The Bear Detectives

Look for the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife

"The Bare Necessities" (Phil Harris, Bruce Reitherman) 

While I am not in direct contact with current members of the Kyoto University Mystery Club, as a former member I do still follow their social media. Personally speaking, my favorite activity at the club were the sessions with whodunnit/guess-the-culprit scenarios: these were short mystery stories written by club members which were clearly divided in a "problem" and "solution" part. The idea is that everyone is first handed the problem part, which traditionally ends with a Challenge to the Reader. The participants get about 45~60 minutes to read the story and (logically!) figure out who the culprit is of the story. If you think you know whodunnit, you can discuss that with the author and they'll tell you whether you got it right or wrong, and after the initial session is over, the author hands out the solution parts to everyone. In a way, the stories do tend to be a bit formulaistic in form, often following Queen-style deduction methods to prove who the culprit is (the culprit knew fact X. Y is proven to not have known fact X, therefore they can't be the killer), but it's exactly the type of mystery story I love, and it was great seeing different members using this form to tell different tales. And while these stories remain "private" for the club generally, I still liked seeing the KUMC social media account briefly tweeting about once in a while about how they did this or that story this week, and how it was received at the session.

Because of that, I still remember how last year, the KUMC account posted how one of their members had written a Danganronpa fanfic as a whodunnit scenario. As someone who enjoys the quirky mystery game series, I was of course intrigued by this concept, as at least in the year I was at the KUMC, people always opted for "original" settings (i.e. not based on existing IPs). But as with most of these stories, I assumed I'd never get a chance to ever read it as I wasn't an active member anymore, and you generally only get to read the story the time it's read at a club session. However, a few weeks ago, I learned the author, Kunou Junki, had actually self-published their fanfic late 2023, selling it at doujin markets. Which was cool, but again, I wasn't really in the position to visit those doujin fairs to pick the booklet up. It was apparently received pretty well though, and Atsukawa Tatsumi even mentioned the story in his ongoing column on mystery fiction, praising it as a whodunnit scenario and as a Danganronpa fanfic. But then.... a few days ago, Kunou announced they were finally selling the fanfic via Booth. So I finally got to read it.

Danganronpa FF - Ame no Kigou, Soshite Happy Birthday ("Danganronpa FF - Rain Code, and Happy Birthday", 2023) is set at the aptly Doujin Academy, where a group of students, each being extremely skilled in a very specific field, are held captured by Monokuma, a cute-looking, but horrifyingly sadistic robotic bear who has set up a game of death among the students. If a student kills a fellow student, a class trial will be held, in which the participants must decide (vote) on a culprit. If the students manage to identify the real culprit, the latter will receive "punishment" (be executed) and the game will continue (more of these rounds) until there are two survivors left, who are free to go. However, if the real culprit manages to elude suspicion at the trial, they are the one will be released, and all the rest of the students will receive "punishment". Monokuma has been feeding the fears and desires of the captured students, making some of them desperate enough to want to kill their fellow students in an attempt to escape Doujin Academy, but fortunately, up until now, the remaining students have been able to correctly identify the real culprit each time, allowing the rest to survive while the real culprits have been executed. At the start of Danganronpa FF, about half of the initial group of students is already dead, either having become a murder victim, or having been executed as a murderer.

The story is told from the POV of Yomikura Suzu, the Ultimate Narrator, who has been acting as a kind of Watson to Aizawa Seishun, the Ultimate Detective, who has been the MVP in the class trials until now: not only has he been solving most of the murders, he is also trying to figure out a way to escape from Monokuma's prison. After the latest execution, Aizawa hopes to set a plan in motion that will allow them to go against Monokuma, and he decides to rope in Yomikura as his accomplice. While the gymnasium is closed off during the night (22:00 - 08:00), all other rooms in the school are accessible, and Aizawa has found out the dressing rooms in the corner of the lecture hall, in front of the passage to the gymnasium, do have cameras, but no microphones, and are also completely soundproofed, so he spends the whole night discussing his plans with Yomikura there, assured Monokuma can't overhear them. When they leave the dressing room the following morning however, they are shocked to find two murdered bodies lying in the lecture hall and that they have been penetrated with a spear. There's also a bloody trail leading from the gymnasium, through the passage, to the lecture hall. A new game of life and death begins, as the remaining students need to figure out who the killer is, or else they themselves will be executed.

Save for the occasional pastiche, I generally don't read fanfics, so I have no real idea of what the standard is, but I sure found Danganronpa FF to be a very effective one. It starts already with the great cover art and the next page introduces you to the various school rules of Doujin Academy, which will be a familiar sight to those who have played the original Danganronpa games: there are the general rules that explain under what conditions a student can escape the school, but also rules about the night time, about ownership of student notebooks and even about how many people a killer may kill (as in: you can't just kill everyone and win the game in that way.). Most of the rules are exactly the same as the games, so it really feels like this is a story set in that world, even if we're now at Doujin Academy. While the characters are original, the characters have concepts that would seem to fit perfectly in the Danganronpa world, from the Ultimate Narrator, to characters like The Ultimate Twin, the Ultimate Ninja and the Ultimate Mountaineer. This story is set after half of the cast has already been wiped out, so it's a bit of a shame some characters are only mentioned briefly by name only, and I'd love to have seen more of them (I wonder of Kunou is planning more stories/"chapters" set in this world?). However, I do have to say that for the most part, you don't really need much prior knowledge of Danganronpa to enjoy this story as a tale of mystery: the essentials are explained adequately (especially with the rule book at the start of the booklet) and ultimately, the mystery really revolves around these specific murders, committed at this specific point in the ongoing story, so no knowledge is necessary about what happened before, or what happens later or about Danganronpa in a meta way. In Danganronpa terms: this is a specific chapter, with its own case.

As a pure whodunnit mystery, I have to say I was surprised how dense this was. It's been a while since I did a 'real run' of a whodunnit scenario, so I'll be the first to admit my deductive senses aren't what they used to be, but Danganronpa FF seems about a full step more complex than the usual KUMC whodunnit scenario, making it unlikely anyone could have gotten all the points within the usual session time (though perhaps they held a longer session than usual). So yeah, this is a really deep whodunnit story following the Queen format, where you can logically deduce who the killer is by identifying criteria the killer must answer to, and then figuring out who of the suspects answers to all of those criteria. Some of these criteria are relatively easy to notice, allowing you to cross off some names early, but others are really cleverly done, and I am the first to admit that I wasn't even close to the answer model provided by the detective at the end. There are quite a few (very devilish!) twists and turns in the long deduction process (which is why I think it would have been difficult for someone to solve all of the story during a normal club session), but for Ellery Queen logic-lovers, this is really great stuff  and I love a lot of the logical processes shown in this story (the initial step alone of the long elimination process is already really good!). What is even more commendable is how cleverly Kunou makes use of the Danganronpa setting. A lot of the things pulled off here in terms of logic only make sense in a Danganronpa-inspired world, with the school rules and Monokuma antics and stuff like that. So I really agree with Atsukawa here about Danganronpa FF is satisfying as both a mystery story, and a Danganronpa fanfic.

The third act of Danganronpa FF wasn't originally part of the scenario presented at the KUMC, as after the initial murder problem and the subsequent solution part, we are treated to what is basically an in-depth essay on the Danganronpa games as mystery games. If you have played the games (or you don't care for spoilers at all), there are some interesting points made (ha, I hadn't expected Kunou to quote Morooka's academic work on shin honkaku mystery and games!), but it is certainly a part that 'takes you out of the story', so your mileage on this closing part may vary. This part has no direct influence on the logical parts of the mystery, so you could choose to ignore it if you wish to do so.

