When the Cicada Calls

あなたは今どこで何をしていますか？

この空の続く場所にいますか？

「You」（雪野五月）

Where are you right now? What are you doing now?

Are you somewhere beneath the far-reaching sky?

"You" (Yukino Satsuki)

About the title of this post: isn't it insane that there's a Scooby-Doo show with a Higurashi: When They Cry-inspired episode?

The last two months, the posts on this blog have included short updates on my progress through 07th Expansion's long mystery suspense visual novel Higurashi no Naku Koro ni ("When the Cicades Cry"), released in English as Higurashi: When They Cry. If you've been into anime and manga these last twenty years, it's very likely you have at least heard of this monster hit. Higurashi: When They Cry originally started as a 8-volume doujin (self-published) PC game, with the first chapter released in 2002 and the concluding chapter in 2006. Since then it has grown into a behemoth of a multimedia franchise, with several manga and anime adaptations (the most recent one was broadcast last year!), drama series, live-action films, pachinko machines, everything. It's been a part of Japanese pop culture especially after the first anime adaptations in 2006-2007. As it was a very big mystery-themed franchise, you'd think I would have gotten started on this a lot earlier, but I always found myself an excuse not to: while the anime was easily available since back in the days, I tend to prefer the original work if possible, but I don't really like to play novel games on my PC either, especially not if it meant having to read 8 chapters each about 8-12 hours long. The games have out in English on PC for a long time now by the way, so I think a lot of the readers here do already know Higurashi, either in game form or for example via the anime. Anyway, I kinda missed out on it in the second half of the 2000s, and then for a long time, I eyed the DS version, but that was kinda expensive because it had been divided into four different releases, but with added content. But with the current Switch/PS4 release titled Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Hou ("When The Cicades Cry - Offering"), I finally found a release that had everything I wanted of the franchise (both the original 8 chapters, as well as extra material and console-exclusive chapters), and for a modest price tag too! So it took me a while to get to it, but I finally understand all those Higurashi memes!

Anyway, last year, I played through the memorable mystery novel game Umineko: When They Cry, which is from same creators (07th Expansion). Because I knew beforehand it would take me a while to get through Umineko, I decided to write down any thoughts I had on the mystery on a special blind playthrough memo page on the blog. I liked how it kept me engaged with keeping an eye on clues and what I thought the solution would be. So after having fun with both the game of Umineko and the playthrough, I decided I'd finally play Higurashi: When They Cry this year and after asking commentators here, it appeared keeping notes to guess the solution to the mystery as I was going through the individual chapters would be feasible here too, so I decided to do the same this year. Those who have already played, seen, or read Higurashi: When They Cry might find it interesting to see how my ideas changed (or not) as I played through the chapters. I don't usually do long projects with multiple posts on this blog (because experience told me I don't really like doing them), but these playthroughs were pretty fun!

So what is this gigantic mystery franchise about? Higurashi: When They Cry introduces us to the village of Hinamizawa in June 1983. Hinamizawa is a small rural community with just about 2000 villagers and lies deep in the green mountains. Teenager Keiichi has recently moved to Hinamizawa with his parents and also attends the local school, which is so small all the children of all ages are put together into one class. Keiichi becomes close friends with his fellow members of the after-school game club: Rena (who also recently moved back to Hinamizawa), Mion (the heir of the most prominent family in the village), Rika (the young daughter of the clan of priests which tend to the local shrine) and her bestie Satoko. The change from life in the city to the slow, calm life in the countryside is of course big, but his friends make Keiichi feel welcome in quaint Hinamizawa. Far removed from the hustle and bustle of the big cities, Hinamizawa is like perhaps not exactly a paradise on Earth due to some inconveniences like not having facilities like supermarkets or public transport, but its certainly a peaceful place. Times flies by for the friends and eventually it becomes June, which is when a local annual festival is held: The Watanagashi Festival is a tradition, celebrating and thanking Oyashiro, a local deity believed to watch over Hinamizawa. In recent years, the festival has grown larger and even people from neighboring towns come to attend the festivities. It's at this point we learn that for the last four years, Hinamizawa has always seen one death, and one disappearance on the night of the Watanagashi Festival. While few people talk about this out loud and efforts have been made to silence the fact that these deaths and disappearances have been occuring at an annual rate now, villagers believe this to be the Curse of Oyashiro and some even whisper that 1983 will be the fifth time the Curse of Oyashiro will take its victims. But is there really a supernatural curse at play in Hinamizawa, or is there something else going on beneath the facade of this seemingly peaceful village, and how are Keiichi and his friends involved in this?

 

Higurashi: When They Cry is a novel game, so the type of game that is focused on presenting a story visually, featuring very little interaction nor does it ever test you with quizzes on your deductions or anything like that. You just read the story as it unfolds, and the "interactive game" element lies outside the actual game: it challenges you to solve the mystery of what happened. The original PC release of Higurashi: When They Cry consisted of 8 chapters. The first four chapters, titled Onikakushi, Watanagashi, Tatarigoroshi and Himatsubushi form one set together commonly known as the Question arc. As you can guess from the name, these first four chapters basically set-up the mystery for the reader, providing them with the questions that need to be answered, as well as the clues necessary in order to solve the mystery of the series of mysterious deaths and disappearances in Hinamizawa. There is a distinct, unsettling atmosphere that builds in these Question chapters that is really great: what starts out as the story of a young boy settling into a completely new environment and finding new friends, slowly turns into something much grimmer, as slowly he starts to stumble upon glimpses of a Hinamizawa he never knew existed, and he is not sure what to think of a lot what is considered "normal" and "tradition" in Hinamizawa, and as events unfold, he learns that perhaps, he never wanted to know. The final four chapters, Meakashi, Tsumihoroboshi, Minagoroshi and Matsuribayashi, in turn form the Answer arc together, with each of these Answer chapters providing answers to mysteries seen in a corresponding chapter (i.e. Meakashi provides answers to the events in Watanagashi), but also offering answers in regards to larger, overarching mysteries that played throughout the Question arc. Similarly to how events played out in the Question chapters of Umineko: When They Cry however, the chapters in Higurashi's Question arc are in essence telling variations of the same basic story about the horrible events that occur after the Watanagashi Festival in 1983, but each of them is executed in completely different ways. The reader is given different "parallel versions" of the events of June 1983 that all build on the same basic set-up, but each time, events play out differently after the Watanagashi Festival, leading to different people dying and other bloody events to occur. Each of the Question chapters basically culminate in a completely different horrible tragedy, even though they all have the same starting point, using the same characters. 

That however is exactly how the game challenges you to solve the mysteries in Higurashi: When They Cry. The reader has to guess why all these horrible events are happening by examining all these "parallel versions" and figure out why they can end up so differently even though the basic parameters are the same. Why did that character do that in Onikakushi, while she didn't in Watanagashi? Why did those events happen both in Tatarigoroshi and Onikakushi, but not in Watanagashi? It's like trying to complete a bigger picture using pieces coming from different sets of jigsaw puzzles, and it's something you don't often see used in mystery fiction. Mystery fiction that deal with parallel universes, time travel stories or games with branching storylines like Kamaitachi no Yoru do utilize similar concepts, with stories unfolding in different manners depending on a story-changing choice made, which therefore forces you think about the underlying meaning of that choice. But like Umineko: When They Cry, Higurashi: When Thy Cry uses eight novel-length puzzle sets and asks you to see which pieces from the different sets, can also be put together to form one extra, hidden picture. Each chapter also tends to focus on different core narative characters and provide extra background information that are relevant to all the chapters. For example, Watanagashi is the second chapter and tells its own version of the June 1983 tragedy, but it also focuses more on the history and folklore of Oyashiro in the village of Hinamizawa, an aspect of the story that was not touched upon nearly deeply in the opening chapter Onikakushi. And the third chapter Tatarigoroshi focuses more Satoko's home situation, which is only briefly touched upon in earlier chapters. Each of these elements spread across the "parallel versions" thus form puzzle pieces that not only address the mystery of the respective episode, but also the broader picture. Because the chapters do build on the same basic setting, earlier parts of each individual chapter do feel kinda samey (even if they focus on different parts of the story), but once the Watanagashi Festival occurs, the uneasiness really starts to settle and each chapter slowly builds to a dramatic, catastrophic finale.

