Out of all the long-form Kagerou
Project media, the novels are the source I feel best covers what
could be described as a “normal” loop, with the added advantage
of being the one in the medium that best affords an opportunity to
understand the characters inside and out, since novel-style narration
is privileged to more inner thoughts than other media.
After an extremely brief look at events
from Kagerou Days, the story starts – as all the long stories do –
with Shintaro Kisaragi on a mercilessly hot August day during Obon.
Not that the heat quite gets to him, seeing as he’s a shut-in NEET
who has the primary concern of dealing with Ene, the girl that lives
in his computer and does her best to troll the hell out of him. In
the course of events, Shintaro spills some soda on his keyboard,
totally wrecking it. Due to the holiday, no online stores will
same-day deliver (Obon is a big deal, after all) so if he doesn’t
want to be without his computer for literal days, he’ll have to leave
his room for the first time in years. It’s a hard sell, but cooped
up with no computer access registers as a fate worse than death so
out Shintaro goes.
And yes, it is a fried keyboard that kicks him out the door in every version. Now’s as good a time as any, but it seems somewhat farcical compared to the tone of Lost Time Memory that what finally drives Shintaro out in the world is something so mundane. But, at the same time, I’ve come around to its kind of thinking. It’s Route XX Shintaro that’s defined by a total focus on Ayano, to the point where he can’t live without her. Route 1 Shintaro is able to come to terms with her death, even though she’s still hugely important to him. So the fact that it’s something mundane, rather than something supernatural and Ayano-related that drives him into the outdoors, because the mundane nature of the events supports Shintaro’s normalization as a functioning human being that’s ultimately critical to his ability to do exceptional things. Have to walk before you can run.
During Shintaro’s trip to the
department store, he bumps into a couple members of the Mekakushi Dan
(not that he knows them at this stage)… and then the store is taken
over by terrorists pulling some sort of “We have hostages give us
money” chicanery like a Japanese version of Die Hard. Shintaro
analyzes the situation, and thinks that he could handle it if he had
a proper opening. Kano shows up, strangely not restrained, to give
him that opening. Really, a lot of odd things seem to go on, but in
one moment there’s a golden opportunity to make a break for the
computer that controls the security system the terrorists are using
to secure themselves and plug Ene in.
Apparently it’s a success. Shintaro
faints when grazed by a bullet, and wakes up in the Mekakushi Dan’s
hideout, safe and sound. He’s introduced to the gang (including the
fact his sister is in with them), and we get to hear their side of
the story.
Specifically, we’re treated to Momo’s
side of the story. Her trip to school for the day is pretty similar
to what we see in Kisaragi Attention (and, in fact, the song lends
its title to the section), where her ability to draw in the eyes of
people around her causes no end of trouble. After she leaves school
she tries to cover with casual clothes, but the mobs just keep on
coming, and growing all the time… that is, until Kido and Kano find
her. After some misunderstandings, she’s brought into the truth of
having an eye ability, and Kido can promise to help suppress Momo’s
ability with her own while teaching Momo control. It’s a deal that’s
too good to refuse, and introductions are made with Marry… who
doesn’t do a great job of making first impressions since she spills
the tea she makes… all over Momo’s phone, which means they’ll have
to go get her a replacement. It’s off to the department store. The
same one Shintaro visits, of course at the same time. The gang is
mostly invisible thanks to Kido, but they’re very much there and
aware when the store gets taken over by the terrorists. Here we see
the other side of the plan: Shintaro still has the end goal, but it’s
up to Momo, the Mekakushi Dan, and their abilities to give Shintaro
the opening and everyone the exit. We see all the strange things
Shintaro saw, but now with the explanation of how the hidden
Mekakushi Dan caused those events to happen. Finally the terrorists
are distracted, Shintaro plugs Ene into the security system, and Momo
draws everyone’s eyes into Marry, who can leave them paralyzed for a
short time while the Dan makes its escape with the unconscious
Shintaro.
The book ends the following day, where
Shintaro and the Dan are gout and about. The two of them spot a
couple of boys, one down the other sitting near him. The latter Ene
recognizes as Konoha, but as an ambulance arrives, investigating that
is a matter for another time.