At any rate, I did really enjoy Danganronpa FF - Ame no Kigou, Soshite Happy Birthday, as both a really well-plotted whodunnit scenario as well as a mystery story written with a lot of love for the Danganronpa franchise. Danganronpa FF was apparently also a reason why Kunou was asked to pen an original whodunnit story for the Mystery Carnival event of publisher Seikaisha held last week. I haven't read that story, but I do hope I get to read more of Kunou in the story, as what I have read here really makes me curious to what more they can come up with. Hopefully, we'll see more of them in the future!

Original Japanese title(s):　久納淳生 『ダンガンロンパFF　雨の記号、そしてハッピィバースデイ』

Beautiful Ruin

「所詮始まりの終わりは終わりの始まりなどではなく、どうしたところで始まりの終わりでしかない。その後に終わりが始まるかどうかは、結局は終わってみないことには分からないのだ。」

『サイコロジカル 兎吊木垓輔の戯言殺し』

"After all, the end of the beginning is not the beginning of the end. Ultimately it's nothing more but the end of the beginning. Whether the end will begin afterwards, is just something we won't know until the end begins.'

"Psycho Logical - The Killing Joke of Utsurugi Gaisuke"

Ha, I knew the cover for this volume would connect to the previous one!

Sixteen-year-old Samidare Yui and thirteen-year-old Kirigiri Kyouko may appear to be normal students of a Girls Missionary Academy at first sight, but they are also both officially registered detectives who have solved many crimes. A curious murder case at the Sirius Observatory first brought these two girls together and in the few months that have passed since, the two have become best of friends. But the two are also united in their fight against the Crime Victim Salvation Committee, a secret organization that sells perfect murder plans and the means to commit them to crime victims, their family and/or loved ones looking for revenge. However, while the Committee draws up these intricate murder schemes, they will also invite a detective on the scene who will attempt to solve the murder and catch the culprit. This game of wits where the Committee arranges for both a criminal and a detective to be present and forearmed is dubbed the Duel Noir and this clash is broadcast to the Committee's financial sponsors as a form of entertainment. The last few months, Yui and Kirigiri have managed to inflict heavy blows to the organization and their sickening games by defeating the executive members of the organization and with that, the Crime Victim Salvation Committee is near destruction.

Kirigiri receives one final Duel Noir challenge: in the next 168 hours, a locked room murder will occur in the Sirius Observatory, where her battle against Crime Victim Salvation Committee started. Kirigiri and Yui travel back to the cold, snowy place there they first met, but they find they are not the only visitors. Three other "0" Class detectives (the highest class) are also present. The three detectives are all after the immense fortune managed by the Committee, as they have received information that the Crime Victim Salvation Committee is about to fall and that the Committee's financial resources are hidden within the Sirius Observatory. Kirigiri and Yui notice the Sirius Observatory has undergone quite some renovation since their last visit, one of the changes being a special door that only opens if five different persons register their biometric data in the system. The five enter the renewed Sirius Observatory, which is shaped like a five-pointed star, with five triangle-shaped rooms surrounding a main hall. The five detectives learn they have to chain themselves to each other in order to start the system inside the observatory: each chain is twenty meters long and connects to the right hand of a person at one end, and to the left hand of another person at the other end. Everyone is thus connected to the person next to them, and the chains themselves are also connected to the doors of the guest rooms in the building, meaning everyone is chained tight to the building itself too. Putting the chains on reveals a two-meter-wide pillar of ice is standing right in the middle of the main hall, holding a little black box in the centre: presumably the box will hold both the key to unlock these chains and the whereabouts to the Committee's fortune. The other three detectives are desperate to get their hands on the box, but the pillar of ice forms a formidable obstacle, as there are no tools to be found inside the observatory, and most of the furniture either burns badly, or is bolted down to the floor.

Little is achieved the first day and when the night falls, the five detectives learn that they all have to sleep in seperate rooms, which are all locked automatically until the morning. Not complying with these rules results in the detonation of a bomb, so they have little choice. The following morning, the doors are unlocked again, but they find one of them has been murdered in their room during their sleep! But how is this possible? All the guest rooms were locked automatically, there were no footprints in the frost on the floor of the main hall, the windows were locked from the inside, there were no footprints in the snow outside and the twenty-meter-long chains on each person's arm only allow little freedom of movement outside the observatory itself, so none of them could've sneaked out through the windows anyway. Chained to each other and with little food and water left for the following days, Kirigiri and Yui have to work fast to identify the murderer and escape this icy observatory in Kitayama Takekuni's highly anticipated Danganronpa Kirigiri 7 (2020).

For this volume is the long-awaited finale to the spin-off prequel series of the videogame series Danganronpa. The references to the main series are fairly lite by the way and knowledge of the games is not really necessary to read this novel series which focuses on the past of the popular character Kirigiri Kyouko. Kitayama Takekuni started in 2013 with this series, but the release schedule was rather irregular: sometimes we had two volumes within a year, sometimes nothing in over two years, so you never knew when the series would continue. He finally managed to finish this series now, on the tenth anniversary of the Danganronpa franchise, and I'm happy he did, because I do like the series, but the long wait between certain volumes was really frustrating.

This volume makes it clear right away that this is really the grand finale to the series: the story goes full circle by returning to the place where the series first started, we go more in-depth in the past of the novel-exclusive character Yui which was mostly alluded to in the first volume and even the core mystery plot feels like a grand finale, as it cleverly incorporates elements from previous stories. Five detectives locked and tied up in the Sirius Observatory, every detective being given a stash of cash money and the existence of rules governing their movements during the night, other elements originating from the obstacles faced during the trial of the Twelve Locked Room Temples (volumes 3, 4 and 5): nothing is spoiled from these earlier volumes, but the faithful reader will definitely notice the little references here and there to the whole Danganronpa Kirigiri series, with certain ideas and concepts from earlier murder plots making a reappearance, making this specific case really feel like the end point of the story. It's an interesting way to a finale in a mystery series: thinking about it, I don't think I have ever read a final story in a detective series that so cleverly incorporated elements mystery plots from earlier stories in a meaningful manner: Kitayama obviously isn't doing these references just because he's out of ideas and rehashing old material, he's intentionally making you recall earlier events and tricks to give you the "grand finale feeling," but also to play tricks on the reader, daring them to guess how he'll cook those ingredients this time to fool them.

The mystery plot itself is the kind we've come to expect from Kitayama: we have all these grand gimmicks like all the people being changed to each other and carefully thought-out settings that limit the movement/possible actions of all the actors in the tale (the dimensions of the observatory and the available furniture) and of course there's the Kitayama Special: the very silly, but highly entertaining locked room murder that depends on some mechanical trick that involves the layout of the setting. Interesting is how it uses the Sirius Observatory from the first volume in such a different manner: while the building is slightly renovated, it's still the same basic place, so I wonder whether Kitayama had already planned to use this place as the finale and knew he'd use this spot for two different stories, or that he came up with the trick for this novel at a later stage. For the idea is really fanciful and almost cartoony, but I really love the impossible locked room murder in this story, as it's just the type of ridiculousness I want from my mystery fiction and it fits perfect with the location. One thing I always like about Kitayama's locked room murders is how you often the trick can always be explained visually. Most of the books I've read of him, including this series, feature a lot of diagrams, and often there's that one diagram that explains all the magic in just one simple figure, even if the concept and execution is fairly complex. The same here, where all the little things and hints suddenly fall in their right place the moment you see the corresponding diagram. The idea also works wonderful with all the side-elements Kitayama introduces for this story and it even allows for some really nice deduction scenes that are less about "somehow guessing how that ridiculous trick was done", but more about layered logical reasoning based on the evidence we see before us and the logical implications of the actions taken by the characters. This volume and volume 2 were the longest volumes in this series, and they were also by far the best parts of this series.

