Gakuto Coda

The Literature Club is back the way it was, for the most part - the main difference is that Ayame is still around, still nonhuman but much less powerful, and magically tied to Utsume by the events of the previous book. However, now Aki is having supernatural problems of her own. There's an urban legend about a cursed fax, a chain letter that the recipient receives for several days in a row and must send on in the same order if they want to avoid dying. It seems that the fax is real, and Aki has just begun receiving it. Not only is it creepy, arriving out of the blue at 2 AM, it's somehow causing Aki actual physical harm. The paper cut she got from the first fax showed signs of infection only a few hours later.

At the same time, there are rumors going around at school that there's a pack of wild dogs loose in the area. One of the teachers was bitten, and signs of the dogs can be found all over the school grounds, although no one has actually seen one of the dogs. Yomiko, the school witch, freaks out both Ryoko and Aki, warning Aki that she will be torn apart and eaten by dogs that no one can see. Somehow the Literature Club has to figure out what's going on and save Aki before it's too late.

If you haven't read the first book in this series, Missing: Spirited Away, I'd recommend starting there. Although these two books deal with entirely different supernatural beings, Missing: Letter of Misfortune references a lot of characters and events from the first book and doesn't devote a lot of time to explaining things for the benefit of newbies to the series. The entire Literature Club is back, of course, but so are Ayame, Yomiko, Jinno, and the men in black. The first book also mentioned something about Aki that turned out to be extremely important in this book.

As far as its supernatural aspects went, I liked this book a good deal more than the first. The cursed chain letter, demon summoning via fax, the invisible dogs - all of it was much more my jam than the fairy-like "spirited away" stuff in the first book. Aki was also my favorite character in the first book, so I was looking forward to a book that focused on her.

Unfortunately, that's one of the areas where this fell kind of flat. Although there were scenes from Aki's POV, for some reason it was harder to connect to her this time around. It also seemed like Coda had forgotten certain aspects of her character that he'd established in the first book. Yes, she was still cold and sharp on the outside and fragile and lonely on the inside, but all that stuff about her secretly being in love with Utsume seemed to be absent. I mean, I didn't entirely mind that, except that it introduced a few plot holes.

I distinctly remember Aki being jealous of Ayame in the first book. Her hidden feelings for Utsume and jealousy towards Ayame should have become an issue in this book, especially during the climactic battle, and yet none of that ever came up. It was as though those feelings had never existed and Utsume was just another friend of Aki's in the Literature Club. Heck, Ryoko was depicted as being more important to Aki than any of the other members of the club.

I really enjoyed the creepy scenes inside Aki's apartment, and the bit with the sender of the cursed fax reminded me a little of that scene with the tiny dinosaurs in the first Jurassic Park movie. Unfortunately, the story was a bit bogged down by Utsume's frequent lecturing. He gave the Literature Club a multi-page lecture on magic - granted, it contained useful information that both they and the reader needed to know, but it made Utsume seem decades older than his friends. Utsume even interrupted the climactic final battle to announce that he was going to give another lecture. Again, it turned out to be a useful lecture, but it made for a weird and slightly ridiculous moment.

Just like I had trouble following the events at the very end of the first book, I also had a little trouble figuring out what was going on at the end of this one. Some of the things Yomiko said didn't make much sense - I don't know if it's because of the translation, or if it was one of those things that would eventually have been cleared up by a later book in the series. Since none of the later books were ever translated and published, I guess I'll never know.

It's sad because, despite my complaints, I'd definitely continue on with this series if I could. I'd have loved to see what else Coda had planned for these characters. Utsume and Aki were the only characters that the men in black had identified as having some kind of connection to supernatural beings, but I recall Yomiko saying something intriguing about Toshiya that could potentially have been the focus of one of the series' books.

Even though I'll likely never get to read more of this series, I'm still glad I read these first two books. They were interesting and a nice change of pace from vast quantities of "reincarnated as a [random thing] in another world" Japanese light novels currently getting licensed and translated.

Additional Comments:

There were some glaring translation and editing issues. A couple of the worst ones:

"And slowly, the cursed child emerged." (101)

It's possible that this was an accurate translation, but I strongly suspect that this sentence was actually supposed to be "And slowly, the cursed fax emerged." A child did not emerge, Sadako-like, from the fax machine.

"The spell will not work if it is doesn't use the same base knowledge." (203)

I wonder, did Tokyopop's 2008 novels have more typos? I don't recall Missing: Spirited Away having similarly glaring errors.

Extras:

An excerpt from the third book in Coda's Missing series. I didn't bother to read it - what's the use, when the book was never published?

There was also an afterword by Coda, in which he mentioned that a friend of his had accused him of ripping off the Men in Black movie after hearing about the men in black he included in his books.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (más)

When Kyoichi Utsume was a child, he and his younger brother disappeared. He somehow managed to return, but his little brother did not. Ever since then, he's been obsessed with death and kamikakushi, mysterious beings that are said to spirit people away.