Umineko: When They Cry revolved around a series of impossible murders occuring on an isolated island, with the Golden Witch Beatrice claiming these murders were made possible through magic, while protagonist Battler tries to defy her by finding rational answers to the impossible murders. Whereas the series features witches, monsters and other supernatural elements and focused on the theme of magic vs rationality, Umineko: When They Cry drew very heavily from classic mystery fiction in a meta fashion, quoting Van Dine and Knox freely and very much focusing on discussions about how the impossible murders could have been committed by a human murderer using sly tricks we know from mystery fiction, or whether it really was all just magic. Higurashi: When They Cry, while still a series that poses a mystery to the reader and challenges them to solve it, is less firmly built on the traditions of classic mystery fiction and offers more open-ended mysteries for the reader to solve. People who liked the locked room murders and more from Umineko: When They Cry therefore might be a bit disappointed how "mundane" the murders in Higurashi: When They Cry are: don't expect locked room murders or people disappearing from observed spaces or anything like that, more often than not these are murders that could've been committed by anyone in the village or feature other open-ended aspects. The focus therefore lies less on the direct dynamics of how specific each murder is committed, but much more on the macro-level mysteries: what are the underlying circumstances/factors that make it so that in each version we see of June 1983, it always ends in a tragedy? What are the factors that caused the tragedy to unfold in this particular way in this chapter, but in a different manner in the other chapter? I think this makes Higurashi: When They Cry a lot easier to solve than the more technical Umineko: When They Cry and probably also more accessible. Umineko: When They Cry had a lot of meta-level discussions about mystery tropes (like I mentioned in the Umineko reviews, a lot of mystery fans actually get into mystery fiction via Umineko), whereas Higurashi: When They Cry is much easier to enjoy as a suspenseful thriller with a mystery to solve, and I think the clewing in Higurashi is telegraphed more clearly. 

I did enjoy tackling the puzzles in Higurashi: When They Cry. While I can imagine some readers might think the mystery in Higurashi: When They Cry isn't really fair, it's certainly possible to make educated guesses about the most important parts of the secrets Hinamizawa and its residents hold. In my review of Umineko: When They Cry, I noted how the mysteries at the micro-level there were not as impressive as the mystery at the macro-level. That holds even more so in regards to Higurashi: When They Cry, where a lot of of the individual events seem pretty straightforward and even the murders are often just "what you see is what you get", but the focus here lies on how you are going to put each event in the context of the larger mystery: why are these events happening, and how does that relate to the other chapters? In a way, it's like seeing several playthroughs of a board game being played out in front of you. You don't know the game and the rules yet, but by observing several playthroughs, which may have different outcomes in terms of game flow and winners and losers, you still slowly start to see what the game rules are, because you saw connections between the playthroughs. Imagine a person not knowing chess, and observing the pieces across several games. Perhaps the first time they think the Queen can only move 2 spaces diagonally because that is the only move the Queen did in that game, but in a subsequent game she might move across the whole board, and another time she moves across straight lines. And eventually, the person will deduce the exact move range of the Queen. This approach results in a very different kind of mystery to engage with, compared to most detective novels you'll be reading, and I personally like these kinds of unexpected approaches to the genre. But to bring up my last Umineko: When They Cry comparison: Higurashi: When They Cry is also much clearer in its Answer arc in regards to the happenings in the Question arc. Umineko: When They Cry basically gave you a "key" in its Answer arcs, and then asked you to use that key and clear up any questions you have about the Question chapters yourself. Higurashi: When They Cry on the other hand explains the events in the Quesion chapters rather clearly in comparison (basically: "and that's what happened"), again a reason why on the whole, Higurashi is a bit easier to "engage" with than Umineko: When They Cry.

 

Writer Ryukishi07 of 07h Expansion is not an economical writer by any means, and besides the mystery, Higurashi: When They Cry spends a lot of time on characterization and fleshing out the background of Hinamizawa. Considering the focus of this blog, I will mostly concentrate on the mystery-side of Higurashi here, though I know a lot of fans of the franchise are probably more interested in the various colorful characters the series has. It's not something I'll be discussing here, but I do want to make a special note that there is a lot to enjoy about Higurashi: When They Cry beyond the mystery and the way it tackles some sensitive themes, like the issue of child trauma and how to cope with these problems, is quite memorable and it's clear that Ryukishi07's own history as a civil servant had a tremendous effect on Higurashi. As for themes that may interest the reader of mystery fiction more: the idea of an isolated village community with powerful old clans and old folklore comes straight out of a Yokomizo Seishi-style novel of course, and I think that people who liked The Village of Eight Graves especially will find a lot to enjoy in Higurashi: When They Cry. Similarly, the concept of the local deity Oyashiro, the surrounding folklore like the Watanagashi Festival and inferences into the real meaning of Oyashiro's curse, the festival and the history of the village Hinamizawa as a whole is the kind of theme you'll see in Mitsuda Shinzou's Toujou Genya novels, that deal with local history and folklore, murders occuring during traditional ceremonies and "hidden truths"  behind local folklore. If you're into these kind of themes, Higurashi: When They Cry is definitely worth looking into to. 

 

As mentioned earlier, I played the Switch/PS4 version titled Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Hou, which does play a bit differently than the PC version. Most importantly, this release, like previous console/handheld releases on PS2/DS/PS3/Vita, has a few extra console-exclusive chapters that collectively tell a side-story focusing on other characters. This release also presents the various chapters of Higurashi in "sets of chapters", which are all connected as a flowchart. You can only move on to the next flowchart if you have finished the previous one, but that meant I couldn't actually only play the original eight chapters of Higurashi: When They Cry, because each "set" of chapters includes both the original PC chapters as well as the console-exclusive chapters. While most of those console-exclusive chapters are not directly connected to the happenings in Hinamizawa (mostly set in the nearby Kakiuchi City), they do provide with additional clues that pertain to the events in Hinamizawa, so they do make it easier to solve the main mystery in Hinamizawa. It's a shame they force you into this playing order, for I originally planned to play the original 8 chapters first before moving to the extra stories, but that's not possible (unless you use the additional quiz game to unlock all the chapters in advance, but that requires you to... answer questions about spoilers, so option is that's only for people who already know the story). I like that Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Hou has all the content and I like the console art assets/voices too, but it does force you into experiencing Higurashi's story in a very specific manner, which might not be the best one to be honest. Oh, and while I have finished the original Higurashi finale Matsuribayashi, I still haven't finished the console-exlusive finales (the two Miotsukushi chapters) and there's a lot of fan disc content I haven't touched yet either, but I'll get to that some other time...

As with my review of Umineko: When They Cry, my focus in this post was on Higurashi: When They Cry as a mystery story, and while it is not as firmly settled within "meta mystery fiction lore" like Umineko: When They Cry and is less "by a mystery fan, for a mystery fan" in that regard, I still enjoyed my time in Hinamizawa a lot. The way the game challenges you to make connections between the various chapters and try to find some connecting tissue that explains both the mystery in the respective chapter, as well its relation to other chapters is simply something you simply don't see often in mystery fiction, regardless of medium, and while I do think Umineko; When They Cry, as a kind of spiritual sequel, did improve upon the idea, Higurashi: When They Cry was still enjoyable to me. It is by no means a "perfect mystery story", but it is an excellent example of how diverse the mystery genre can be, not just in subject matter but also in the manner in which a mystery is presented and how it challenges the reader/player to interact with it. For those who play on PC in English, I believe the first chapter (Onikakushi) is available for free at the various storefronts like GOG and Steam, so how about a little trip down to Hinamizawa?

Original Japanese title(s):『ひぐらしのなく頃に』「鬼隠し編」/「綿流し編」/「祟殺し編」/「暇潰し編」
『ひぐらしのなく頃に解』「目明し編」/「罪滅し編」/「皆殺し編」/「祭囃し編 」

The Magician's Secret

 “For certain, neither of them sees a happy Present, as the gate opens and closes, and one goes in, and the other goes away.”

"The Mystery of Edwin Drood"

Finished the answer chapter Tsumihoroboshi as well as the Advanced Story arcs Yoigoshi and Tokihogoshi of Higurashi: When They Cry, and have added my thoughts on their consequences for the mystery on the memo page for my playthrough of Higurashi: When They Cry. Still a lot to do, but I guess I'm slowly approaching the finale of this long, long tale of human drama, suspense and mystery!

Yep, it's finally time for this book today!