This volume even finds room to add in false solutions and actually tell a genuine story, which some of the previous volumes really struggled with: volumes 3 until 5 especially were far too short and often felt like lengthy summaries of a mystery tale, rather than actual stories that could stand on their own. It didn't help that they were also written in a way that certain cases weren't solved within the same volume, but would carry over to the next one, but even if you'd ignore that, it can't be denied that most of the locked room murders we see during the Trial of the Twelve Locked Room Temples lacked depth because it had to handle a lot of locked room murder cases within limited page numbers, while something with the length of Danganronpa Kirigiri 7 really shows what this series could have done. Danganronpa Kirigiri 7 takes the time it needs to properly end its tale of how Kirigiri and Yui bonded over the course of this series and to set things up for the events of the first Danganronpa videogame. Oh, and for Kirigiri fans: ever wanted to know the backstory of why Kirigiri wears gloves? It's here!

Danganronpa Kirigiri has been a series that did not always live up to its potential. While the core impossible murder plots were always interesting, the hasty middle part lacked depth, making the series feel more like a work-in-progress at times. Danganronpa Kirigiri 7 however brings the series back to form in its long-awaited finale, and it was worth it! A great conclusion with much-appreciated references to past events/murder plots and a genuinely well-built up ending to the tale of the besties Yui and Kirigiri. At one hand, I'm happy this series has ended now, especially in this form, but I have to admit I'm sad we won't see the duo of Yui and Kirigiri anymore, as the whole franchise has moved on already, and it's unlikely we'll ever even hear references to Yui, as she's a character exclusive to this novel series and Kirigiri's story in the other media (games/anime) is now over. Danganronpa Kirigiri might not always do what you want it to do, but in the end, I'm glad I decided to read this series, and that's not even said only as a Danganronpa fan.

Original Japanese title(s): 北山猛邦　『ダンガンロンパ　霧切り７』

Dimensional Sniper

おれの武器はコルトパイソン357マグナム

撃ち抜けないのは美女のハートだけさ

「Chance」（神谷明）

My weapon is a Colt Python 357 Magnum.

The only thing I can't shoot, is the heart of a beautiful woman.

"Chance" (Kamiya Akira)

The cover art of this volume is SOOOO going to form one complete illustration with the cover for the next volume.

In the previous volume in Kitayama Takekuni's Danganronpa Kirigiri series, the young detective Kirigiri Kyouko and Samidare Yui managed to give a painful blow to the Crime Victim Salvation Committee, an organization which sells perfect crime schemes to people who want to exact revenge on others, but which also invites private detectives on the scene to see if they can solve these perfect crimes. In Danganronpa Kirigiri 6 (2018) however, Kirigri and Yui aren't trying to solve these Duels Noir directly themselves anymore, as they have been challenged by Johnny Earp. Earp is not only one of the three best detectives alive, bearing the highly coveted "triple zero" qualification, he's also a secret agent of the Crime Victim Salvation Committee, specialized in 'cleaning up' people. He's also quite amused by Kirigiri and Yui, and challenges them to a series of sniper duels held during the Duel Noir. Kirigiri and Yui are given a sniper rifle, and some basic information regarding an upcoming Duel Noir, indicating the location, the kind of murder scheme ("a locked room murder", "mistaken identity" etc.) the client bought from the Committee and other information. Kirigiri and Yui not only have to deduce what the exact murder plan is based on this grocery list, they only have three bullets to stop this murder from happening, for example by shooting the culprit, or by sniping some of the tools they might need. Earp on the other hand is on the "defense" team, and will use his sniper rifle to prevent Kirigiri and Yui's attempt at stopping this Duel Noir in progress. As Earp is a master in all firearms who boasts an Olympic Games-level skill in sniping, Kirigiri and Yui have no chance of winning in a straight shoot-out, and they have to outwit the triple zero detective, obstructing the Duel Noir from a distance without being spotted by Earp.

Danganronpa Kirigiri 6 is still part of the same spin-off novel series of the videogame series Danganronpa as before (knowledge of the games is not necessary to read this series), but whereas the previous novels focused on author Kitayama Takekuni's specialty (mechanical locked room murder mysteries), this sixth volume brings something completely new to the table. The earlier novels had Kirigiri and Yui trying to solve locked room mysteries based on a grocery list of murder weapons, murder tricks and other items while investigating on scene, while this time, the duo can't even come close to the scene (due to Earp's sniping skills), and they have to deduce 1) how the murder is going to be committed and 2) somehow stop this murder scheme using the sniper rifle and 3) not getting spotted by Earp in the meantime. It's a very different dynamic, and it results in different types of locked room mysteries compared to those we've seen before. This time they are simpler, but they only serve as the background drop for the sniper duels, and the mystery lies in how Kirigiri and Yui are going to stop the murders with their shots. The mystery is thus two-fold: the underlying locked room mystery, and the 'meta' mystery of how Kirigiri and Yui are going to invade, and stop that plan.

To be honest, the concept is much better than the execution. The prologue offers an interesting, but ultimately very simple example of how the sniper duel could go: while the locked room mystery presented there is very rudimentary, Kirigiri and Yui show their wit in stopping the murder from happening by destroying a vital element of the murder scheme, while keeping out of Earp's sniping range. This first part shows a lot of potential, especially if the following sections would be about more complex murder schemes, which would not only be more difficult to predict, but also with more occassions for Kirigiri and Yui to interfere with their rifle.

The rest of the book however is quickly filled with short, disappointing intermezzo and the final sniper duel which runs according to very different rules than the first sniper duel. There's an interesting impossible murder there, where Kirigiri and Yui, while under fire, have to solve the mystery of someone being shot right in the face inside the mirror house of an empty entertainment park, even though no other people besides the victim were inside the mirror house, and the shot doesn't seem like it could've come from anywhere. The solution is a bit hard to swallow though, as the murder method is rather impractical and it doesn't seem like it could be pulled off in one go, which in turn would've left much more evidence. But the true disappointment is that by this time, the sniper duel with Earp has more-or-less been abandoned, and the potential shown in the prologue isn't even touched upon. There's another subplot that is properly clued, but it's not as good as it could've been, considering what the prologue showed.

Danganronpa Kirigiri 6 manages to change gears significantly compared to the previous books, but it doesn't make any good use of the amazing potential it does offer. What could've been an amazing double-layered mystery with battle-of-wits-and-sniper-rifles being played against a backdrop of locked room mysteries, turns out in the end to be a collection of random moments and ideas that never really come together. The series does seem to be heading towards the ending though, which the cover also seems to suggests. I'll be reading this series to the end, but I have to admit that on the whole, Danganronpa Kirigiri seemed to have peaked way too early (volume 2 was fantastic) and since then, its potential has always been much more than the actual, final product.

Original Japanese title(s): 北山猛邦　『ダンガンロンパ　霧切り６』

The Temple of Lost Souls

nobody knows, only I know it 

(you're already know, already over) 

everybody loves despair 

さあ　Recall from THE END

「Recall THE END」（TRUSTRICK）

nobody knows, only I know it 

(you're already know, already over)

everybody loves despair 

Come, recall from THE END

 "Recall THE END" (TRUSTRICK)

It's been a while since I last read a volume in this series!

