Chain Mail: Addicted To You
The idea of taking on an online persona to escape the pressures of Real Life is hardly a new one. I found the effects of teen angst in the Internet Age in All About Lily Chou-Chou to be both effective and deeply moving, despite cultural barriers between me and foreigners a decade younger than I am. Taking this angle and running with it, Hiroshi Ishizaki’s light novel Chain Mail examines how the isolation and pressure of adolescence draws four total strangers together with fascinating results.

If you’re reading this blog at all you ought to be able to understand where Chain Mail is coming from with this. After finding it tucked away virtually unseen in the manga section of my local Waterstone’s and buying on impulse, I suspect the only people I know who’d appreciate its innovative ‘multiple viewpoint’ storytelling as I did are those I converse with online. The ‘net and the artificial realities it provides attract us all for very personal reasons but the overall promises of diversion and communication are the same.
I’m always wary of spin-offs and retellings that aren’t done by the original writer or artist; particularly so when the story is one of my personal favourites. As much as I admire Makoto Shinkai’s Hoshi no Koe OAV I’ve always felt it had some room for improvement, but wasn’t sure whether anyone else could recreate what made it so special. There’s no denying that it was a tantalisingly short piece in the first place, which is all part of its charm really, but I was still intrigued by what could be done in a different format without the restrictions imposed on the film that it’s based on.
“As I was watching Evangelion, up until about the fourteenth episode, I remember thinking ‘Ahh! Everything I’ve always wanted to do has been done! I don’t have to do anything any more! Anno and his crew have done it all for me!’” admits Hiroki Endo, in the Afterword to the first volume of Eden: it’s an endless world!, as he shares his thoughts on how certain titles set the standard but at the same time can never capture your own individual emotions and ideas. I know exactly where he’s coming from: had everyone resigned to the notion that there would never be anyone to top Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton might have thrown in the towel and Stevie Ray Vaughan may never have bothered either. How could the evolution of guitar music ever continue?
There’s still a lot to be said for the good old-fashioned medium of words stamped onto slices of dead trees. I honestly believe certain stories work better in one medium than another; Haruhi Suzumiya is I think a case in point. The TV show’s shuffled broadcast order never significantly improved the experience because I’ve yet to hear a convincing explanation for it. The translation of the light novel on the other hand seems to keep an ordered chronology as nature, and Nagaru Tanigawa, intended and is more satisfying for that.
Satoshi Kon’s animated adaptation of Tsutsui’s novel Paprika shouldn’t need much of an introduction; at least I hope not since I can’t give an objective view on the film given the immense amount of respect I have for Kon as a director. I’m glad I found out about the English translation of the novel though, not least because Tsutsui is apparently one of Japan’s most well-known science fiction authors; he has a reputation for being notoriously outspoken and prolific, and even wrote the original Girl Who Leapt Through Time. I like him already.

As far as fans of sharp, contemporary Japanese psychological thrillers are concerned, Ryu Murakami is often the first names that spring to mind. Quite rightly too considering he wrote the original novel of Audition and has several of his other works published in English in recent years: I have to say I
[Moved from my soon-to-be defunct side-blog because 1. I still haven't had time to write anything new and 2. it's more Relevant To Your Interests on this one.]