Nikaidou Ranko series  
Jigoku no Kijutsushi ("The Magician from Hell") (1992)  
Kyuuketsu no Ie ("House of Bloodsuckers") (1992)  
Sei Ursula Shuudouin no Sangeki ("The Tragedy at the Saint Ursula Convent") (1993)  
Akuryou no Yakata ("Palace of Evil Spirits") (1994)  
Yuri Meikyuu ("Labyrinth of Lillies") (1995)  
Bara Meikyuu ("Labyrinth of Roses") (1997) 
Jinroujou no Kyoufu - Deutsch Hen ("The Terror of Werewolf Castle - Germany") (1996) 
Jinroujou no Kyoufu - France Hen ("The Terror of Werewolf Castle - France") (1997)  
Jinroujou no Kyoufu - Tantei Hen ("The Terror of Werewolf Castle - Detective") (1998) 
Jinroujou no Kyoufu - Kanketsu Hen ("The Terror of Werewolf Castle - Conclusion") (1998)  
Akuma no Labyrinth ("The Devil Labyrinth") (2001) 
Majutsuou Jiken ("The Case of the Sorcery King") (2004) 
Soumenjuu Jiken ("The Case of the Double-Faced Beasts") (2007)  
Haou no Shi ("Death of the Ruler") (2012)  
Ran Meikyuu ("Labyrinth of Orchids") (2014)
Kyodai Yuurei Mammoth Jiken ("The Giant Phantom Mammoth Case", 2017)

The Houshou Clan has been one of the most influential families in the city of Hakodate for decades, so when not one, but two of them appeared at the night club Black Lizard one evening, everyone's eyes were fixed on them. Shibahara Etsuo, accompanied by his beautiful fiancée Suzuhara Tomoka, might "just" be a member of the branch family, but still a well-known face around town, but it was his beautiful cousin, Houshou Kimiko and her fiancé Takioka Takashi who had everyone at the tables around them mumble to each other. The two cousins had not expected to meet each other here, but the four decide to share a table and watch the show they had come for: a magic show by the Sorcery King Mephisto, an illusionist who's had a fantastic run abroad and recently in Tokyo too. After some introductionary magic tricks, Mephisto invites both Kimiko and Tomoka on the stage. Kimiko is put inside a box, while Tomoka is placed on a bed. When Mephisto brings out a chainsaw, everyone gasps for a moment as he slowly brings the loud machine down on the bed where Tomoka is lying. But as the audience hear Tomoka's horrific cry as blood spatters all around on the stage and on the face of Mephisto, they slowly start to realize... that this is not a magic trick! After cutting Tomoka in two in front of a live audience, Mephisto then proceeds to tie his assistant to the guillotine on stage, removes the safety and decapitates her on the spot. Everyone is in a panic and tries to flee the club, while Mephisto disappears backstage. It's only by the time the police arrive it becomes clear how grave the situation is: not only has Memphisto killed Tomoka and an assistant on stage, another assistant was killed in his dressing room and Kimiko has gone missing. But while Mephisto's bloody footprints show how he went backstage and killed his other assistant there, there is no trace of him in the building, even though all doors and windows are locked from the inside. Takioka and Etsuo soon receive a letter from Mephisto, who asks for ransom money for Kimiko, but it also soon becomes clear that Mephisto has a grudge against the whole Houshou Clan and that he is after the three family jewels: the Blazing Eye, the White Fang and the Black Heart, which are connected to a secret of the Houshou Clan. The police try everything to protect the members of the Houshou Clan from Mephisto, but the mad illusionist manages to pull off the impossible everytime: spiriting people out of secured hospital rooms, disappearing from a house surrounded by snow without leaving footprints and steal a jewel from a guarded room. The police inspector in charge soon realizes only one person will be able to help them: the brilliant detective Nikaidou Ranko, but she is busy working on another case in the south of Japan now, so they'll have to hold the fort until she can clear this case up in Nikaidou Reito's Majutsuou Jiken ("The Case of the Sorcery King" 2004).

I'm finally done! Nikaidou Reito's Nikaidou Ranko series was one of the earliest series I started to review on this blog and especially in the early years of this blog, our young protagonist Ranko and her brother/Watson Reito had frequent appearances here. While I didn't read the books as regularly the last few years, it remained a series I have fond memories of: I started reading them early on in my Japanese studies, so they had always been a kind of indicator for me for my studies. And they were also the first "big brick" books I read: most of the novels in this series have really high page count, so especially early on in language studies, those bricks can seem rather intimidating. And I haven't even mentioned Jinroujou no Kyoufu yet, which with four hefty volumes is probably still the longest locked room murder mystery. While I'll be the first to admit that I did not enjoy all the novels in this series as much as I would have wanted do, finishing this series still feels a bit sad. Well, I say "finish" now, but in reality the series hasn't officially ended yet, it's just that I have read all the books currently published, and new volumes only come very, very rarily nowadays. Oh, and I think I mentioned in an older Ranko review already, but I have basically managed to read this whole series out of order! The only ones I read in publication order are Akuryou no Yakata and the short story collection Yuri Meikyuu, as well as the four volumes of Jinroujou no Kyoufu, though the latter doesn't really count because the four books form one story.

I once described early Ranko novels as Carr on crack: the books are oozing with dark atmosphere, set in the seventies and featuring many (MANY) locked room murders and other impossibilities committed in creepy mansions, often against a backdrop of family curses, Western esotericism and medievalism. After the epic Jinroujou no Kyoufu however, Nikaidou shifted the story style significantly by introducing the Labyrinth saga with the 2001 novel Akuma no Labyrinth. This book introduces us to an enigmatic and very dangerous murderer called Labyrinth, who served as the archenemy of Ranko. Their battle would last for four books, ending with Haou no Shi in 2012. Unlike the earlier novels however, the Labyrinth novels were styled more closely to the henkaku horror mystery stories by Edogawa Rampo: these tales were lighter on the mystery, and much heavier on adventure, horror and grotesque story elements, reminiscent of the 20s-50s pulp science-fiction novels with evil scientists and things like monsters, bloodthirsty murders who commit their crimes in the bloodiest/horrific manners possible and elements like secret codes and hidden treasures. To be honest, I didn't really like these novels: Akuma no Labyrinth wasn't bad per se, but it was basically just two short novellas that felt a bit lacking, while Soumenjuu Jiken was just straight-up mad scientist sci-fi horror, and the final story Haou no Shi also didn't stray too far from that model. I understand this was the kind of story Nikaidou wanted to write now with Ranko, but it wasn't really what I wanted to read, so it took me quite a while to finally finish the Labyrinth saga with Majutsuou Jiken, which is actually the second novel in the Labyrinth saga.

Reading things out of order also meant I already knew about the murders in the night club, because they are mentioned in the third novel Soumenjuu Jiken. Majutsuou Jiken and Soumenjuu Jiken take place around the same time, and this is relevant to this book's plot. After solving a murder committed by the Sorcery King in Tokyo (but failing to trace his whereabouts), Ranko travels to Kyushu hot on the trail of Labyrinth. These are the events of Soumenjuu Jiken, but during that story, Ranko also happens to read a newspaper article about the gruesome murders that happened at Black Lizard in Hakodate, which she suspects is related to Labyrinth too, but she can't leave right now as she is busy with her current case. This is also why Ranko and Reito don't appear in Majutsuou Jiken until the end, as they were occupied. That also means that the Sorcery King Mephisto is free to do whatever he wants until the end of the story, and he sure does!

Because Majutsuou Jiken is a suspenseful, incredibly pulpy thriller like we know from Edogawa Rampo, with a creepy, insane murderer with a goofy villain name who goes around hurting or killing people in the most horrific ways because, well, he can and he's evil. There's a certain cartoonish element to this which I can appreciate, and I have to admit: I think Majutsuou Jiken is the best of the four Labyrinth novels, as it does what it's supposed to do in the best manner, without feeling too gimmicky like Soumenjuu Jiken. Go in expecting a pulpy adventure similar to Rampo's The Black Lizard or The Dwarf, and you're okay. The story is basically a string of events where the Sorcery King constantly manages to baffle the police and endanger the lives of Kimiko, Etsuo and the others in the Houshou Clan. The mysteries basically never stop piling up. The book opens with a mysterious murder by the Sorcery King, where he stabs someone in a room while observed by a witness, but then the room disappears. Ranko quickly solves this riddle, and I think many readers will have an inkling of what happened too, but then the narrative switches over to Hakodate, and there the Sorcery King is absolutely unchallenged. A few things that occur while Ranko's occupied: a woman is trapped inside an old stone structure that doesn't even have an entrance, a patient is spirited away from a hospital room while a police guard had been standing at the door all the time, a trapped and shot Sorcery King manages to escape from a house even though there was snow around the building and no footprints can be found, threatening letters from the Sorcery King appear inside the Houshou manor even though there's police security in and outside the house and the Sorcery King makes a whole room disappear from a building. The police and the other involved people like Etsuo are constantly baffled by the impossible disappearances/appearances by the Sorcery King, and it is only in the last quarter of the book that we see Ranko.

