A Model Murder

"Well, I don't like it! I don't like the whole idea being associated with Wham, Pow and Zap! It just isn't me!"

"The Comic Book Crusader"

Manga adaptations of mystery novels have a long history: in fact, the first third or so of Fukui Kenta's seminal work Honkaku Mystery Manga Zemi ("Honkaku Mystery Comics Seminar", 2018) is solely dedicated to discussing manga adaptations of mystery fiction from both Japan and outside of Japan. While I generally discuss original mystery manga on my blog, I have discussed a few of these adaptations, like  Meitantei Thinking Machine: Kanzen Datsugoku ("The Great Detective The Thinking Machine: The Perfect Escape"), an adaptation by Kuwata Jirou (of Bat-Manga fame!) of "The Thinking Machine" short story The Problem of Cell 13 by Jacques Futrelle and also Kagemaru Jouya's adaptation of Yokomizo Seishi's Yatsu Haka Mura ("The Village of Eight Graves"), a comic adaptation so important it actually made detective Kindaichi Kousuke a household name in Japanese popular culture. Today I want to briefly discuss three other manga adaptations of existing mystery stories, and look at the way they adapt the source material in very different ways.

First up is the manga Ellery Queen no Bouken ("The Adventures of Ellery Queen") by JET, a manga artist who has worked on many adaptations of mystery fiction like a lot of Kindaichi Kousuke novels as well as Sherlock Holmes and Lupin. This manga originally ran between 1994 and 1995 in the magazine Mystery DX and adapts four stories from the same-titled short story collection by Ellery Queen: The Two-Headed Dog, The Bearded Lady, The African Traveller and The Seven Black Cats. It's the art style that might attract attention first: ever seen such a broad-shouldered Ellery? The way panels are laid-out on the page also make it immediately clear JET mainly draws shojo (girls) manga, as it especially reminds me of the 70s shojo manga artists. Anyway, the four stories adapted by JET are not really my favorites from The Adventures of Ellery Queen, so I was a bit surprised by the selection, but I do have to say JET does a good job at doing fairly straight adaptations. Some stories feel a bit drawn out: each story is nearly 100 pages long, but I don't think all of them need all of that space, but on the whole, JET manages to capture all the important points of each story in a good, captivating manner. 

The two animal-themed stories, The Two-Headed Dog and The Seven Black Cats benefit a lot from the horror-style story-telling: The Two-Headed Dog deals with sightings of a ghostly dog near a Cape Cod inn Ellery ends up in, while The Seven Black Cats has Ellery investigating the mystery of an elderly bed-ridden woman who supposedly hates cats, but buys the same kind of black cat every week from the same pet shop. To be honest, both stories are okay mystery stories, but I have always felt they are more like Sherlock Holmes or even Father Brown stories, rather than stories that play to Queen's strengths. The Bearded Lady on the other hand I think is one of the quintessential Queen short stories, dealing with the weird dying message of someone painting a beard over the face of a woman in a painting, The mystery of The African Traveller is in a way a very Ellery Queen-esque story: Ellery teaches a criminology course to a select group of students of three, and he takes them to a live crime scene, giving them the assignment to figure out who did it, with them all going their seperate way to develop their own theories. Of course, they all arrive at different solutions (that being the Queen trope), showing off Queen's plotting skills to build theories based on physical evidence: while this part is interesting, it's the actual murder itself, and the solutions arrived at that are not really interesting on their own. As said, the manga adaptations do not differ greatly from their source stories, and thus this manga didn't do much to change my mind.

I've got the bunko pocket edition of this manga by the way. There is also a two-volume release as well as as a convenience store manga release, which is actually how I first learned about this manga. Convenience stores sometimes have cheap reprints of older manga that are specifically only sold in convenience stores, printed on a large format and on cheap paper like with manga magazines. I spotted the manga while on a trip with the Kyoto University Mystery Club, but didn't buy it then because it wasn't convenient for me to drag a big magazine with me at the time... but the problem with convenience store manga is that they disappear very quickly from the distribution system and unlike normal manga, they usually don't really appear in the used market. But I am glad I got the bunko version, as this is printed on better paper and it even has a color splash page!

