Where Does The Twelve Kingdoms Anime End In The Light Novel?

The first eight or so episodes of The Twelve Kingdoms are the most difficult to get through episodes I’ve seen since the Scrapped Princess, but boy does it pay off in terms of character growth.

It turns out, when you start with wildly unlikable characters, you can really make them grow as people. Who knew?

Where To Start The Twelve Kingdoms Light Novel After The Anime?

If you finished The Twelve Kingdoms anime and wish to continue the story in the light novels, you can start at Novel 5.

Please note the the novels, because they are sometimes quite long, have been sometimes been released in two parts, though some re-prints re-condensed them down back into one novel. So in some sources, the start point may be Novel 7 (or Novel 6 if they are working with reprints) as Novel 1, 2, and 4 are all two-parters, but Novel 2 was reprinted as a single novel again.

To make that easier, the novel you want to start on is titled Tonan no Tsubasa, AKA The Aspiring Wings.

Is The Twelve Kingdoms Light Novel Over?

While officially marked as on hiatus, the author has stated that the main story of The Twelve Kingdoms is completed.

As The Twelve Kingdoms doesn’t have a linear plot, and the novels wrap up the loose thread of the whole Black Kirin/King of Tai thing in Novel 9 released in 2019, simply “not writing more” about that world is as valid an ending as any.

What to Expect From The Twelve Kingdoms Source Material Compared to The Anime?

The Twelve Kingdoms anime, with its lengthy periods of exposition, really conveys how “lore-dense” the novels are. As such, it should come as no surprise that the anime left out a decent chunk of even more lore from the novels as well as did change a few moments throughout the story.

Will that stop you from jumping into the novels and continuing? No, but you may find moments in the novels mentioned that weren’t in the anime or went differently (but end up at the same place, keeping the core story pretty intact).

Something to keep in mind about the novels is that the anime frames the story around Youko while the novels very much do not unless the story is following her. Furthermore, characters like Sugimoto play a larger part in the anime, for longer. In the novels, Sugimoto is, by comparison, a much more minor character.

Do you need to read The Twelve Kingdoms novels from the beginning? No, but you definitely can get a lot of new content and experience the story in a different way if you did.

Will There Be A Twelve Kingdoms Season 2?

Sadly, the anime aired in 2002, so I don’t think there is really a shot for a The Twelve Kingdoms Season 2 at this point.

However, The Twelve Kingdoms is actually quite the beloved series, so a remake someday might not be out of the realm of possibilities.