The Season of Reading Starts with an Artbook
"Whoa. I absolutely have to buy this."
Progress has a habit of shoving the old out of the way, and books were no exception. Technology had invented a new medium called the ebook, and ebooks came with plenty of advantages. They were cheaper than paper, took up a revolutionary amount less space, and unlike paper they never yellowed, so you barely had to worry about upkeep.
And yet, even so.
"I can say this with complete confidence. A paper book has a flavor all its own."
The texture of the paper. The lighter strain on your eyes. The fact that first-print limited bonuses only exist if you buy the physical copy. And, impossible to leave out, that feeling that belongs to paper books alone.
To me, Lee Hari—former man, current woman, someone who lives and dies by the vibe—feeling is a matter of critical importance. Every so often the memories of those days come drifting back. Slipping a cover over a light novel and reading it in secret at school. Getting an earful from Dad over a hot-spring illustration. Overspending because a special edition was simply too tempting to resist. Plenty of other memories besides, the kind you can look back on and laugh about with a yeah, those were the days. Those live only in paper books. Ebooks never had any of them.
My viewers were probably the same, weren't they?
"So the autumn reading special is going paper books, front and center."
With that, I killed the sentimental radio-letter BGM. From here on, I meant to crank the stream energy back up to my usual level.
"First, let me recommend this one to all of you. ...We've had a lot of new people lately, so it's about time I introduced it again, right?"
As I spoke, I pulled out the book I'd prepared and held it up for the viewers. It was far larger than a normal novel, and far thinner. It had far more pictures than words—far more pictures, even, than a comic—and next to an ordinary book, it cost a respectable amount.
"Ta-da! The artbook for Can the Artillery Girl Fall in Love?!"
Right. An artbook.
"Nothing less than holy scripture, packed with every face of Tomoe, the greatest heroine in the universe! They say if you don't own this, you aren't a true Märchen viewer. There are other charming heroines besides Tomoe, you say? Whoa. I absolutely have to buy this."
"Why? For the opening of an autumn reading special, what book could possibly be more fitting?"
I meant it. If someone told me to pick the single book best suited to the season of reading, I would answer artbook without a second's hesitation.
"Everyone, autumn is called the season of clear skies and fat horses, the season of reading—but it's also called the season of art. So wouldn't an artbook, where art and reading come together, be the single object that fits autumn most perfectly? An autumn essential?!"
Pouring out that passionate defense of the artbook left my mouth bone-dry, so I took a sip of water to rehydrate. The drink cooled my head a little.
...Right. I should show them this, too.
"This isn't really related, but I've got both the Japanese edition and the Korean edition."
Then I carefully brought out the Japanese copy I'd carried over for the sole purpose of showing off. It was also the monument to my lack of patience—I had believed, firmly, that it would be translated someday, and still couldn't wait.
But come on. It was an artbook by Tomoe's illustrator. How was I supposed to resist that? Not resisting was the only reasonable option. Damn right it was.
For the record, I bought three copies of the Korean edition. And one of those three I used for missionary work. Who did I give it to? Eunha, obviously. Among everyone I know, who else was I going to preach that stuff to?
Once my viewers learned I'd bought multiple copies of the same book, their reaction was...
...Huh? The reaction was way better than I expected. I'd braced for at least a "Black Marshmallow Cow" or two.
Sincerity really does get through, I guess. Or maybe watching me set money on fire in Raider lately had made a few extra copies of the same book look like child's play.
Either way, a genuinely decent response from chat put me in an excellent mood. I nodded, satisfied, and went on.
"Thinking that a few more people will come to know Tomoe's charm because of this, and that the world gets a little more beautiful for it, is pretty satisfying."
The decent reaction ended immediately.
"I'll take that as you understanding just how great my love for Tomoe is."
The moment I said it, a thought struck me.
"...Seeing this artbook just made me think—later on, Raider will sell something like an official illustration book too, right?"
"Now that I've said it out loud, I'm really looking forward to it. When is that day going to come..."
When it did, I'd have to buy at least five copies from the jump. One to preserve, one to display, and missionary copies for Medongbu's editor and manager on top of that.
For now, though, back to the point.
"So, for the leadoff of the reading special, I talked a bit about the Can the Artillery Girl Fall in Love? artbook. Like I said, autumn and artbooks get along beautifully. But if you want that vibe of sitting on a bench, taking in the autumn wind and admiring the maple leaves while you read, an artbook is a little big, you know? So I thought I'd recommend something more portable."
Light novels, in other words.
Self-help books?
Was there really any need to recommend one of those?
"If you watch a light novel protagonist struggle with everything they've got to achieve their goal, doesn't that count as self-improvement?"
"Anyway, there are a ton of light novels I want to recommend."
Having lived through both the Otaku Minor World and the Otaku Major World, the urge to recommend light novels welled up in me even harder.
Plenty of good things had come from the shift out of the Otaku Minor World into the Otaku Major World. As the otaku market grew, demand for light novels and manga grew with it, so series dying mid-translation because of publisher trouble became far rarer, and the translations themselves came much faster. Even when something sold out, stock was restocked quickly. And you almost never had to wait years, wondering when the next volume would finally be translated.
We live in a world this blessed, and you're not going to read light novels? Wouldn't that be a crime? So if I wanted to keep my viewers from committing crimes, I had no choice but to recommend light novels.
...Wow. I sounded incredibly like a literary pretty-girl streamer just now.
Holding that sense of mission in my chest, I puzzled for a moment over what to recommend, then dug up a piece of information buried in my brain.
"Oh, how about this one? I hear it's getting an anime remake this time. It captures that distinctive medieval atmosphere so well—it's a series I genuinely love."
As I said it, I searched it up and showed them not the volume-one cover, but a recent one. Advertising a classic with the art style of its first-volume cover was, yeah... a bit much.
"Pretty much every light novel I've enjoyed runs past ten volumes.... If we're looking for a workaround, pick a series that's cleanly split into Part One and Part Two, and just read Part One?"
Saying so, I introduced about three series.
"These ones wrap up Part One really cleanly, so——"
And in came a donation whose only purpose was to get under my skin.
"...Courage and recklessness are not the same thing. And the price of recklessness has always been brutal."
Even as I said it, a warning wrapped in the words, part of me felt genuinely wretched. So it had come to this—not only were there people who didn't know Tomoe, there was someone calling her a boomer pick. I'd uploaded a Tomoe evangelism video to NewTube specifically to stop anyone from calling her that, and it still wasn't enough?
"A hypnosis app.... Yeah. I really do need a hypnosis app..."