As the title says, I'm an anime fan looking to get into book reading, though you could also say I'm pretty new to anime as well.
To start, I want to preface this by saying that I'm not looking for any generic responses, like "hey, this novel is written by a japanese author", "this kind of feels like anime!", "theres an anime based on this novel" or other stuff like that. What I'm trying to say is I don't want recommendations with the primary focus being that the novels are similar to Anime, I'm looking for novels with similar themes and genres to the Anime that I really like, if that makes sense.
First things first, I don't have much experience with reading. Well sort of. I have experience reading manga but that obviously isn't the same as reading a novel. And as opposed to a lot of anime fans, I don't really have much experience reading light novels either. What I have read though (and I'm extremely proud of this), is the visual novel Fate/Stay Night. Basically a visual novel is a novel with visuals, drawn character sprites on a drawn background, low effort art. Most of it is a wall of text on that said background, so it's basically a glorified book. It's all text but occasionally you'll have to make choices which lead to different outcomes. All in all, with all three routes, Fate/Stay Night is 820k words, which is what I'm so proud of. It may not seem like a lot, but for someone like me who never reads, it's a crazy accomplishment.
As for what Anime I enjoy, I tend to like more mature stories. That is, stories that focus on mature themes and I tend to stray away from the more childish side of anime (most shounen series). My favorite genres are probably mystery, drama and thriller with an intense focus on great character writing, unpredictable plot twists, emotional impact, mind bending psychology, the more gray side of ethics, contradictions, flawed characters, philosophy, tying it all together, tragedy and I guess I tend to like more realistic and "bad" endings.
I also have an Anilist page that keeps track of all my completed Anime and my ratings for them, but my post got removed when I tried to include it in this post even though I think it's fairly important information which could lead to better suggestions/recommendations, but oh well!
(my username on the site is "lewka", so feel free to search for it on your own if you want to)
Also, I'm male, turning 16 in August.
If there's anything else you'd like to know, feel free to ask!
Thanks!
by TheOneAndWorthy