The second novel delves right into Takane’s backstory, giving us the long version of Yuukei Yesterday much as the first novel’s second half largely extended and expanded on what we got in Kisaragi Attention. Takane is part of a two-person special needs class alongside Haruka Kokonose, taught by Mr. Tateyama (who is Momo’s briefly-seen teacher in book 1). Takane and Haruka both seem to have chronic medical conditions that cause them to miss a lot of school or at least did in the past, hence the odd class. Of course, the obligatory school festival is coming up and their class of two has to figure out something to do for it, since their goofball teacher promised the school administration a booth and squandered the money. The three of them hit on the idea of running a shooting gallery video game: Mr. Tateyama can code and Haruka is good at art… and to cover for the event having only one prize (a taxidermied fish that was the result of the mis-spent festival money), it’ll be a 1-versus-1 against Takane, who is herself a pro gamer under the screen name “Dancing Flash Ene”.
The plan goes surprisingly well,
despite Kido cheating by turning Takane’s crosshairs invisible and
the fans of Dancing Flash Ene recognizing her and swarming the booth.
Finally, Shintaro (a stranger to Takane at this point) shows up and
riles up the prickly Takane. Despite Takane doing her best yet, and
being so sure she’d win that she declared she’d call Shintaro
‘master’ if he managed to pull one over on her, he gets a perfect
score. Ayano appears shortly after to apologize for Shintaro’s
behavior.
Time passes, and Takane and Haruka grow
close. Haruka even takes up the game where Takane made her fame, and
his own screen name and avatar, Konoha (the name being derived from
his in a similar way to “Ene” from “Takane Enomoto” that
probably makes a little more sense in Japanese). Of course,
tsundere that she is, Takane can’t really handle her growing feelings
for Haruka… until one day he has an attack of his unspecified
condition that leaves him hospitalized, and Takane blames herself for
not noticing sooner. As she returns to school from visiting him at
the hospital to pick up his stuff she runs into her now-friend Ayano
and they briefly talk unadmitted crushes before Takane moves on…
and has a critical health episode of her own. Before blacking out,
she notices a familiar (unspecified) figure and manages to gasp out
her love for Haruka.
The next we hear of her, she ends up
becoming Ene, swallowed in darkness and ultimately dissolving into
the digital world from which she’ll, we know, one day end up on
Shintaro’s computer with the doofus unaware that’s the real Takane in
there.
Speaking of Shintaro, we also follow
his day at the amusement park, a sequence in which he’s kind of
forced to admit that the outside world isn’t so bad, whatever his
possible annoyance at having to chaperone Marry (who wanted to go
into an attraction for couples with no Seto to be found) and Kido
(Who lost Momo in a haunted house and is apparently no good with
horror) and deal with Ene mocking him as usual.
Now, while most of the books do spend a
great deal of time in flashback land (since not a lot of time is
passing in the present for these events), they do pick up in terms of
moving the story forward over what book 2 does. That said,
Takane/Ene’s backstory is still very interesting in its own regard,
especially with the implications that Mr. Tateyama is somehow the
mastermind of something evil and aware of the Heat Haze that are
received when Takane blacks out and as she starts to become Ene.
But, book 3 starts doing new stuff in
more ways than one. For starters, book 3 does give us more motion
with the “present” Mekakushi Dan, and on the other hand Book 3
represents the first big branching-off point where the novels start
to tell a different story from the songs or Mekakucity Actors. Some
earlier details, like the Mekakushi Dan’s visit to the amusement
park, don’t show up every time, but book 3 launches into substantive
changes.
What does book 3 cover then? Oddly
enough, it’s actually largely concerned the material surrounding
Kagerou Days. The events of the song appeared in extremely brief
cut-ins in the first book, but here we get the background of the
affected kids, Hibiya and Hiyori, Konoha along with them, and some of
the fallout or follow-up involving bringing Hibiya into the Mekakushi
Dan and setting the stage for the group’s mission for the novel line.
This makes now as good a time as any to
talk about the routing, how it works, and why it works. Each major
KagePro story – the Novel storyline, the Manga storyline, and
Mekakucity Actors – is both part of a bigger whole and its own
thing. None of them are adaptations of the others, except possibly
for the other routes adapting the songs. They do have their
similarities, the big ones being the elements covered in the first
and second novels: the “present” August 14th with the
Terrorist encounter at the mall and the past when Tanake and Haruka
were at school as told in song in Yuukei Yesterday. Add in Ayano’s
Theory of Happiness and you pretty much have the backbone; you know
you’re in a very strange timeline when these events aren’t quite
right. However, even the ones that start the most similar end up
diverging, giving us different plans and different action rather than
a game of “Spot the differences”. It’s an odd relationship
between the alternative versions. They’re not sequels/prequels even
if you can guess the relationships between the different timelines
with regard to something like an order, they really are just
alternative versions.
