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3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
funny
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
"Mana sosokmu yang sebenarnya? Yang malam atau yang siang?"
Kalimat tanya yang tertulis di cover belakang buku membuatku penasaran dengan apa yang ingin disampaikan Sumino Yoru dalam karyanya kali ini. Setelah membaca karya-karya beliau sebelumnya, aku rasa yang satu ini tidak kalah mengemas kisah yang menarik.
Berkisah tentang anak SMP yang berubah wujud menjadi monster di malam hari. Suatu malam, Ia datang ke sekolahnya untuk mengambil barang yang tertinggal dan bertemu dengan teman sekelasnya. Awalnya aku pikir cerita kali ini bakalan menyeramkan, tapi ternyata menggambarkan kisah yang menyedihkan tentang perundungan.
Penyampaian ceritanya unik karena perbab dibagi ke dalam siang saat berwujud manusia dan malam hari yang berubah menjadi monster. Menurutku bagian bab-bab awal buku ini terasa lama dan mulai membuatku terpacu untuk menamatkan bacaan di pertengahan halaman buku. Character developmentnya terasa. Ceritanya pun dapat dibaca semua kalangan khususnya remaja.
Bagian yang meninggalkan kesan mendalam bagiku adalah saat sang tokoh utama menyadari dan bertanya.
Lantas, monster itu apa?
Sosok dengan fisik yang menyeramkan,
Sosok manusia yang merundung sesamanya,
atau sisi gelap yang perlahan menguasai hati dan pikiran kita?
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying
within this book a young girl is being bullied, whether it be that some classmates actively go out of their way to harass her or it be the fact that majority of her class shunes her (from judgement or from the fact that they themselves fear to become like her)
the main character turns into a monster every night, one day he goes back to the school -in his monster form- and sees the girl there. she doesn't question him when she find out who the monster actually is. from then on they experience a friendship (only at night) without even realising it.
she tells him not to bring the things that happen in the day into the night.
“When you’re suddenly in that person’s shoes, you can no longer believe 'That’s just the way things are.'"
after he realizes this, he finally has a peaceful night of sleep again- one where he doesn't turn into a monster.
the main character turns into a monster every night, one day he goes back to the school -in his monster form- and sees the girl there. she doesn't question him when she find out who the monster actually is. from then on they experience a friendship (only at night) without even realising it.
she tells him not to bring the things that happen in the day into the night.
Spoiler
at the end of the story we see that the main character realize something again, something important he forgot.“When you’re suddenly in that person’s shoes, you can no longer believe 'That’s just the way things are.'"
after he realizes this, he finally has a peaceful night of sleep again- one where he doesn't turn into a monster.
I recently just watched a movie that’s also about transformations as a metaphor for adolescent/middle-grade age changes. Likely due to me going through growing pains in the US, I prefer the giant red panda stand-in for female puberty over the multi-legged multi-eyed shapeshifting monster in this novel. Yoru Sumino is right that we can feel monsterous on the inside when we have all these uncomfortable and hideous thoughts going through adolescence. Who is the real monster? What does it feel like to hide a monster inside yourself? It says a lot when a fearsome creature is less scary than pre-teens during the day.
By the end, Sumino does bring the reader to a powerful message on identity, I just found it tedious to get there. My goodness, I remember overthinking EVERYTHING in middle school. But listening to Sumino’s narrator inner dialogue made me glad I wasn’t a middle schooler in the Japanese school system. (In my experience, bullying in America was on smaller scales, with bullying going on within closed-ecosystems of different friend-groups, not whole class against one). I loved seeing how 僕 and 俺 became synthesized, almost like the Christian-ideology of three-in-one. Sumino also deserves praise for so beautifully expressing the value of being seen.
Like the novel アンバランス, the novel ends with the protagonist’s first step in the right direction. I like that kind of realistic ending. We gradually change and do so with effort.
P.S. I’m now recalling when a socially-esteemed mean girl in 6th grade asked if I was friends with the girl she was bullying. I felt the pressure to tell her no, but that was just a brief moment. I told her “yes”, she said some snobby remark, and I wrote in my diary about how I felt good about the decision. All she did was stop talking to me, but it didn’t matter because I had my own friend group to talk to. I doubt the situation would have been that easy if I were in the same group-conscious world as this novel’s protagonist.
By the end, Sumino does bring the reader to a powerful message on identity, I just found it tedious to get there. My goodness, I remember overthinking EVERYTHING in middle school. But listening to Sumino’s narrator inner dialogue made me glad I wasn’t a middle schooler in the Japanese school system. (In my experience, bullying in America was on smaller scales, with bullying going on within closed-ecosystems of different friend-groups, not whole class against one). I loved seeing how 僕 and 俺 became synthesized, almost like the Christian-ideology of three-in-one. Sumino also deserves praise for so beautifully expressing the value of being seen.
Like the novel アンバランス, the novel ends with the protagonist’s first step in the right direction. I like that kind of realistic ending. We gradually change and do so with effort.
P.S. I’m now recalling when a socially-esteemed mean girl in 6th grade asked if I was friends with the girl she was bullying. I felt the pressure to tell her no, but that was just a brief moment. I told her “yes”, she said some snobby remark, and I wrote in my diary about how I felt good about the decision. All she did was stop talking to me, but it didn’t matter because I had my own friend group to talk to. I doubt the situation would have been that easy if I were in the same group-conscious world as this novel’s protagonist.
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
this book is not as good as some of the author's other works, but this one is still a excellent read.
I was expecting this to be darker or scarier honestly. I just randomly picked this up at B&N because of the cover, title and the synopsis. However, this focuses more on high school and being bullied. The bullies don’t look like a Kaiju, but they’re a different kind of monster. I think high school students could really enjoy this book. I’m not the right audience, but I liked it alright. Adachi isn’t scary. He seems very scared of himself turning into a monster, so much so that he doesn’t test anything about it hardly. He takes baby steps into learning more about his monster self. Makes sense, just part of the reason this felt so slow and boring at times for me. I liked reading the night chapters more than the day chapters, but so often it felt like nothing was happening. I wanted to learn more about Yano, but she hardly speaks about anything since she has the rule about not talking about what happens during the day. I kept coming up with ideas for what would happen and none of them did. The story just went along and sort of abruptly ended. After thinking about it more, I lowered my rating from 3 to 2 stars. Sadly, this is just not for me.
I have mixed feelings on this one. On the one hand, I loved it. On the other, I'm not sure if the ending really...spoke to me, so to speak. Then again, I was exhausted when I read the end of the book so I can't say I'm the best judge. But it was an interesting take on high school life and how bullying can affect people.