This is too imbecilic to let pass. “Romance novels” for men — absolute nonsense. A “light novel” is essentially the Japanese equivalent of an occidental “young adult” book. Fuyumi Ono and Nahoko Uehashi are counterparts of such writers as Diana Wynne Jones, ((One of my favorite writers. Her book Howl’s Moving Castle is far better than Miyazaki’s botch of a movie and is strongly recommended.)) not Harlequin romance hacks.
2 thoughts on “Today’s idiotism”
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Far be it for me to come running to the defense of those crudgy old misers at ANN, but Brian was fast becoming my favorite writer on their staff. Seeing how simply WE are able to understand the contents of light novels and draw parallels to western young adult books, I can’t see how the new Answerman so tragically mislabels them, except for maybe this: he mistook “light novels” for “visual novels” and then went on to associate such things with eroge and assorted media. In this mindset, Brian’s answer makes more sense. However, being an authoritative writer on a respectable news site, this is still a huge lapse in judgment on Mr. Hansen’s part and shows poor proofreading, but at least not smacking of sheer ignorance as it may have initially come off as.
As for the other bit about Toradora… I weep on the inside. 🙁
Train Man by Hitori Nakano, one of my favorite all time desert island Nick Hornby Top Ten titles, could be viewed as a romance novel for men, but it is a story that transcends that classification of gendered fiction since it does not alienate the male audience by making the main character too “perfect” a match for the female lead. This is because it’s a true story and rarely do perfect non-flawed bishie characters exist in real life, and that’s why I liked it, it gave an average nerdy guy like me hope I could find love. Still haven’t found love, but hey, Train Man is always there… if you need it, as the great man from Labyrinth said.
I honestly lament the lack of good love stories for men because our popular culture associates such fiction as girly and unmanly. Never forget that even 300 has love story elements, Leonidas loves his queen and laments his death causing her grief, sorta. He has as much emotion as a Spartan is allowed to have.
…and that’s why I want to read the manga Otomen, because love stories dudes can relate to are awesome…