The language is fairly approachable most of the time but then Nishikata will have a long inner monologue where he lays out his plans for how he's going to foil Takagi this time and I often found those hard to understand with a lot of exotic vocabulary, as well as monologues during a competition where he would weigh his options, and other monologues. Basically, when the characters are speaking to each other, it's understandable, but when Nishikata is talking to himself it's difficult. At least for me.
As far as entertainment goes, it's just very repetitive. Twenty volumes and every chapter is very similar with minimal plot. They were nice in that they showed me a lot of new aspects of Japanese culture, particularly in the sorts of games that children play and what their school life is like, but the actual chapter format was always the same and it got old.
I still recommend it but I don't advise reading all twenty volumes back to back. I imagine it's more enjoyable if you spread them out among other things.
Fairly good but repetitive
I have mixed feelings about this series.
The language is fairly approachable most of the time but then Nishikata will have a long inner monologue where he lays out his plans for how he's going to foil Takagi this time and I often found those hard to understand with a lot of exotic vocabulary, as well as monologues during a competition where he would weigh his options, and other monologues. Basically, when the characters are speaking to each other, it's understandable, but when Nishikata is talking to himself it's difficult. At least for me.
As far as entertainment goes, it's just very repetitive. Twenty volumes and every chapter is very similar with minimal plot. They were nice in that they showed me a lot of new aspects of Japanese culture, particularly in the sorts of games that children play and what their school life is like, but the actual chapter format was always the same and it got old.
I still recommend it but I don't advise reading all twenty volumes back to back. I imagine it's more enjoyable if you spread them out among other things.