comments:
===Namerakana Sekai to, Sono Teki (One-shot) A very enjoyable collection of sci-fi short stories which contains futuristic stories as well as alternate history ones. There are two stories I especially love: A Handgun Gifted to Miaha (rough translation). In the future human lives, or their physical well-being rely totally on nanomachines inside their bloodstreams. Science is so advanced that one could use those machines to alter someone’s personality, like making them fall in love with a particular person, or make them become a genius in a particular field of research. It’s a very emotional romance story of how two people falling in love, yet not loving each other, at the mercy of those nanomachines. In fact, this world setting is inspired by, and it’s also a tribute to Project Itoh’s Harmony. Another sci-fi one-shot I enjoyed a lot. It’s a really intense and suffocating read. Faster than Light, but Slower (rough translation). A Shinkansen train got caught in some paranormal activity and it’s completely frozen in time. After NASA's investigation it’s found out the train was not exactly “frozen” but moving at an extremely slow pace that it would take 2,700 years to reach the next station. At first glance it felt like a rescue story but it went so deep that it will make you question your life and existence itself. A very thought-provoking story. 9/10 ===Kioku Shoten Utakatadou no Tantan (One-shot) Written by Nomura Mizuki, the author of Book Girl. An episodic novel about a mysterious young man who claimed to be a bookshop owner, but his real job was trading memories between people. At first I thought this was a sad and depressing read but it ended up having a variety of genres in different chapters. There are indeed very emotional stories but also absurd comedic as well as fluffy stories. There are a variety of reasons why people would want to sell and buy memories. To get rid of painful or embarrassing memories, or to experience something one could never have done, like a crippled person enjoying skiing in Hokkaido. However, selling too many memories of oneself might make them lose their sense of self, while gaining too many memories of others might confuse their own identity. An intriguing novel about what if when a person’s personality is defined by their memories. Or rather, other people's memories. 8/10 ===Yomei 99 Nichi no Boku ga, Shi no Mieru Kimi to Deatta Hanashi (Yomeboku Series, #2) This series is a collection of one-shots that centres on the theme “protagonist having a terminal illness and is dying but he also falls in love with a girl”. Probably the most popular bittersweet/tragic romance setting in Japanese literature. I initially thought these books are all self-contained stories sharing the same theme. But the author did something interesting to link them up and the stories actually happened roughly at the same time. For example, the FMC from book 1 (who died towards the end) made several cameo but important appearances in book 2, affecting the protagonist’s way of thinking. And the protagonist from book 2 even became the MacGuffin of book 3! So, this book is about a high school boy who could literally see when people’s days are numbered, when the countdown reaches the 2-digit number 99. This brought him quite a traumatic childhood whenever he saw the countdown numbers appearing in his close friends and family members. Inevitably, this made him quite a shut-in, loner when he grew up. To his surprise, one day when he woke up and saw in the mirror a bright and shiny number 99 above his own head… Quite a thought-provoking debate on whether it’s a blessing or a curse if one knows exactly when they are going to die. 7.5/10