Ask John: Will America Ever Get Translated Anime Novels?

Question:
A few of my favorite series (Boogiepop Phantom, Irresponsible Captain Tylor, and Lodoss War, to be specific) are, I’m told, based on Japanese novels. Given the growing frequency of domestic OST releases, do you think it’s possible that any of these novel series will be released in the US (or the series for any other anime, for that matter)?

Answer:
Unfortunately it’s much easier to import Japanese CDs than it is to localize Japanese novels. In the case of a CD, an American distributor need only translate the slim booklet of liner notes. Naturally, a novel would require hundreds of pages of careful translation. We haven’t heard of any American companies looking into the possibility of importing and translating Japanese genre related novels, although there are probably numerous ones that anime fans would find interesting including Hideyuki Kikuchi’s Vampire Hunter D novels, Yuu Watase’s Fushigi Yuugi Gaiden novels, novels that provided the basis for anime including Perfect Blue, Crest of the Stars and Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko, and novels based on manga and anime including the Gunnm and Gensomaden Saiyuki novels.

There have been limited attempts at translating Japanese genre fiction in the past. In the early 1990s Del Rey/Ballantine Books translated several of Yoshiyuki Tomino’s Mobile Suit Gundam novels for the American market. These books are now out of print, but shouldn’t be too difficult to find at any larger used book store. Haruko Takachiho’s Great Adventure of the Dirty Pair novel was published in a bilingual English/Japanese version for the Japanese market in the 1980s, and some copies of this translated novel filtered into the American market. Unfortunately this English language Dirty Pair novel has been out of print for years and is now a highly prized collector’s item among American anime fans. Coming to more contemporary examples, Viz Communications is distributing the English language translation of Koshun Takano’s Battle Royale novel, the basis for the massively successful live-action film which spawned a manga adaptation. While not directly manga or anime related, the English translation of the Battle Royal novel may portend actual translations of manga and anime related Japanese prose some time in the future.