I've been writing and planning a novel series/world for at least four years by now, and really want to end up getting them out there, but I don't really understand what kind of novels they're supposed to be. Let me explain.

I'm an otaku, and have always pictured my stories being in the same kind of world of anime, manga and light novels, with the anime style art and such. Even though this is way too soon for me to be saying, I've always dreamed of writing novels that ended up getting anime adaptions, and had the world of my stories expand.

The problem is that I'm not Japanese. Sure, I'm learning Japanese, but I'm still way too far away from being able to speak it fluently, let alone write a novel series in it. What kind of options would I have? Do I really just have to wait until I know Japanese well enough to write my series?

When it comes to novels, I suppose it would be strange to write novels in English and have anime style art for them, because they probably won't be popular or have any proper place to go, and they wouldn't officially be connected to the Japanese world of anime and the like. How does this aspect of it work? I know a lot of light novels are getting translated and released in English, but it's not a big enough thing for novels like that to be written originally in English, right?

The only option I can think of is to work with someone fluent in Japanese who can help translate it and publish my series as a proper Japanese novel series, but I can't really imagine that happening.

Is anyone else having a similar problem to me? If anyone has any advice on what to do then I would very much appreciate it.

These kind of things can be just as big in the west. Maybe not as big in Japan, I wouldn't know. But honestly, if you release your stuff in Japan, there would be so much more competition than here (or wherever you are). There is definitely market here for that kind of thing.
And I don't believe it to be weird to have novels written in English to have anime style art. Art is global and not exclusive to a certain culture.

My suggestion is to just write your novels in English first. The stories are more important than the language its written in. After that, either hire a translator or maybe by then you'll have already master Japanese.

I think that writing-wise, as long as it is quality, you can get an audience anywhere, regardless of country or culture. Like western folks liking anime-style stuff for example. You can have an anime style show produced in and marketed to the west and, in the way entertainment is going (becoming more anime-based in the west), still have an audience and a potential adaptation. If you are lucky, you can get an animated adaptation. However, it is incredibly impractical to write a whole story in a language you are not fluent in and market it to a culture of which you do not fully understand what they want in entertainment.

I'd say that if you are heavily inspired by anime, you can have a story almost identical to an "anime" just written by a person of a different heritage and origin. If you're worried about popularity, think of Maximum Ride. Many western novels do not have an anime style, and many do not consider using the style. However, Maximum Ride had a graphic novel adaptation in a manga style and still gained a lot of profit and popularity, especially among the younger audience it was marketed to. Younger audiences, of whom are now growing up, appreciate the anime art style, and I find that if you have a good enough story and good enough promotion (as with any other novel), you'll be able to get it out there.

Thank you for the replies.

It's technically, not the art style itself that I'm worried about, (though there is that too) but the target audience. Even if I do release novels with anime style drawings and covers, I would still want them to fit into the anime/manga/light novel category, rather than just being a western novel series with anime inspired art. The same applies for an adaption, I don't want my stories to simply be animated, I want them to become anime, not western cartoons.

Does that make sense? I just want it to exist in the same world as anime and the like, differently to most English written novels. I don't want it to be something like Avatar, where it's technically not an anime.

I do agree that it's not a good idea to write a story in a language I'm not too familiar with. That's the reason why I didn't want to have to resort to that, because of how much time it would take for me to be in a position where I could do it properly, and not have my stories be poorly written to people fluent in Japanese.

I don't really understand how it works. Is it really as simple as that I'm not Japanese? In a way, you could say that my main focus or intention is for a Japanese audience, rather than it being in English and possibly getting translated into Japanese.

I'm someone Japanese at heart, and very much an otaku. It just doesn't feel right to write something that won't exist in the same world that I'm in.