The Clues Challenge

1 

 

Hey, you can hear me, right? Yeah, I know, it's weird, me calling out to you even though we can't see each other. But I know you're there, so listen to me. I need your help. I am supposed to research a book called Zarathustra no Tsubasa, but I have no idea what it is or what it exactly is I am supposed to research. I'm just not good with this thinking stuff. So I thought, perhaps I should get some advice from someone who's better at that. Yep, it's you I am talking about. So perhaps you could tell me what do do?

 

To help ⇒ Go to 2.

To not help ⇒ Go to 6.

 

2

 

Great, we're a team now, the two of us! Should we come up with a team name? No? Oh, okay, well, you might change your mind later on. Anyway, we're going to investigate this Zarathustra no Tsubasa or whatever it is called. But don't worry, I haven't come completely empty-handed. For example, did you know Zarahustra no Tsubasa is Japanese? It means The Zarathustra's Wings. What? You ask me whether I know Japanese? Well, to be honest, the English title The Zarathustra's Wings is just one I noticed on the cover of the book, as it has both a Japanese and English title. I also found out that the book was written in 1986 by Okajima Futari and that it is apparently a gamebook. What should we do first?

 

Look up the author of the book ⇒ Go to 3.

Look up what a game book is ⇒ Go to 4.

 

3

 

Oh, right, Okajima Futari. I've heard of him. Or to be exact: them. It was the pen name of Inoue Izumi and Tokuyama Junichi, who were active between 1981 and 1989. I think they also wrote Klein no Tsubo and Soshite Tobira ga Tozasareta. Apparently, this is the only gamebook they ever wrote, though Klein no Tsubo does begin with a man writing a gamebook, which is then going to be changed into a virtual reality game. Guess the theme of a gamebook must've remained interesting to them, as Klein no Tsubo was released almost ten years after The Zarathustra's Wings. But that's all we need to know about Okajima Futari for now, right? What next?

 

Add (W) to your inventory. 

Look up what a game book is ⇒ Go to 4.

Look up what The Zarathustra's Wings is about ⇒ Go to 5.

 

4

 

So I looked around on the internet, and I think a gamebook is a type of fiction where the reader participates in the story themselves by making choices, which changes the outcome of a story. They're also known as a Choose-Your-Own-Adventures.The choices you make as you progress in a story, for example by choosing to go either left or right in a maze, will lead to different narrative branches, all with varying outcomes. Some gamebooks also have more complex systems built-in, like an inventory mechanic or a story flag system which allows the game to check whether you have done certain segments already or not. Gamebooks were especially popular in Japan in the 1980s, ranging from both original gamebooks to gamebooks based on for example films like Laputa Castle in the Sky and Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind.  You even have gamebooks based on Famicom (NES) video games, like the ones based on Famicom Detective Club Part 1 and Part 2. So The Zarathustra's Wings is one of these books, huh? And there are of course (board) games like Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective which are design-wise very close to a gamebook.

 

Add (F) to your inventory. 

Look up the author of the book ⇒ Go to 3.

Look up what The Zarathustra's Wings is about ⇒ Go to 5.

5

 

Oh, that's funny. The Zarathustra's Wings is about this detective, he's not really bright, so he needs help when it comes to the mental stuff. So he starts taking advice from some person we can't see, telling him to do this or do that... sounds familiar? Yeah, he also talks to that person directly sometimes. Anyway, the detective is hired to investigate the murder on Kashima Eizaburou, the wealthy businessman who was found dead in his study three months ago. He had recently obtained a jewel called the Zarathustra's Wings and shown it off to some house guests, but the following morning, he was found murdered in his study, and the Zarathustra's Wings were missing! What's more, the study was locked, and the key found on the desk inside the study, so this means it was a locked room murder! This detective is hired by the son-in-law to find out who the murderer is and to find the missing Zarathustra's Wings. Sounds like an interesting adventure! Should we read it?

 

Inventory check.

Do you have (X) in your inventory?   ⇒ Go to 8.

If you want to read the book  ⇒ Go to 7.

6

 

The murderer suddenly appears behind you, plunging a knife into your back. If only... we had made a different choice, I might've been able to save you...  

