Only the Ring Finger Knows (Novel) (See ANN entry)

No spoilers.

Sex rating: PG-13

Art: B
Story: C
Action: N/A
OVERALL: C+

For my first foray into BL novels, this is a pretty bleh title. Then again, we've seen half of it before, literally...

{mos_sb_discuss:11}

Sorry for only two images this time, but as it's an illustrated novel and there's only text on the back, we're short one.

Anyway! So, the first Only the Ring Finger Knows novel has two halves. The first half retells the story of the Only the Ring Finger Knows manga. It's almost exactly the same as the manga in terms of pacing and story, except for some reason I find Yuichi somewhat more malevolent in typographical form.

The second half of the novel is the tale of Wataru Losing That God Damn Ring. Again. *sigh* It's almost like a classic I Love Lucy story-- Lucy screws something up, and while trying to cover it up so Ricky doesn't find out, manages to make things fifty times worse. Except that in Only the Ring Finger Knows, it's not funny, and there are no Cubans. It's cute, but hardly innovative or something that kept my imagination-- fortunately this is a pretty fast read.



As for the presentation, well...I think it's cool that DMP tried to keep the book small like the original Japanese (though I think it's a little bigger...or at least a little taller. I'm not sure on that though). The illustrations are nicely done-- two color ones at the beginning, black-and-white ones scattered throughout the book, etc.

The actually writing is pretty mediocre, and it's hard to tell if that's from the translation or from the original-- it's pretty juvenile writing, and it's a book marketed at juveniles in Japan, so I suspect it's more author Kannagi Satoru than translator (Allison Markin Powell).

I do have a nit to pick though: typos! I'm a total geek on this kind of thing, but there are typos scattered about as frequently as the black and white illustrations. Seriously, check out the second color image in the front of the book: "your're so angry"? Not all of them are that obvious, but they stick out to some people (read:me) and are distracting-- and I think it's fair to expect that a pro publisher will

Example of my nitpickiness-- DMP, if someone stutters at the beginning of a sentence, you still only capitalize the first letter of the word. It's "B-but!," not "B-But!" Hey, if you want another editor to read things over for typos and stupid little crap, I'll do it super cheap!

And that, kids, is the best job come-on EVER.

Writer: Kannagi Satoru
Illustrator: Odagiri Hotaru
Censorship: N/A
Warnings: Does very little originality count?
Disclosure: We got a free copy of this from DMP.