"I have to go over everything that's happened. I have to remember"
Another Code R: Journey into Lost Memories
For some it might've felt like the longest year ever, for some it might've been busier than ever, but whatever the case, this year is almost ending. And as per awful tradition, this is also the time I look back at the reviews and other posts that stood out the most this year. By which I mean: the posts I actually managed to remember, because my memory is as bad as ever. Anyway, I'll be picking up some of the more interesting titles I covered this year in this posts, so take a look if I mention a post that you may have missed. And don't take the categories and lists here too seriously. The other tradition on this blog is that I tend to sit on a long list of reviews that have to wait for months before they are published, so in terms of planned posts, I'm already somewhere in June 2021... At the very least, I can reveal that there are plenty of interesting books awaiting in the new year, so I hope I'll find old and new readers of the blog next year here.
Best Project Outside The Blog!
Also known as the self-promotion category! Though honestly, it's weird to see that Locked Room International managed to publish two translations by me in one year.
The Red Locked Room was certainly very exciting: it's the first (!) English translation of the works of
Ayukawa Tetsuya, despite being such a major figure in Japanese
honkaku mystery fiction.
Locked Room International had been playing with the idea of a best-of collection of Ayukawa's work for a long time, but it took a few years before the stars all aligned and I was able to get started on the unique short story collection. The book features truly the best of Ayukawa's impossible murder and perfect alibi short stories, and there isn't even a Japanese publication that has the same story line-up! Ayukawa's name is immortalized not only through his own writing, but also through the Ayukawaw Tetsuya Award which is still the most exciting Japanese award when it comes to uncovering new, puzzle plot mystery writers and any fan of the classic puzzle plot mystery genre should really take a look at this book because Ayukawa really deserves much more name recognition beyond Japan.
Higashigawa Tokuya's
Lending the Key to the Locked Room was of course only released last week, so it's hard to gauge reception at this point, but long-time readers of the blog will know I absolutely adore Higashigawa's work: they're genuinely always funny to read, and the way he also makes sure to properly incorporate the comedy with the core mystery plot is awesome: his stories are never mystery
and comedy, but he makes sure there's synergy, and the mystery plot wouldn't work without the comedy. This may have been his first full-length novel, but this book already shows why he's perhaps the best known comedic mystery writer in Japan, as the story about college student Ryuhei's antics as he finds himself becoming the suspect in two murders, one of which of the locked room variety, is both cleverly plotted and funnily written.
Other welcome news was of course
the re-release of my translation of The Decagon House Murders by Pushkin Press. To be honest, it was a weird feeling seeing how my first translation of a novel moved to a different publisher, but it's great so see new readers discovering this great novel. The text has been brushed-up thanks to new editors and a bit of help of myself, so if you hadn't read the book yet...
As for other translation work, there's always more in the pipeline!
The Silliest Mystery Story! Seen in 2020!
Episode 961 of
Detective Conan is something one has to
experience. No sequence of letters, words and sentences will ever truly manage to capture the sheer madness of this story which purports to be a mystery story, but which may be described as a glimpse at the depravity of mankind. It's a complete deconstruction of the mystery genre, a rejectment of all that's sane and logical. Even if I start describing the episode, about how Conan, Ran and Sonoko find the body of
dead cross-dressed man with awful make-up on his face, a piece of crab in his mouth and a piece of paper in his hand during a glamping outing, it still doesn't even begin to describe what this episode
really is. Watch at your own peril.
Most Interesting Mystery Game Played In 2020! But Probably Older!
Phew, picking one title was a lot harder than I had expected! Interestingly, this was because I didn't play any mystery games that I loved unconditionally. Even the best detective games I played in 2020 all had elements that didn't quite mesh with me, which I also dwell upon in the respective review. With a game like
Gothic Murder being amusing, but too limited in scale,
Sigma Harmonics filled with too many minor annoyances,
Death Come True at times barely a videogame and
Tangle Tower being oh-so-funny, but a bit lacking in terms of core plot, I was mostly hesitating between
AI The Somnium Files and
Paradise Killer. But with
Paradise Killer's emphasis on
exploration rather than allowing the player to pick up on clues/foreshadowing and building theories themselves, I feel
AI The Somnium Files was the more interesting detective game.
As for non-mystery games, I still play
Animal Crossing: New Horizons daily! I'm also charmed by the ports of feature phone games G-Mode has been publishing on the Switch: I talked about
Herakles no Eikou III on this blog before, but I
looooved the horror novel game
Rinji Shuuden ("
The Extra Last Train"). I also managed to finally complete
Disaster Report 4+ Summer Memories which was... rather disappointing. I loved the third game, but the tone of this game is just so different from the previous games it just didn't mesh with me. Also a special mention for
the Pierre the Maze Detective illustration books!
