No.
At least as far as I can tell. I think it is an interesting question because light novels are in a lot of ways the most interesting kind of material that gets adopted in the past 10 years.
Man, how old was Full Metal Panic?
Anyways, I’ve made a spreadsheet. You can see the full screencap if you click on the image to the top of this post. The methodology was going to Hashihime’s calendars for Winter 2011 and Fall 2010, listing all the TV shows that ended in Fall and the shows that started in Winter, and then mark the ones that are light novel adaptations. With a couple exceptions (like this one).
There’s a nuance in that some of these shows have manga adaptations, but at least one source (ANN usually) would say it is an adaptation of the light novel. In reality it doesn’t matter, because either way the light novel came first.
However it would be mistaken to call it “RailDex” anything, because Railgun is not a light novel adaptation. Go figure.
Speaking of which, this is why I made this chart.
Feel free and please drop corrections on the spreadsheet in the comments!
Maybe I will write more about this later, but the immediate observation is that a lot of these are manga adaptations, and while I was making the list, most of the titles I ignored are either your Fairy Tales or PreCures, which are JUMP-type crap or original shows. Light novels and properties originally as games are in a small minority. There is also a growing number of “media mix” type situations where it’s original, but there’s also a manga or even a light novel to go with, or in the above case as I mentioned, an original light novel series that has a manga adaptation way before the anime. The numbers seem to suggest this being almost as frequent as light novel adaptations where the anime is first-to-adopt.
It makes you wonder what the heck is Railgun actually.
January 18th, 2011 at 10:29 pm
Why is railgun not a novel? It is based off a few short stories and manga but it’s nowhere near it superior “to aru majutsu no index” the original novel. Which by the way is #1. novel in japan. Season 2 anime will only dnd at the half Point of the novels. Though there might be good news for railgun fans. The director for index said he was going to announce something special at the end of the season. It can be one of two things but I ain’t telling.
January 19th, 2011 at 1:04 am
I still count Railgun as it grew out of the Index source. And maybe it feels like there are more LN adaptions in proportion because the ones being done lately are more memorable that the shows from other sources. *shrugs*
January 19th, 2011 at 6:36 am
I would not count Railgun on the basis that it is based on a manga, and the anime shows that it is much better adopted than the two Index anime series in terms of being able to avoid those wall-of-text scenes that plagues the Index anime.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:26 am
So why was the assumption made in the first place? Is it because light novel adaptations stand out? Are they inherently more interesting or do they get more advertising and/or budget? I feel that might be the case. Charting the rise of LN adaptations might be interesting.
January 19th, 2011 at 9:55 pm
As far as charting the rise in popularity for light novel adaptations, I’d be tempted to mark Shakugan no Shana as the beginning of a “trend” towards more of them.
That may just be my bias though, but it was the first anime that was very commercially successful that I remember explicitly finding out to be a light novel. And it’s no coincidence that probably the largest source of light novel adaptations are Dengeki published ones, of which Shana is likely the first (likely, because it’s an empty claim on my part, having done no research).
January 19th, 2011 at 10:49 pm
I linked to Full Metal Panic for a reason.
@Numbers and Space
>> So why was the assumption made in the first place?
I have no idea. Someone probably just noticed that the stuff he or she was watching this season are made of light novel adaptations?
As for the rise of light novels I’m pretty sure it started when light novel got big, which was a 90s kind of thing. There were obviously adaptations of novels before then, but the light novel format was not exactly recognized like the way it is today.
I think the gap between the two aren’t probably all that large. I mean, do you count Vampire Hunter D? That’s a really well-celebrated serialized prose sort of thing, but it really isn’t light novel as much as, uh, serialized stories.