But the solutions to most of the mysteries we see in Majutsuou Jiken also betray the pulpy nature of the book. A lot of the trickery employed by the Sorcery King is rather simple and more often than not, these "set pieces" in the story are just there to look impressive, even if there's not really a reason for the culprit to do so. In fact, during her explanation of the events, Ranko even states a few times the Sorcery King only did certain things just to scare the wits out of the people involved. There's also a lot of horrifying moments that mostly just there to creep you out, which also sometimes results in weird moments, like the Sorcery King managing to make Kimiko disappear from her hospital room, thus showing how he can make the impossible possible... but at the same time, we also learn he casually killed a nurse and a guard elsewhere in the hospital. So you have this super criminal who manages to commit impossible feats, but who also just slashes and kills rather casually, There are more moments where we see a lot of violence, which again puts this book firmly in the pulp corner, though Nikaidou does make good use of the more horrifying moments for the mystery plot at some moments. Some events in the story however ae really just there to make the story more suspenseful or to drag things out a bit like a serial adventure story, but I don't think it benefitted the story. The book is really, really long (the pocket paperback version is split in two volumes), but having a pulpy, Rampo-esque story at this size is pretty tiring, as it's one cliffhanger after another, and all the protagonists can do is gasp at every new trick the Sorcery King does. I think the book would've been more fun at half the length, because some parts really feel dragged out. Even the summation by Ranko at the end is strangely lengthy, with Ranko constantly using roundabout comparisons first before she uses twice as many words as necessary to explain each and every mystery. Most of the impossible disappearances feature elements that won't be unfamiliar to a fan of the genre, and will even feel a bit too simple. I do have to say the mystery of the vanished boy, who was spirited away from a house even though the police had arrived outside and there were no footprints in the snow around the house, was surprisingly good, and definitely a highlight of the novel.  The more adventure-esque part of the story near the end is something your mileage may vary on, I didn't really like it but I kinda knew it was coming due to the Rampo inspiration and references in other novels.

Oh, by the way, this story is also book-ended by a discussion between Ranko and Reito about Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and both Ranko and Reito propose theories about the unfinished mystery (with Ranko absolutely convinced her theory is right), so people interested in the Drood mystery might also be interested.

I should note that my expectations of Majutsuou Jiken were definitely not high. The Labyrinth novels never really worked for me, and the two middle books, Majutsuou Jiken and Soumenjuu Jiken seemed to have had mediocre reception, an opinion I certainly shared concerning Soumenjuu Jiken. But you know, perhaps it's me having more "experience" with the Labyrinth novels now, or me becoming more accepting of what Nikaidou wanted to do with these novels, but I think Majutsuou Jiken is actually the best Labyrinth book of the four. It sets out to present a Ranko story in the format of a serialized, pulp thriller like we know of Edogawa Rampo, and it does that in a perfectly fine manner. The book is certainly a bit too long, but there are some good ideas here and there in terms of mystery in this book, and Majutsuou Jiken I think is also the best at really showing the concept of Ranko VS a superhumanly intelligent and vicious insane murderer (with a Scooby Doo villain name), especially compared to the other three books in this saga. So while I think the best Ranko novels are those that predate the four Labyrinth novels, Majutsuou Jiken is the one book you'll want to read if you do want to try out the Labyrinth storyline (and if you don't mind reading things out of order). Anyway, with that, I'm finally done with the Ranko series, at least, for now. I hope Nikaidou Reito will go back to the style of the older books in future Ranko novels, if more are to follow, but no matter what will come, I will probably read it!

Original Japanese title(s): 二階堂黎人『魔術王事件』

Cross Purposes

「本当のことを言わねぇのが人間だ」

『羅生門』

 

"It's human to lie."

"Rashomon"

Finished the console original arc Kageboushi (the Answer chapter to Someutsushi) of Higurashi: When They Cry, so added my thoughts on how it involves the main mystery to the memo page for my playthrough of Higurashi: When They Cry. The chapters are only getting longer and longer now and I've been reading Higurashi for over a month now, so I'll probably slow down a bit now, because it does take up a lot of time... I do hope I'll be done with the main story by the time Haru Yukite Retrotica (The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story) releases in May...

There are prolific writers, and then there was Nishimura Kyoutarou. He is a household name in Japan when it comes to mystery fiction, which isn't strange onsidering the massive media output that is associated with his name. His Wikipedia page records nearly 650 books (!!!) And that includes short story collections, so that's even more stories, and anyone who's been in a Japanese bookstore, especially the used bookshops, will probably recall those long, long rows of Nishimura books you'll always find there. But that is not all: there have been countless of adaptations of his work for television, ranging from series to television films and there was a time where you'd find his name every week in the television schedule, as there'd always be a rerun of an old Nishimura Kyoutarou television film somewhere in the early afternoon. Even gamers will know the name, as there have been several games based on his work, especially in the Famicom (NES) era. It's simply impossible to not have heard of Nishimura Kyoutarou if you've been into Japanese mystery fiction somewhere in the last 40, 50 years, and even people with no interest in mystery fiction will know the name: so much has his name become part of "normal" Japanese popular culture. 

The unbelievable quantity of his output of course also influenced the quality of his work:  a lot of those nearly 650 books feel very samey and uninspired. There's a reason why everyone associated Nishimura with Stereotypical Nishimura Kyoutarou Story: a story starring Inspector Totsugawa and his team of detectives like Kame investigating a murder which will require Totsugawa's men to travel by train to a faraway destination and/or the victim/culprit used the train and the detectives have to figure out how the use trains is connected to the murder (alibi tricks etc.). If you do the association game with "Nishimura Kyoutarou", nine out of ten times you'll get "Trains" as the response. But while the bulk of Nishimura Kyoutarou's output is often assumed to be uninspired, by-the-numbers stories that just retell the same ideas in a slightly different way, his earlier output can be quite interesting. Koroshi no Soukyokusen was genuinely fun as an And Then There Were None-inspired novel and the crossover series with Ellery Queen, Maigret, Poirot and Akechi Kogorou is always entertaining.

Nishimura Kyoutarou sadly enough passed away earlier this month at age 91, so I decided to pick up one of his earlier, and better received puzzlers: Shichinin no Shounin ("The Seven Witnesses", 1977) is an Inspector Totsugawa novel, though it feels nothing like a Totsugawa story in terms of set-up. The book opens with Totsugawa waking up with an enormous headache, and he finds himself... in a recreation of a street, built in the middle of a small island. The intersection of two streets has been meticulously recreated here, complete with all the stores (with store inventory), parked cars and apartments. Totsugawa finds seven people who had also been knocked out the previous night and brought here: some of the people actually live or work along this intersection and can even show Totsugawa their rooms or shops, while others don't live here, but they do remember this place: one year ago, a murder took place around midnight at this intersection, and all seven people (besides Totsugawa) were witnesses in that case. Their testimonies eventually put young hoodlum Sasaki Nobuo behind bars: some of the witnesses had seen him have a fight with a fellow customer in a bar, others saw him stab the victim outside on the street with his own knife and yet others saw him flee the scene with the knife and the victim's wallet. It is at that point that an elderly man reveals himself to the eight persons on the island: Sasaki Yuuzou is the father of Nobuo. He had left Nobuo and his mother when Nobuo was young and had been working in Brazil, where he had been succesful, but upon return to Japan last year, he learned his son had died in prison, but that Nobuo had always maintained that he did not commit the murder, despite the testimonies of the seven witnesses. That is why Sasaki used his fortune to meticulously recreate the entire intersection on this small island and abducted the seven witnesses: he truly believes his son had been innocent, so there must be a mistake in the testimonies and he wants the witnesses to go over their own testimonies once again, with Totsugawa acting as a referee. The rifle held by Sasaki leaves the seven witnesses little choice, even though each of them swears their testimonies at the trial were accurate, but Sasaki's done his homework and little by little, he manages to point out little contradictions in each testimony. But while the party is going over the old testimonies, one of them is killed, and because they're all alone on this small island, it is clear that the murderer has to be one of them. 