And now we go from a faithful adaptation, to not-so faithful adaptations: Tsunoda Jirou, a mangaka best known for his occult-horror manga like Kyoufu Shimbun (Newspaper of Horrors) adapted three of Yokomizo Seishi's Kindaichi Kousuke novels, being Yatsu Haka Mura ("Village of Eight Graves"), Inugamike no Ichizoku ("The Inugami Clan") and Akuma no Temariuta ("The Devil's Handball Song", released in English as The Little Sparrow Murders"). The original plan was actually to release seven of these adaptations by Tsunoda, but plans were changed, so we only have three. And I only read the latter two, as I haven't found the Yatsu Haka Mura adaptation yet. I first learned about these adaptations a while ago, when I came across the original releases of these manga in a used book market... only they were selling for a price I couldn't justify to myself considering their state: with the paper all yellowed and with those rusty stains. Fortunately, I managed to find good bunko versions of Inugamike no Ichizoku and Akuma no Temariuta relatively soon afterwards. However, I was hugely surprised once I actually started reading them. And that was not only because the stories were set in contemporary times (the seventies), nor the fact that Kindaichi didn't look at all like he's described in the book (more like a bookish professor here).

No, it was because Tsunoda surprisingly injected a lot of his occult-horror mangaka DNA in these adaptations, creating very original takes on these Yokomizo classics and making them feel that more creepy.  Yet, the core plots remain intact. So yes, Inugamike no Ichizoku is about the awful will left by Inugami Sahei, which leaves his immense fortune to Tamayo, the granddaughter of a family friend, on the condition she marries one of his three grandsons. And if they all die, she will be free to choose whoever she wants to marry. Because this story is now set in the seventies however, an interesting conundrum is created: in the book, the oldest grandson, Sukekiyo, went missing during World War II and the will can't be read until he is found. When he is eventually found, it turns out Sukekiyo was greatly wounded in his face, forcing him to wear a mask (which creates doubts about his true identity). Because this story is set so long after World War II, Tsunoda created a completely different reason for Sukekiyo to be disappear and have his face damaged, and it's a pretty brilliant take: Tsunoda creates a completely new backstory for the Inugami clan, that ties them to Inugami (dog spirit) cults: it is said that the Inugami clan controls dog spirits, which allowed them to amass a fortune, but sometimes, this backfires and one of them becomes possessed by a dog spirit. The only way to get a dog spirit out of the possessed is by driving it away by fire, even if it means killing the possessed person... and that's what happened to Sukekiyo: he was thought to have been posssessed, and while torturing the poor guy, the building caught fire, leading to his disappearance. The way this gives meaning to the Inugami name, and adds a creepy cult backstory using occult powers really makes this feel like a Tsunoda manga and it strangely really fits in this story. Most of the story unfolds similar to the original novel, though the climax is much more... thrilling and it actually makes Tamayo a very powerful character in this manga.

But things really become crazy in Tsunoda's adaptation of Akuma no Temariuta. Yes, Kindaichi still goes to remote Onikoube Village and he's still involved in investigating an old murder case where a swindler err... swindled a good deal of the villlage nearly two decades ago, but this time, the murders aren't committed according to a centuries-old song that one sings while playing a ball, no, this time the murders are based... on the lyrics of a kind of metal band of three women who perform topless. Yep, the titular "Devil's Ball Song" is their hit song, and the three singers actually all hail from Onikoube Village. But while they're back visiting their village, they get killed one after another, following the lyrics of their hit song... This is a very original take on the story: the original novel is about family feuds in small isolated villages, a single singer who managed to escape the village and make a huge career and people being killed after the lyrics of a song long forgotten, but here we have the three potential victims all being fairly friendly to each other, as they form a band together (and I have to repeat: they perform topless and I have no idea why). And yet... the major plot points of the book remain the same: like in the book, there was a swindler in the village many years ago, but here, the swindler was a person in the entertainment (singing) industry, tying back to the band. The three girls may not be presented as members of the "prominent" families of the village, they have created their own importance by being a nationwide popular band. Tsunoda is really good at keeping the actual mystery parts completely intact, even if he changes the looks and feel of the story a lot: in this case the imagery of the band, with creepy dolls and stuff, really suits his occult-horror style. The lyrics of the song are completely original by the way, and they lead to even creepier deaths in the manga than in the book.

Anyway, this was a brief look in manga that took very different approaches to adapting the source material. Personally, I don't think Ellery Queen no Bouken is really worth the trouble reading, unless you are 1) simply interested in all things Queen related and/or 2) interested in seeing a rather attractive Ellery in sometimes funny scenes like kabe-donning his old man. The Tsunoda Jirou adaptations of the Yokomizo Seishi novels on the other hand transform so much about the original work, while keeping the core mystery plots intact, I do feel they are worth a read: they are truly adaptations of those novels, by Tsunoda Jirou, and nobody else could've adapted them in this manner. He really managed to rewrite the stories in a way that respected the original novel, while also playing on his own strengths, resulting in very unique adaptations.

Original Japanese title(s): JET『エラリークイーンの冒険』, つのだじろう『犬神家の一族』,『悪魔の手毬歌』