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(3.17/5)I was pleasantly surprised!
I dont know why I was initially this biased - for some reason I really didn't feel like reading it, but I picked it up because it suited my book club's monthly theme and had a fitting difficulty rating. Now, in hindsight, i m really glad I picked it up! I could understand it with ease for most parts, and I really got into the story only a couple of pages in.
The main character was sometimes a bit frustrating - very timid, kinda shy-ish, but I guess there s room for character development in the next two novels :D I like the supporting cast as well - I'm glad this group of friends sticks up for each other like this. The support is real.
I wonder where the story will go - especially regarding the letters~
- Entertainment: The target demographic of this book is ~12 y/o girls. Decide for yourself how much this interests you. The story is OK but it is full of the usual stereotypes and the main characters are all shy and insecure to an extent that can be frustrating to read. Also note that book 1 by itself is not really conclusive. It just ends, without resolving anything at all. I guess you would have to keep reading books 2 and 3.
- Language Learning: This book has very short sentences, making the grammar easy to understand even for complete beginners. Unfortunately, a lot of words commonly spelled with kanji are spelled with kana here, which might be easier for Japanese children but made reading them more difficult for me than it would have been otherwise. Overall still one of the easiest LNs I have seen.
Easy to read high school romance with time travel elements
orange is a shoujo romance kids novel about a high school student named Naho who receives a letter from herself ten years in the future. Her future self warns her that something terrible will happen that she'll regret for the rest of her life, and this letter is an attempt to change that future by giving past Naho instructions on what to do and not do. The letters revolve around a new transfer student named Kakeru, whom Naho befriends and begins to have feelings for. orange was originally a manga series, and later turned into an anime and live action movie. According to the afterword, this book covers the manga's first volume and the first 7 chapters of the second volume.
I found this book relatively easy to read, similar in difficulty to books like 夜カフェ. It's written in third person, features full furigana, and the vocabulary is mundane, centered around normal high school life and teenage feelings. Once in a while characters will use regional-specific slang, but this is always "translated" in parentheses immediately following, or is explained by another character within the dialogue itself. As the romantic situation became more complicated I found it did get a bit harder, since abstract conversations about feelings rapidly become inscrutable in Japanese if you're not paying close attention to who's talking and who they're talking about. But the author also uses a lot of commas to "chunk" the sentences which makes them a bit easier to parse, so overall it was not that bad.
The premise of the story is interesting, and I liked it well enough. It starts out as a light mystery (Is this letter legitimate, or a prank? What terrible future is Naho trying to change?), and then as more details are revealed it transitions to romantic drama. Like so many shoujo heroines the main character can be frustratingly meek, so if that sort of protagonist bothers you you should probably skip this one.
Content warning: references to suicide.
If you received a letter in your handwriting claiming to have been written by you 10 years in the future, what would it take for you to believe it?
Orange is a 3-part series, so while book one covers a lot of ground it doesn't finish the storyline. I'm mostly fascinated by the time travel aspect of the letters, but the overarching plot is interesting, too. If you've ever been the quiet student in school who just wanted to be noticed, this one's for you.
The language is very easy to understand, I'd place it at a low N3 level with the caveat that there is some teenage slang in there every so often. There is also quite a bit of kana usage where you'd normally expect kanji, which can be mildly confusing when you're reading with half of your attention haha. Best part are the occasional manga panels, which are excellent for providing a teensy bit of visual context if I lose track of the setting or atmosphere.