The theatrical release
Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet was postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic, making it the first time there was no new
Conan film released in April in 24 years, but the pandemic also inspired some creators to come up with new mysteries. I haven't seen/read all of them of course, but there have been a number of "Stay Home"-themed mystery television dramas and short story collections in Japan. I myself discussed two of them, and while
I liked how the writer of Kindaichi Shounen went out to gather the voice actors and other actors to film an original mystery drama using Zoom, my vote still goes to the return of the legendary
Furuhata Ninzaburou series. The
Columbo-inspired television series stopped in 2006, but writer Mitani decided to bring the lieutenant back by using his weekly newspaper column to serialize a brand new short story. The story was not about any aspect of the pandemic like staying home or using video chats, but simply written because Mitani wanted to cheer people up again with a familiar face and the result was a fun little story with a beloved character I hadn't seen for a
long time, and I hope Furuhata will return again in the future for more joyous occassions.
Most Impressive Cover! Seen in 2020!
Some truly awesome covers have appeared on this blog this past year. Both books in
the Isekai no Meitantei series have fantastic fantasy-style covers, the way
Danganronpa 7 forms a set with
volume 6 is a nice touch and
Jojutsu Trick Tanpenshuu ("
A Collection of Short Stories With Narrative Trickery") actually has a narrative trick hidden in its cover art: it doesn't really show in the e-book version I think but it's really a funny idea for the physical book. My choice is ultimately really only based on personal taste: I like the clean art style and use of color of the cover of
Kimi ni Yomasetai Mystery ga Arunda and it has a nice youthful school vibe that fits the contents of the book.
Favorite Theme of 2020!
Recontextualizing stories/stories-within-stories
Last year,
I happened to read a lot of mystery novels that dealt with supernatural elements, and this year, I thought it was interesting I came across a lot of novels with either a story-within-a-story premise, or mysteries that later recontextualize previous happenings in a very different manner. The latter is of course a fundamental part of mystery fiction in general, as most stories will revolve around err, mysteries which are later explained (recontextualized), but in a few novels I read this year, you'd have a story that's apparently solved, but that's later revisited once again to show the story had another, hidden function. The most obvious example of this was
Kimi ni Yomasetai Mystery ga Arunda ("
I Have A Mystery I Want You To Read"), which is explicitly about the (badly written) mystery stories by Anna: these stories all stand on their own, but once we leave the story-within-the-story level, the narrator always end up with poking holes here and there in Anna's stories, putting her stories in a completely different light. Other favorites of this year like
Neko ni wa Suiri ga yoku Niau ("
Deductions Suit Cats Well"),
Jojutsu Trick Tanpenshuu ("
A Collection of Short Stories With Narrative Trickery") and
Medium - Kourei Tantei Jouzuka Hisui ("
Medium - The Medium Detective Jouzuka Hisui") too have stories that are initially "over" but later revisited again to show it had a secret, secondary plot running beneath the surface. I love these kinds of stories which have both a properly developed "front" and "back" plot.
The Just-Ten-In-No-Particular-Order-No-Comments List
I enjoyed the Locked Room International picks a lot, but... they really, really need to work on their covers. They reek of amateurish self-publishing, and they do a huge disservice to both the authors and the publishers.
ReplyDeleteI think LRI tends to use public domain images or lightly photoshopped images rather than hire cover artists, who usually aren't cheap. This makes sense for a one man publisher like LRI.. but yeah, i see where you're coming from. The best person to address this to would be Pugmire, since he runs LRI. I like to think of hiring a cover artist as an investment myself
DeleteComments etc. about LRI releases are indeed best sent to John Pugmire at Locked Room International, either through e-mail or through the LRI site/blog.
DeleteJohn need more support,LRI should be more known and more people should enjoy the translated works,I hope next will be more great for all of us,merry Christmas
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas to you too!
DeleteI haven't read Lending... yet, but The Red Locked room was a real gem. Thanks for the hard work! I like that you weren't limited by the original collection(s) and instead mixed and matched the best stories.
ReplyDeleteOn a similar note, when translating the classics, have you ever considered including the illustrations from Arisugawa's illustrated guide to locked rooms?
I was browsing and found the below illustration for "The Red Locked Room" story. It would be really nice to have these illustrations complement the original stories for future translations (when applicable), as they're very well done and help visualize the problem:
https://auctions.afimg.jp/item_data/image/20170314/yahoo/f/f207761673.3.jpg
The Red Locked Room as our own original collection was really only made possible thanks to a lot of help from Taku Ashibe, not just in regards of selecting the stories but also in truly getting things rolling.