Someone not content with the original verdict abducting witnesses to do a non-official reexamination/retrial? Yep, that reminded me of Settled Out of Court. Which reminds me I should really read more by Henry Cecil...

Shichinin no Shounin feels nothing like what I would expect from a Totsugawa novel: no trains, instead of an urban setting we have a closed circle situation on a small island and ultimately, Totsugawa can't even do much but look on while Sasaki's forcing everyone go over their testimonies again and pointing out contradictions in their stories. In fact, it wouldn't really take that much of an effort to rewrite this story to leave out Totsugawa's presence. It's definitely not the book I'd tell you to read if you wanted to read a Totsugawa novel, but I'd definitely recommend you to read Shichinin no Shounin if you were interested in Nishimura's more interesting mystery novels, as this one defnitely is one.

With Sasaki and his rifle cross-examining each witness' testimony and slowly poking small holes in each of them, I was of course reminded of Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney games while I was reading this book, and I think that is also why I feel the execution of this book doesn't quite match the potential of the premise. The book is set-up in "testimonies", with Sasaki going over each of the seven testionies in turn. So he starts in the bar, where the owner of the bar and another customer saw how Nobuo had been arguing with the later victim and how after the victim left the bar, Nobuo went out too. As Sasaki listens to them, he reveals he had used this year to investigate the witnesses and the exact circumstances of that fateful night, so he then slowly reveals information that contradicts the witnesses' testimonies at specific points, usually not very important on its own, but having consequences for later testimonies. So then he moves on to the next witness (for example, those who saw him leave the bar and go after the victim), rinse and repeat. And the way Sasaki does this is fairly entertaining, pouncing like Columbo on very small points to pull out a bigger revelation. But the problem is: Sasaki is at an advantage here. The reader doesn't learn the new information Sasaki has uncovered, until he reveals it to everyone and confronts the witness with his findings/his suspicions, and Totsugawa too can only listen to whatever theories Sasaki has. Ultimately, Sasaki is proven correct on all his small points, slowly changing the testimonies of each witness, and while seeing this happen is fun, it's a bit frustrating the reader is never allowed to take on the puzzle themselves. You never get a chance to figure out the contradictions yourself because the relevant information isn't given to you beforehand, so all you do is watch Sasaki do all the heavy lifting. The contradictions ultimately are pretty solvable for readers if the relevant information had been presented beforehand in some manner, so it's a shame we never get a chance to solve the thing ourselves, especially as it's quite satisfying to see how all the smaller contradictions add up to something bigger. The type of contradictions and the "difficulty level" is about what you'd expect from one of the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney games, which is exactly why I felt this was a missed opportunity: even with the exact same story and contradictions, the book could have been written in a more interactive way, rather the rather passive mode it now has. This extends to Totsugawa's role in this book, who most of the time is just standing there and listening to Sasaki's theories just like us.

Sasaki is focused on slowly poking holes in the testimonies and trying to find a way to prove his deceased son's innocence, but the witnesses also get a few breaks in between, and it is during one of this breaks, when everybody is somewhere else on the island, one of the witnesses is killed. Obviously, everyone suspects Sasaki did it to get revenge on the witnesses for putting his son behind bars and ultimately "killing" him, but Sasaki denies the crime, and Totsugawa too at least feels there's not nearly enough evidence to implciate Sasaki alone. But they are alone on this island, meaning the murderer must be one of the witnesses then, but why would any of them want to kill another of the witnesses, as the seven people basically don't know each other and only saw each other once, at the trial. It's here Totsugawa finally gets something to do, as he tries to protect Sasaki from the other witnesses, and the other way around. There are some interesting deductions regarding the "current" murderer near the end of the book, like about the motive and the murder weapon used, but there's also a large part of the story that is basically just Totsugawa making wild guesses and the only reason the current murderer is caught in the end is because they decided to react to Totsugawa's baseless accussations rather than just ignoring him, so the ending feels a bit weak/forced, There are some moments where the current murder ties in to the murder one year ago in interesting ways, but the focus is definitely on the past case.

Overall though, I think Shichinin no Shounin is an amusing courtroom drama-style mystery novel in the same vein as 12 Angry Men, Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney or something like Columbo, even if the book is not actually set in the courtroom. Seeing how a lot of smaller contradictions add up to one bigger reveal is always satisfying, and this book is no exception. It's just that I think this book could have been even more fun if the plot had been presented in a more interactive way, allowing the reader some time to contemplate the evidence and figure out the contradictions themselves too, instead of just listening to Sasaki playing the great detective. But still, this was a good early Nishimura novel and one I'd recommend if you'd want to read a detective novel by Nishimura that doesn't feel like just a standard formula.

Original Japanese title(s): 西村京太郎『七人の証人』

The Adventure of the House of Darkness

Deep into that darkness peering

"The Raven"

Started with the Answer chapters of Higurashi: When They Cry! First one up is Meakashi, and it appears I was on the right track! Added my thoughts/inferences about that episode (and previous episodes) to the memo page for my playthrough of Higurashi: When They Cry. I'll have to do a few console-exclusive chapters first before moving on with the original Answer chapters though...

Man, the covers of these rereleases are really gorgeous!

Disclosure: I translated Ayatsuji Yukito's The Decagon House Murders.

It is a four hour drive from Tokyo to reach Usakino, a location deep within the luscious green mountains that's perfect for recreation... or at least, that's what project developers and investors had hoped for, but things didn't quite go as planned and in the decade or so that has passed since everybody realized this wasn't going to be a hit, nature has not troubled by tourists very much. One of the people who got burned by the project falling through was by the uncle of Yuuki Takuya, who bought a second home here with the expectation that the location would be developed further, but now he just has a house in the middle of nowhere. Takuya, a university student, asks his uncle if he could use the small house during summer, as he has to read and translate a German book for his thesis, and the house would be ideal to force himself to focus on his project. On the day Takuya is driving to the house, his car accidentally lightly hits a boy who came running out of the woods onto the road. The young boy, around ten years old, is soon followed by another boy who is not only about the same age, but looks very similar. Takuya learns that the two handsome boys are Enjouji Mado and Miya, two brothers who are in fact not twins. They live in the Enjouji Manor, basically Takuya's neighbor (even if it's a modest walk from one house to the another through the forest) and are living there with their mother, their aunt and a tutor during summer. Takuya drives the boys back to their home, where he meets their father, a very strict man who seems to have forgotten that boys should enjoy their time as boys, before becoming adults, Takuya also meets with Haruka, the boys' tutor and a nurse-in-training, who takes care of the mother. The following day, Takuya is visited by Haruka, who confides with him that she's actually here with an ulterior reason: her friend had been the previous tutor of the boys here, but she died in some freak accident in the forest, but strangely enough her hair had been cut short. Haruka thinks something's wrong about the Enjouji Manor, which Takuya also feels: the boys, who seem to have grown to like the newcomer, are very secretive, but seem to have been meeting with someone in the forest before they got in the accident. Takuya agrees to support Haruka during his stay here and go poking around himself too, but then new deaths occur in the forest, and it appears that Mado and Miya are found at the center of things in Ayatsuji Yukito's Kurayami no Sasayaki (1989), which also has the English title Whispering in the Dark on the cover.

Kurayami no Sasayaki is the second book in the Whispering series, which Ayatsuji started after writing the first three books in his House series that started with 1987's The Decagon House Murders. The concept behind the series was that Ayatsuji wanted to fan out, so these books are actually more horror than detective, Nowadays, Ayatsuji is known for both his mystery and horror novels, and he has also written a few hybrids, of which Another is undoubtedly the best known worldwide. But his first published steps into the horror genre are found here. Last year, I read the first book in this series, Hiiro no Sasayaki ("The Scarlet Whispering" 1988), a slasher mystery that was greatly influenced by the famous Dario Argento giallo film Suspiria. But while the focus in that novel definitely lay on the gruesome murders and the suspense arising from those murders, there was also an okay whodunnit mystery plot there and while as a detective novel, Hiiro no Sasayaki wasn't going to blow your mind like an axe to your head, I found it an amusing read and I wrote in my review that I enjoyed it as a palate cleanser, and that I'd probably read the other two books in the series too.

