Obake Apato no Himitsu and Kimi ni shika kikoenai:A review
November 7th, 2009After finishing the “Hanbun no tsuki ga noboru sora” light novel, I read two other novels. I’m not sure if they can be considered as light novels, though. At least I can say that these two novels belong to the seal Tusbasa Bunko and are aimed towards young readers, judging from the fact that all the kanji have furigana. The first novel I read was “Obake apato no Himitsu“.
“Obake apato no himitsu” is the first novel of a series which has just started to be published under the title “Tokyo Cat’s town”. I found the novel to be a bit difficult to read, something that came a bit as a surprise to be honest. As I said, this novel is aimed towards young readers, but there were lots of complicated words and expressions that I didn’t expect I would come across with. The plot wasn’t very clear either. There were many questions left unanswered, although I guess the writer will give the necessary explanations in the next volumes of the series…or so I hope, because there were a great deal of mysterious things going on in this novel.
The novel starts with a young boy and his sister visiting their mother at the hospital. She is in a kind of comatose state, and the doctors can’t do much for her. One day, the siblings find a girl in their mother’s hospital room. It turns out that girl is their cousin, and she takes them to live with her and her grandparents, since the siblings’ father is very busy and can’t take care of them. The kids then move to their cousin’s house, which is in a neighbourhood in Tokyo.
Each of the siblings receive a box afterwards from their grandparents containing a small cat doll, and learn about the secret of these dolls. These cat dolls are known as “Nekokaburi”, and allow their owners to transfer their souls into them. That way, the siblings turn into cats, as to say. All the inhabitants of the neighbourhood have a Nekokaburi and they have organised some kind of cat society. Small kids have to attend the Night Cat Academy, in order to learn how to use the Nekokaburi properly. In the meantime, different incidents take place and a certain Nekokaburi user, who seems to spend all his (or her time) in cat form, is making trouble in the neighbourhood…
“Obake apato no himitsu” was an Ok read. The story has some potential, and I do like the interaction between two of the characters (the siblings’ cousin and a boy who is more or less related to the troublemaker Nekokaburi user).
And then, let’s move on to the second book, “Kimi ni shika kikoenai“, which actually consisted of three stories, all of them a bit too much emotional for my taste, but enjoyables nonetheless.
The first story was “Kimi ni shika kikoenai”, and deals with a girl who doesn’t have a mobile phone and then says that she doesn’t have any friends because of that. The thing is that I don’t see how these two things can be related (you can have friends even if you don’t have a mobile phone, right?). The girl, however, doesn’t feel the need to buy one, because, well, she doesn’t have friends to call to… So ok, the first part of the story was getting a bit on my nerves. Then the girl, since she spends almost all her time alone, starts to picture on her mind what her dream mobile phone would look like. She pictures it so perfectly that one day… she receives a call from a boy who is in her same situation. They talk to each other a few times, and they eventually grow very close. Since they live far away from each other (the boy lives in Hokkaido, and the girl in Yokohama) they decide to meet each other… and I won’t tell anything else or I will spoil you the ending. I can say I liked this story after all, and especially how it focused on how we communicate with other people. The main problem with the girl of the story is that she is afraid of talking to others, since she thinks she is unable to hold a conversation. Talking to that other boy helps her to overcome her fears.
The other two stories were “Kizu” and “Usokano”. In “Kizu”, the main character, a young boy, meets another boy of his same age who has the ability of transferring the injuries and wounds of other people into his body. In “Usokano”, a boy makes up that he has a girlfriend. Once he starts lying, he has to pretend that everything is true or either his classmates will laugh at him. He creates all sor of stories about his fictional grilfriend…
About “Obake apato no himitsu” and “Kimi ni shika kikoenai”, I can say that I find the latter to be more entertaining. They were both interesting enough to read, though, and I think they are a good choice if you are looking for something to read in japanese which is not extremely difficult.
