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Recently, Differences between the Overlord light novel and manga was bumped due to a new answer. As it's quite an old question, I decided to review the whole Q&A. I thought the question was okay based on the title.

But the problem is it's 4* questions.

  1. What's the difference between the Overlord novel and manga? Are they the same?
  2. If they are not, is the novel illustrated like the manga with visual presentation?
  3. Does the English translation for the manga have some translation errors?

I was surprised that the question was left opened and got answered as is!

And here is the 4th question, "would it be possible to share some contents in it by taking a picture and posting it?". Do we need to do something in this post? Thanks.

tl;dr (or, "let's do meta seriously")

The question body has 4 questions which some of them are not related to Overlord (aka. too generic). However, it already got 4 answers.

  1. Is the question as currently written okay? Does it need to be closed instead?
  2. If it can be salvaged, how? What about the existing answers?

*The original revision has 5 questions, 1 which was too opinion-based.

2 Answers 2

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The question should have probably been removed, but there are 2 apparent problems:

A) The question is old (+1 year)

B) The question has too many views (+7k in over a year)

In my opinion, the OP is asking many questions in order to solve one issue: Should I read the manga or the light novel?

He even mentions that the reason for posting his question is that there's still no season 2.

"As the anime stopped at season 1 and there's no news of season 2 yet"

So now, he wants to know what he should read. The answer everyone gives is the light novels. The OP also asks for mistakes in the manga's translation, but that's because the manga is his first choice in his question. Once he gets to know the novels are better, he would obviously want to know about the novel's translation.

So making a summary, this is what the OP is asking:

  1. Should I read the manga or the light novel? What differenciates one from the other?

  2. Is the translation correct or will I get wrong info while reading it?

All the answers are on point and tell us what the OP wants to know (including Akamine's answer. The translation he provided seems to be aimed at one of the OP's queries as I explained before. With his character-per-character Japanese-English translation it is better understood though. I think the purpose was to let the OP see firsthand how the translation works, whether it's literal or not, whether it makes mistakes etc.)

Bottom line: I wouldn't change the answers. I would let them be as they are. I wouldn't really change the question either given that the answers keep quoting it, but rather I would add something in the end like this.

To make my question less confusing and more comprehensible:

Should I read the manga or the light novel? What differenciates one from the other?
Is the translation correct?

Edit: Second option. If the answer doesn't comply with the standards, just close it. That way people can still see the question and answers as it's considered a question of relevance because of its views, but there won't be more answers. It will also deter new users from asking questions in the same way because the answer got closed.

Example:

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/391731/how-do-you-say-to-have-sex-in-a-formal-way

I made this question some time ago. As you can see, it got closed because it doesn't comply with certain standards. However, the question is super popular and got several answers, so I asked a moderator whether I should ask it again in a different way for users that may consider it interesting. The answer I got is that there's no need, the system is made so that my popular question and its answers will be able to be seen by everybody, at the same time that the site applies the correct regulation to the question.

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Final action: since closing the question as "too broad" was vetoed by a mod, the question was protected instead to prevent new users from answering the general question about LN vs Manga, and link to What exactly is a "Light Novel"? was posted on the comment.

Read below for the past proposal:

If I ignore the answers, then the question as currently written should be closed as "too broad". However, some of the existing answers seem helpful in adding knowledge to this site. Instead, I proposed to salvage it.

Out of 4 questions:

  1. "What's the difference between the Overlord novel and manga? Are they the same?" should be clarified to only mean in-universe content. The difference between light novel and manga in general should go to What exactly is a "Light Novel"?
  2. "If they are not, is the novel illustrated like the manga with visual presentation?" is too generic and is already answered in What exactly is a "Light Novel"?
  3. "Does the English translation for the manga have some translation errors?" is tangential to the topic. It's better to be asked as a separate question.
  4. "Would it be possible to share some contents in it by taking a picture and posting it?" is already answered in What exactly is a "Light Novel"?

So, my proposal is to edit, focus on the 1st question, and remove the rest.

By narrowing the scope, the answers will certainly get affected:

  1. Thoroniul's answer should be edited to focus on the 1st question and remove the rest. The revision should be trivial since the answer is already well structured.
  2. Akamine Yoshiaki's answer is a bit... complex.
    • The 1st section on "Revision" looks like answering the 3rd and 4th question, which unfortunately should be removed, but I probably can also compromise to put it on the bottom as an addendum.
    • The 2nd section answers the 1st & 2nd question. This might need to be revised by only leaving the specific difference and personal recommendation.
    • The 3rd section answers the 4th question with LN unpacking & Manga review video. I'm not sure the unpacking video is useful (but considering the question is already a bit trainwreck...). The Manga review is speaking about the manga only, without mentioning the difference to the LN. Unfortunately, I think this should be removed too.
    • The last section about the translation... looks like it's answering the 3rd question, but for LN. As much as I appreciate the OP's effort, I'm not sure reading the difference between the official & fan translation is useful for this question. It might be good on a question asking about the nuance of official translation in general or specific to Overlord, but still, I'm afraid this isn't really useful to understand the difference between the LN and the manga. Unfortunately, I prefer this to be removed too.
    • (Side note: The original revision is much longer due to character-per-character Japanese-English translation, which I have removed since I don't think this site's purpose is to learn/understand that. I might have a different opinion if it's posted on Japanese.SE)
  3. xtoybox's answer, albeit a bit short, is already on target.
  4. Jason's answer seems to answer 1st & 2nd questions, which is quite trivial to revise to focus on the 1st question only.
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