Showing posts with label Coda (Gakuto). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Coda (Gakuto). Show all posts

Saturday, January 18, 2020

REVIEW: Missing: Letter of Misfortune (book) by Gakuto Coda, translated by Andrew Cunningham

Letter of Misfortune is the second book in Coda's Missing series. It's a Japanese light novel, and sort of a blend of horror and fantasy. Tokyopop had planned to publish more of the 13-volume series, but then it restructured in 2008 and this series and others ended up in limbo.

Review:

The Literature Club is back the way it was, for the most part - the main difference is that Ayame is still around, still nonhuman but much less powerful, and magically tied to Utsume by the events of the previous book. However, now Aki is having supernatural problems of her own. There's an urban legend about a cursed fax, a chain letter that the recipient receives for several days in a row and must send on in the same order if they want to avoid dying. It seems that the fax is real, and Aki has just begun receiving it. Not only is it creepy, arriving out of the blue at 2 AM, it's somehow causing Aki actual physical harm. The paper cut she got from the first fax showed signs of infection only a few hours later.

At the same time, there are rumors going around at school that there's a pack of wild dogs loose in the area. One of the teachers was bitten, and signs of the dogs can be found all over the school grounds, although no one has actually seen one of the dogs. Yomiko, the school witch, freaks out both Ryoko and Aki, warning Aki that she will be torn apart and eaten by dogs that no one can see. Somehow the Literature Club has to figure out what's going on and save Aki before it's too late.

Saturday, January 11, 2020

REVIEW: Missing: Spirited Away (book) by Gakuto Coda, translated by Andrew Cunningham

Missing: Spirited Away is the first book in Coda's 13-volume Missing series. The series was originally licensed by Tokyopop, and only two volumes were ever translated and published in English. The third volume was scheduled to be released in September 2008, but since that's about when Tokyopop imploded, it never happened.

Review:

When Kyoichi Utsume was a child, he and his younger brother disappeared. He somehow managed to return, but his little brother did not. Ever since then, he's been obsessed with death and kamikakushi, mysterious beings that are said to spirit people away.

Rumors start flying at Utsume's high school that he, the guy who supposedly doesn't believe in love and romance, has found a girlfriend and is introducing her to everyone. Utsume's friends in the Literature Club discover that the rumors are true when he brings Ayame, a cute but oddly easy to overlook girl, to meet them. Ryoko and Takemi, two members of the Literature Club, decide to follow the couple and come back with gaps in their memories and a strange story of visiting a terrifying other world. Since there's no longer any sign of either Utsume or Ayame, it looks like Ryoko and Takemi's story may be true. Can the members of the Literature Club somehow retrieve their friend from the other world? Will he even want to come back?