I mentioned in the other review that I am not a fan of the horror genre per se: I do read horror manga once in a while, mostly thr work of Umezu Kazuo and Itou Junji (not the most original choices, but they're really good!!), but I don't watch slasher or horror films at all for example. I am of course familiar with horror (film) tropes of course through other media, and many mystery novels do often incorporate horror elements. So even I managed to recognize the "creepy twins" trope in Kurayami no Sasayaki, even if Mado and Miya aren't really twins. But they are described as being rather handsome for their age, and that coupled with their otherwordliness due to their isolated upbringing within the Enjouji clan and the fact they keep mostly to themselves, it's clear that the two brothers aren't quite normal, giving the reader (and Takuya and Haruka) a distinct feeling of uneasiness. And the fact creepy, often gruesome murders around these boys probably doesn't help either. For the faint of heart: the murders in Kurayami no Sasayaki are on the whole not as bloody as in Hiiro no Sasayaki, but the plot device of the murders in this book is definitely not to function as a focal point in an investigation, but to function as suspenseful plot devices, so the descriptions are written in a way to get some visceral reactions.

Oh, and about gorey murders, the books in the Whispering series aren't really connected save for the theme (so no characters carrying over, or at least, not in the first two books), but apparently, this book is connected to another horror novel by Ayatsuji, Satsujinki. I haven't read that one, and I also don't know exactly how "tight" the connection is, but apparently events described in the prologue of Kurayami no Sasayaki are worked out in more detail in Satsujinki. So if you have read that book already, it might be worth it to take a look at this book too.

But the most important thing to write about on this blog is of course: can Kurayami no Sasayaki also be read as a detective novel? Just like Hiiro no Sasayaki, the book does take on the format of a mystery story most of the time despite the focus on the horror elements: we learn early on in the book that Haruka is investigating the death of her friend, and the reader also learns that other mysterious deaths have occured in this region, all with a common, yet unexplicable link: for some reason all the bodies had some part of them removed, like their hair. Takuya too knows there's something the boys are hiding from the adults, but breaking their defenses is rather hard, as Mado and Miya do seem very intent on keeping their secret a secret. Ultimately though, you won't find a detective character summing up all the clues and logically proving who the murderer was by combining fact A, B and C and overturning that one perfect alibi. Like Hiiro no Sasayaki however, there is a twist somewhere in the book that makes you realize you had been looking at the facts in the wrong way and that the truth had been staring you in the face all that time, but I'd argue that the twist, seen solely as a "mystery plot twist" was better in Hiiro no Sasayaki, compared to its sequel. Kurayami no Sasayaki, when read as a mystery novel, feels not as fair as the first novel, nor is the clewing as good. There's no way you're going to figure out why the bodily parts have been removed for example, you just have to accept the explanation because it's basically impossible to deduce the truth based on the clues you get. The "big" twist is better, but still feels not as fair in set-up as the one in Hiiro no Sasayaki.

Overall though, I think that if you liked Hiiro no Sasayaki, you'll like Kurayami no Sasayaki too. Like the first entry, a lot of the horror touches of this second novel will feel familiar, purposely so, invoking familiar tropes from horror films. The plot is designed as a mix of these horror films, with some of the plotting and twists we know from Ayatsuji's work and in that sense, I'd say Kurayami no Sasayaki is definitely recognizable as one of his creations. I do think the first one was better if read with a mystery cap on, but I'm still interested enough to also want to pick up the last volume in the series in due time.

Original Japanese title(s): 綾辻行人『暗闇の囁き』

Secret Seven Mystery

Seven little Soldier Boys chopping up sticks;  

One chopped himself in halves and then there were six

"And Then There Were None"

A series about a number of buildings built by the same architect that were designed to be used in murders? Well that sounds familiar...

Xeno is a young man who was once found lying passed out on the street, but when he woke up in the hospital, the doctors learned two things. First was that Xeno had lost all memories of his past and nobody knows where he came from or why he's now suffering from amnesia. The second thing they learned was that Xeno was a brilliant detective: the moment he woke up, he managed to solve a case involving one of the doctors present in the room just by looking at him. With the help of some sponsors, Xeno has now managed to set himself up as a detective, and a succesful one at that too, because there are few people in Imperial Japan who can claim to have never heard of the detective with amnesia. During the investigation in a baseball stadium into an impossible murder on a pitcher during a game, Xeno learns that the criminal mastermind who had been acting as a crime consultant he had been hearing rumors about is in fact the famous architect Kai Shichirou, Kai reveals to Xeno that he has secretly prepared seven of his creations in such a way they can be used to commit inexplicable, impossible murders like locked room murders and he challenges Xeno to solve all seven of his locked murder rooms. With the help of his newly recruited assistant D-Zaka Eira, a former assassin, Xeno travels across Japan to solve Kai's devious death traps in the manga Tantei Xeno to Nanatsu no Satsujin Misshitsu or Detective Xeno And The Seven Locked Murder Rooms, written by Nanatsuki Kyouichi and illustrated by Sugiyama Teppei,

Detective Xeno And The Seven Locked Murder Rooms is a manga series which was originally serialized in Shonen Sunday (alongside Detective Conan) between 2018 and 2019, and ultimately collected in 8 volumes. I first learned of its existence through those publisher's pamphlets you always get with new manga releases (in my case, the most recent Conan volume at the time) and while the premise sounded interesting, I never really got around to it, and when I heard it had ended at 8 volumes, I also assumed its run wasn't anything exceptional, because... well, the title says The Seven Locked Murder Rooms, so either you'd have about one murder room per volume/10~11 chapters and very little room to do anything else (like the Kindaichi Shounen series), or each murder room story would have to be relatively short, which worried me in a different way because then it seemed the locked murder rooms wouldn't be as important as the title would suggest! At 8 volumes, I doubted Detective Xeno And The Seven Locked Murder Rooms would be a mind-blowing series, and going in with those expectations... Detective Xeno And The Seven Locked Murder Rooms was on the whole entertaining, even if not without its flaws.

Considering the series ran next to Conan in Shonen Sunday, it's more than tempting to compare the two series, especially as storytelling-wise, the two do feel similar. Unlike Kindaichi Shounen's long stories, Detective Xeno And The Seven Locked Murder Rooms in general did seem structured closer to Conan, with short stories about four chapters long, though Detective Xeno has more direct connections between each story, with events in one story often being directly used as the set-up for the next story.  When it comes to mystery plot however, there's an obvious difference in style of plotting, and it's one of the weaker points of Detective Xeno And The Seven Locked Murder Rooms: a lot of the individual stories revolve around one single idea, which makes them feel very empty. The first of the Seven Locked Murder Rooms Xeno and Eira encounter for example is the Tombstone Manor, where a man is seen to be stabbed with the murder weapon, but no attacker is seen, suggesting the presence of a ghost, a ghost who later in the story is even able to throw policemen out of the windows! But the story is really short, and ultimately, it's all made by possible by the secret death trap-like idea Kai Shichirou has installed inside the Tombstone Manor and once you figure out what that is, you have solved everything, as there are basically no other mysteries in the plot. Clewing is also fairly sparse in these stories, so you don't even feel really rewarded for figuring these stories out: you either happen to think of the death trap, or not, as the clues are so little and uninspired, they don't really work as a guide for those who try to piece the things together based on the presented clues. And that's how the stories mostly are in this series: a mystery (often impossible) that is just one trick that's being played, and once you solve that, you know everything. In Conan, even the shortest stories often consist of multiple minor tricks strung together, not relying on one single idea but stringing a few together to make what could've been a minor story into something much more rewarding, but Detective Xeno And The Seven Locked Murder Rooms very, very seldom does that, making a lot of the stories feel like one-trick ponies.

But I did say I did ultimately enjoy the series. The atmosphere, while often comedic, is at times also darker than Conan and I think that most of the Seven Locked Murder Rooms, even if they are all built around one gimmick, are pretty fun, in the "okay, that's just silly and in the real world that'd be impractical, but guys, this is fiction and man, that' s fun!!" sense of the word. The murder gimmicks Kai has built in his seven buildings are like the ideas you'd expect from early Shimada, so like the ideas seen in Murder in the Crooked House. Things moving around, gigantic mechanisms, the kind of ideas that are absolutely grand, over-the-top, but oh-so-memorable and the kind of things that remind you detective fiction doesn't need to be realistic to be entertaining. The ideas behind the first two Locked Murder Rooms we see, the Tombstone Manor and a music university campus, are really silly but deliciously entertaining as mystery fiction for example. I do have to say some of the Seven Locked Murder Rooms don't actually... create locked room murders. Only about half of them have tricks that create locked room/impossible murders, while others are just elaborate death traps that make it very obvious what happened to the victims: the traps would not leave the scene in a way that'd seem "impossible" to the police, only as "implausible" that something like that would've happened... So that's a bit disappointing. Luckily. the series doesn't revolve solely around the main Seven Locked Murder Rooms: there are a few shorter stories in between, and some of time are interesting mystery stories, even if they too are often written around one single idea. One involves a mercenary of a PMC who wants Xeno to explain how how his unit got annihilated in Kabul: this style of a person talking about a past incident that Xeno explains by reinterpreting the events reminds of the type of storytelling found in Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou and C.M.B. and while very simple, the story is quite enterrtaining. Another story involves a female fashion designer and her stalker, and this short, but memorable inverted story feels like it could've been in Sherdock or a similar series. Detective Xeno And The Seven Locked Murder Rooms will seldom truly astonish the reader, but the presentation is fine and the ideas, even if they could've been developed more, can be fun.

