Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria

This LN is going to be absolutely balls to write about (in a bad way), so I might as well start by posting a bunch of notes for each volume. /---------------------------------------------------- Notes /---------------------------------------------------- Overall Evident from the first volume, Hakomari's greatest strengths originate from Eiji Mikage's terrifying writing talent. If he wants suspense, your eyes will be glued onto the screen without fail. Baiting the reader's emotions becomes a literal art form, yet you can't even feel any resentment for being so pathetically toyed with. You will feel every emotion that the characters are feeling as they're being thrown in a loop. It's draining on the mind and soul. How about thrill? That rollercoaster will fly right off the rails and throw you into some of the most incredible imagery you've ever seen. But it's never senselessly bizarre or abstruse (see: Madoka Magica Rebellion). That imagery will be accompanied by an aura of powerful emotion, be it sadness, dread, or pure awe. It will actually impact you. Moreover, such vivid descriptions can be conveyed without disrupting the flow of action in the slightest, unlike some other wordy prose I've seen (looking at you, Nasu). In short, Hakomari is insanely enjoyable. My man Eiji nails down the mystery psychological thriller part of the story like he's been doing it his entire life. And well, that's not really what I care about in the end. For me, what makes a great work from mere popcorn has everything to do with the overarching elements of the story: the themes, the central conflicts, and the character development. This is where the problem gets a bit more complicated. -Characterization Issues and Slice of Life- One of the biggest issues I have with Hakomari is its characters and the way they're used. Being the crazy ass thriller that it is, many of Hakomari's characters are likewise extreme: broken, weird, or exceedingly obsessive. Take our main character Kazuki for example. He's driven entirely by his unhealthy obsession for Maria. (Outside of that, he's a boring ass light novel protagonist who doesn't do anything with his ever-growing legion of fangirls who like him for god knows what reason. I mean, just look at him. You can't get a more generic, blank-slate design than that.) There's also Maria and her naively altruistic obsession towards fulfilling people's wishes, Daiya and his grand notions of systematic vigilantism, and a wide array of miscellaneous nutheads who are, well, crazy to say the least. It's one thing that these characters are not relatable in the slightest, but it's another thing entirely when they seem so distant and mechanical, like puppets drawn by strings. The problem with all this is that I have a hard time viewing them as 'real', and therefore I can't emotionally invest in them. Usually, when we're dealing with characters forced into extreme situations, there are two types of opportunities to give a character the sense that they're 'human' (for lack of a better word). One is through emotional cracks that form in their behavior. Take Lelouch for example: what makes Lelouch a more sympathetic character than Light is the moments of weakness that he keeps to himself, moments that clearly indicate signs of his ongoing feelings of guilt, exhaustion, and concern for others. In a sense, we're seeing Lelouch as a fellow human being, not as a human-shaped embodiment of his ideals and the story's themes. The second way is through moments outside the conflict; the change of environment, especially through an everyday slice of life, can easily give characters more dimension, more nuance, more natural relatability. This is one of the cornerstones of Monster's extraordinary characterization. Unfortunately, while Hakomari engages in both methods, neither are used effectively. Take the first one, the signs of weakness under pressure. Yes, the characters do crack under pressure. They frequently crack under pressure. But while we see them exhibit moments of pain or despair, it rarely ever adds to their character. We don't get a sense that we're understanding them better, relating to them more, or seeing more nuance to their personality. (Brief tangent, but one possible counterexample is when Yuuri cracks, and we see the crazy manifest itself in a somewhat spectacular fashion. That doesn't make her character seem any more real though; if anything, it achieves the opposite effect.) Instead, it's just a cycle of momentary doubt followed by a deep breath, a clearing of the mind, and the plot sets in motion again. It also doesn't help that there's no reasoning behind either Kazuki or Maria's goals: they pursue it because they feel compelled to pursue it, and they have the superhuman will to sacrifice anything for it. Period. Morality and various other doubt factors are only things to be conquered over time, not reflected upon (causing a change of plans or a change of heart) or regained. How about the slice of life? Oh boy. Look, I'm usually one to love banter. Banter's enjoyable to read, can flesh out character dynamics, and demonstrates a character's wit and charm that we wouldn't have seen otherwise. But as the famous expression goes, too much of anything is bad. Hakomari overloads its slice of life with so much banter between the characters that that's literally all there is to it. It's meaningless after the millionth time of seeing some character firing the shots and applying the third-degree sick burn with surgical routine. It's mechanical, it's incredible unfunny, and hell, it's annoying! Having a dick size competition of who has the sickest comebacks doesn't show me anything about the characters. I can't even tell you how the everyday can be written meaningfully; I just know that I've seen successful examples, and Hakomari's not one of them. Okay. For sake of argument, let's take two steps back and assume that the whole point of such mundane slice of life is to set up the foundations for the big reveal regarding Kokone's past. So it'd be similar to Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso, where the characters deliberately fake an overly light-hearted atmosphere with all the idiotic rom-com to cover up deep underlying issues. Well, that's great and all, but I feel like it's a huge wasted opportunity to have sacrificed one of the best backdrops for subtle character development in favor of a plot twist. Haruaki and the rest of the character cast really could have used it. Oh well, perhaps Eiji Mikage isn't a good slice of life writer and preferred to stick to