Raidou Kuzunoha vs the Messenger of the Dead: A Review by Someone Who Cares Too Much
First of all, if you haven't already, please check out the novel in the above post's google doc link! It is certainly a novel of all time, and I don't know if recommending it when you're not already into the Raidou games is a good idea; might just make you not want to continue the series :P
Lighthearted jabs aside, I wanted to give a little disclaimer that my critiques of the novel are based on a shaky translation that may not be all that accurate. As such, the review is just my casual thoughts on what I understand the writing and plot to be, so don't take it all that seriously.
Now, let's get nitpicky over a 20-year-old book! :))
Believe it or not, I don't actually hate everything about it; I found quite a few bits and pieces very well articulated, and for that, I've decided to start with those. When picking up the novel, hopefully the main reason you'd do so is for the original characters that the author's included. For me, the main character I wanted to know more about was
Kyouji the First, whose design alone is fantastic and made me quite intrigued as to what he was like, and what his role in the story would be. Upon first glance, you'd likely assume him to be the main antagonist, or an otherwise very prominent character, considering he even has a place in the character introduction page, right alongside Narumi and Raidou himself:
Kyouji, all things considered, doesn't actually have much of a presence in the novel. He has a major boost in relevance near the end, where he runs around and kills some people before getting shot in the head and arm, but other than that, he's really not all that important. I'd have liked to see more of him. Speaking of! A brilliant post about Lone Marebito by @promised-nadir (which you can read here) mentions that in the concept art, it seems they were actually planning to bring Kyouji back!
You can tell the writer/designer read the novel, as Kyouji has some kind of damage to his right hand and to the left side of his head, as was caused by Raidou near the end of the book. A nice little design callback! Alas, we are left to mourn what could have been.
What we do see of him is, in my view, some of the best parts of the novel. Kyouji has a very fun personality and his nonchalant attitude toward death makes for some rather strange interactions:
Hope to see more of this guy in any potential future installments.
Another few notable new characters are Yoshio and Otoe. I like these two a lot, and I enjoyed their found-family dynamic with Raidou. I wish Otoe had more to do in the latter part of the plot, rather than sitting in a barrier with some Daigaku-imo and a calpis but ah well.
You may notice this guy on the cover and think "wow he sure looks important". You'd be right -- Saiga is the main antagonist of the novel, with Alucard and Kyouji being minor villains (if Kyouji even does enough to qualify for the villain status). In terms of personality, Saiga doesn't have much going on. He's an antagonist in actions and his evil bad guy plan alone, not by drive or passion like with Dahn or XL. He wants to make the barrier around the capital super duper strong so that no bad guys cause anything bad to happen, and he kills a bunch of people to do it. You don't get much of a backstory or a sense of why he wants to protect the capital so much, or anything of that sort. It's not too much of a flaw considering it's not that necessary, but eh. Would've been nice to have.
So other than the characters, there wasn't much I found to be outright good, and I'll get to the parts I felt had potential later on. For now, it's time to complain!
One of the unfortunate problems with the novel is how they characterize the returning cast, specifically Narumi, who got it really, really bad.
I'll start with Raidou, since he's the protagonist, and the one we see the most of.
If you couldn't tell, this Raidou is law-aligned.
Not an uncommon interpretation, and can be pulled off pretty easily. Raidou is even described on several occasions as speaking in a monotone or emotionless manner, and it's pretty well circumvented later on when his dead mom spawns in mid-battle:
Credit where it's due, Raidou is probably the best written of the returning characters, and it's likely due to the fact that Raidou is supposed to be a blank slate. I didn't hate him, at the very least, but his emotionless attitude can get a bit irritating at times (his callousness in not caring about Narumi's blatant misogyny targeted at Tae, for example).
There's a bit I'd change if I could, but for the most part, not a bad character to follow through the story.
Y'know who does suck though?
Dear god, what have they done to you, Narumi.
If you didn't like Narumi in Soulless army, I don't blame you. It took until vs Abaddon for me to get around to liking him.
To that end, the writer didn't have the better of the two Narumis to go on, just Soulless army. You can tell from the writing that they decided his laziness and frat boy attitude were his most memorable traits and turned those up to max. It doesn't make for a very likable character. Gonna be a no from me.
Tae was ok. Not terrible, but she's an easy one to write. Blah blah I can't talk about anything but women blah blah oh no I fainted.
I am glad they gave her a grandma; gives her something else to do.
At one point the writer forgets to write in Gouto for several scenes and tacks on a simple "oh he went somewhere else", leaving him completely out of the plot for the next chapter and a half. Considering that Gouto was one of the better written characters, that's quite a sad turn of events.
The worst character by far was Dormarth. What I hated about her most was one of the more prominent issues I took with the writing: the author's need to ramble when its not necessary and be succinct when it might've been helpful to learn more.
In the case of Dormarth, her "romantic" sections with Raidou went on for what felt like pages (they weren't, but damn did they feel like it), and when she had her fakeout death I was genuinely relieved. Not only were they uncomfortable, but they took up time that could've been better spent on anything else. Poor Jack O' Lantern got left out, and his third demon (yay Emishi representation) got the short end of the stick. All so Dormarth could go on and on about how she wants to bang her summoner. Ough.
This quirk of the writer's extends beyond drawn out scenes and bleeds into descriptors of various objects or setting pieces, which on principle isn't bad, and is actually in some cases necessary, but did he really need to give an entire paragraph of information about lamps or the state of Japanese transit systems in 1931?
I feel like the time could be better spent on developing the antagonists or including more backstory for the main cast.
Raidou, as I said before, is a blank slate. Each interpretation of him will be vastly different from another. Raidou in Nocturne is completely silent, while in Lone Marebito he's much more chatty. It is worth noting that in comparison to every other version of him, he's definitely more flat in the novel. There's some info that could carry on to other versions should the novel turn out to be canon, too.
Apparently his mother is dead, and that his "real name" is Jouhei. There's a random mistake where it's suggested that a candidate for the title of Raidou is specifically decided by the clan, and not a willing decision by the person undergoing the trial, which makes the Kuzunohas feel more villainous than otherwise shown.
So to cool off, the last part of the review will go over some of the parts that I think could've been really stellar if they just got some minor tweaks. These are the elements that had had the potential to make something really fantastic, but were either not taken to their best or were otherwise not fully realized.
There's a scene with Alucard near the end where Narumi accidentally kills him with a tooth pick (at Alucard's shrunken size, it acted effectively as a stake through the heart), and this scene was GREAT! I loved the payoff of Narumi's greed to bring an end to one of the more threatening minor antagonists, and Narumi doing anything at all is a welcome change. If there was more breathing room for this scene and if there was more time given to add more impact, I think it would've been easily one of the best moments of the book.
Again, Otoe and Kyouji should've had all the time spent on Dormarth, but that's already been said.
The ending was very rushed, almost giving the reader whiplash from how quickly they try to wrap everything up. So, to honor this, I've decided to end this review on the same, lighthearted note as the novel does!
Thanks for reading, folks :))
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