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Note that this critique will be based on the first four volumes, and will be spoiling the story for those volumes in its entirety.

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Incomplete post is incomplete and very much bad. It’s probably not going to be finished, so keep that in mind.

Although I have read a fair few Japanese light novels at this point, Solo Leveling is the first officially translated Korean novel I have ever read. I had heard much praise being thrown its way, so by the time I put down the fourth volume and felt nothing but a sense of relief that it was done, I was left feeling severely disappointed.

After heavy speculation surrounding the company, it is now – given the status of Sol Press, LLC – official that the company’s days are almost certainly numbered.

While the common phrase everyone says in response to what happened is simply that they’ve not payed their taxes, the exact status for the company is: “FTB FORFEITED”. This status indicator is more than a simply “they’ve not payed their taxes,” though one might argue it is perhaps sufficient as a response to the question. It specifically means that they’ve either failed to “file a return,” or “pay taxes/penalties/fees/interest.”

Tencent has through Sixjoy Hong Kong Limited, wholly owned by Tencent Holdings Limited, acquired 6.86% of Kadokawa Corporation.

While Tencent already owns significant portions of branch companies of Kadokawa, they’ve now managed to set their claws into the main business. Which will, of course, have absolutely no impact on how the future of the company will look like.

Any fan of Japanese media – including anime, manga, light novels, etc – will no doubt be sweating right about now. Though, if it needs explaining just how big Kadokawa is when it comes to everything weebish, then consider that Kadokawa owns J-Novel Club, YenPress, BookWalker (and through it, GeeXPlus), Niconico, FromSoftware, and much more.

I don’t believe I’ve ever had such a strong reaction to reading a piece of written literature as I’ve had towards Kenja no Deshi wo Nanoru Kenja – or She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man as it’s localized as.

Note that this review/analysis will be based on the first two volumes of the series. With that in mind, readers should proceed with caution as spoilers are inevitable.

All aboard the growing monolithic train everybody! Can’t wait til we’ve got the usual “influencers” shilling JNC memberships, and “Remember to go to JNC slash TurboAutist and enter code: TURBO for 10% off your next order!”

Think what you will about Kadokawa, good or bad, when an industry nears monopolistic levels in the hands of a single company, it tends to not end up well. One might want to believe that Kadokawa will manage this deal well, having this one singular corporation owning the majority of all publishing of light novels, both domestic and foreign translated release, is a worrying development.

TL;DR Turns out Seven Seas has not only been translating Japanese media, but has been engaging in moral editorial work. Don’t buy anything from Seven Seas until they’ve made an apology and proven themselves worthy of your money again; until then, just sail the high seas for their stuff if you really want to read it.

Seven Seas has been caught with their pants down, and apparently it’s not even their first rodeo either. Their first instance of completely removing content from a published light novel was their original Classrom of the Elite release. It’s quite mind-boggling why Seven Seas would do this, considering they had to have understood people would figure it out eventually. Still, let’s give the actual company a break here, and instead assume it’s the team that translated the source material. Which one here is responsible here? Is it only one of these people, or were several involved in the blatant act of censorship? Was it orders from above, editorial censorship, a rogue translator that went out of their way to moral police, or a combination of the above? For now, no one besides the company and/or at least one of these people would know. However, the editor-in-chief, Adam Arnold, should have been aware of it to some extent at the very least. If he wasn’t, then Seven Seas should probably consider having the guy fired for his blatant ineptitude and failure to oversee the translation process of a major release.