For book three, that leaves us with the
leadup to Kagerou Days. Hibiya and Hiyori, it turns out, are a
couple of kids from the countryside. Hibiya has a crush on Hiyori (a
slightly disturbing one if we’re honest, though apparently she’s at
the level where she has a fan club at school, and I guess he’s young
enough you could probably still call it cute), and the good fortune
to be invited along with her on a trip to the city. Hibiya wants a
cell phone, and Hiyori wants an autograph from her favorite idol,
Momo… and a porter to carry her stuff around, hence Hibiya.
They’ll be staying with the husband of Hiyori’s late sister, but he’s
not in which apparently means they’re spending most of their time
with Konoha, who’s… a bit weird, and an object of immediate
affection for Hiyori, much to Hibiya’s chagrin. After a shopping
trip and cemetery visit (where they run into Kano and we get the
pieces to put together that Hiyori’s sister was Ayano’s mom. Big age
gap, but it happens.), the three of them get into a bit of a fight,
which ends with Hiyori running into an intersection and all three of
them facing death and getting pulled into the Heat Haze.
The story of how we got there is
interwoven through the book with the story of what comes next.
Following up on the epilogue of the first book, with Ene being very
out of sorts at seeing Konoha, who has exited the Heat Haze along
with Hibiya, Hiyori still being trapped there. It’s not helped when
Konoha doesn’t seem to remember Ene and Hibiya wakes up and starts
making trouble. There’s nothing on the kid’s mind but wanting to
rescue Hiyori and blaming Konoha for not saving her, but especially
with Momo’s help they eventually manage to wrangle him back to the
Mekakushi Dan’s hideout. We get a good discussion about some of the
rules they’ve derived: The ability users all would have died, and
were all with someone else at the time, and that someone else
vanished: Momo drowned with her and Shintaro’s father, Kido was in a
fire with her sister, Hibiya in the accident with Hiyori, and so on.
Kano spends some time trolling Shintaro, and gets fairly cruel about
it when he uses his Decieving Eyes to take on Ayano’s form,
especially since Shintaro has still been having dreams/nightmares
(possibly visions) about her. Momo and Hibiya spend a day on the
town, getting to befriend one another and exploring Hibiya’s new
remote viewing ability, culminating with a seemingly successful
attempt to use the ability to get a glimpse of Hiyori. They return
to the hideout, and we end with the Mekakushi Dan ready to launch
into a mission. Their goal? Conquer the Kagerou Daze.
The next book follows the same pattern
of weaving stories together: the continued adventures of the
Mekakushi Dan on one side, and in this case, the history of Azami
(Marry’s grandmother and the source of the eye abilities) on the
other. Her story starts a very long time ago, possibly even in
prehistory, as a being that wanted to understand herself. She sought
meaning, and anyone or anything that might know what she was, but
after ages of searching her adventures in the world of humans left
her desiring isolation instead, because she had been constantly
betrayed and attacked, leaving a legacy of bloodshed. As such, she
retreated to a secluded location.
After some time, a human found her in
her formerly hidden glade. He was… strange, but affable, and
offered to build a house for her. She accepted the offer, and over
the next three years they worked together (well, mostly he worked,
that was his job after all) to build a house in the deep forest…
and in that same time, affection grew between the two of them, so
that when the house was finished, they were to stay there together as
a couple. The human even gave the being a name for the first time:
“Azami”, after the thistle plant that, like her, is both
beautiful and prickly. They end up having a child together, but
Azami notices her husband growing older. Desperate to escape the
fate of inevitably losing him, Azami once again delves into her own
nature and that of her powers. One of the “Snakes” (the
personifications, for lack of a better word, of her core abilities)
tells her that she can with care and effort forge a new world where
time has no power, repeating endlessly rather than moving forward
(sound familiar?).