Samidare Yui and Kirigiri Kyouko are not only both students at the same Girls Missionary Academy, they are also the only students there to be officially registered detectives. At the start of the Danganronpa Kirigiri series, Yui and Kirigiri learned about the Crime Victim Salvation Committee, a sinister group which organizes the Duel Noir, the ultimate battle of the wits between criminals and detectives. The Committee sells perfect crimes to those who want to take revenge, and supplies murder schemes, the objects and location needed and even a completely new identity for after they're done. However, the Committee at the same time will also invite a detective on the scene, who has either prevent the murders, or identify the murderer within a week. Yui and Kirigiri are determined to stop the Committee, which of course has noticed the presence of these two. In Kitayama Takekuni's Danganronpa Kirigiri 5 (2017), Yui and Kirigiri are still caught up in the trial of the Twelve Locked Room Temples: if they manage to solve all twelve locked room murder mysteries within a week, the second-in-command of the Committee agrees to step down. Yui, Kirigiri and some new allies managed to solve nine of them in the previous two volumes, leaving the final three for this volume. Can they conquer the trial of the Twelve Locked Room Temples?

Danganronpa Kirigiri is a spin-off novel series of the videogame series Danganronpa, focusing on the past of the character Kirigiri Kyouko, but the connections to the main series are so light one can easily read this series on its own, without any knowledge of the games. The novels are written by Kitayama Takekuni, an author who specializes in mechanical locked room murder mysteries and err... not a very fast writer, it seems, as Danganronpa Kirigiri is released really slowly, with one, two year gaps between the books even though they're so short. Kitayama was also consultant on the mystery plots for 2017's New Danganronpa V3, but still.... Usually, a slow release schedule isn't really a problem, but Danganronpa Kirigiri is an exception, as from volume 3 on, the seperate volumes couldn't be read independently anymore. By which I don't mean that some story plot points carry over to the next volume: in Danganronpa Kirigiri, you'll stop right in the middle in a scene, which is only continued in the next volume. For example: Danganronpa Kirigiri volume 4 from late 2015 gave us the introducing scenes of a murder and an impossible disappearance in the Libra Girls Academy, but then the story cut away, and only continued in the subject of today's review, which was released in 2017! Volumes 1 and 2 can be read more-or-less independently, though you do want to read them in order, but volumes 3, 4 and 5 really need to be read together in one go.

Anyway, Danganronpa Kirigiri 5 is the end of the The Twelve Locked Room Temples story arc, and presents the reader with three impossible crimes. The murder in the Bar Goodbye is by far the least interesting. One of Yui and Kirigiri's allies is sent to check out the bar, which is situated in a dark back alley of a dilapidated and abandoned entertainment district. The detective has brought the real estate agent along to gain access to the closed bar, but the agent is suddenly called by someone who's obviously quite confused: the man on the phone says he just woke up in a place he doesn't know, that he's tied to a chair and that the only things he could reach was a cell phone, which was set to call the real estate agent. The only clue to his whereabouts is a matchbook, which says Bar Goodbye. The detective and the real estate agent realize the man must be inside the bar. They knock on the door and confirm over the phone they're at the right place, but when they enter the bar, they find the man stabbed in the back, even though he was still alive and talking to them just seconds before. While there's a door in the back, the murderer couldn't possibly have stabbed the man and gone out through the back door in the few seconds they were off the phone to open the door, so how was this crime committed? The solution is slightly better than a needle-and-thread trick, but only barely. It's very basic, especially compared to the far more complex impossible crimes we've seen in this series, though to be honest, this impossible crime was more like a bonus, as its main goal is to help the main plot develop in other ways.

Yet another of Kirigiri and Yui's allies was sent to a local university's Museum of European Middle-Age Torture Instruments, with the announcement that the murder would be committed with an Iron Maiden. But when the detective arrives at the scene, she learns that the only death that happened recently was that of a professor who had died in a fire in a small shack on the museum's grounds, a fire presumably caused by smoking in bed. The detective does find an Iron Maiden however, placed in the outer garden of the museum overlooking the shack, and for some reason it's decapitated.... This murder (yes, it turns out to be murder of course) is much better than the previous one. While a bit obvious once you see the floorplans of the whole story, the method of killing is quite original, but suitably clewed. The neat thing about the Danganronpa Kirigiri series is that the detectives always receive a 'grocery list' in advance of what the murderer will use: they'll for example know what the murder weapon is, and whether an alibi trick will be used, or an impossible disappearance etc. But writer Kitayama still manages to present the reader with surprises despite spoiling these elements in advance. This story is a good example of playing with expectations through the grocery lists to come up with a relatively small-scale, but still perfectly fine impossible crime.

The final locked room mystery in this novel is the murder in the Libra Girls Academy, which started in the previous volume. Yui wakes up to find herself trapped inside a chapel, next to a dead body. She also spots the murderer, who runs out of the room. Yui chases after the culprit, but the figure disappears behind a door. When Yui opens the door, she finds a small room with no other exits and two coffins in the middle. Inside the coffins, she finds two girl students who are tied up very tightly, so they can't be the murderer either. But where did the murderer then disappear to? This impossible disappearance is quite clever, though perhap a bit easy to guess if you know Kitayama's reputation for constructing technical, and mechanical locked room murders. That said, this is by far the best impossible situation of the book, which is also very neatly clewed through surprisingly diverse clues, from one that's been staring you in the eyes from the beginning, to small happenings that don't really catch your attention when they are mentioned, but that take on a very different meaning once you know how the trick was done. However, there was absolutely no reason why this story had to be split up across two volumes: at first I thought Kitayama was planning something neat with the split-up, but in the end, having the first few scenes in volume 4 was only to have people read on in volume 5.

What the three mysteries all have in common by the way is how very, very bare-bones they are in terms of plot. The focus lies completely on the howdunnit, and the culprit is almost always just an afterthought (and likely the one single new character to appear in the story). This can be explained because of the main story of course (where the emphasis lies on solving the impossible crimes), and that Kitayama needs to cram in a lot of mysteries in a limited amount of pages, but one can't deny that at times, these mysteries feel more like drafts or basic set-ups, which would usually be developed into full stories later on. So they can feel quite empty save for the core impossible situation. This volume tries to do a bit more with the whodunnit angle, and more-or-less succeeds with that, but still, don't expect a full-fledged novel experience from this.

The story arc of The Twelve Locked Room Temples ends in volume 5, but immediately sets up a completely kind of challenge for Kirigiri and Yui as they continue their fight with the Crime Victim Salvation Committee. In general, the trial of The Twelve Locked Room Temples that started in volume 3 is much better in concept than in execution, as it resulted in impossible situations that were, on the whole, okay to quite good, but also incredibly bare-boned, with little more but those locked room murders (which could've been dressed up more for more impact) and at times, you'd even forget about the characters. Danganronpa Kirigiri 5 is similar to the previous volume a minimalistic volume with some good ideas that, with a few pages more, could've been a more substantial experience. The review of the next volume will probably follow soon, and by the looks of it, volume 6 might be the penultimate volume of the series, so things might move forward there!

Original Japanese title(s): 北山猛邦　『ダンガンロンパ　霧切５』

Middle Point Symphony

「聖闘士には同じ技は2度通用しない」 

『聖闘士星矢』 

"The same technique won't work twice on a Saint." 

