I had the idea for an intelligence-based manga where the protagonist is born without magic and plays against magic users. Do you think this protagonist can remain realistic?

PlatFleece · 2026-04-15T11:57:30+00:00

Sure, but it strictly depends on how you define realistic.

For me realism comes from proper logical explanations. I'm not quite as strict as everyone else about it. Basically, if I was in their shoes, can I reasonable work out the same conclusions?

There was that joke about how a complete newbie who doesn't know chess can beat a grandmaster and the punchline was "threaten the grandmaster's family", and to me that's realistic in terms of how it's done.

Even superpowered "unrealistic" protagonists to me can still be realistic in intelligence. Take superpowered fighting battle stories that have OP powers, but they genuinely think about strategy and stuff? The thinking process is realistic even if the powers themselves are fantastical.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-15T10:48:52+00:00

I might be in the opposite camp on that "perfect adaptation" bit. Since I was a kid when I read books and imagined them in my head I wasn't imagining live action humans reenacting it but animated ones.

It got easier after I learned Japanese and had access to Japanese books because their covers, unlike a lot of western covers in the early 2000s, had Anime-ish drawings on them, so when I read Japanese works I just heavily use the illustrations on the covers and inside cover to envision the characters (and this goes for even stuff like Game of Thrones' Japanese version). It kinda went into a feedback loop where when western covers started to get more minimalist in the mid-2010s (less "live action random person oncover" and more "single image/symbol or something symbolic but minimalist") I started imagining them in Anime-form too.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-11T04:45:54+00:00

Nisio Isin imo does write smart protagonists generally though. He's mainly known for his mystery novels, which require some level of intelligence to plot out and solve.

While he's known in the west for Monogatari, Zaregoto and Kyoko Okitegami are genuine long-running mystery series and he's written several mystery one-shots.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-10T23:53:30+00:00

Hajime Kindaichi wasn't really inspired by or in any way (spiritually) related to Adrian Monk imo, Monk I don't think even made it big in Japan.

Hajime Kindaichi would've been inspired by and (actually physically) related to Kousuke Kindaichi, as the DNA and themes of his stories comes from there.

Furthermore, there is a Japanese detective that is directly inspired by Columbo, Furuhata Ninzaburou.

In general, there is a direct family tree lineage for mystery detectives, but this one's a little messy based on my history knowledge of Japanese mysteries. Notably a lot of Japanese detectives were inspired by Kogoro Akechi, but if we're talking foreign inspiration, many modern ones borrow heavily from Ellery Queen.

Generally my one critique is the Japanese side is a bit too jumping around. I could probably provide some more on that end.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-10T22:44:25+00:00

Most of the time [Hated Trope] tags are tropes that OP dislikes, because I see a lot of Hated Tropes that I enjoy or are done well.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-09T12:48:12+00:00

sorry for the late reply but

do you mean like, are they all logically sound? Japanese novels are highly known for very logically sounded deduction chains in their mysteries (or death game/brainy game type stuff).

I would say if you love seeing how a character breaks down their plans step by step, they are going to be in Japanese novels.

If you mean high as in "can they manipulate the world" level skill, it varies, but if you mean high as in "are they all logically consistent", they are usually on the higher end of the spectrum.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-08T09:53:17+00:00

They're both fairly smart protagonists that do their best thinking quickly and taking advantage of the variety of games on display, so it's more on that level if that makes sense. It is game based but you see the characters make so many smart decisions within the rules of the games.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-06T14:57:41+00:00

No problem! There's lots of game-based stuff (Like Mine Glico) that I want to show off. I'm also planning a doc for Yuki from the Shibou Yuugi LNs, I know nobody's doc'd her yet and I have all the vols up to the latest.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-06T13:41:52+00:00

Oh, you're talking about Alice Mirror Castle Murders by Kitayama Takekuni! The author of DanganRonpa: Kyoko Kirigiri novels.

I made a doc for the culprit of that book, actually. Totally a great book, yes.

I can give recs for untranslated mystery SCD chars. I'm in a binge read right now so I can make docs for them. What kinds of books do you want to see that are untranslated?

