REVIEW: Another Episode S/O - Yukito Ayatsuji

• Year first released:  2016
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780316312318
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Yen Press
• My rating (out of 5):  3

You might remember from my October review of Another that I was quite smitten with it. (I gave it a 4.5 - pretty dang great, really.) One thing I said about it was, "Every step of the way, the story continually evolves - whether subtly or overtly - and is jam-packed with at least a dozen hefty twists, each of which alters the trajectory of the plot in unpredictable ways."

You can imagine, then, that I had rather high hopes for this side-story novella, Another: Episode S. Ultimately, these might have set me up for a bit of disappointment. 

Episode S wasn't bad. It wasn't anything particularly special, though - at least not compared to its counterpart. Here we have a ghost story about the ghost of a man trying to figure out how he died, why, and where his body is. (He is under the impression that he can't move on from this world until he finds his corpse so that he can get a proper burial.) It's kind of straightforward stuff, really, nothing groundbreaking (up until the end, at least).

I discovered an interesting concept after finishing the book, though:

There were several things about the plot development that bothered me. Frankly, I thought they were rather lazy on Ayatsuji's part, even a bit of a stretch. It felt as though Ayatsuji was taking the easy way out, relying too much on coincidence to move the story along. Curiously, though, once I hit the twist ending - which was quite sizable and highly intriguing, by the way - I realized that many of the things which bothered me along the way were actually intentional, and weren't as lazy or stretchy as I had thought. 

This said, on the one hand, I'd like to say that this revelation washes away the bad taste of that perceived laziness. It was certainly a worthwhile ending which I didn't see coming, and which made sense of the apparent conveniences along the way. Then again, I spent 200 pages with those things. And even though they were justified in the end, so to speak, that's still 200 pages of a bad taste. It's not necessarily so easy to gloss over that, even with a great finale. 

Some people say the end justifies the means. I think Episode S is proof that this isn't always true.

If I look at Episode S as a side story to add a little more weight to the world of Another, it's interesting enough. Considering how much I loved the first novel, I was glad to have the chance to spend more time in the universe. Episode S is absolutely not a starting point for the universe, though, and it won't win over anyone who wasn't impressed with the first book - it's just a nice little filler to flesh out the world a bit more.

(A couple minor, non-review notes, by the way:

One of the reasons Episode S is not a starting point for the world of Another is because it gives away several of the twists from the first book. If you're interested in the world, PLEASE read Another first.

Also, you might have noticed the title of the book also mentions Episode O, which I didn't comment on in this review. Episode O is a very short manga included in the back pages of the book, about which there's not much to say. It doesn't have much of a plot on its own - it's really just meant to highlight a tiny little bit of backstory from the original novel, and would be completely meaningless if you haven't read the original.)

REVIEW: Another - Yukito Ayatsuji

• Year first published:  2009 (Japanese), 2014 (English)
• ISBN of the edition I read:  0316339105
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Yen On
• My rating (out of 5):  4.5

Somehow, despite having already seen the anime of Another AND having read the manga version, I had completely forgotten the major twist at the end of the story. Granted, it's been a couple years, but even still...how could I have forgotten something that big?

Whatever the reason for this, it worked out perfectly. Reading this novel version of the story (which actually came before the anime and manga) I was just as surprised by the twist ending as I was when I first experienced the story in those other formats. I mean that literally - even the very sentence before the big reveal, I still couldn't remember/piece together/guess the ultimate twist. And considering how crazy of a finale it is, this was definitely ideal.

Much like I said of The Tokyo Zodiac Murders in my review of it last week, "the journey matters here, too." In fact, as shocking as the ending was to Another, I would argue that it wasn't even the best part of the book. Brilliant and great, yes - but not the best. 

For one thing, Another is exceptionally paced. Barely a page goes by without some sort of clue, image, or bit of dialogue that set my mind reeling, trying to figure out how it all fits in. Of course it's quite standard for a mystery/thriller/horror to often leave you questioning what is happening - those moments are often half the fun of the book. You read a new tidbit and try to fit it into your theory of what's really going on. In this vein, no book has made me ask nearly as many questions as Another. Every step of the way, the story continually evolves - whether subtly or overtly - and is jam-packed with at least a dozen hefty twists, each of which alters the trajectory of the plot in unpredictable ways. 

Perhaps the most fantastic element of Another, though, is how brazenly original the entire experience is. It starts out as a fairly typical, rural-Japanese-high-school, maybe-ghost/curse story, but very quickly - though subtly - begins to steer away from this. Rather, to be clear, I should specify that it steers away from the common tropes of this. (It still takes place in a rural Japanese high school, etc.) One can almost imagine that Ayatsuji began by saying, "How can I start with this common horror setup, but then completely turn it on its head?" At least, whether or not this was his thinking, it's precisely what he did. Importantly, he accomplished this while still giving us a smooth story that felt fully realized - never jarring, never far-fetched, always ten steps ahead of the reader.

If you want a highly unique, engaging psychological horror - and especially an Asian horror, which, as I discussed previously, tends to handle the psyche of horror better than American literature - Another is easily one of the best out there. I can't imagine I'd actually forget the ending yet again, but I'm sure I'll still be reading it again anyway.

(And, for what it's worth, the manga and the anime versions are absolutely first-rate as well - I'd happily give a 4.5 to all three formats of the story.)

Guilty Pleasures, pt. 1.5 / REVIEW: DEATHNOTE: Another Note - The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases - NISIOISIN

• Year first released:  2006 (Japanese), 2008 (English)
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9781421518831
• Publisher of the edition I read: VIZ Media LLC
• My rating (out of 5): 4.5-ish. or maybe 2ish. hmm... 