That’s what you’ll get in book four,
but I’ll cut to the chase about how the story continues, especially
since some of this is learned through Marry and the notes in her old
house that the Mekakushi Dan investigates in this book. Azami sets
about creating that Never-Ending World as a paradise for her family,
but her husband wants to clear up a few errands before leaving Earth
behind. Unfortunately, this time when he goes into town he gets
caught, tortured, interrogated, and the angry villagers are what come
for Azami as she waits for her husband. They’re not a threat to the
likes of Azami, but her heart has been broken far too many times, and
even when her husband shows, battered and bruised but still trying to
reach her, she retreats into her Never-Ending World alone. Little
did she know she was imprisoning herself in the hell she forged, the
Heat Haze. She’s held there, powerless to interact with the real
world, tormented by the Snake of Clearing Eyes who set all this up in
the first place. When she sees her daughter and granddaughter
(Marry) about to be killed, though, she can’t bear it, and uses what
power she has over the Heat Haze to command it to bring those that
would die to her. She gives Marry the Queen snake, essentially her
soul, to act as a surrogate life force and allow Marry to escape, but
in doing so she loses her ability to control the Heat Haze and the
other snakes at all, which will continue obeying its last orders, to
draw in those who would die (with, of course, some parameters). This
is how the ability-users came to be: die in the right circumstances,
place, and time and the Heat Haze can swallow you. Be compatible
with one of the remaining Snakes, and it can serve as a new life
force and allow you to escape, able to wield the power it represents.
For the Mekakushi Dan in the present…
well, Shintaro has some very strange and particular dreams of Ayano,
almost as though they’re still talking, and it’s not clear to him
what’s real and what’s misremembered Kano trolling. After an
actually really lovely morning and learning that Marry is apparently
over a hundred, they decide to visit her old house in the forest to
look for clues, finding Azami’s diary. From her self reflection,
they learn of ten abilities Azami possessed, and the fact that
“Clearing” is responsible for the Heat Haze. For the kids, the
story of what they’ve gone through falls into place, as does the
truth of those still trapped like Hiyori.
The fifth book, though, has a slightly
different story to tell, because in order to understand what’s going
on now, it’s not just ancient history. In this case, it’s Kano’s
background, which you might at first wonder about the relevance of.
For one, and I can’t stress this
enough, it’s interesting and engaging in its own right. The magic of
the Kagerou Daze light novels, even compared to other KagePro routes,
is how much you get to know the individual characters. There are
tons of scenes that aren’t about racing towards Outer Science as fast
as we can, they’re about really understanding the Mekakushi Dan,
empathizing with them, and getting invested in their problems.
Character building is critical, because if you don’t care about a
character, it doesn’t matter how much story they go through whereas
if you do make a connection you won’t regret any of the time you
spend with them.
Kano’s background starts with his
terrible home life as a child, through his would-have-been death in a
violent robbery, gaining his Deceiving Eye power (with which he can
take on the likeness of others) and becoming, like Kido and Seto, an
orphan. The three of them first become something of a band at the
orphanage. They get adopted by the Tateyama family and meet Ayano
(actually meet again for Kano, who had a chance encounter with her
far earlier). Through this, we get to understand some of his seeming
hostility towards Shintaro, as the boy who didn’t take better care of
Kano’s precious big sister. There’s also an interesting divergence
from some other routes here: It’s clear that the scene at the start
of Lost Time Memory is, in the original song, Additional Memory, and
most other iterations, Ayano and Shintaro. In the novel route,
there’s an encounter that follows it pretty closely, except “Ayano’s”
lines are more harsh and accusatory – because Ayano is already in
the Heat Haze and the figure Shintaro meets is Kano disguised as
Ayano. Each loop has its own color like that.
We also learn the truth behind Ayano’s
death, how she learned of the threat that the Snake of Clearing Eyes
inside her father posed to her friends and family, and the way she
could interfere with her plan. She shared this with Kano, who helped
her in her tasks until, at the end, he found his way to the school
rooftop to witness the confrontation between Ayano and Clearing Eyes.
After she was swallowed by the Heat Haze, Clearing Eyes browbeats
Kano into doing him some favors to cover it up
In book 6, the past we get is Haruka’s,
seeing how he and Shintaro interacted with the others back when they
went to school. This story is pretty unique to the novels, and it’s
really nice, kind of a B-side to Yuukei Yesterday. The “present”
story in the volume is mostly contained in the bookends that show
Haruka and Shintaro meeting again in the Heat Haze. Because this
summary is already going on way too long, I’ll be brief about what
the volume gives us: it’s good to have the dark side of Konoha that’s
coming foreshadowed, and it’s good to get more character out of
Haruka. In a lot of other versions, Haruka is not a character who
gets a lot of development; like Ayano, he doesn’t really have a
present version (because Konoha is a different entity without
Haruka’s thoughts or memories) but unlike Ayano he’s only connected
to a couple of the other characters at most, and essentially
relegated to being seen through Takane’s eyes. Getting his narration
and his perspective on Takane as well as the friendship with the
Kisaragi family is something that’s good as well as fairly unique.
