12 Days of Anime: #9: Raw Novels

Last year, I read my first raw manga, which was fun.  After that, I thought "Why stop at manga?".  So I went to browse Amazon.com, and found the first Haruhi novel in paperback for, in its raw Japanese format.  I was thrilled, until I came to a realization.

Upon opening the book, I saw that only some of the kanji had helper kana next to them.  This posed a major challenge to me, as I had relied on the aforementioned kana in the raw manga to help me out.  In the novel, I had no such luck, and was left hanging about half the time.

Being left hanging is no fun, and that was the situation I was pushed into.  I frequently found myself perusing the English version of the same novel to figure out where I was.  Aside from key dialogue that I'd heard a million times in the anime version, I was struggling to find my spot repeatedly.  It was not a pleasant experience at all.

In retrospect, I probably wasted my money, since I still haven't finished the raw novel.  It's too bad, because I REALLY like her mane the Haruhi Suzumiya series.  I want to buy more raw novels, but my poor run with the first one kinda soiled the experience.  Ah, well. No way to learn but through experience.