"Saint Seiya"

I love the cover of this book. Too bad it never gets as awesome as on the cover. I'd have loved to see a more prominent team-approach to the current storyline.

The Crime Victim Salvation Committee is the organization behind the Duel Noir: a match of wits held between murderers bent on revenge and detectives that can't let crime go unpunished. The Committee sells perfect crime schemes to would-be murderers, but it also invites detectives to the crime scene daring them to solve said perfect crimes. Young detectives Yui and Kirigiri have been tracking down the Committee and one of the most important figures in the organization decided to have a wager with the duo. He presents the two ladies with The Twelve Locked Room Temples, a challenge consisting of twelve locked room murders which they have to solve within one week. If they can either prevent, or at least solve all murders and apprehend the culprits, he promises to leave the Committee, which would severely weaken the organization. Picking up from the previous volume, Kitayama Takekuni's Danganronpa Kirigiri 4 (2015) has the two detectives gathering a team of comrade detectives as they fight against the clock to take down the remaining Locked Room Temples.

It's the fourth volume in this spin-off series of the Danganronpa series focusing on the past of character Kirigiri Kyouko as she starts out as a professional detective. Connections to the main story as told in the games are fairly light, and unlike spin-off novel Danganronpa/Zero, I think this series can be read quite easily without any prior knowledge of the series. The Danganronpa Kirigiri novels are penned by Kitayama Takekuni, whom we know on this blog as a writer who specializes in highly mechanical locked room murder mysteries. The things he uses may not be Rube Goldberg contraptions, but you'll definitely find gadgets, gimmicks, and more stuff in his locked room mysteries, and this characteristic of his work remains even though he's now working on an existing IP.

If you have read my review of Danganronpa Kirigiri 3, you might remember my biggest complaint about it: It was an incomplete story. While there were also some plotlines left open in the first two volumes, they were without a doubt seperate stories that could stand on their own. The third volume introduced the challenge of the Twelve Locked Room Temples, but only one of those twelve locked rooms was solved in that volume (plus five off-screen by a third party). The volume didn't satisfy at all, as it had a great concept, but then stopped just as things were getting interesting. The third volume was in fact nothing more than a prologue, even though it certainly wasn't sold as one. Danganronpa Kirigiri 4 picks up right away from the third volume, with Kirigiri and Yui first recruiting a band of allies, among which they divide the remaining six Locked Room Temples. Do not even try to read this volume without reading Volume 3, as this volume explains absolutely nothing and dives straight into the action.

The previous volume was very shallow, as it only featured one locked room mystery. This time, we have three of them, presented through parallel storytelling. Well, actually it's two and a half. For while the case of the disappearing murderer at the Libra Girl's Academy sure looks interesting, it's not actually solved in this volume. This might a more common practice with serialized comics, with storylines spanning several volumes, but this is rather ridiculous for a normal novel, even if it's a series. I mean, the previous volume only had one locked room mystery, but at least it was solved and filed away within that volume. But to be presented only the first half of a story, and to have to wait for the next volume for the solution? That's just cheap and annoying. At the time I'm writing this review, it's been over a year since Danganronpa Kirigiri 4 has been released, and there is still not even a release date scheduled for the next volume, which (hopefully) includes the conclusion to this murder mystery (EDIT: the fifth volume has been announced and released in the period between me writing this review and actually posting it).

The remaining two (mostly) complete locked room mysteries in this volume are luckily fairly entertaining, if a bit short. One of Kirigiri and Yui's allies is sent to an abandoned school, which has been cut off from the world through a landslide. Inside the gymnasium, he finds a girl stabbed in her chest, her body placed inside a circle of candles. He also finds four students, who explain they're from their school's Mystery Club. They had been challenged by the Black Magic Club to come here, but when they arrived here (before the landslide), they stumbled upon the deceased victim, a fellow member of the Mystery Club. The detective soon deduces that it's quite possible that one of the Mystery Club members present might've committed the murder, but all four of them have perfect alibis as they were all together making their way to the abandoned school at the time of the murder.

The clueing in this story is surprisingly well done. It uses a piece of knowledge now commonly known through all those forensic science-oriented mystery shows in a very original way and the particular way in which this murder was committed was something I had never seen before. The one problem this story had, and which also holds for the other story, is that it's presented in a very concise way. While the locked room murder trick is original, the narrative allows for very little space to actually contemplate on it. More pages would've allowed for more depth in the story and the characters. Now it feels more shallow than it should be. I wouldn't call this a bad story, but there was much more potential in this.

The last murder case handled in this volume is set at the Twin Abilities Development Research Facility. Kirigiri arrives too late at this laboratory where they research the psychic and physical bonds between twins, for when she arrived at the scene, two researchers on watch had been knocked out and the two test subjects, twin brothers, were already murdered. It is a mystery how the murders were committed though. The brothers were being held in different wings of the building, and the corridors in both wings were both locked at two points each. The special locks used can only be opened by the fingerprint of the researcher registered on the lock, so you'd need the fingerprints of all four researchers to open all the locks to both wings to kill both victims. Or was the bond between the two brothers so strong that killing one automatically led to the death of the other?

In comparison to the previous locked room mysteries, I'd say that this one is not really as impressive as the ones we've seen earlier in this series (or even this volume), though I think I can forgive it because of the themes it's playing with. I can't talk about it in detail as it'd give the game away, but I can definitely understand where Kitayama was going for with this locked room trick, and while I think he does not pull it off just as well as planned, I think it's more than a good effort and an original way to play with reader's expectations. Is it really fair? Perhaps not, though I think that's also partly because of the earlier mentioned problem of the storylines included in this volume being rather short. More space would definitely have helped the premise of this story a lot.

In the end, Danganronpa Kirigiri 4 has the same problems as the previous volume, though less severely. Once again, it's an incomplete story. While we do have two fairly entertaining locked room mysteries included in this volume, we also have one murder mystery storyline which is literally abandoned midway. As this is sold as a standalone volume (for a premium price), I can't say I'm really pleased with that, especially as the following volume took over a year to be released. Danganronpa Kirigiri 4 is literally just a part somewhere in the middle of a longer storyline, with no proper introduction nor conclusion. As for now, the Twelve Locked Room Temple storyline is entertaining as a concept (even if the individual Locked Room Temple storylines are a bit hasty), but the presentation is awful, as it spans several volumes leaving the reader with bits and pieces that don't make any sense outside the larger context. I might become very enthusiastic about the whole thing once it's done and ready so I can look at the complete storyline, but as a consumer, I think the manner in which this storyline is presented to the reader is awful, and that it hurts the otherwise interesting premise. Volume 5 was released in March of this year, more than a year after the release of this volume, so I hope that volume will bring some closure.

Original Japanese title(s): 北山猛邦　『ダンガンロンパ　霧切り４』

Unfinished Crime

「聖闘士には同じ技は2度通用しない」

『聖闘士星矢』

"The same technique won't work twice on a Saint."

"Saint Seiya"

A logical school mystery story based on Saint Seiya would be awesome. "No, you couldn't have killed him. You already once used all your techniques on him, and we all know the same technique doesn't work twice on a Saint: ergo you had no techniques with which you could kill him!"