I do think the series is at its best from the start up to the mid-way point. At first the series seems like it will focus on the Seven Locked Murder Rooms, but it introduces a lot more diversity with the shorter stories (like the two I mentioned above), with different kind of mysteries for Xeno to solve, and more characters appear too. This builds up to a major case about half-way the series, which involves Xeno and Eira travelling to Kai Shichirou's paternal island, where his wealthy family (his father Kuga Ichizou and his half-brothers of the Kuga family) still reside. While technically, the series divides all the events that occur here as seperate stories, they all happen one after another and are interlinked, so basically form one large story in the style of Kindaichi Shounen. For example the story opens with a person being stabbed by a knife in the waiting room of the ferry that's going to bring Xeno and Eira to the island, and it's here where they first meet with Kai Shichirou's niece Kuga Manami. On the island, Xeno and Eira get involved in a case involving the disappearance of Kuga Ichizou from his personal retreat, a series of (attempted) murders on Kuga family members and a secret tied to the island's past, and on the whole, the story is pretty amusing, even if the individual mysteries do feel very "isolated" from another (i.e. it's really a series of seperate events strung together, even if they do form one narrative together).

However, while the series had been dropping hints about links between Kai Shichirou's Seven Locked Murder Rooms and Xeno's own forgotten past from the start, it appears that after the mid-way point the writer got a note from his editors to start wrapping things up, and suddenly we get info dumps and reveals out of nowhere, and the story starts sprinting towards the finale from that point on. This is when the Seven Locked Murder Rooms become less interesting, though the murder gimmick in the fortress in the bay of the imperial capital was one of the better ideas in the series. But the story has to wrap up too many things in too little time, so the concept of Eira, a former assassin who's acting as Xeno's assistant (and voice of reason, and source of comedy) feels a bit underdeveloped, like she should have been given one or two more stories focusing on her to really wrap her story up, and some characters suddenly make a surprise apperance near the end, as if they were established, beloved characters when in fact they had appeared only once before: they probably would've been developed as more interesting recurring characters had the series been longer, but now their later appearances feel like cameos rather than triumphant returns. The mysteries do feel a lot less interesting in the final half of the series in general, which is a shame, as I do think the first half showed a rising line in terms of mystery, with the series slowly introducing more diversity (inverted stories, psychological mysteries, "situational" mysteries) and a grander world with each subsequent volume and then it suddenly becomes very narrow again.

For me, Detective Xeno And The Seven Locked Murder Rooms is perhaps a perfect example of "Yes, but...". If you ask me whether I enjoyed reading it, it's a definite yes, because I read it in just four or five days, so that definitely means I felt the series brought me more entertainment than frustration and there are some fun, memorable murder tricks shown off in this series, but... yeah, it's undeniable a lot of the cool ideas feel like they could've been developed even further into something much more, and because of the relatively short run of eight volumes, the story has to start preparing for the finale soon and a lot of characters and storylines come out rather rushed because of that. There are plenty of series that feel complete and completely developed within a very limited number of volumes, but you can definitely feel that Detective Xeno And The Seven Locked Murder Rooms has a set-up for a series that was supposed to be longer, and that's why a lot of ideas don't go anywhere ultimately. I'd try to read until the long story halfway the series, and if you like it up to that point, you might as well read the remaining two volumes for the hasty closure it brings. I'd be interested in seeing more of the world (but not focusing solely on a story-related gimmick like the Seven Locked Murder Rooms), but I doubt this series will ever see a sequel.

Original Japanese title(s): 七月鏡一（原） 杉山鉄兵（画）『探偵ゼノと7つの殺人密室』

The Emerald-Eyed Cat Mystery

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go,” said the Cat"

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Finished the Himatsubushi arc from Higurashi: When They Cry and added my thoughts/inferences about that episode (and previous episodes) to the memo page for my playthrough of Higurashi: When They Cry. Himatsubushi was the last of the original Question arc chapters, so what follows now should be chapters that will give answers to the happenings that occured in the previous iterations of the Hinamizawa disappearance & murder cases. I don't know however if this is like Umineko: When They Cry, where the second half of the story still requires you to put some of the pieces together yourself, or whether Higurashi will just show you what actually happened, so at this point, I don't know whether I'll be updating the memo page with my thoughts while reading the Answer chapters (and the other Advanced Story chapters) or that everything will be so obvious I don't really need to comment anymore. At this point, I seem to have settled on a vague idea of what's happening in Hinamizawa, but I guess I'll find out soon how correct, or incorrect, I am.

I don't really get this cover. The protagonist of today's book is often described as cat-like, but this is a bunny, so it's...  not him?

I very much enjoyed the two books I read by Kurachi Jun I read last year, so naturally, I was also very interested in reading more of his work. Interestingly, he only appears to have worked on only one series, with all of his other works standalone works, so I decided to take a look at his Nekomaru-sempai series and for a change, I actually decided to do things in order and start with the first book. Nichiyou no Yoru wa Detakunai ("I Don't Want To Go Out on Sunday Evenings" 1994) is not only the first book in this series though, but is also Kurachi's debut book, a short story collection featuring seven (+ two) stories featuring Nekomaru, a man in his thirties, but who looks a lot younger despite his stoop and occasionally grouchy attitude. Nekomaru has been going from job to job ever since he graduated from university, and has a knack for being incredibly nosy and has no problems making a lot of use of the hospitality of his juniors from university (who do have fixed jobs, and therefore money to treat Nekomaru), but his friends have to admit: Nekomaru has a mysterious aura that attracts people, and perhaps more importantly, Nekomaru is actually really smart, capable of solving the most mysterious of cases within seconds (if you treat him on a drink, of course). In this short story collection, we follow different people, from friends of Nekomaru to complete strangers, who come across seemingly inexplicable crimes or impossible murders, but Nekomaru always manages to bring light to the matter.

Kuchuu Sanposha no Saigo ("The Death of the Mid-Air Stroller") revolves around the mystery of a man having falling twenty meters down to his death in the middle of town. Which on itself wouldn't be much of a mystery, save for the fact that the buildings surrounding the spot where the man fell aren't anywhere near twenty meters high. The closest would be a building of ten meters high, so where did the man came falling down from? While rumors of the "Bird Man" are roaming around, Nekomaru is told by a friend about a dream he's been having, about being to fly and that one day, he dreamt he was flying around town when he flew into a bird and crashed down... As a mystery story and as the opening story of this collection, I have to admit this was a bit disappointing. It's pretty easy to vaguely guess the general direction of the true solution for any reader I think and even then, the logistics and details of the solution Nekomaru proposes wouldn't actually work that way, so the solution, while predictable, doesn't even feel satisfying. The saving grace is that at the end of this book, this story is touched upon again, but even so, I was a bit disappointed with this start.

Yakusoku ("Promise") is a short, but sweet story about the young girl Mayu who usually stays at the park until late because she doesn't want to go home. One day, she sees an middle-aged man in the park, and she strikes up a conversation with him, and he confides to Mayu  he too doesn't want to go home. They meet up every day in the afternoon in the park, and the man shows the girl magic tricks, which she loves. He promises her one day to bring a prop the following day to show another magic trick, but the ollowing morning, the man is found frozen to death in the park, having stayed out drinking there in the wintery night. The girl, barely able to read the newspapers, tries to learn more about the man's death and one day, she ends up the park again, where she meets with Nekomaru, who after reading the newspapers, came to have a look himself too. After learning from Mayu the man had promised her he'd return with a magic trick the following day however, Nekomaru realizes there are deeper depths to his death. While this is a very short story, I really like the initial step that eventually leads Nekomaru to the conclusion it was a murder. While the overall plot has Christie-like qualities, hiding a more complex plot than you'd expect from the page count and also revolving around looking at a certain situation from the other way round, the way Nekomaru first focuses on a physical clue he gains from Mayu's story and then starts to build his deductions based on that, comes straight out of Ellery Queen's playbook. While the clue is small, Nekomaru manages to present very convincing inferences based on that one clue, and it's quite impressive how it manages to connect to murder so simply, even though the story itself is very short and minimalistic in set-up.

