When you look into the darkness, it looks backs…
Creative Staff:
Story: Miyuki Miyabe
Translation: Jim Hubbert
What They Say:
A series of murders shocks Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward, but Shigenori, a retired police detective, is instead obsessed with a gargoyle that seems to move. College freshman Kotaro launches a web-based investigation of the killer, and comes to find that answers may lie within an abandoned building in the center of Japan’s busiest neighborhood, and beyond the Gate of Sorrows. In this adult sequel to Miyabe’s The Book of Heroes, you will meet monsters from other worlds and ordinary horrors that surpass even supernatural threats.
Content:(please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Tokyo, West Shinjuku. A young five-year old girl named Mana is cold one night, as her sick mother lays dying in their home. From her window, she sees the gargoyle statue in the nearby tea caddy building move. A retired police detective, Shigenori, hears the same odd story from a neighborhood friend. Elsewhere, a young college student named Kotaro has no idea he’s about to cross paths with both of them in what will become an investigation spiraling into darkness.
Homeless people are disappearing from the area, something that begins to trouble Kotaro’s co-worker, Kenji. Their job at a tech company called Kumar is to the patrol to Internet and Kenji begins to put the seed in Kotaro’s head that they might be able to find clues through web-based research. Could it be the work of the notorious serial killer Toe Cutter Bill? Kenji begins to take the investigation seriously, despite concern from his colleagues and Kotaro. Just before the winter holidays, as Kenji promises to see Kotaro after the New Year, it ends being the last time Kotaro sees Kenji alive and whole. Distraught, Kotaro picks up from where Kenji left off in investigating, which leads him to check out the tea caddy building on the same night Shigenori is doing the very same thanks to help from a locksmith acquaintance. It’s upon this chance meeting Kotaro learns Shigenori has crossed paths with Kenji, but it’s not the only discovery the two will make that night.
They meet Galla, Guardian of the Third Pillar of the Tower of Inception, who is not from their region and is harvesting cravings for some otherworldly purpose. From this encounter, she takes away Shigenori’s cravings without permission, which causes him to lose his detective “mojo,” something he desperately ends up wanting back later in the story. Despite the pain, it’s those cravings that make him human.
As for Kotaro, it is only the beginning of his interactions with Galla. There are two things that strongly define him in this story, his growing obsession with tracking down the killer, and his unrequited crush on Kumar’s President, Ayuko, almost fifteen years his senior. It’s over an impromptu dinner with Ayuko that she makes a poignant observation; when does the line start to blur between trying to gain information to profiling a killer and starting to take on those behaviors? It’s an interesting parallel to the first book, The Book of Heroes, where if one tries to live out a story, which is essentially a lie, they have committed sin and might end up as one of the nameless devout to atone. It was the ultimate fate of previous protagonist Yuriko’s brother, Hiroki.
Her insight proves to be a hugely foreshadowing moment. As Kotaro wades further and further into morally gray territory, will he learn the cost of making deals with creatures from the darkness? Despite Shigenori’s warnings to forget it as if it were a bad dream, and a brief intervention from Yuriko herself, now a few years older and a wolf, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and it’s exactly what Galla was counting on.
I don’t want to give too much away about the climax, as it finds an interesting way to tie in the Nameless Land into this story so it really feels like a sequel. If the first book felt like dark fantasy meets cosmic horror, The Gate Of Sorrows has more of an almost noir quality about it. It feels more like a proper mystery with suspenseful, fantastical elements and almost flirting at the edge of being vaguely cyberpunk at times.
The characters this time around also had more believable point of view voices, something that had bothered me slightly about The Book of Heroes, and they felt more distinct. What’s interesting to note about this story is that there really isn’t one clear Big Bad; there’s a killer, there’s Galla, but there’s no master villain behind the strings like the King Of Yellow, something I wonder if was an intentional choice to make the story less black and white. We know from Yuriko’s tale that trying to live a story, no matter how well-meant, is a sin. We are told this is ultimately what happened to Hiroki, but this time around Miyabe shows this concept more organically and across the span of the novel as Kotaro’s story in many ways mirrors Hiroki’s.
If I had any complaints, it’s that there’s a bit a jump between Kotaro catching his prey and to him having second thoughts on the deal. It felt like quite the tonal shift, as if there needed to be more doubt shown on his end before coming to that decision, especially since at that point the story isn’t even over yet. I would have liked to have seen his emotions going downhill better played out, but alas. There were some other plot points, like Toe Cutter Bill, that had slightly disappointing resolutions in the end, but luckily this is not the case for the main one as Kotaro goes. I was actually happy with out his story played out as it made the most narrative sense given what happened, if not having just the teeniest moment of ‘guilty-feeling son ex machina,’ but it wasn’t enough for me to be too bothered.
Though that does relate to the issue of Galla as a pretty two-dimensional character. We are told her motivations but there wasn’t enough meat to form an emotional reaction, and perhaps it’s because we never see her point-of-view but in the end she comes off a bit flat when she is supposed to be imposing. It’s one of the parts of the book I wish had more narrative time dedicated to it, but at the same time it’s likely deliberate that we never see her POV so she remains mysterious and enigmatic.
In Summary:
Overall, despite a few quibbles, it’s a solid book. This is a slightly stronger story than its predecessor as narrative and pacing goes, and it’s clear Miyabe has a knack for interesting, layered world-building and weaving different genres throughout her stories. I still very much enjoy the concepts she lays out in this continuity, and how she builds upon it further with the introduction of the Tower of Inception and words as a visual element crucial for Kotaro to solve his mystery.
Fans of Death Note or the works of CLAMP would probably find this book appealing, as it has a similar vibe to those works but with much less apples and cherry blossoms. Miyabe’s storytelling felt much better here, and it could be that it was the sort of book I feel more engaged with ultimately than Yuriko’s, which is actually a bit funny given something in The Gate of Sorrows that stood out to me.
There was one line I found really intriguing as a potential setup for a third book, almost a throwaway one from Galla, stating that in becoming a wolf Yuriko will likely begin to disappear from reality, presumably becoming more akin to a character of a story than an average high school girl in her region. I would totally read that book, Yuriko’s adventures in apprenticing and become more and more a wolf and what it would it would mean in the end for her existence. Perhaps there is more to this fictional universe still? Only time will tell.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: T+
Released By: Haikasoru/Viz Media
Release Date: August 16th, 2016
MSRP: $26.99 Print/$9.99 Digital