In the previous two novels of Danganronpa Kirigiri, the young detectives Yui and Kirigiri learned about the Crime Victim Salvation Committee: an organization which hosts the Duel Noir, a game of detective vs murderer. The Committee provides a would-be murderer with means, methods (murder plans) and opportunity to exact their revenge, while also inviting a detective on the scene. If the detective manages to prove who the murderer is within seven days, the detective wins, and otherwise, the murderer gets away with murder. But now the Committee has set its eyes on the two detectives who have been doing surprisingly well in the Duel Noir. Yui is challenged directly by one of the top dogs of the Committee, who works as a 'producer' of murder plans for the Committee. She is given the trial of the Twelve Locked Room Temples: she has seven days to solve twelve locked room murders which are about to start. Even with the help of Kirigiri, this seems like an impossible task, so their first task is to locate the legendary detective Mikagami Rei, who might be of help to them. In a world whether neither ally, nor enemy are precisely what they seem, can Kirigiri and Yui overcome the challenge of the Twelve Temples in Kitayama Takekuni's Danganronpa Kirigiri 3 (2014)?

The third book in this spin-off series of the Danganronpa franchise, focusing on Kirigiri Kyouko in the early years of her career as a detective. Links between this series and the main Danganronpa series are fairly light, so it's quite possible to read this series on its own. You do need to read the books in order though. In fact, that is the biggest problem with Danganronpa Kirigiri 3. People used to reading comics or manga are probably familiar with the practice of storylines taking place over several volumes/issues. Longer-running manga in particular often have storylines being spread across several volumes. There is a fixed number of pages for each volume, so often, you'll find you're still in the middle of a story when a volume of Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo ends: the next chapters are included in the next volume. This is a common phenomenon with ongoing comic series. You don't really see this practice with novels: sure, pocket releases of novels are often split up on two or more volumes in Japan, but that is splitting up one complete story in parts (not an ongoing story), mainly profit for maximization and convenience (bulky pockets are hard to read).

Danganronpa Kirigiri 3 however is obviously just an introduction for a bigger story. The idea of Kirigiri and Yui having to solve twelve locked room mysteries within seven days sounds like a cool set-up for a short story collection about impossible crimes, right? The thing is, it takes more than half the length of this book to even get to the starting line of this challenge. Whereas the previous two books threw you right into an interesting closed circle, impossible crime story, this book takes plenty of time to get you all excited about a trial of twelve locked room mysteries to be solved, and then it has just enough pages left for one (1!) of those murders. To be continued in the next volume. It makes this volume feel extremely empty, because there is basically only one short mystery story here, and the rest is just set-up for something that isn't even resolved in this volume, and I'm not even sure it'll be resolved in the next volume. Sure, there's some other things going on too, mostly revolving around the identity of Mikagami Rei, whom Kirigiri and Yui need to find to even stand a chance to win the challenge, but it's fairly light material. Again, a story split over multiple volumes is a very common practice for ongoing comics, not so for novels. As it is now, it's a very unbalanced book on its own, as there's just too little.

Oh, by the way, the Twelve Locked Room Temples, that is indeed a reference to the anime/manga classic Saint Seiya, where the best known story arc, the Sanctuary Arc, is about our band of heroes who have to pass through Twelve Temples and defeat the twelve guardian Gold Saints there within twelve hours. So Danganronpa Kirigiri 3 feels like the story ends after they passed by the Aries or Taurus Temple.

The one impossible crime they do solve in this volume is good though, even if the pace's a bit hasty because of the fewer page count reserved for the story, compared to the previous two volumes. The murder reminds of Yokomizo Seishi's classic Honjin Satsujin Jiken, with a man being stabbed with a sword in a locked room of the annex of a traditional Japanese manor. In fact, it is obviously inspired by that story, but Kitayama wouldn't Kitayama if he didn't come up with a genius murder trick for this story. It's ridiculous, in the good sense of the word, and I myself thought it was highly original too, as I had never seen something similar before. There's a reason why Kitayama is feared for his rather mechanical impossible crime plots, and this is an outstanding example of the things he comes up with. It's not all perfect though, as the way Kirigiri deduces who the murderer was, was rather weak, which both Kirigiri and the author seem to acknowledge, as the actual 'proof' comes from the old 'make them slip up' ending that is seldom satisfying.

To be honest, I hesitated about writing the review for this particular volume. It is obviously only part of one single story. It is uneven, because I'm missing a very large chunk of the bigger picture. But then I think: 'But this book is being sold as a standalone book. And the previous two volumes were also part of an ongoing storyline, but also managed to be perfectly fine standalone books.' So I think potential readers should be made aware that this is an incomplete story. Danganronpa Kirigiri 3 does not work on its own.

There is little more I have to comment on Danganronpa Kirigiri 3. It has a great concept, it has a decent short impossible crime, but it is also incomplete. Despite the price of the book, you're getting maybe the first half of a story. And that's not really nice. I see a lot of potential to do something fantastic with the Twelve Locked Room Temples gimmick, but I guess we'll need to read the next volume to see if it really works out.

Original Japanese title(s):  北山猛邦　『ダンガンロンパ　霧切り３』

Hotel Dusk

「いや、人は疑うべきだよ。多くの人は誤解しているけれど、人を疑うことは、つまりその人間を知ろうとする行為なんだ」

『Liar Game』

"No, you should be doubtful of people. Most people get this wrong, but to have doubts about someone, means you're trying to get to know that person."

"Liar Game"

Despite its popularity, I have to admit I never played Mafia.

Following the events in the first novel of the Danganronpa Kirigiri series, Kirigiri and Yui continue their hunt for the Crime Victim Salvation Committee, a secret organization that provides revenge murder plans and the means to commit them to crime victims. They discover that the Committee considers this all to be a game: they provide the murderer with means, but they also invite a detective to the crime scene. The whole confrontation between murderer and detective is a form of entertainment for the Committee's sponsors: a battle of wits for survival. If the murderer wins, they get their revenge and are offered a new life, if the detective wins, the murderer will have a rather large debt to pay back to the Committee.

A new lead brings Kirigiri and Yui to Norman's Hotel, which was abandoned after a guest went on a killing spree. Inside the decrepit hotel, the two young detectives find out that more people have been lured to the hotel with the promise of a special auction. All ten people, including Kirigiri and Yui, are however trapped inside the hotel, and are forced to participate in a variant of the well-known Mafia/Werewolves game. Each participant is given money and the instructions to be inside their room each night when the auto-lock switches on. However, each night, once the auto-lock is activated, the Murderer will start with their rounds, holding a master key. The only person who can stop the Murderer is the Detective. Each evening, "Detective Rights" are auctioned. The winner is given the title Detective and immunity that round (can't be killed by the Murderer), and also receives a master key, with which they can free the others from their rooms. The first night, efforts are made to save everybody from their rooms as quickly as possible, but despite precautions a murder still happened, inside a locked room, with the only exit being observed by a witness! Can Kirigiri and Yui solve this impossible murder and catch the Committee in Kitayama Takekuni's Danganronpa - Kirigiri 2 (2013)?

This is the second novel in the Kirigiri spin-off series of the Danganronpa video game series, focusing on the early years of Kirigiri Kyouko's career as a detective. As I mentioned in the review of the previous book, each book features its own seperate case(s), but the books do form one big narrative together, so it assumes you have read the previous book (which explained how Kirigiri and Yui became friends and how they first learned about the Crime Victim Salvation Committee). This book focuses on the Detective Auction storyline. Knowledge of the main Danganronpa series is not neccesary at all.

