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Notes -
Light novels are mostly regular books that have occasional anime-style illustrations in them, maybe ten per volume. They are written at a lower level of language complexity and are aimed at younger audiences; basically the Japanese equivalent of YA novels.
Example 1, from "An Introduction to Light Novels".
Example 2, from "What Are Light Novels? How To Write Light Novels?".
Durarara was originally a light novel, and was adapted into both a manga and an anime. This is completely normal in the incestous media ecosystem of Japan; The Saga of Tanya the Evil is another good example.
In general, the lower the production cost, the more titles there are. So these days there are tons of web novels, the most popular of which get rewritten into light novels, the most successful of which get adapted to manga, and only the very best get adapted to anime.
One notable feature of modern anime is that it often serves as essentially an advertisement for the manga or light novels rather than as an end in itself, so you get one or two cours and then nothing, because there is no point in promoting a print series that has already ended. C'est la vie.
Thanks, that helps a ton. It sounds like we don't really have anything directly comparable in the US, since our YA novels don't have illustrations (or they didn't back in the day, maybe they do now).
Yeah I have seen series which don't bother to adapt the entirety of the source material, which can be frustrating when it leaves the story unfinished or rushes the ending. Maoyu was one I saw that was like that - good premise, fun characters, but it managed to feel both rushed and unfinished. My understanding is that the manga was better, but they didn't adapt the whole thing.
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