 

BAD END.

 

7

 

Wow, that took a bit more time than we had expected, didn't it? For the most part, it does what you'd expect of a gamebook, allowing you to choose who to interview or where to go. By using a special story flag checklist, the book also makes sure to know what pieces of information you have obtained (or not), which will become important later on. A common problem with gamebooks also seen in The Zarathustra's Wings is of course that each section of a gamebook is fairly short, so it reads quite differently from a novel: a lot of the story feels quite shallow and too much to-the-point and all the characters kinda feel the same. But at least the book makes you feel like a detective. Kinda. The book is basically divided in two parts, the first part being more focused on the murder investigation, and the second part on the search for the missing jewel. In the first half, you will be interviewing the suspects, see what you can learn from them and explore the study where the murder happened and the other rooms of the house. While the murder took place in a locked study, the trick used to accomplish this is very, very basic and the tricky part of the gamebook is basically activating all the story flags necessary to "solve" the murder: you might have a very good idea of what happened, but if you happened to miss a section and not have activated Story Flag A for example, you might fail in the "accuse segment" anyway because you didn't discover all the evidence. Perhaps this would have felt more satisfying if the trick itself had been more complex, but because the trick is so simple it almost feel like nitpicking... And in general, the necessity of "activating story flags" (= proving you obtained certain pieces of information) is a style that works very well with Ellery Queen-esque "elimination" deduction styles (where you cross off suspects of a list), but not so much as with a locked room... The second part of the book is focused on learning the whereabouts of the Zarathustra's Wings and a certain coded message is a vital key to learning its location. The code itself is in hindsight pretty simple, but there aren't really good hints beforehand, and you can't advance in the book without breaking this code: you only learn which section to go next if you decipher the coded message. When The Zarathustra's Wings was originally released in 1986 (before Internet!), apparently a lot of people got stuck there so when the book was re-released as a pocket in 1990, they added a segment with sealed pages at the end, with a hint (basically the answer) to solve the code, out of fear of people getting stuck there again. But what did you think of this second part? I wasn't a big fan of it myself, because it was so focused on the code, and if you had missed certain story flags in the first half of the book, you'd be punished here severely.

 

Inventory check.

Do you have (F) and (W) in your inventory?   ⇒ Go to 9.

If not  ⇒ Go to 6.

 

8

 

It is impossible to have (X) in your inventory. You cheat! I didn't know I was working with a cheater! Forget it, I'm outta here!

BAD END.

 

9

 

Guess we're done now. We've looked into Okajima Futari's gamebook Zarathustra no Tsubasa or The Zarathustra's Wings. I guess it's more interesting as a concept, as there aren't that many mystery gamebooks, and certainly not by mystery novelists. But the mystery itself in the book isn't super exciting: if this had not been a gamebook, but a normal mystery novel, the locked room murder trick would be very disappointing and one could also argue that a locked room murder on its own doesn't work very well with the way the gamebook handles story flags, and that a pure whodunnit would've been better perhaps. The code too is a major part of the story that might not be really what people were looking for when they opened this book wanting to play a murder mystery gamebook. So Zarathustra no Tsubasa is only worth looking into if you are specifically interested in trying a murder mystery gamebook, as there simply aren't many, but don't expect a hidden gem here. Anyway, that's it for our team-up for now. Perhaps we'll meet again, but until then, stay safe and don't make any wrong life choices.

 

The End

Original Japanese title(s): 岡嶋二人『ツァラトゥストラの翼』

A Race Against Time

"That belongs in a museum."

"Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"

The first time I ever heard of the Klein bottle was through developers' comments of the Ace Attorney game series actually, where the village of Kurain (Klein) was named after it.

The Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book Uesugi had written for a publishing contest had exceeded the page limit, so Brain Syndrome was disqualified, but to his great surprise, he was contacted by a game company called Epsilon Project, which wanted to purchase the rights to make video game out of his gamebook. Uesugi is thrilled and immediately signs the contract, but months fly by without any real contact from Epsilon. When they finally do contact Uesugi however, he's in for a surprise. Epsilon Project's adaptation of Brain Syndrome wasn't "just" a game: it would be real revolution in game technology. Using unexplored virtual reality technology in the form of the machine K2, the player is submerged in a tank while playing the game, where both audiovisual and full-body feedback give the player the feeling they're really fully immersed in the game world. Uesugi is asked to test-play the game adaptation of Brain Syndrome, together with the part-timer Risa, and both not only find the virtual world of K2 amazing, they also slowly grow closer to each other. But one day, Risa suddenly disappears after a day of work, and then Uesugi slowly starts to harbor doubts about Epsilon Project, as in hindsight, it's a bit strange that he and Risa are driven in a blinded van every day to the secret location of K2 all just to test a videogame, not to mention the other over-the-top security measures taken. Uesugi decides to look for Risa, but the answers he finds are not the ones he had expected in Okajima Futari's Klein no Tsubo ("The Klein Bottle",1989).

Okajma Futari was the pen name of the duo Inoue Izumi and Tokuyama Junichi, who were active between 1981 and 1989. Last year, I reviewed Soshite Tobira ga Tozasareta, which I didn't like particularly, but they still had a few interesting titles in their bibliography I wanted to read. Klein no Tsubo was the last novel published under the Okajima Futari name, as they officially disbanded after the release of this novel, and most of the book was actually written by the Inoue half.

The historical lens is something you also often use when reading fiction, as ideas, tropes and customs all change with time, and what might be a brilliant concept at the original of release, might literally be old-fashioned in another time. The same with the mystery genre of course, where many ideas seen in the Father Brown stories seem rather unoriginal nowadays, but that's because everyone in the century after their release has been borrowing ideas from them. Concepts that were groundbreaking at one time are very likely to be commonplace some decades later. And that is definitely the case with Klein no Tsubo.

In 1989, I am sure that virtual reality and related fields were still quite original and not deeply explored yet in mystery fiction. But nowadays, even the smartphone in your pocket is capable to do some form of VR. Haptic feedback, super-realistic AI and words created in a digital realm: it's not uncommon anymore in this world. Movies about virtual worlds that seem realistic to the protagonists have been quite common since the 1990s, and especially since the 2000s we've seen countless of movies and series about people finding themselves in super-realistic virtual game worlds that seem almost real.

Reading Klein no Tsubo in 2019 (okay, I read this novel in 2018. It's only the review which is published in 2019) sadly enough offers far too few surprises. As a mystery thriller, it does absolutely nothing you haven't seen before if you have been around and consumed popular culture the last two, three decades. Mind you, Klein no Tsubo does nothing wrong at all and can be an entertaining read (don't expect a puzzle plot mystery though), but the times have already gone far beyond everything done or discussed in this novel. Some of the plot twists in Klein no Tsubo might genuinely have been shocking and creepy in 1989: but by now even something like a Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons will have not only used those same ideas, but gone beyond that. Nothing Klein no Tsubo as a thriller does, can possibly be a real surprise to someone now.

I think thematically,  Klein no Tsubo is a strong novel, and to repeat myself, it's a perfectly fine thriller that is competently written, but this is an example where you can really feel how time, and Zeitgeist, has made this novel not only outdated, but perhaps even obsolete, as the things the novel accomplishes, have become part of the bare basics of what a modern reader would expect from this specific theme, so you're left with a feeling of "Oh, was that everything? That wasn't just the set-up?".

Original Japanese title(s):  岡嶋二人 『クラインの壷』

Locked Doors

あの夢この夢　君にみえるかな

青い花を咲かすノヴァーリスのトビラを

明日が生まれるのは僕ら次第だって

世界がつながるよ 

「君の思い描いた夢 集メル HEAVEN」（Garnet Crow）

Can you see it in all of your dreams /

The Door of Novalis where the blue flower blooms

It is up to us to create tomorrow

Our worlds are connected

"The MÄR HEAVEN Where We Collect Your Dreams" (Garnet Crow)

There are quite some Japanese mystery stories with titles based on And Then There Were None, now I think about it. More than in English, I even suspect.

