Like... big ol' problem. So, I am always deeply wary of race politics in it cause, well, the track record isn't great for the medium, you know?
Segregation vs. Assimilation is a pretty interesting thing going on in Japan, I think you might want to look into that actually. Certainly in recent years the proportion of foreign nationals in Japan have increased and thanks to the aging and shrinking population certain individuals have advocated for literally importing foreign workers and putting them in a foreign worker's quarter thanks to "their experiences in South Africa," but I'd also look into the forceful assimilation and restrictions on culture of people like the Ainu, who are then declared "subsets" of Japanese (but still naturally face discrimination).
It's not quite so simple as that, basically -- racism can get pretty advanced. That being said, frankly speaking no the author does not think segregation is good, so no worries on that. I understand your concerns, haha, I've been reading TL'd CN / KR / JP novels for a long-ass time and seeing nationalism and friends pop up has been a tried and true experience. Is America gonna be the weird villains? How about Japan? How about -- etc etc, but yeah, as Raguna said, there's really only one way to really determine if the series is for you or not.
(GATE's "the only military in the world that uses black people" lives rent free in my head lol)
people want a villainness who is evil aesthetically (wears black and heels) and not an villainness who is evil morally (has probably funded and profited from private-sector segregation) smfh
buddy this is the evil woman CEO book series, it's not gonna be the book for you if you're not ready to see a morally 'above average' woman CEO
(also i will note that the author doesn't seem to approve of the gated communities, and I think Runa says something like "it's an opportunity but an unclean one")
depressingly accurate shade, and yeah, it doesn't sit well with Runa doing it -- there's a distinct level of sardonicism seeping through it when she talks about it, like the "necessity" of a retail system where residents can order ingredients with a single phone call because you can't have the rich actually going shopping right, haha...
Hmm. Reread this thread the other day and suddenly it is back and in the middle of an argument. Hope you find the time/motivation to work on this eventually because I really want to see where it goes.
people want a villainness who is evil aesthetically (wears black and heels) and not an villainness who is evil morally (has probably funded and profited from private-sector segregation) smfh
To be fair, the "villainess otome isekai" genre is about normal women who occupy the bodies and identities of people who would be villainous if they didn't do that. And very few of them wear black, even when they were villainous.
You describe a phenomenon which exists in many fandom spaces, but one that's not as relevant to this genre as it sounds.
So while I did not read the LN I did read most of the so far scanlated manga chapters. And I am not sure if I find the actual story or the author's notes more interesting. Actual Canary Wharf experienced and former Credit Suisse employee is translating the thing.
This thread got me to buy the first light novel, and it was pretty interesting overall. I'll likely get vol2 as well, because the story hook has been enjoyable thus far.
Did notice a few minor grammar errors in the Amazon ebook though.