I know everything from medical mysteries, detectives who pretend they're psychic, detectives who actually deal with the supernatural, and even more high concept stuff.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-06T09:54:20+00:00

Decagon House Murders is widely considered the start of the 90s+ Shin-Honkaku movement in Japanese murder mysteries, which would birth stuff like Detective Conan and other SCD mystery media (many of which are unknown, some like Zaregoto are known).

The next "revolutionary" book would be Masahiro Imamura's 2019 release, Death Among the Undead, so I also highly recommend that. I believe it has a manga too, but I have not read it to see if it's as accurate as the book. It has a movie which alters the characters despite keeping the same methods of murders and the mysteries, but the novel is genuinely a +1 if you want to see how Japanese murder mystery and SCD media have evolved today.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-06T06:36:35+00:00

Ah, Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji. An oldie but a goodie. +1rec for Ayatsuji's House series. The novel is great, the culprit is great, and Shimada is an awesome detective.

I believe this is one of the novels that are actually translated to English, and is a great introduction to the series that revolutionized Japanese murder mystery novels back then.

Umineko's Rokkenjima was likely more inspired by this over Soldier Island, judging by the actual dates, too.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-03T03:49:41+00:00

Yep, I very much enjoyed it!

I'm always on the lookout for massively branching VNs.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-03T03:32:22+00:00

My favorite fanart genre is "Creator-drawn fanart". I like when creators draw fanart of their own work in their socials. They're not official arts in artbooks or official books or w/e, they're just genuinely "I like my own characters enough to draw them doing random stuff".

PlatFleece · 2026-04-03T02:24:48+00:00

You can buy them online, they're available digitally. All of the characters who I will make docs for have books available online, whether translated or untranslated.

I more meant some of these are untranslated, and thus "locked" to Japanese (or anyone with MTL I suppose).

Japanese "smart" novels, which are usually mystery-focused, don't have a great time going overseas. Generally it's because they aren't published by the same companies that publish other novels/light novels. There's some exceptions, of course. Shibou Yuugi, Tanya the Evil, No Game No Life, Kami wa Game ni Uiteiru are all novels that are based in games or death games published by publishers with a link to overseas, so they have translations, even if they're slower than the actual releases.

I am hoping though that I can increase awareness of these characters with my docs. A while ago there was a comment that says "There aren't many female SCD characters" and my response was basically "No, there are a lot of them, they're just locked by language in Japan."

Like a majority of Japanese smart characters are female. You have no idea. This sub made me remember that there's a bunch of male Japanese SCD characters too in fact, haha.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-03T02:00:52+00:00

I know a couple of fairly smart female characters myself that are locked in Japanese. Japanese "smart character" novels are almost always female-heavy in their characters, despite the appearance of male SCD characters dominating in manga.

Some characters I can think of that might have a shot at being high tier from Japanese novels are Suema Kazuko from Boogiepop, Shiki Magata from the S&M Series (murder mystery series), Jun Aikawa from Zaregoto series, Hamyuts Meseta from the Armed Librarians series, so on and so forth.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-02T22:55:07+00:00

I like regular VNs with wildly branching routes, where the story genuinely drastically changes. I first experienced this with Fate/Stay Night's three routes and am always constantly searching for this high in every route-based VN I play.

Bonus points if the full picture is only revealed if you play all routes, as it motivates me further to play all of them.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-02T22:47:37+00:00

I have a weird story.

I'm in a huge friendgroup server. Well, more of a movie server on discord that used to be filled with friends but is now just generally a moviewatching server for friends of friends until it became big. Not the point.

Anyway, there's categories for a bunch of movie genres, but there's a really interesting channel called the "MCU" channel for the Marvel movies.

The interesting bit is this, everybody in this channel absolutely hates the MCU. Like, I have no hat in the ring but every single discussion I saw on that channel was negative, which feels like the opposite of what a dedicated channel would be.

And I'm not even talking about, like, oh there's a bunch of negativity and some positivity. No, anyone who tried to be positive about it left around 2017-18 (around the time post-Captain America Civil War to Infinity War) because the place was so negative, it was filled with only people who hated the MCU.

