Uketsu's excessively Gothic story is informed of macabre murder novels, a family curse, revenge noir and --of course-- cruelty. An attempt to redeem the plot with a character who tries to invert the curse by not committing murder is weakly handled and seems more like a 21st century fairy tale than non-violent behavior resembling something a real human would do. But of course these are only characters in a book, right? It's OK to shun any guise of reality because of that. I guess.
With lines like this: "..would anyone really sacrifice their whole future for a school sweetheart?" I came to resent the author and the book. That line contains the basis for hundreds of well known novels, stories, plays and movie scripts. It is a sentiment that is the foundation of timeworn storytelling where something real and human and relatable is at stake. That the author ridicules such a notion speaks volumes about who he or she is and why Uketsu writes soulless nonsense like Strange Houses. Rather than embrace humanity, a more challenging pathway, Uketsu reduces the risk and adventure by piling on excesses reminiscent of 18th century Gothic horror novel conventions: deformity, obsessive love, paranoid fear, and "brainwashed" people compelled to commit murder because they have been cursed.
I'm done with Uketsu. These are not novels. They are naive puzzle books drawing on video game notion that violent revenge is the only recourse. The narrative is skeletal, the dialogue is rendered in script format adding an off-putting dispassionate layer to the entire framework. Strange Houses seems more like an instruction manual with all the real tools of fiction writing -- human characters, metaphor, descriptive and rich language -- completely stripped away to make way for a bare bones structure of logic puzzles onto which a flimsy and outlandish plot is attached. There's pulp fiction and there's trash fiction. A third English translated book from Uketsu came out this year -- Strange Buildings. I won't be going to the open house.
I totally agree with you about these books. There are plenty of good Japanese mystery writers who are worth reading, but Uketsu leaves me cold. But then again, I can't take to Japanese Manga either, although millions would disagree with me.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, this is a series of puzzle books rather than detective novels from a horror creator instead of a mystery writer. They're supposed to be strange, macabre visual puzzles created by someone who presents himself as a soulless puppet. I can see why that's not going to be to everyone's taste.
ReplyDeleteSo I see this as a gimmick series like those dossier or photograph mystery novels, but generally a good deal better than can be reasonably expected from a gimmick. Just look at the magic eye picture mystery from the '90s Jim recently reviewed. Not very good.
I can see that. Also, the performance art part of this YouTube persona can’t be ignored. But I didn’t want to dissect that oddity. That site has become its own strange platform for wannabe actors in desperate need for attention. The release of the Uketsu internet videos in book format is just marketing as far as that goes. A cash cow for the brand, so to speak. I should’ve just avoided this second book because I disliked the first one.
DeleteYou know, I’ve been wondering if Uketsu is actually Jim Rion, the translator who lives in Japan and has a penchant for weird horror fiction. Also I forgot to mention in my post that Strange Houses seemed very much influenced by the “House” detective novels written by Yukito Ayatsuji. The Labyrinth House Murders has a lot in common with Uketsu’s book.
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