English has series like The Lord of the Rings, Dune, The Wheel of Time, Cosmere. Does Japanese have any heavy-hitters, or should I stick to English for fantasy/sci-fi series?
https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/y6ebko/how_does_popular_fantasyscifi_literature_in/
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Japan isn’t as big as English for SF novels, as for this genre authors tend to go to manga rather than novels.
However there are a few good ones, you can check Haruki Murakami’s work in particular.
Record of Lodoss War
Guin Saga
Legend of Galactic Heroes
Not sure how popular but these are well known fantasy/sci-fi titles by Japanese authors.
Mamoribito is well known.
Vampire hunter D has a ton of volumes.
But heavy hitters are manga: Akita, gits, berserk, Blame, Planetes etc.
The Twelve Kingdoms by Fuyumi Ono is a fantastic series which attempts to depict an Eastern version of Narnia or Middle-Earth. Four books in the series have been translated and published in English.
Issui Ogawa’s Tenmei no Shirube is a grand-scale space opera but unfortunately it hasn’t been translated into English yet.