Reviews with content warning for Child death - かがみの孤城

Sad, hopeful, whimsical, lovely. the movie was lovely but this felt like an arrow to the heart in a very bittersweet, throbbing way. I NEED this in print

I often struggle with translated literature feeling stilted or distanced from the characters but this was spectacular.

my one bone to pick is that sometimes the children admitted faults in places where truly their parents should have picked up the slack, but I also think that is realistic to their lives. their parents didn’t know them enough to notice their issues, so the kids blame themselves for “not speaking up” when problems arouse. :(

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brekaboujie's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I feel that reading this book as a trabslation has potentially resulted in me rating it lower than I would have done if I could read it in its original language. It is such a culturally specific book, and the setting is something I know so little about and is so far from my own experience that I found it difficult to empathise with the characters and the plot line. It was all just so BIZARRE but treated very seriously: the intense bullying, the lack of trusted adult figures which meant the bullying was never dealt with, the (to me) extreme reactions to teasing that was so just... stupid and ignorable (feels mean to say, but Kokoro reacted to everything so intensely and extremely it didn't feel realistic to me which then meant a huge section of the plot was a bit muddled in my head), and the mirror and magical land which just... no one questioned despite it being plopped in a world that didn't have any magic elsewhere.

I think a lot of my lack of enjoyment and issues immersing myself came from the translation choices, so I won't comment hugely on the way it was written as it may be totally different in the original version. However, I did fully think for about half the book that the mirror world was an intense hallucination / delusion and that Kokoro was very unwell. It allowed me to ignore some of the weird aspects so then when it wasn't that everything just felt very odd.

I did enjoy the twists, but I wish there had been better lead up to the ending sequences.

It felt like a big genre twist at the end with the thriller chase sequence vibes, which was fun but again, very odd. Going through everyone's trauma was a bizarre choice as it completely messed up the pacing for me. I also CANNOT TELL YOU how frustrated I was that it took them that long to realise that they were in the same world but from different timelines. It was SO EASY to check and when they went straight to alternate universes I almost ripped my hair out !!!!!!!!!

Overall, I feel like I missed out on a lot by reading an English translation so this is a hesitant 3 stars. The premise was interesting, but it really didn't work for me.

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