Rumors start flying at Utsume's high school that he, the guy who supposedly doesn't believe in love and romance, has found a girlfriend and is introducing her to everyone. Utsume's friends in the Literature Club discover that the rumors are true when he brings Ayame, a cute but oddly easy to overlook girl, to meet them. Ryoko and Takemi, two members of the Literature Club, decide to follow the couple and come back with gaps in their memories and a strange story of visiting a terrifying other world. Since there's no longer any sign of either Utsume or Ayame, it looks like Ryoko and Takemi's story may be true. Can the members of the Literature Club somehow retrieve their friend from the other world? Will he even want to come back?

My first impression of this was that it was better than I expected. The translation was relatively smooth, and the lack of the usual anime cliches in the story was a welcome change of pace from many of the more recently published light novels I've read (no boob jokes! no harems composed of several well-worn character types!).

Utsume made me roll my eyes, with the way the other characters referred to him as "Dark Prince" and "Your Majesty." Utsume's personality was cold and didn't seem like the sort that would attract a bunch of devoted friends. It helped, a little, that Coda spent time establishing why the other members of the Literature Club cared so much about him. Toshiya had been around when Utsume and his brother originally disappeared and had seen the changes in him after he'd come back. Utsume had helped Ryoko through an exam-inspired panic attack. Aki was a prickly girl who recognized parts of herself in Utsume. Of all of the characters, Aki was probably my most favorite, but I wish she hadn't been quite so focused on Utsume.

The teens' efforts to rescue their friend took them in a couple different directions, and I'm hoping at least some of that comes up in the second book as well. One half of the Literature Club talked to a mysterious magician named Jinno, while the other half talked to a man who was essentially part of Japan's version of the men in black.

The books' ending was confusing. What happened? It seemed like one particular character had been shot, but then for some reason they were fine. Why did another one of the characters disappear? Was that Ayame's influence?

If it weren't for the confusing ending, I think I might have liked this a bit more. I'm still looking forward to reading the second book in the series, at any rate.

Extras:

A short afterword written by the author, an excerpt from the next book, and an excerpt from the manga based on this book.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (más)

I’m fascinated by Japanese horror and the supernatural, in that I find it interesting while it completely wigs me out at the same time. There’s such a vast difference in the cultural mores between the East and West concerning death or the Fair Folk or Things Which Mankind Is Not Meant to Know.

Missing is a decent light novel, and it’s got a very creepy story at the core. While the characters do fit into different stereotypes—the ice queen, the stupid best friend, the tall and quiet guys—they still manage to feel like defined characters in their own right. I definitely got the sense that any one of these characters would be willing to risk their lives for each other. Out of the five, the ones who would probably need more development overall were Ryoko and Utsume. I liked Ryoko, she fits very well into the cute girl role, but she never really gets beyond that characterization. I feel like there’s more to her that we just haven’t seen yet. Utsume’s mysterious past—specifically, his being spirited away by kami-kakushi as a little boy and then later at the start of the novel—is at the center of the plot. And while it’d be easy to say that we don’t get to see much of him, because he disappears for a good chunk of the novel, he really doesn’t do much in what we do see of him or in flashbacks. All Utsume does whenever he’s onscreen is act dark and mysterious and pontificate philosophically. On the other hand, the other three members of the Literature Club—Takemi, Aki and Toshiya—feel more developed. We get more of their backstories, and they actually grow a little throughout the story.

However, I’d have to say that the antagonist, Ayame, was my favorite. Again, she does fall into a stereotype role (tragic ghost figure), but her actions toward Utsume feel more tragic. There’s a part when Ryoko notices the look on Ayame’s face and mentions that you can’t help but feel sorry for her. Yet, whenever she has to be creepy, good Lord, is she creepy.

There are two major problems that I had with the book as a whole. For one thing, minor characters are introduced with a lot of build-up and explanation about what they do, but don’t contribute further to the plot after their role is finished. I can understand this in the case of Kijou (although I have my theories on that), but Jinno and Yomiko disappear after talking with Takemi and Toshiya.

My second problem is the translation. For the record, I’ve only read the English translation, as I don’t have the original and I can’t read Japanese writing to begin with. (I kinda know the sentence structure, but even then it’s extremely loose.) That said, the translation doesn’t really flow well. The prose is choppy and sounds weird at times, and there’s odd bits of dialogue that doesn’t fit with many of the characters. It’s not written well, and really takes away from a lot of the book—I’ve read other translated works, and the prose and dialogue actually flows a lot better. I’m not sure if this was fixed in later volumes—it’s a thirteen-book series; however, with Tokyopop’s current status, I doubt that any of the other volumes made it to print.

Overall, it’s a decent read, and I am interested in reading more. Unfortunately, only volume 2 ever made it stateside, so I’m pretty much stuck with the first one. In any case, it’s a quick and effective read that manages to be interesting and scary.
… (más)