The murders organized by the Crime Victim Salvation Committee have an inherent game-like quality to them. The murders are meant to be shown to the sponsors as a form of amusement, so the battle of wits between murderer and detective is always fair, and has clear rules. The murderer is given the advantage with all the murder plans and means, but the detective (who is chosen by the Committee without their knowledge) for example is given seven days (168 hours) to solve the case once they have opened the notification letter and they can not be killed by the murderer under any circumstances (the detective can also just ignore the notification). What is even more interesting is that the detective is actually sent a list with everything the murderer got from the committee, from the type of murder plan purchased to other objects provided. The list is shown at the start of the story, so you are told right away there'll be a locked room murder, and that it's set in a hotel, and this and that will be used. The thing is: there's no context. The detective (and the reader) will have to figure out themselves how all those elements will be used in the murder plan. This is an extremely original and daring way to start a detective story, basically giving you the grocery list already, but not telling you whether the cook will be making a pie or a stew.

In the Detective Auction, this game-like element is emphasized, because the murder plan is executed through an actual game, with its own set of rules (that go on top of the rules of the Comittee). Buying "Detective Rights" in an auction, outsmarting the others, etcetera: it's all very reminiscent of a series like Liar Game, and that is not a bad thing at all. In fact, Danganronpa - Kirigiri 2 remains very exciting throughout, as the cast not only tries to solve the murder(s), they must also figure out a way to win the auction in order to secure the Detective Rights (if the winner of the Detective Rights doesn't want to save the others, the others are screwed). Like always with these kinds of stories, the crux lies at a very close reading of the rules and being just a bit more clever than the rest. Great, engaging stuff going on here.

The impossible murders (yes, multiple of them) in this novel are always fairly clever (even if they are basically the same trick repeated).  Like I mentioned earlier, the story already tells you what sort of murder you can expect, and what will play a part in those plots, but it is still up to the protagonists, and the reader, to figure out how everything fits together. While I have a few questions about the logistics of this murder plot (you'd need to do a lot in little time), it is, fundamentally, a great impossible murder plot, with proper hinting (both through the 'grocery list', and through 'normal' hints in the story). What makes this plot especially impressive is that it is intricately connected to the above mentioned "Detective Auction". The synergy between these two sides is amazing, and really a good example of having all things in a story work together.

This book is almost twice the length of the previous book (despite being only slightly more expensive), and while the first book kinda felt like an extended short story, Danganronpa - Kirigiri 2 was truly a novel-length experience. The books definitely aren't cheap though, compared to other (Japanese) soft-cover releases, but this one is a lot more cost-effective than the previous book.

Danganronpa - Kirigiri 2 was a great mystery novel overall, that manages to flesh out the elements introduced in the first book in unexpected, but very welcome ways. The fusion it offers between 'game' and 'murder mystery' is excellent and I can only hope the next book will be at least as good as this one. The only 'but' I have is that it is part of a series, and while knowledge of the bigger Danganronpa series is not necessary, it's probably better to start with the first book of the Dangannronpa - Kirigiri novels.

Original Japanese title(s): 北山猛邦　『ダンガンロンパ　霧切り２』

New Classmate of the Dead

「自分を信じるな！俺を信じろ！お前を信じる俺を信じろ！！」

 「グレンラガン」

"Don't believe in yourself! Believe in me! Believe in me who believes in you!!"

"Gurren Lagann"

I just realized this third entry in the Danganronpa series took ages to release. For people playing the English releases, the wait has not been that long, but for people who play the original Japanese releases, it's been a wait of almost 5 years since the last game...

Sixteen high school students awake to find themselves inside an abandoned school building. They have no recollection of how where they are, how they got there, why they're there, or even of each other. The only thing they remember that each of them is considered to be the "Ultimate" of their respective fields of interests, resulting in a diverse group consisting of people like the Ultimate Cosplayer, the Ultimate Inventor and the Ultimate Detective. Outside, they see that a gigantic dome surrounds the school ground, making it impossible for anyone to make their way to the outside world. A group of cute-looking, but highly dangerous robotic bears led by the black-and-white Monokuma explains to the group of sixteen that they are students at the Gifted Prisoners Academy and that the only way to escape from the school is to murder someone, and get away with it. A class trial is held after each murder, where the surviving students have to debate about the identity of the murderer. If the final majority vote on the identity of the murderer turns out to be correct, the murderer will be executed and the game goes on, but if the murderer manages to fool the rest of the students and lead them to a false conclusion, all the other students will be executed while the murderer will be granted freedom. While at first, none of the students show any intention of participating in such a mad game, it doesn't take long for Monokuma's hints about the outside world and the lost memories of the group to break their will and then the first murder occurs... Can the students of the Gifted Prisoners Academy survive these deadly class trials and find out why there are held captive in the PlayStation 4 / PlayStation Vita game New Danganronpa V3 - Minna no Koroshiai Shingakki (New Danganronpa V3 - A New Semester of Mutual Killings for All, 2017)?

New Danganronpa V3 is the third installment in the Danganronpa series developed by Spike-Chunsoft. The psychodelic presentation and the script filled with pop culture references of the original Danganronpa (2010) gave the quirky courtroom mystery game about a group of sixteen Ultimate high school students of Hope's Peak Academy forced to kill each other a unique vibe and it became a surprisingly big hit. Danganronpa was followed by Super Danganronpa 2 in 2012, where a new group of sixteen students were forced to participate in the mutal killing game, while the fictional universe was explored in spin-off games and novel series like Danganronpa/Zero and Danganronpa Kirigiri. The 2016 TV series Danganronpa 3 formed the end of the storyline that started with the first game.

The 2017 videogame New Danganronpa V3 on the other hand is, as the title suggests, a new start for the series, moving away from the previous storylines and introducing us to a brand new cast and setting. It's actually something only a game series can pull off, now I think about it. Even with a new cast and setting, the player will without a doubt recognize V3 as part of Danganronpa series, because the framework is still the same: it's still a mystery game, the game mechanics are mostly the same as previous games, the art and writing style is the same and there's even plenty of reused music. Only the contents (story) is different. It is nonetheless a different game, even it is also clearly Danganronpa. It's something you can't do effectively with a book for example, as there is no true iconic 'framework' in which to present a novel (save for book design/cover, but that can only convey the 'series' feeling in a limited manner, in my opinion).

Anyway, New Danganronpa V3 is supposed to be a sort of soft 'reset' of the Danganronpa franchise, but at the core nothing has changed. Once again the player is presented with a closed circle situation with sixteen students, with them having to solve the murders they commit among themselves in a courtroom setting, whilst also trying to figure out why they are being held captured at the school by Monokuma. Between the murders, you'll wander around the school (in a 3D map) to solve some simple puzzles, but also spend quite some time nurturing friendships with your fellow students. And yes, it really sucks when a student you befriended is killed in the next chapter, or turns out to be the murderer, though that is what makes Danganronpa what it is: you never know who might turn out to be the murderer, and the person who is always cheering you up might actually also be busy planning an elaborate murder plan to escape from the school. This closed circle atmosphere, where you never know who might get killed and who might kill, is something you can't really find in other (passive) mediums like novels and one of the things that make Danganronpa such an unique experience.

