Undeniably, there is a large amount of people who enjoy watching anime and reading manga. At the same time, undeniably, there is at least some percentage of the anime and manga we watch and read that is adapted from either light novels or from games (visual novel or not, for example, the
Arad Senki anime was adapted from the MMO of the same name - the Japanese version of Dungeons 'N Fighter). However, recently, I have come to observe that a lot of people who enjoy anime and manga adapted from a light novel, are blissfully (?) unaware that a light novel of the media as a source even existed! For some reason, that really gets on my nerves. At the same time, it might have been a good thing, as a trend I see is that anime adapted from a light novel (this case applies less for manga, though I do observe it, and sometimes, the complete inverse happens - case in point, the
Kara no Kyoukai movies adapted from Nasu's gargantuan 1000~ish page work, a movie per chapter) does turn out to be outright worse, or is missing some details that detract from the full potential of being a quality piece of animation that it could be.
I know that there are a couple of reasons for this. First of all, light novels are strictly a Japanese affair. Japanese is a language that, face it, not an incredibly huge amount of people know - compared to English speakers. The language barrier is a huge impediment in being able to absorb and appreciate (or criticize) the particular book you've picked up. Anime is a thing in its country of origin, yes, but unsurprisingly, the lack of awareness is in overseas audiences, which is why I brought this point up first. People who have looked up these adapted anime may have run into phrases such as "originated as <so and so>" and "was an adaptation of <this and that>" and may have thought nothing of it due to the fact Japanese is something they Can Not Read, or Can Not Read Very Well. Fortunately, while translations do exist (for example,
Sword Art Online is covered by BakaTsuki), they are still relatively scarce and do not cover enough source material.
Secondly, light novels tend to be under the radar - people overseas just never hear about them, unless peers or friends tell them or big announcements are made, but such big announcements are never really made on a regular basis. Not enough to spread awareness. Even in Japan, there have been criticisms towards the Light Novel storytelling style as one that panders to the lowest denominator (and while this is true to some extent, there are some rather interesting works out there that don't fall under this category). A lot of criticisms also point to a lot of the LNs just being plain junk... I guess a lot of the stuff is bad,
This blog post from 2 years ago comments on an AnimeSuki discussion thread debating on why light novels "would never become as popular as Harry Potter." From a Japanese perspective, it seems like a lot of it stems from the lack of merit to be found in LNs. Which I guess as I mentioned, is true to some degree. I bought a Chinese translation of Famima! and found it looked like stereotypical MC+loli shenanigans coated with a Mafioso flavor, felt like I wasted money there. There's also a distinction to be made between cultures - overseas readers prooobably wouldn't be able to wholesomely get the intricacies in Japanese culture unless they themselves were already greatly immersed in it. Operative word - wholesomely.
Lastly, demographic. Interestingly enough, LNs are actually quite popular when viewed under the lens of non-Japanese, in other parts of Asia, especially Taiwan, where I get a lot of my Chinese translated light novels. There's also a sort of similar light-novel publishing culture prevalent in Taiwan as well, though they seem to be mostly published web novels (similar to
SAO) and/or fan fiction (similar to
50 Shades of Gray). I think that in some ways, light novels don't actually seem to mesh properly into a given strict demographic - they're almost always written for pleasure and because "I felt like it", and invariably fall into a given niche rather than demographic. Manga and the like tend to be more specialized into age groups, hence we have shounen/shoujo/seinen/josei. For example,
Sword Art Online is the kind of story I feel anyone of ages higher than, say, 15 could easily enjoy
if they were already interested in the premise to begin with (and this is discluding chapter 16.5, which was removed from print editions of
SAO but still can be found floating on the Internet translated even).
I want to know how many of you folks read light novels, and maybe you could talk about your experiences with them, maybe have a bit of discussion on this general topic? Since I know we have a bunch of people who enjoy anime and manga, it seems interesting to me to observe how people who don't read LNs but enjoy anime and manga observe LNs, what do they think of them, basically.
To answer the question posed in my thread title, in my opinion? I don't see it becoming popular ever, in my view. It's sad because there are good light novels out there, and some of them do produce great anime at best, or hilarious trash at worse. There are even those that get the reverse treatment, so I think it's a topic worthy of some discussion.