Andrew Cunningham (Translator), Jocelyne Allen (Translator), 2015

A collection of 6 connected horrors (+1 bonus) that shed light into a small world populated by serial killers. The mains: Morino (森) who bleeds Gothic Lolita (a legit Harajuku fash) like black licorice to urban predators and her classmate – a teenage killer with the perfect veneer smile. The Goth’s world swells and mutates around Morino like a spider web, an unyielding forest at night – under the boughs, there is no prospect for a way out, to tell day from night, shadows from monsters slipping off their camouflage to hunt. In Morino, the character for tree 木 are written thrice, the strokes meander on top of one another. What fate sees in Morino, what flashes in front of the victims, before they know it, they are deep into the forest (ever hit the wrong button at the vending machine?).

The high school pair embarks on a mission to locate the most brutal killers in town, so that they can pay respects to their idols. Why, one of themes in this book is that anti-social personality is innate rather than acquired. Some are born with birthmarks, others with the urge to stuff the livings in boxes or spread them out. Otsuichi does an awesome job of elevating these carnal urges into rites of passage. For example, one undertaker sticks a bamboo pole into a coffin underground so that it is possible to communicate with the victim for a while – day in, day out, getting into their minds. Then water is poured through the pole. The process reads strangely poetic.

I like the first and sixth stories the most, for very different reasons. The adrenaline rush in the first story. I did not see it coming, getting side-tracked by the twists and turns of the pair’s journey in the mountain, tracing after what the killer did in his diary. The sixth story, on the other hand, is the richest in the whole collection. Victims have another dimension. Their struggle evokes emotions that are more, well, varied (as supposed to the psychopaths’ dichotomy) and tender, like sunlight piercing through pregnant clouds.  

In sum, delicious dark stuff, max entertaining and a great gift option, abate PG15. This is considered Otsuichi’s magnum opus (published straight out of college) but I wouldn’t mind purchase his other collections to see a variation, or jump straight to Uketsu’s Strange Pictures (2022) – English translation just out this year.