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A review by dee2799d
クビツリハイスクール 戯言遣いの弟子 by NISIOISIN
4.0
I've been told that this is where the series starts veering away from the locked room mystery genre and started going towards the direction of the Ningen Series (the spin off). As a big fan of locked room mysteries, I'm a bit disappointed but if there's still gonna be some sort of mystery I guess that's okay? The dialogue is as good as always--although people don't really talk like that in real life do they? It's too witty to be real.
NisiOisiN leaves a lot more of the motives as vague as possible here, although the murder isn't as personal (it feels like) as with the second book. It's up to the reader to judge why the murderer did what they did.
Possibly the most interesting point in the novel though is the dissection of Ikkun's character. This was hidden in book1 due to Kunagisa loving the hell out of Ikkun, partially revealed in book2 through Zerozaki's mirror image, and then dissected by Aikawa in this book. And you realise that emotions really are complex things, aren't they?
29 December 2019
Upping stars from three to four based on the Vertical edition.
So Vertical has finally published the 3rd novel in the Zaregoto series despite being so damn vague about the rest of it. Like come on guys, you publish Katanagatari in hardback despite it not being the best Nisio series (Nisio and fight scenes??) and you can't even confirm if Zaregoto is a done deal nor not? !
But okay fine, we try not to be salty and review the actual novel.
Daniel Joseph did an incredible job with this--like I know there are just some things that are hard to translate and this is why I read this in English and not Japanese (I'm nowhere near fluent enough to handle NisioIsin, despite these being light novels)--but he certainly made things as easy to understand as possible while still keeping the Nisio style. So I might have been really salty about Vertical earlier, but I do want to say that I appreciate how they have the translator's name on the cover. These people deserve all the praise.
Especially since it appears fan translation might have been helpful about explaining the jokes, but not how the story tied together. Reading it now as an official translation, I got a bit more meat when it comes to the murderer's motives and emotions than I did the first time. It's still vague and left to personal interpretation, but like a lot of Zaregoto, there is enough to imply that one option is more likely than the other (if you so wish).
I'm kind of surprised at how thin this volume is compared to the first two, but the Monogatari novels didn't follow a set number of pages either. I do think some passages might have been cut though; I really remember Ikkun mentioning how, after his meeting with Zerozaki, things happened and he just couldn't be assed to get a hair cut? Which is why when Aikawa mentions it in the car, we weren't surprised.
I also want to say, since I might not have mentioned this before, but Nisio debuted with Zaregoto and he wrote some of the novels before Monogatari happened. You can really see the shift in his worldview, or perhaps a mellowing of intensity? from Zaregoto to Monogatari. And I'm not saying he lost his touch or stopped caring, because Monogatari has some cutting (and surprising) insight about human personalities and psychological questions. But I also think Zaregoto has a lot more despair? The despair in Ikkun's conversation with Hime-chan in the end, and Aikawa's own acceptance that her 'stand up straight with your chest out!' pep talk was nothing since it's coming from a safe position speaks of a writer who knows what it's like to be in that low end. The hatred people have of being told to try harder when they've already been doing that and have nothing left. I'll always love this series best among Nisio's works because of that, and I just hope we see this whole thing published in English.
NisiOisiN leaves a lot more of the motives as vague as possible here, although the murder isn't as personal (it feels like) as with the second book. It's up to the reader to judge why the murderer did what they did.
Possibly the most interesting point in the novel though is the dissection of Ikkun's character. This was hidden in book1 due to Kunagisa loving the hell out of Ikkun, partially revealed in book2 through Zerozaki's mirror image, and then dissected by Aikawa in this book. And you realise that emotions really are complex things, aren't they?
29 December 2019
Upping stars from three to four based on the Vertical edition.
So Vertical has finally published the 3rd novel in the Zaregoto series despite being so damn vague about the rest of it. Like come on guys, you publish Katanagatari in hardback despite it not being the best Nisio series (Nisio and fight scenes??) and you can't even confirm if Zaregoto is a done deal nor not? !
But okay fine, we try not to be salty and review the actual novel.
Daniel Joseph did an incredible job with this--like I know there are just some things that are hard to translate and this is why I read this in English and not Japanese (I'm nowhere near fluent enough to handle NisioIsin, despite these being light novels)--but he certainly made things as easy to understand as possible while still keeping the Nisio style. So I might have been really salty about Vertical earlier, but I do want to say that I appreciate how they have the translator's name on the cover. These people deserve all the praise.
Especially since it appears fan translation might have been helpful about explaining the jokes, but not how the story tied together. Reading it now as an official translation, I got a bit more meat when it comes to the murderer's motives and emotions than I did the first time. It's still vague and left to personal interpretation, but like a lot of Zaregoto, there is enough to imply that one option is more likely than the other (if you so wish).
I'm kind of surprised at how thin this volume is compared to the first two, but the Monogatari novels didn't follow a set number of pages either. I do think some passages might have been cut though; I really remember Ikkun mentioning how, after his meeting with Zerozaki, things happened and he just couldn't be assed to get a hair cut? Which is why when Aikawa mentions it in the car, we weren't surprised.
I also want to say, since I might not have mentioned this before, but Nisio debuted with Zaregoto and he wrote some of the novels before Monogatari happened. You can really see the shift in his worldview, or perhaps a mellowing of intensity? from Zaregoto to Monogatari. And I'm not saying he lost his touch or stopped caring, because Monogatari has some cutting (and surprising) insight about human personalities and psychological questions. But I also think Zaregoto has a lot more despair? The despair in Ikkun's conversation with Hime-chan in the end, and Aikawa's own acceptance that her 'stand up straight with your chest out!' pep talk was nothing since it's coming from a safe position speaks of a writer who knows what it's like to be in that low end. The hatred people have of being told to try harder when they've already been doing that and have nothing left. I'll always love this series best among Nisio's works because of that, and I just hope we see this whole thing published in English.