I mean, have you guys seen the majority of these stories? They’re longer than the Harry Potter series! Definitely not ‘light’ reading. Or does the word represent another concept? Why ‘light’ in ‘light novels?’
Because each volume of a book is pretty much pocket size. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_novel
The pockets must be pretty big to accomodate any volume of some series like say Horizon in the middle of nowhere.
From what i understand, the light in light novel is because it's lighter than an actual novel. I'm not sure picking Harry Potter is a good example considering it was a novel geared towards children. But if you compare light novels to books such as the Da Vinci Code or the Dresden series, you will notice that the descriptions leave more to the reader's imagination and the story tends to move at a much faster pace. And now that I think about it, after Book 4, those Harry Potter books exploded in size. The last one had nearly 760 pages. A Light novel volume generally doesn't go over 250 pages.
^ It isn't about the content. It's just about the Type of the novel. Why people call "Web novel" as "Web novel"? Because it's a "novel you find and read on the web". Simple right? A "Light Novel" isn't the same type as a "novel", the size is different, the amount of word in each books is different, etc...
Those are quite rare. Most of the light novels I’ve seen in the book store are truly pocket size. Horizon isn’t called the dictionary for no reason lol
Light novels are called light novels because they are the natural agent that stimulates sight and makes things visible. Without light novels, we would all be blind. Of course, there are those who say they have never read a light novel before, but this is an obvious fabrication, as they clearly have the gift of sight bestowed upon them by the holy artifact that is a light novel. Truly, this world would be blind to the future, both literally and figuratively, if light novels did not exist. We can only imagine the time before light novels existed, a terrible world of only four senses.
I would say they are called Light novel because they are a light read. They aren’t too heavy or intense full of many philosophical meanings. Most light novels take place in mordern settings as well as the fun fantasy ish type of novel. And it’s mostly slice of life. The novel’s are meant to be read as enjoyable light stuff. It’s not too heavy or overly taxing on the mind. Some novels are packed full of content and context and loads of crap that you have to read all at the same time to fully comprehend. But light novels don’t require that, just read it once or a couple pages and you can pretty much see where it is going.
They are also called light novels because it uses a lower level of Japanese than traditional novels. Considering a native Japanese speaker needs to have a college level of Japanese to completely read a newspaper, if you are targeting younger readers you have to make the Kanji (use fewer and more well known kanji) and writing simpler and more direct. That is the reason why they have litterature clubs in Japanese schools, for high schoolers it is a big deal to be able to read full blown novels and shows a high mastery of Japanese which is above the expected level.
Or the Novel Low-Cal, which uses sweeteners that might be bad for you. And then there’s Novel Original, which Qidian had to revert back from Novel New. The consumers didn’t like Novel New, which meant they had to switch back to the original format.(single spacing, headers and footnotes from the translators. Novel New used a monetization system, where you had to use spirit stones to reveal paragraphs while you’re reading. Very very bad...)
This is the real reason for it as far as I'm aware, lighter vocabulary and smaller usage of kanji than what you usually find in novels~
Novel Cherry had dubious intents and was recalled from the market. and last I checked.... Novel Raspberry cannot be found anywhere (i still haven't found a store selling pepsi max raspberry despite all the adverts T_T)
Novel Raspberry was...disgusting. Of course I’m not fond of raspberries...but Novel Yuri is more to my taste.