This first installment of the Scrapped Princess series of novels describes the events that occur before the start of the anime with the same name. The same characters as the anime are annoying (I.E., Pacifica), Rachel is still the cool, dizty, motherly older sister, and Shannon is still the loudmouth who says what he means.
Truthfully, I'm not too impressed by the first novel. Its reading level is not all that high (though whether the original Japanese was the same read or if it's a translation issue is one I don't know), and, more importantly, I does a real poor job of world building as it really only deals with the siblings life and troubles after the death of their father. Hence, features about this universe can be rather confusing to a green reader. Even worse, the book has a bad tendancy of over-explaining magic and weapons, much like a real anime. It is a rather short read, which might get expensive with the books at $8.00 per volume with 7 or 8 volumes.
I'm not sure if this is a novel based on the anime, or the anime was based on this novel. Then again, the anime wasn't anything all that great either, though it was a fun watch. Maybe the novel will turn around and be fun in the next installments.
Comments
I like it a lot.
I personally love the Scrapped Princess series. I just picked up this novel today.
For clarity, the novel came first. The Scapped Princess anime and manga were based on the novels.
Well, if it came off as me
Well, if it came off as me not liking the series, it's really not the case. I actually thought the series was quite enjoyable. It just didn't at all in the same league as a few other series, in my opinion.
Still, the book was a bit of a disappointment for me, though I'll most likely continue reading the series as it comes out.
Thanks for the clarification about the order between the novels and the anime and manga. That was my first suspicions.
The Novel
I just read TP's adaptation of the first novel. I forgot that TP scrapped the nice Japanese cover in favor of the bland cover as they attempt to appeal to a wider audience (even though the books are sold in the manga section...smeg heads).
Anyway, I've not read the original Japanese version (I need to improve my Japanese skills first) but I strongly suspect that TP's adaptation of the novel is very domesticated and dumbed down (toned down) to appeal to a young American teen crowd. Besides the cover as an example of this and the lack of Japanese honorifics, the novel feels like it has been changed to me. I can't explain it beyond that, which is why in the short term I'm hoping to encounter someone who's read the original Japanese novels and can compare.
This could be true. It
This could be true. It also could be the classic subtitle vs. dubbing argument that reading and processing subtitles takes extra mental processing that seems to provide an extra layer of complexity, where as if you watch the dub, you'd realize you're watching a kid's show, or in this case, the novel is translated for us and you get a "young adult" book vibe from that translation... and in this case, the original was also a young adult book. ;)
Seriously, I'm not so sure that the translation was actually toned down for the American release compared to the Japanese version. I'm not getting this "Ack! It was changed" vibe from the novel at all, plus I remember a few scenes of pretty extreme violence.
If you do get a comparison from someone that's read both version, please let me know!