Another week, another episode of the crowd pleaser Midweek Discussion. This time let’s discuss the other half of what makes a light novel a light novel.

Most of the time I have to say that I don’t really give much thought to the illustrator. I might read an LN and think, oh “That art style looks good” or “That design is interesting”, but most of the time I won’t even remember the name of the artist even in those cases, and if they were silently replaced I would be oblivious to it. That doesn’t mean that the illustrations are irrelevant though. The art style alone has a big influence of how I perceive a text. The artwork on the cover will set the tone with which I read that novel. I will interpret a scene differently if there is a derpy artwork on the cover versus a grimdark one for example. Sure the prose can overcome the

But there are exceptions. Illustrators that I find absolutely essential to a series. You Shiina (no, not you! the illustrator /sigh) is one such example, but that’s too on the nose. So I would like to point out so-bin instead. The illustrator of the Overlord series. His artwork stands out so much amongst the mass of LN illustrations. You could just get a glimpse of an Overlord illustration and immediately recognize from which series it comes.

This does not only apply to the cover illustrations but also the in-chapter illustrations as well (one more because I couldn’t choose just the two examples).

TL;DR: so-bin good.

So, my questions for this week are:

• do you have favorite illustrators and who are they?
• how important are the illustrations to you?
• what are good examples (I admit that’s just an excuse of a question for me just wanting to see pretty pictures)
• what would you like to see more in LN illustrations? For example, I would like to see more establishing shots instead of just key moments or character introductions.