Two men and two women wake up to find themselves locked inside a nuclear bomb shelter. The last thing each of them remember is having tea with the mother of their friend Sakiko, who died three months ago in a car accident. Sakiko had invited her two friends, and their boyfriends for a triple date to the holiday villa of Sakiko's family (one of the boyfriends couldn't make it, so they ended up with five people). A big row between the friends resulted in Sakiko leaving the villa in her car, which was later found beneath a cliff. Sakiko's body was only retrieved from the sea much later, and the police deemed it an unfortunate car accident. It appears however Sakiko's mother disagrees with the police, as one can guess from the fact that she has taken her daughter's four friends prisoner as well as the message "You Killed Her" painted on the walls. The four friends think Sakiko's mother has gone out of her mind and try to escape the shelter, but as they talk about Sakiko's death, they realize that their assumptions about her demise might be horribly wrong in Okajima Futari's Soshite Tobira ga Tozasareta ("And Then The Door Was Closed", 1987).

Okajima Futari is the pen-name of a writing duo consisting of Inoue Izumi and Tokuyama Junichi, who wrote mystery novels together between 1981 and 1989 until they disbanded again. The name is derived from okashina futari, or "Two curious people". I had never read any of Okajima's novels before, though the few novels published have been received quite well by the Japanese mystery community and even experimented a bit with the genre, as they also wrote a mystery gamebook in 1986. Soshite Tobira ga Tozasareta is one of their later works.

In theory, I should've liked this novel a lot more than I actually do. The closed circle setting, where a group of people (among them the culprit) is isolated from the outside world is a a classic trope of mystery fiction, and for a good reason. The core mystery plot is combined with suspense elements as we know the murderer is among the group, and that any of them might fall victim without a chance to escape from their predicament. Many of the books I discuss here (especially Japanese ones, now I think about it) use this setting. Soshite Tobira ga Tozasareta at first seems to go the traditional way by locking everybody up in a bomb shelter, but this time, the characters are forced to think about a case that happened in the past, with no direct danger threatening the group. The setting is a highly original one (strangely enough, it's not the first time I've seen it in mystery fiction), and as time passes by, you can really feel how tense the atmosphere must be inside the small rooms, with the pressure building as each of the characters starts to doubt the others.

As the story is set inside the shelter from start to finish, the four characters are forced to rely on their memories of the day Sakiko died, occassionally helped by some "useful" objects they find inside the shelter that are also connected to the case. The book is thus completely built around the discussions the four characters have, and the deductions and recollections they have as they put their minds together. Ocassionally something mentioned by one person will help the memory of someone else, or one character remembers seeing the other acting awfully suspicious, etcetera. As the story progresses, what appeared to be an accident will take on the form of murder, and while I wouldn't say the plot is bad, it's also not especially engaging or exciting. The four recall things, talk a bit, fight a bit, and repeat. The revelations made are never shocking. In fact, it takes ages for the story to really move (it's probably only around the halfway point when you get enough material to deduce yourself), and everything up to that point is more filling in blanks in the tale, as each of the characters look back at the day of the accident. As for the truth that is revealed in the latter half of the book, it's a bit predictable.

What I myself really did not like however were the four characters, and especially the protagonist. While not in equal measures, I'd say each of them are in fact horribly selfish and selfishly horrible people and none of this would've happened if any of them had acted in a more decent way towards each other. None of them even needed to be good people, they just needed to be more thoughtful of each other to avoid all of this! The story has a rather melodramatic streak to it, with love triangles and more, but it kinda falls flat with this cast, as each time you learn more about the group, you realize how being just ever so slightly more considerate to the others would've resulted in well, an outcome without any death at all, and at least more persons with some happiness. Note also that these four are the only characters who appear in person in the book (other people only appear in flashbacks), and the whole story is driven by the conversations between the four, you may imagine how each page made it even more difficult for me to continue with this cast of characters.

So my first experience with Okajima Futari was not a particularly good one. Soshite Tobira ga Tozasareta has an original setting, but a mediocre plot, and horrible characters who are also sadly the focal element of the story, as everything is built around their conversations and interactions. I understand that the whole book is plotted around the fact that these four characters are being held prisoner, but I think I would've enjoyed the plot better without this plot device, without me having to deal with these characters all the time. Being locked up with them from start to finish can really drive a reader insane.

Original Japanese title(s): 岡嶋二人　『そして扉が閉ざされた』