his strengths of plot writing instead. Actually, I'd argue that neither of those two assertions are quite true, but we'll get to that later (or not). -Drama- Yet despite all my complaints about the relatability and groundedness of the characters, Eiji Mikage's stroke of genius kicks in whenever the story hits a dramatic high point: regardless of how you feel about a character, he will make you feel something for the character during that scene. Without fail. He'll make you feel for a character you've known for barely twenty pages, or even a character who's a murderous psychopath underneath his deeply irritating visage. Sympathy, empathy, pity, despair, sadness, what have you. It doesn't matter. Ultimately, it's this incredible capacity to write engaging drama that carries the latter portions of Hakomari to greatness. After all, no matter how stubborn I am about not liking a character or feeling that they're not relatable enough, once I've felt for them in a big moment, my emotional perception of them will change. The poignancy of their overbearing struggles will hit me, and whenever I think back to them, I will only be able to recall these strong pangs of emotions. That is the sign of success, and my god do the sixth and seventh volumes succeed big time. -Character Perspective- Another counterweight to the characterization issues is how effectively character perspective is used to tell the story. For most of Hakomari (if not all), the story is told through Kazuki's perspective, and shifts to Maria's or Daiya's perspective from time to time based on the needs of the situation. Regardless of the character, you as the reader can really get into the character's heads and place yourself in their shoes. Very rarely do I recall disagreeing with the character's judgement; their logical thought process is sound, and their decision making is always very understandable given their situation and the information they know. Their concerns are well founded, and their emotional reactions to the situations bleed through the page right into your mind. The immersion aspect is rock solid in that regard. Now all this may sound contradictory to my previous assertions about "unrelatable and distant" characters, so I should clarify the subtle distinction: getting inside the character's mind does not instantly make the character feel 'human'! The internal logic of the mind can be sound and understandable, but the character himself might still feel mechanical and drawn by the whims of fate. That being said, the significance of effective applications of drama and character perspective is that the characterization issues I mentioned prior don't actually hinder engagement with Hakomari's characters to a great extent. You'll understand the characters, you'll feel their emotions, and in the end, you'll probably feel for them too. It'll just take a while to get there. -The Characters- Well, if you don't mind me, I'll just cut the crap and informally blabber about my impressions of Hakomari's characters for a while. Let's start with Kazuki. Despite being the most blank-slate character of the cast, the lead of a bad harem, and a blindly stubborn nutcase who transcend all moral boundaries for the sole goal of getting some of that everyday Maria ass, there's one thing about his character that's really impressive: the meticulous development that leads to him becoming a nutcase. No, seriously. From volumes 1 through 4, you see him develop in many subtle ways, slowly breaking more and more moral boundaries, becoming more perceptive and decisive, and becoming more aware of what he's going to do about his feelings for Maria. Each event pushes him further on his path, and before you know it, he's a guy who can contend with Daiya in terms of determination, strategy, and ruthlessness. It was at Volume 5 that I suddenly realized this, despite having been with his character all this time. What? Isn't Kazuki supposed to be that innocent, absent-minded kid from the first volume? No way. Then there's Maria. At face value, I don't find Maria to be that interesting. Her backstory is pretty cool, and now she's pursuing some naïve goal that's stupid and should be crushed immediately. Great. As much as her presence seems cool from the start, the author breaks it down pretty quickly, and we all know her to be that girl who's just trying to run from reality. Now what makes Maria really interesting is O, and this is something I detailed in my Volume 7 reaction. It's actually pretty interesting to see 'Aya' as her selfless self, and O as her selfish self. To complete the primary character triad, there's Daiya. Refer to my Volume 6 reaction to see what I think of his character, and I guess I'll just add that Daiya's intransparency makes him really frustrating despite his better intentions. How about the side characters? For Kokone, I don't think we're given nearly enough of her perspective. Sure, we have the backstory and all (see: Volume 6 reaction), but I kinda wished that she played a more active role in the story. I mean, heck, I bet that she had more pointless banter lines than serious lines. Same thing with Haruaki; I like Haruaki, I like his role, and I really wished that he would somehow involve himself deeper with the boxes conflict, as perhaps the only 'normal mind' to provide a voice of reason for all the crazy. The other solution would just be to make the slice of life more meaningful, but I guess we can't have it all. I like Kasumi, but she's wet paste. There's literally nothing to Iroha's character, and as for Yuuri, well…I thought I didn't like Yuuri because she was way too manipulative and crazy for me to get behind. The epilogue changed my mind; she's a crazy manipulative hoe, but she's our crazy manipulative hoe. -Concluding Thoughts- There are a few loose threads that Hakomari fails to address (like what the heck actually happened when Touji and Nana disappeared), a few questionable plot leaps of faith that seem suboptimal, but I honestly don't care about them that much. Overall, Hakomari is a lopsided, somewhat incohesive work in my eyes. It's brilliant at thriller material, and the dramatic execution is near flawless, but the substance behind the work falters a bit over its own ambitious weight. It's really a godsend that Volume 7 ended up being the best volume in the entire set, as that epilogue almost brought me to tears with its heartwarming execution, and made me rethink how much I really cared about the characters and their journies through this grueling series. I don't think that Hakomari will be the best of this medium, but it's certainly not a bad place to start.