Now I want to explain to you one of the reasons I’ve been thinking about guilty pleasures recently:

Just last week, I read the Japanese light novel DEATHNOTE: Another Note - The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases by NISIOISIN. As usual, after reading it, I sat down to write a review of it for you. I found that I was rather stuck, though.

First of all, I absolutely LOVED the book. But when I tried to discuss the book’s style, I had to admit that it’s, frankly, pretty badly written. (I believe that some of this was bad translation, but definitely not all of it.*) It had a constantly shifting POV that was more than a little distracting. To add to this, the first-person narrator played a rather confusing role in the story, one that I don’t think I can definitively explain for you. This is largely because I don’t think I fully understood who the narrator was supposed to be – in fact, to be even more blunt, it felt like the author made a mistake in who the narrator, as a character, is in the overall DEATHNOTE universe. Oops. 

Perhaps, then, I loved the book because it had such great content (even though the form was bad) …right?

Well, partly yes. The plot was great, and had a killer ending. (No pun intended – I mean, it’s a serial-killer mystery, after all.) But what I certainly loved most about the book was the character L (who you’ll know if you’ve read the DEATHNOTE manga or seen the corresponding anime). Revisiting his character – and in prose, instead of only manga or anime form – was an absolute delight. He’s every bit as fantastic and hilarious and genius here as he was in the manga/anime. Very possibly my favorite character to have come out of the genre as a whole.

So then. When I tried to give a numerical score to the book, I wanted to give it a 4.5.

I realized, though, that this score is actually rather misleading. This book doesn’t really deserve a 4.5, for many of the reasons I already described (amongst several others). 

Yet I totally loved the book. It was an absolute blast for me. And so calling it anything less than a 4.5 feels wrong, too.

It turns out that the book is great, but it's not actually good.

Weird, I know.

Another Note was not high-quality. But dang it if it wasn’t one of the funnest books I’ve read recently – and, therefore, worth every minute I spent with it.**

* * * 

*This is actually the second book I've read by NISIOISIN in the past couple weeks. Each had a different translator. Both translations were fine - nothing entirely remarkable or entirely egregious - but overall I think the other book, Decapitation, flowed a little better as far as the translation is concerned.

**By the way, if you’re thinking of reading this book, it’s highly advisable that you read the original DEATHNOTE manga or watch the anime first. This is because:

1. Even though this book is a prequel to the manga/anime series, it actually contains spoilers for the series. 
2. The series is a better “jumping-off-point” to getting a grasp on L’s character. This book itself doesn’t do much of anything to help you understand his personality; it’s better to come to the book with a good feel for it already. (And, again, since L is my favorite part of the book, approaching the manga/anime first will almost certainly increase your enjoyment of this book.)

All that said, if you are familiar with the tropes of DEATHNOTE and are considering this book: Yes. Absolutely. Read this - just know that it's not as "high-quality" as many other great books you could be reading. (In fact, I might even say it's not as "high-quality" as the manga itself, even though it's still totally worth it - especially if, like me, you realize how amazing L is.)

REVIEW: Decapitation: The Blue Savant and the Nonsense User - NISIOISIN

• Year first released:  2008 (Japanese), 2017 (this English translation)
• ISBN of the edition I read:  1945054212
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Vertical
• My rating (out of 5):  4

Looking at the cover of this book, it’d be very easy to form a quick judgment of it. It sure looks like one of those crazy Japanese cartoons, doesn’t it? – and, therefore, it must be for people who like all that that weird Japanese stuff, right?

Well…not really, no.

Yes, Decapitation is a Japanese “light novel” – basically a popular short novel. (The closest thing we produce here in the U.S. would probably be a mass-market paperback.) They don’t generally serve as examples of the highest quality of Japanese literature. And yes, very often, light novels are written that tie-in to manga.

This isn’t a book that’s necessarily targeted at teens, though, nor is it exclusively for people who are already into Japanese media. Instead, Decapitation is a locked-room mystery that is more likely to remind you of Agatha Christie than a comic. Technically, it takes place on an island off the coast of Japan, but there’s very little about the plot or the setting that feel particularly culturally exclusive (for better or worse).

A group of eight strangers – all geniuses – are summoned to an island palace on the whim of an incredibly wealthy and highly bored heiress. Soon enough, one of them ends up dead – decapitated, as you might guess from the book’s title – and, of course, everyone on the island is a suspect in this inventive, twisty novel.

Admittedly, the writing takes a small amount of adjusting to get into. I found myself a bit confused for the first 20 or 30 pages. It wasn’t that the setting or the action was hard to follow – everything was explained/displayed well enough – it was simply hard to understand exactly why things were being expressed in just this way. Wait…is this character speaking right now, or just thinking? Why are some of his thoughts in quotation marks, but not others? etc.

After that first small stretch, though, either it got better, or else I somehow acclimated – it’s hard to say which for sure. Either way, it stopped being of concern very shortly into the book.

Once I got past this small bump in the road at the beginning, the rest of the book came together rather nicely. Though the subject matter was serious (we’re talking about a murder mystery here, of course), NISIOISIN still managed to sprinkle in a healthy amount of levity, without being too obnoxious, cutesy, or out-of-left-field (all things I’ve noticed are sometimes a struggle in other manga and light novels). In fact, the overall tone of the book was fantastic - a definite highlight, all things considered.

The story moved along quickly, the characters were distinct (with the intentional exception of the triplets, of course), and the twists were enjoyable. I wasn’t as shocked by the ending as I’ve been by other similarly-themed novels, but, since Decapitation gives us more to enjoy than just an ending, this wasn’t particularly problematic or distracting. 

I highly enjoyed Decapitation and veritably raced through it. And, if you're at all a fan of mystery - especially one that's more quirky than most other stories in the genre - you probably will, too.