Dark Night of the Hunters

This happened to a friend of a friend...

This'll probably be the last normal review post of this year!

Houjou Saki is a new graduate from the police academy and as part of her training period before she's officially assigned to a division, Saki has been stationed at a small police box at the station of K City in S Prefecture. Once a thriving industrial city, K City is now slowly transforming into a bed town for nearby Tokyo. After getting complaints from the neighbors about a horrible smell coming from an empty house, Saki and her two senior police officers at the police box go check the building. Inside, they make a horrible discovery: three mutilated bodies of woman wrapped in blue sheets are scattered across the house. It's at the investigation update meeting that Saki learns for the first time that their discovery was just only one in a series: more bodies of women were found lately in empty buildings in K City, all because neighbors complained about the horrible smell of death lingering in the neighborhood. The fact all the victims were horrible tortured with a whip and cut open while alive and the fact all the women are missing body parts, tells the police they're after one and the same culprit. Because the faces of the victims are completely bashed in, their teeth removed and fingerprints burnt off with acid, it's impossible to determine the identity of these women.

What isn't mentioned at the meeting is the curious thing Saki saw when she found the bodies: Saki swears she saw a ghostly apparition in the house a second before she entered the empty building. The figure she saw was a beautiful woman dressed in a white robe, but who for a moment, also seemed to have a skull for a face. While one can guess why Saki's report was ignored by her direct superiors, one person finds it highly interesting: Lieutenant Takahashi Mayako of the Special Patrol Unit of the S Prefectural Police HQ, which usually handles old unsolved cases. Mayako reveals to Saki that thirty years ago, a serial killer active in K City acted with the exact same modus operandi as the current killer. That killer, dubbed the Parts Collector as each of the victims was robbed of a body part, was never caught, but the files mention witnesses who saw the same ghostly apparition Saki saw at the sites where the bodies were found. Mayako is the only one who is convinced there's a direct link between the two cases and has Saki assigned to her as her partner in order to track down the murderer in the novel Shin Hayarigami ~ File 0 Tokoyami no Maria~ ("Shin Hayarigami ~File 0 Maria of the Eternal Darkness~", 2014) by Sayama Misao (pen name of Kushimachi Minato).

After playing and reviewing the two Shin Hayarigami videogames the last few weeks, I learned there of the existence of a spin-off prequel novel, which was released together with the first Shin Hayarigami in 2014. While the first Shin Hayarigami was more of a horror game than the hybrid horror-mystery game the series usually was, I enjoyed the much improved second one a lot, and as I was already in this Shin Hayarigami mood, I decided to dive right away in this novel too. The novel is set one or two years before the first Shin Hayarigami game: Saki is still a rookie patrol cop in her training period. Her meeting with Mayako of the Special Patrol Unit and her experience with the case in this novel would later result in Saki's first official assignment to the Special Patrol Unit and thus get her involved in the Blindman incident. What's funny is that this novel also provides an explanation for a game mechanic. In the Shin Hayarigami games, Saki is a master of "Liar's Art", where she uses sweet talk, threats and any kinds of lies to lure a witness into giving the answers she needs. As a game mechanic, it's pretty frustrating as often you don't know beforehand how a witness will react to the answers you pick, but it's funny how Shin Hayarigami ~ File 0 at a certain point actually provides an origin story to Saki's Liar's Art. I mean, prequel novels often include origin stories of how the gang first met or something like that, but seldom for game mechanic! It's like having a novel that incidentally also reveals how Mario learned how to jump.

As a horror-mystery novel, Shin Hayarigami ~ File 0 strangely enough feels more like classic Hayarigami than the actual game it accompanied. Most of the scenarios in the first Shin Hayarigami were just gorey horror where Saki would always find herself also becoming a partial victim, while Shin Hayarigami ~ File 0, Saki is investigating a case that has some occult nuances to it, without becoming too much a part of it herself, like in the classic Hayarigami games and Shin Hayarigami 2. While the story of Shin Hayarigami ~ File 0 is not split in a scientific and occult route like in those games, the investigation of Saki and Mayako is definitely focused on both these angles. I do think it's kinda a shame that Saki sees a ghost right at the beginning of the story: in the games, even the scientific routes usually contain some supernatural or unexplained element, but that usually only comes near the end. In Shin Hayarigami ~ File 0, the ghostly sighting is basically presented right at the start and accepted as such by Saki and Mayako, which is the opposite of the games, where the unsettling feeling of the supernatural creeps into the story at the very end. While the ghost has no direct effect on the world and most of the investigation would've occured more or less in the same way without the ghost appearing, it's still a bit distracting to have Saki see the ghost multiple times and accept that it's supernatural.

That said, Shin Hayarigami ~ File 0 isn't just about ghosts. Saki and Mayako also perform 'normal' investigative work as they try to track down the serial killer, and this novel was fairly entertaining as a perhaps not remarkable, but okay-ish thriller serial killer story. Don't expect a fair play mystery where you can identify the culprit based on clues beforehand (though I do think this story could've been rewritten to be a bit more fair), but it works fine as a work that focuses on the chase, and the idea of the split in scientific/occult routes of the games is actually represented quite well by the two female senior detectives of this story: Mayako (who believes in the witness sightings of the ghosts) and the forensic expert Hiromi who dismisses all supernatural explanations. The Hayarigami games have always been about urban legends: cases were themed after urban legends, or at times, urban legends would actually be the motive or driving force behind a case. This element is done actually quite well in this novel, even more than how the theme of urban legends was handled in the first Shin Hayarigami. I won't reveal who the "Maria of the Eternal Darkness" in the title is, but this is what I want from Hayarigami! References to and reflections on real-life religion, folklore, and urban legends and juuuust a little bit of an original twist all work together to bring an interesting case is exactly what Hayarigami should do and man, the first Shin Hayaragami would've been so much more enjoyable if it was closer in atmosphere to this novel. The first Shin Hayarigami is a perfectly fine horror game, but Hayarigami shouldn't just be a horror game, but also present an interesting mystery story. The only complaint I have about this particular part of the story that it's not a well-known urban legend/folklore story (certainly not in Japan), but having the characters realize the case is patterned after such a story midway, instead of right at the start also works for this series as a change in formula.

Shin Hayarigami ~ File 0 Tokoyami no Maria~ is not a novel I would recommend to those who haven't played any of the games as on its own, it's an unremarkable thriller, but if you did like either of the Shin Hayarigami games, I'd say this is a pretty solid read. It does a good job at invoking the style and atmosphere of the games in terms of set-up and how urban legends link up with the cases and I also like how you can see how the experiences in this story will eventually shape Saki into the Saki we know from the games (though strangely enough, Saki is much stronger in a fight in the novel than in the games). Play the soundtrack in the background while reading, and you're all set. As far as I know, I have now handled all the story-related content of Shin Hayarigami now, so if I'll return to this series, it'll either be because I've returned to the original Hayarigami series, or because a third Shin Hayarigami game is finally released.

Original Japanese title(s): 『真 流行り神 〜ファイル0 常闇のマリア〜』