7 and 8, though, jump fully into the
climax. Now, as might be apparent, the Kagerou Daze novels have a
kind of deliberate pace. It might be easy to kind of “lose the
plot” between the stuff with Hibiya and book 7 where we really
start to follow up on it and challenge the Snake of Clearing Eyes,
because we spend a lot of time experiencing how we got here rather
than where we’re going now. A weaker outing would, certainly, be
damaged at least somewhat by that kind of pacing – Mekakucity
Actors kind of falls prey to that (more on that when we get there).
Here, though, it does feel like it’s legitimately more about the
journey than the destination.
In 7 itself, there is still backstory
(of course, that’s how this is structured) In this case, we get the
history of Tsubomi Kido… and if you thought that Kano had it rough
before becoming part of Ayano’s family (and then the Mekakushi Dan
they formed)… he did, but Kido’s might be the gold medalist in
their trauma Olympics. Her backstory is also a lot larger-feeling
and more dramatic than many of the others, without the same degree of
daily school life, focused on her life with a role-model big (half)
sister… and insane, obsessive formerly estranged father. As
opposed to, say, the daily life of Haruka that filled book 6, what
Kido went through is a lot more intense and even cinematic, which is
fitting considering its running parallel to the beginning of the end.
She even had quite the encounter with Azami when she was in the Heat
Haze as a child, which rather than the strange experiences we see
from the others gives more meaning to what happened to her – not
that she doesn’t have her own strange experience.
On the active side, there’s gearing up
and going for the showdown against the Snake of Clearing Eyes, hidden
inside Mr. Tateyama. The plan to reach, confront, and disable him is
actually really good; it’s scaled up in depth and complexity from the
plan in the first act for handling the terrorists, but similarly
makes use of the skills and abilities of the characters.
Unfortunately for the Mekakushi Dan, their foe has a trick up his
sleeve that they weren’t able to predict: possessing Konoha, becoming
the dark version as seen in Outer Science, ending with Marry calling
down the Heat Haze, leading us into the final book.
Book 8 is largely concerned, then, with
resolving that conflict and showing something of a denoument. To that
end, there’s no backstory element. There are still interwoven parts,
but that follows characters in the normal world and Heat Haze in
parallel. At the battle with Clearing Eyes, Azami spends all that
she has left to operate, for a time, as one with Marry, lending her
skill with the powers that once belonged to her to the fight. Most
of the gang ends up dead all the same, struggling to hold back
Clearing Eyes in his Dark Konoha form, until he’s finally able to be
sealed away.
But, that’s not where the book ends.
The battle with Clearing Eyes that covers the last half of last book
and the first half of this one is good, intricate, and emotional, but
room was left for a strong denoument. Marry and Seto survive their
encounter, and for a time, however haltingly, they try to move
forward: Seto especially tries to be strong for Marry, whose
experiences with Azami’s presence and gaining the snakes of the
fallen leaves her less than totally stable. Eventually, though, they
manage to communicate with their friends trapped in the Heat Haze,
and together come to the conclusion that no one involved can really
accept this ending. Maybe it’s what Clearing Eyes was really playing
for, but the choice to reset in this case is a deliberate one, made
by the lost kids who (Marry especially) want a second chance.
So, the time has come to try to some up
my thoughts about the series.
The pacing is different. There are
eight volumes of stuff and if you look for the unbroken thread
between the opening of Volume 1 and the end of Volume 8, that thread
is kind of stretched. But that’s only if you don’t accept the
stories running in the past to be of value. I personally think those
stories are extremely valuable, and don’t look at anything KagePro by
the standards of an action story. Seeing them as more of a character
study, the novels are really good. They’re breezy light reading with
a lot of heart and a lot of meat, and I feel like they’d be a good
way for newcomers to onboard into the Project since they explain
within themselves everything you need to know for the novels.
There’s humor, drama, even a few action beats, so I’d really
recommend the novels in isolation.
As part of the project as a whole,
they’re good – getting the deeper perspective on the “normal”
route can help contextualize some of the stuff in the songs and
Actors. But at the same time, if you’ve already seen Actors and
enjoyed the songs, I’d say the next step is the Manga over the
novels. I’d still go on to both, but if I had to make a call, that’s
what it would be. Take from that what you will.
Next time up, it’ll be on the Monday
review: we’re taking a look at Mekakucity Actors!