I was originally going to wait until I get an afternoon where I'm not so tired, but I was reading through chapter 3 of The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow when I stumbled on a passage in there that made me get up an immediately want to post on it. I've actually already read the fan-translation of this book a while ago, but I never really read it carefully since it was on screen rather than the book form that I'd prefer to read novels in. But first, my initial observations and impressions (warning, spoilers of the anime version ahead, too!).

First, a few differences in the translation of the novel compared to the anime. One of the very first things I noticed is the name of main protagonist in the book is spelled "Yoko", while in the official DVDs of the anime, it's spelled "Youko". Truthfully, I really care little about this difference, but it is one (Interestingly, the original fansubs of the anime spelled her name as "Yoko". In terms of consistency, I'll refer to her as "Yoko". Other names will have the same treatment too, where I'll use the spelling in the book). There's several other names that are spelled differently, such as "Takkee" (in the anime, that was spelled Takki). Also, I do notice that proofreading of the book could have been better, as I've noticed several grammar errors or plain typos reading through the first 2.5 chapters.

Second of all, the novel is much more violent than the anime. Extremely violent; in the first two chapters alone, there's already rather detailed scenes of dismemberment and decapitations. In fact, the Kochou that attacks Yoko in Japan, the one that she dispatches in a single stroke in the anime, in the book she defeats it by cutting off its foot, running it through with her sword at least once, completely severing one of its wings, and, finally, by decapitating it, in the process covering Yoko in blood and gore. She reacts to this the way I'd expect any average teenager girl would react to such a scene: she vomits into the ocean.

As for the actual storyline difference between the book and the anime, the most obvious is that in the book, Sugimoto only has a very minor part in the first chapter and does not come with Yoko to the other world, and Asano does not exist at all. In fact, in the book, Yoko goes to an all-girls school, while it's apparent the anime has her going to a co-ed school. I find this to be an important distinction; Yoko in the book was actually split out into the three characters, Yoko, Sugimoto, and Asano, in the anime. This is partly to externalize Yoko's thoughts to survive (In the book, she actually has to make the choice to steal from Takkee for survival, while in the anime, it was Sugimoto's insistence). The result, though, is that Yoko is much more passive in the anime than in the book.

The final observation, the one that pushed me to post something about the book, was about the technological development of the Twelve Kingdoms. On the 12K-TP The Twelve Kingdoms Fansite forums in the past, I and others have made the observation that the Twelve Kingdom's technological level is quite behind our world is partly because of the lack of resources, such as oil. Imagine the grin I had when I read the following passage in Chapter 3 of The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow:

The land of Kou was also much poorer than the world Yoko knew. There were no automobiles, of course, and no gas or electricity. She hadn't even seen any plumbing or waterworks of any kind. She had initially though it was because the civilization here was lagging behind that of her own, but from speaking with Takkee, she had realized this was not the case. It seemed that they simply lacked ready resources like oil and coal that had made industrialization possible in Yoko's world.

I also would think the lack of offensive wars would also retard technological advances in many ways. These would basically be wars that would expand a country's territory at the expense of another. In the world of the Twelve Kingdoms, emperors are expressly prohibited from doing this and may suffer the wrath of the heavens for attempting to do this. Hence, there's little need for navies to conquer and maintain foreign colonies (and the nautical and shipbuilding improvements that would filter down for merchant ships).

Well, back to reading. I'm actually finding the book is indeed much more detailed than the anime!