くまクマ熊ベアー 1

The easiest light novel to read in Japanese

くまクマ熊ベアー is a comedic light novel about a 15 year old hikikomori gamer named Yuna, who has played so much of her favorite VR MMORPG that she has attracted the attention of the game's developers, and they offer her two gifts: an embarrassingly cute bear costume that has hidden powers, and the chance to escape reality permanently by entering a real live fantasy world.

The sentences are simple, short, and direct, with few relative clauses and no flowery description whatsoever. I found conversations involving more than two characters a bit difficult to follow since the author avoids dialogue tags like they're the plague. While there are quite a few video game and fantasy specific words, there's not a lot of variety to the vocabulary so once you've looked something up it'll stick through sheer repetition. This book has little furigana, so if you're not good with kanji you'll want to read this digitally to make dictionary lookups easier.

The story is very chill and occasionally funny, being mostly about Yuna making friends and learning how to use the ridiculous bear suit. There doesn't appear to be any longterm plot or deep worldbuilding, so it's simply a fantasy slice of life novel. Whether you'll find that relaxing or boring depends on your preferences.

If you're eager to read your first light novel in Japanese and you're okay with not having furigana, this is probably the ideal book to start with.