I wasn’t planning on putting together another one of these this month, but we just got three big pieces of news all at once! This has been an exciting time for English light novels…

• First up, some news I was hoping to hear ever since seeing the movie… Makoto Shinkai’s novel for Your Name has been licensed! Yen Press will release that along with the spinoff novel Another Side: Earthbound, as well as the manga adaptation for Your Name. No more details yet, but I’ll be sure to update if we get a release window.

Your Name

The story is set one month after a comet has fallen for the first time in a thousand years in Japan. Mitsuha, a high school girl living in the countryside, wants to live in the city because she is tired of life in the country. Then, there’s Taki. He’s a high school student living in Tokyo with his friends while working as a part-timer at an Italian restaurant. He also has a strong interest in fine arts involving architecture. One day, Mitsuha dreams of herself as a young man. On the other hand, Taki also has a dream where he is a female student attending high school in the countryside. What’s the secret behind their dreams?

• J-Novel Club has announced two more light novels for their online weekly-update service! You can now look forward to reading Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash, as well as I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse (AKA Little Apocalypse). J-Novel Club uses a monthly subscription model that offers weekly updates of all their light novels, and as volumes are completely translated they will have full ebooks for sale. The first four “parts” of Grimgar are already up (the first part serving as a free preview for anyone to read). And there is a part up for Little Apocalypse as well. Have fun keeping up with all these stories!

Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash

Why are we doing this…? When Haruhiro came to, he was in the darkness. Not knowing why was he here, or where “here” even was. With him were others who also remembered little more than their own names. What they found when they came out of the underground was a world that was `just like a game.” In order to survive, Haruhiro forms a party with others in the same situation as him, learns Skills, and takes his first steps forward into the world of Grimgar as a Trainee Volunteer Soldier. Not knowing what awaits him… This is a tale of adventure born from the ashes.

I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse

Rekka Namidare was a normal boy until his sixteenth birthday. Then a girl suddenly appears from his future, warning him that he’ll somehow start an interstellar war! It turns out Rekka hails from a special bloodline that’s destined to get caught up in all kinds of trouble. Whenever a story’s heroine is in dire need, Rekka will be given one last chance to save her. And in the future, Rekka will have saved so many girls that their jealous love for him will cause the apocalypse!

• Recently you may remember Vertical’s announcement regarding Zaregoto — here are some more details for that:

• One more big announcement! Here is a tweet from Seven Seas:

Seven Seas has released light novels in the past (their more recent endeavors being Alice in the Country of Diamonds, and the Dance in the Vampire Bund anthology), and is planning to release a Hatsune Miku novel next May. But perhaps they are looking to kick things up a notch in the coming year? We’ll have to wait and see…