DeleteI don't know about John Pugmire at LRI, but at any rate, I never considered those ilustrations actually. They are some really nice pieces in that book, but obviously that'd be opening a whole different can of worms in terms of copyright etc. It'd probably be a nightmare getting something like that arranged ^_^'
Merry Christmas! This year's definitely been busy, with much less time to read than usual. Here's hoping that things speed back up and slow back down next year.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read either of your translations this year (so much less reading time :( ), but they both look great and I can't wait to do so. It's really exciting to have Ayukawa Tetsuya in English.
I can't add anything to what you said about Glamping Kaijiken, except that I hope more people watch it and write their thoughts about it, as they'd be interesting to read, or at least very entertaining.
I like your theme of "recontextualizing stories/stories-within-stories," especially as it covers a fairly wide field. Each of the books you listed as examples embody the theme in different ways (or at least they seem to, too one who hasn't read them). One book that sounds like it might fit in it is 11 Mai no Trump and, come to think of it, the works of Awasaka Tsumao in general. (Oh, how I'd like to read them:)
Your Just-Ten-In-No-Particular-Order-No-Comments list seems very strong this year. Out of the ten, nine are on my list of books to read once I can read Japanese, and the tenth isn't one I'd at all mind reading. Here's to a similarly fruitful year of reading next year!
(Also, apologies for any errors, Chrome is eating my comments when I try to preview them. Again.)
Happy Boxing Day!
ReplyDeleteTry nagging TomCat about Glamping Kaijiken ;)
I'm around June now in terms of scheduled posts (some unwritten yet), and I can at least say I have very strong candidates already for about half of my just-ten list ^_^
Ok, now I'm excited. Last year you mentioned one book, and that was Houjou Kie's debut, one of the mysteries that I most often find myself speculating about, and this time you have around five candidates, and the year hasn't even begun! Plus, as I hope to be able to resume my Japanese studies next year, they'll provide plenty of motivation to keep my nose to the grindstone.
DeleteAnd happy Boxing Day!
I'll see what I can do in the new year. :)
DeleteBest wishes for 2021.
Best wishes to you too!
DeleteDo you like the Persona games by the way?
ReplyDeleteAnd if you don't mind me asking, is translating mysteries your main job or is it a side gig?
You know, I have not played any of them! Not even anything in the Shin Megami Tensei series in general. They look really stylish though (from 3 on) and there's a part within me that wants to try them, but on the other hand, I tend to prefer, straightforward, not too difficult RPGs, so I'm not exactly sure whether Persona would really be something for me. On a side note, I was considering reading the original Megami Tensei novels a while back, and I was surprised they haven't been in print for a loooong time. You'd think the source material of such a series would be easier to find...
DeleteAnd for your second question... let's keep it a secret! :D
They really are stylish, aren't they? If difficulty is your concern, i know at least Persona 4 and 5 have changeable difficulty settings. I played only the fifth one and while some of the later dungeon puzzles are annoying, they're not too difficult either. There's a nice rhythm to having the standard RPG combat and dungeon crawling on one hand, and the dating/friendship elements and high school student life on the other
Delete*Cue when Persona 5 for Switch*
DeleteI'm not a big fan of dungeon crawling, which is another minor concern, but it's good to hear there are difficulty settings from 4 on. I guess I could dig up my PS2 again sometime next year...
I look forward to these semi-best-of end of year posts. Thanks for all you do writing and translating. A few random thoughts:
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to trawling back through this blog in 4-5 years when I can plausibly attempt novels in Japanese.
I played Paradise Killer as well- it was fun as an exploration game, but it's just funny how little the West understands/desires how to make a fair play mystery game. The solution was anything but nuanced and clever despite some clear mimicking of the aesthetic forms present in Ace Attorney/Danganronpa.
Currently reading (and enjoying) 8 mansion murders, but man, I really need to read a lot more Carr before I can safely read honkaku writers, don't I?
Interestingly, I thought Return of the Obra Dinn was one of the fairest mystery games I've played, but it did miss a sense of urgence as you were mostly investigating still scenes of the past. I'd be so interested in a mix between Paradise Killer and Obra Dinn, where you're allowed to investigate a larger area in a non-linear manner while also allowing you really investigate things yourself and consider what a certain clue means.
DeleteThanks for reading 8! I think that one's the most 'genre-savvy' of the LRI books I've done, especially with Abiko's own end notes, but to be honest, I haven't read much of Carr myself :P