As always, the plot can be roughly split in two: the overall story, about why the sixteen students are being held at the Gifted Prisoners Academy, and the seperate murders that happen among the students (in essence a connected short story collection). The individual cases in New Danganronpa V3 were quite enjoyable. As always, they're all impossible crimes (usually a locked room mystery). While in terms of difficulty, I'd say they're just slightly more complex than the (too simple) ones from the first game, the murder plots in V3 were more innovative and original, and therefore fun, even if it was often easy to deduce what had happened even before the class trials started. Apparently mystery writer Kitayama Takekuni (who also writes the Danganronpa Kirigiri spinoff novels) cooperated on the mystery plots for this game. Kitayama is known as a master of impossible situations with a physical trick behind them and you and you can definitely sense his hand in some of the cases. Some of the cases also make fantastic use of the rules and tropes of Danganronpa's unique fictional universe and even the videogame medium itself. These murder cases are really only possible in this game and nowhere else, and thus offer some truly unique ideas. The fourth episode for example features an original setting for a murder plot, somewhat reminiscent of Komori Kentarou's Lowell-jou no Misshitsu. The seperate cases here show that a mystery plot does not need to be utterly complex to be amusing and rewarding. The overall storyline though has, as always, its share of problems. The overall idea behind the SURPRISE (it's never really a surprise) finale is okay (in a Kyomu he no Kumotsu manner), but the execution is longwinded, boring and simultaneously too ambitious and lazy. It's quite a disappointment in comparison with the smaller cases. The parts of V3 are better than the whole.

 

As always, the mystery solving gameplay is inspired by the Ace Attorney games, and has the player mainly pointing out contradictions in the utterances of fellow students with the help of evidence and testimony found during the class trial debates (though unlike the Ace Attorney games, there is an action-element involved in Danganronpa, where you need to act quick and have precise control). By pointing out contradictions, you come to new insights, which drives the plot and class trials forward. New in V3 is the ability to lie: occasionally the debate comes to a standstill, but you can lie to force a breakthrough in the debate. It's used only used sparingly though (but adds some replay value as there are some alternative debate routes you can explore through lying). There are also some other minigame-esque segments that also come in play during these mystery-solving debates, but to be honest: they were horrible. Most of them were 'reimagined' versions of game mechanics of the earlier two games, but for some reason all of them have made a turn for the worse. Seriously. I finished V3 and I still don't get how that one rhythm game works, even though I had no problems with its variations in the previous two games.

New Danganronpa V3 is a surprisingly difficult game to explain. At times, it feels like nothing but a somewhat uninspired remake of the first game, and with some game mechanics changed for the worse and (once again) a somewhat chaotic ending, it's easy to look at V3 as a very large step backwards compared to Super Danganronpa 2 or even the original game. Yet if you look at the seperate cases and the things they do there, I have to say I really enjoyed those cases. V3 really has some of the most interesting cases of the whole franchise (from a mystery-plot point of view). So yeah, I'm quite torn by this game. Perfect, it is certainly not and on the whole, it isn't a step forward for the series either. But there are some brilliant moments in here that do make this game worth the time if you're a fan of the series. The game will be released for English markets later in 2017 with the title Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony.

Original Japanese title(s): 『ニューダンガンロンパV3』

The Gentle Rain From Heaven

ペガサス幻想（ファンタジー）　そうさ夢だけは

 誰も奪えない心の翼だから

「ペガサス幻想」（Make-Up)

Pegasus Fantasy /  Yes, Dreams are

The only wings of the heart nobody can steal from you

"Pegasus Fantasy" (Make-Up) 

Today: a series I've been wanted to read for ages, because of the combination of this particular series with the writer. And yes, I know New Danganronpa V3 is out, but I need to find the time to play it and stuff.

Samidare Yui is a sixteen year old girl and student of a Girls Missionary Academy. According to the rules, any student must register with the school in case they want to have a part-time job. Yui is the first student in the long history of the school to have applied to become a detective. Specializing in kidnapping cases, she has slowly been raising her Detective Shelf Classification score. Every professional detective is registered in the Detective Library, which issues a DSC to all detectives. A DSC score shows exactly what the field of specialty is of any detective, as well as their mastery of their field. The most coveted DSC score is 000, indicating mastery of all fields. One day, Yui is invited to a mysterious gathering at the Sirius Observatory, together with four other detectives. One of them is Kirigiri Kyouko, a young girl who has recently transfered to the same school as Yui and who has only just begun her career as a professional detective. At the Sirius Observatory, the five detectives find out they have been lured into a trap, and everyone is knocked out. When Yui wakes up, she finds out that three of the detectives have been murdered, with their bodies cut up in many pieces and mixed around. Because Kirigiri is the only other person alive inside the observatory (and everything is locked from the inside), Yui naturally suspects her, but are things really so simple in Kitayama Takekuni's Danganronpa Kirigiri 1 (2013)?

Danganronpa Kirigiri is a spin-off and prequel series to the Danganronpa game series. The original games tell the story of a group of students of the Hope Peak's Academy being forced to kill each other in a closed circle setting, but in a way so the others don't know who the murderer was. The sadistic killing games were coupled with exciting courtroom segments (the murderer would be released if not detected, but executed if found out) and a very generous dash of psycho-pop presentation, which made the games an unexpected hit. The storyline that started with the first game finally ended last year, with the TV series Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak Academy. Danganronpa Kirigiri is a book series set several years before the events of the first game (and before the prequel novel Danganronpa Zero) and focuses on Kirigiri Kyouko, one of the characters who first appeared in the very first game. But like in the games, Kirigiri remains a mysterious character, as she is always seen from the POV of another person (in this case, Yui's POV).

The writer of this particular book series is Kitayama Takekuni by the way, who specializes in physical gadgets and tricks in his books. You might remember him from some older reviews on this blog (Alice Jou Satsujin Jiken is probably the most interesting one) and I was actually quite pleasantly surprised by that. While I do like them, I never really got used to the science-fiction/fantasy-like worlds in his books. But with Danganronpa, I already know the world from the games and other materials, so I never got bothered by that while I was reading Danganronpa - Kirigiri 1. But I think this book is also quite accesible for people who don't know Danganronpa yet, because it is set so long before the main events of the games start. This is very different from Danganronpa Zero, which you really could only read if you had played the games.

As a mystery story, The Sirius Observatory Murder Case, is a pretty decent impossible murder mystery. The story basically starts with the discovery of three cut-up bodies, and it then uses a flashback to explain the events that led up to it. The way the bodies were cut up kinda reminds of The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, but rest assured, this is a very different type of mystery. The solution behind the triple murder inside the locked observatory is clever: it fits the setting, more than enough hints are dangled in front of the reader, and yet it is one that might be overseen very easily. We as the reader have the advantage over Yui, because we know that we can rule Kirigiri out as a suspect because she is a returning character from the Danganronpa franchise, but it's still an exciting closed circle murder mystery.

However, the story does feel a bit short. It's more like a lengthy short story, than a real novel. The book is about 200 pages long, but because of all the dialogue lines (= lots of white on the page), it's actually not that long in terms of character count. For the price (and it goes for a premium price!), Danganronpa - Kirigiri 1 feels a bit lacking in terms of content.

The book is set-up to be a series by the way. In the prologue, the reader learns that a organization called the Crime Victim Salvation Committee is behind everything, offering vengeful people the means to execute their revenge. Over the course of the series, Kirigiri and Yui will learn more about this Committee. The book ends with a "To Be Continued" but each book does feature its own independent storyline, though they do end with a set-up for the next volume.

Overall, I think Danganronpa - Kirigiri 1 is an amusing mystery novel. It's not strongly connected to the main Danganronpa series, but that works for this novel series and it is a very decently constructed mystery, as expected from a writer like Kitayama. It's just a bit short. Of the books I've read by Kitayama however, it's definitely the most accessible, and I look forward to reading the rest of this series.

Original Japanese title(s): 北山猛邦　『ダンガンロンパ　霧切り１』