Umi ni Sumu Kappa ("The Kappa in the Sea") has two young students travelling to the beach hoping to find women... only to find it's off-season. Having nothing better to do, they decide to take a rowing boat tour. Turns out that Nekomaru's only just started with this job and has no experience with the boat: he overturns the boat and the three of them end up on the little island just off the coast. While they can see the mainland from the island, it's just too far for unexperienced people to swim back, so they decide to wait until the owner of the shop notices his part-timer and a boat have disappeared. In order to kill time, one of the students decides to tell a ghost story he had heard from his grandfather, a famous tale in the region where the old man came from. Set centuries ago, it tells about two young friends Takichi and Shigehiko, hailing from the mountains, who travel to the coast to sell and buy goods there. One day they end up on a boat, overturn out and wash up on an island, just like Nekomaru and the two students. And while the mainland isn't that far off, both mountain-bred men can't swim that far. They are then suddenly assaulted by a kappa (a river imp from Japanese folklore) who forces the friends to fight each other: the loser will be ripped into pieces by the kappa, while the winner shall be saved. Takichi throws the fight, and several days later, Shigehiko finds himself washed up on the mainland again, where he tells the story of his friend who sacrificed himself to save him. After hearing this story though, Nekomaru comes up with a rather horrifying interpretation of this folklore story. It's a brilliantly set-up folklore mystery story, that analyzes plot elements from the "supernatural" story and then interprets them in a more realistic way: assuming there was no kappa, how did Shigehiko actually make it back to the mainland, and what happened to Takichi? A great story, that's bound to linger for a while on your mind.

The title 163-nin no Mokugekisha ("163 Witnesses") refers to the number of people in the audience that saw how a stage actor fell down after drinking a glass of wine on stage, during a play. It turns out the bottle of wine (a prop) had been poisoned, but nobody could have poisoned that bottle. The bottle actually had real wine in it, and someone had taken a sip of the bottle before the play started, and from that moment on, the bottle had been on the stage, in view of all the audience. Nekomaru, who was cast in one of the minor roles in the play, however quickly realizes how the poison had been administered into the bottle despite all those witnesses. This story does some good things in terms of misdirection, and the way it uses the timing of when the bottle was poisoned to prove who the murderer is, is pretty good, but the actual method of how the bottle was poisoned isn't that memorable and is basically a variant on a trope often seen in mystery fiction.

The title of The Parasite Museum Murder is based on the Japanese title of Carr's He wouldn't kill Patience, but it's not snakes we find in this museum, but parasites. A freelance writer has been given a very tight deadline to write something about the Parasite Museum, so he decides to quickly visit the free museum, which he finds mostly empty. After receiving the pamphlet from the receptionist, he goes upstairs, where he finds Nekomaru as an early visitor. While they're talking on the second floor, the writer notices a man taking the stairs to go up to the third floor. Later, when they arrive on the third floor themselves however, they find the receptionist lying dead there. But the writer is absolutely baffled, for the woman couldn't be here: the elevator was in repair, and the only person he noticed coming upstairs after he had arrived at the second floor, was another museum employee, so when and how did the receptionist arrive on the third floor? Again a very simple story, that makes use of misdirection that might have worked better in 1994, in Japan, but it might not ring any bells if you're reading it now outside of Japan/Asia. It fell a bit flat for me because of that, because it reads differently in a "modern" context (1994 is not thaaat long ago, but still). The trick is worked out pretty well though with some well-placed clues that support the trick, and I think the misdirection *does* work if you are very, very aware in what time/context this story takes place.

Namakubi Yuurei follows the story of an NHK licensing fee collector, who one day is assaulted by a woman with an ash tray while trying to collect fees at an apartment building. After going to the hospital and complaining about the woman to his friends at a bar, he becomes drunk enough to decide to visit the woman, a certain Akemi, at night to give her a scare. He sneaks back into the apartment building in the middle of the night, making his way to her room, but to his great surprise he finds the door unlocked. He takes a look inside, and finds the woman's severed head lying on the floor. The man is running for his life down the street before he even knew it. Obviously, he's also highly disturbed when he learns that the following day, the torso of a woman is found on the riverbank of the Edo River, and he's convinced it must be the body of Akemi. He doesn't tell the police about his experiences because it'd put him on the scene, but then he remembers he lost his hat that night, and he fears it must be lying in Akemi's room. Later in the day, more parts of the woman are found, and eventually the head is found and identified as Akemi, and the police of course go investigate her room... which they find completely clean and not a single hint of a crime of any kind having happened there, not even a report on a hat being found. The man is utterly baffled, for he is sure he saw Akemi's cut-off head in her apartment that night. Nekomaru, who happens to overhear the discussion the man has with his friends, barges in however, and can easily explain how the man could've seen Akemi's severed head that night in her room even though she hadn't been killed in her room. Again I think it's the clewing that make these stories really good: while the explanation of how the man could've seen Akemi's head in her room that night is simple on paper, it's the way Kurachi manages to move the story in that direction that's done well, with proper hinting that expect the reader to deduce a whole story based on a minor clue, but that give just enough of a hint to lead you to the next hint, which again is just subtle enough to point you to the next clue, etc. In Kurachi's story's, you never have to guess the whole solution based on one clue, but it's always a clue that works in conjuction with other clues, which tell you part of the story and also point you towards another clue, allowing you to fill in the gaps. The plotting is always very deliberate, and can make seemingly simple stories feel very satisfying from a "problem-solving" point of view because it shows a genuine attempt by the author to lead the reader to the solution.

Nichiyou no Yoru wa Detakunai ("I Don't Want To Go Out on Sunday Evenings") reads like a thriller and has the narrator, a young woman, telling about the man she's dating. The man is sweet and she enjoys his company, and they go out every Sunday. Lately however, there has been a series of attacks on women in the neighborhood where the woman's living, so her boyfriend always tries to make sure she's gotten back home safely, and they also call after he's arrived home. But slowly the woman starts to realize that her boyfriend might not always be telling the truth, and she starts to suspect the man's been staying in her neighborhood after their dates... for what reason? The woman confides in her ex-boyfriend and Nekomaru, who seems to interpret her story in a very different way. A Father Brown-esque experience, where a seemingly straightforward, but odd situation can be flipped around to mean something completely different, and where clues that seem to point one way, turn out to be pointing in the opposite direction. It's by no means difficult to guess where this story wants to go, but there are surprisingly many clues supporting the final solution, making it a fairly satisfying read.

The book ends with two short epilogues titled Dare ni mo Bunseki dekinai Message ("A Message Nobody Will Decipher") and Dasoku - Arui wa Mayonaka no Denwa ("Adddendum, Or: A Midnight Call"), which take a look back at the seven stories in this collection, and point towards another, hidden story that's occuring within those stories. It's nearly impossible to notice it until it's pointed out to you because there are barely any hints, so as a mystery story, it's not always really convincing and satisfying, but it's a fun way to connect these stories together. It's definitely worth it to read these epilogues though, as it does show off a technique I had seen in other Kurachi stories too, with stories featuring both an "overt" and "covert" plotline developing simultaneously, with the latter only revealed later and it's interesting to see he already used it in his first book.

So on the whole, I enjoyed Nichiyou no Yoru wa Detakunai. Not all stories are as strong as others, but you can easily recgonize Kurachi's plotting and clewing skills in these tales and some stories, like Umi ni Sumu Kappa and Yakusoku really show off how even a relatively simple plot can be turned into a very satisfying read by clever clewing. The way the book in the ends presents connections between all the included stories, making it feel more like a novel rather than just a collection of random stories, also shows off the plotting skills of Kurachi and I can see how someone who'd start off with this as their debut, would end up writing a great novel like Hoshifuri Sansou no Satsujin. I'll definitely read more of Nekomaru in the future!

Original Japanese title(s): 倉知淳『日曜の夜は出たくない』:「空中散歩者の最期」/「約束」/「海に棲む河童」/「一六三人の目撃者」/「寄生虫館の殺人」/「生首幽霊」/「日曜の夜は出たくない」/「誰にも解析できないであろうメッセージ」/「蛇足―あるいは真夜中の電話」