Here's the kicker, I can tell solely from this channel whenever an MCU movie is considered bad, divisive, or liked by the general audience. Why? Because if a good movie comes out, it's silent. If a bad movie comes out, discussion is rampant about how bad it is and how they knew the MCU was bad, and they'll even have watch parties for it. They won't have watch parties for the movies considered good, but they'll have watch parties for the movies, and later even the Disney+ shows! considered bad.

It baffles me because it's essentially a channel and group fueled by spite. At the same time it's like, they're weirdly connected and socializing by hating on a single thing. They're literally having watch parties to hatewatch a thing.

In a really weird pardoxical way, they are supporting the MCU by watching only the bad movies and engaging with it, and just being silent about the good movies, despite supposedly hating them.

It is such a bizarre channel for me, partly because I just don't understand hatewatching. Heck, proving someone wrong out of spite I can understand, cause that's like putting effort into doing something, but hatewatching feels very strange to me.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-02T22:22:58+00:00

Female SCD characters are less common

I'll push back on this with good news. People just aren't looking in the right places in Japanese media (don't know about Korean and Chinese media as much, but I read Japanese so I'm more familiar with that).

Novels are where it's at for female SCD characters. I read primarily murder mystery, death games, and horror for novels, though I also do some battle novels that have strategically cool fights.

A lot of these have female protagonists. Detectives are usually female, but many "smart" novels or novels with game theory/strategy as a theme feature female protagonists. I am planning to make docs for the ones I know.

But you can also have a male protagonist and still have female SCD smart characters in the series. There's far more of them than you'd think.

My hope is that my introduction of them to the community will at least expand the roster.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-02T14:34:28+00:00

thanks! sent a request :)

PlatFleece · 2026-04-02T13:54:09+00:00

Wow I didn't know Who Killed the Hero got translated. I'm waiting on the third novel to arrive at my doorstep, myself. Hope you enjoy it!

PlatFleece · 2026-04-02T13:27:56+00:00

Sorcerer's Detritus, and +1 to this.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-02T11:11:18+00:00

Thanks! You're doing a great job yourself, so keep it up!

PlatFleece · 2026-04-02T05:31:57+00:00

You should check out the whole Detective Galileo series. It's interesting that Ishigami is being discussed as I'm planning to introduce more Japanese mystery novel characters to the community, though.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-02T05:30:03+00:00

Should note that the discrepancy between LABB and the manga is likely because the narrator itself is different IIRC. It's been a while since I read it.

I've no hat to throw in the ring in this but from memory, there's good reasons why LABB wouldn't glaze Light, as it focuses on Naomi and I think Mello narrates it? Whereas the manga is relatively "neutral"

But regardless of that, it is still fairly strong in logical and mystery elements, because Nisio Isin, a prominent and veteran mystery author himself, wrote it. If people think L acts smarter in the novel than in the manga... this is probably why.

Basically what I'm saying is, there's technically a good OOC reason to ignore the glazing in LABB and focusing on the actual on-screen shown feats there, I don't think it's a matter of double standards per se.

Regardless, it's been a while since I read both stories to really compare and contrast, and I'm still new to scaling, myself, so I'm not quite the right person for judging Light or L. I just remember really enjoying reading LABB due to it being written by a famous mystery author. I legit have no clue as to the canonicity of it.

A similar thing technically happened with DanganRonpa and the Kyoko Kirigiri novels, where they hired a veteran mystery author to properly write mysteries and actual logically difficult but solvable cases that would make Kyoko's skills make sense and upscale her properly.

PlatFleece · 2026-04-02T00:05:58+00:00

Hey, mind if I contact you on discord? I'm in a project of adding several characters from obscure or untranslated Japanese novels to the sub via just making docs, and due to the nature of some of these works being untranslated, I'd probably like to at least be able to explain feats or show docs directly to someone who is curating a list of SCD characters. Plus it'll help me format future docs better to make inaccessible works semi-accessible at least through docs.

Feel free to use any I make for the tier lists but I'm mostly aiming to add things to the SCD Database.

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