Iria Akagami, heiress to the ultra-rich Akagami conglomerate, has been banished to their private Wet Crow’s Feather Island (for reasons unknown) with her four personal maids. In order to entertain herself, Iria periodically invites geniuses to stay at her island. The story follows… Actually, we never learn his name, but it’s apparently Ii, so as silly as that looks in English, let’s stick with that. Ii is a friend and basically personal attendant to Tomo Kunagisa, a genius engineer and programmer who has been invited to the island. The only other people on the island are four other geniuses—a scholar, a painter, a chef, and a fortune-teller—and the painter’s attendant. (The painter uses a wheelchair, so the need for her attendant is a bit more obvious.)
All five geniuses are young women, by the way. If that makes a difference to you.
Anyway, everything is going well until a murder occurs. Naturally.
In a lot of ways, Kubikiri Cycle feels like one half of the base upon which Danganronpa was built (with the other half being Ace Attorney). We have a bunch of eccentric young genius specialists in an isolated setting with murders occurring. Add in Ace Attorney trial mechanics and an evil bear, and… I think you get the picture.
The tricks behind the murder are solid, and everything is fairly clued. Well, not “everything” (I’ll touch on this later), but everything related to the basic solution. But what really stood out to me in Kubikiri Cycle was the way the clues and scenarios were constructed. There is a ton of cleverness and finesse on display, which I find even more impressive considering it’s Nisio Isin’s first (published) book. There are clues that serve multiple purposes, false clues that lead to correct conclusions, and so on. The elegance in clueing provides both emotional and intellectual catharsis, which is unfortunately a rare feat.
We have locked room murders, because of course we do, but the first one isn’t in a room that’s actually locked. Rather, the door has been blocked by a river of paint that apparently toppled during an earthquake, which is an original way of closing off a room. (If I had a complaint, it’s that I think Nisio Isin could have carried out his unique scenarios even further. For instance, the characters act like an earthquake would be impossible to predict, but nobody points out that a fortune-teller would be able to premeditate a trick that relies on an earthquake.)
The second “locked room” (don’t act like that’s a spoiler, “Cycle” is literally in the title) is locked from the outside, which is unusual for a locked room, but also has an open window. I actually found it a bit funny that they harped on and on about the “locked room” when it has two clear avenues of egress. Of course, only one person had the key and the window was too high to be used, so I suppose you could say it was “locked” but not “sealed,” which is still a bit unusual. I also appreciate the effort Nisio Isin went through to try to deny the possibility of simply using a rope or ladder or something of that nature to access the window, but unfortunately you can only go so far in denying simple mechanical tools without the use of red truths (oops, wrong island), leaving what feels like a large hole in the “locked room” (even if I know that the solution won’t just be a ladder based on the length Nisio Isin went to deny that).
My point is that these aren’t just ordinary locked doors with keys inside, but unique scenarios creating the equivalent of a locked room. With new situations comes new vectors for deduction, which made these fun problems to tackle.
So we have neat problems with solid solutions and amazing clueing and everything looks fine and good… and then the last chapter happens. Now, the last chapter isn’t “bad,” and I don’t think it retroactively ruins things, and I wouldn’t even say that it goes “a twist too far.” But it’s a lot of words and plot that I don’t think ultimately add anything.
I think part of the reason I’m so ambivalent on the last chapter is because I can mentally discount it since the book still provides a satisfying resolution as of the end of the penultimate chapter. If the last chapter was necessary for closure, I probably wouldn’t like it. But it isn’t, so I can just not care about it.
Some of the twists in the last chapter don’t actually change anything (except explain a few of the red herrings). The main twist of the chapter changes a lot, but also very little in terms of the actual solution. What I think most annoys me is the way the clueing for this twist was done. The main clue is the fact that a claim a certain character makes is “unrealistic.” So we have characters with things like a super-tongue (so honed it can taste someone’s blood type from a bit of sweat) or actual magic powers, and in that context we’re supposed to pick out what’s “realistic”? Fantasy and mystery are not incompatible, but it feels like Nisio Isin wants to have his cake and eat it too. If you want to play this game we can, Nisio, but that’s going to mean throwing out most of your cast for being “unrealistic.” It almost feels insulting, like I’m being called a fool for believing in Nisio Isin’s worldbuilding (and that’s despite the fact that the larger-than-life cast appears to be played straight in every other instance).
Anyway, enough on the murder. There’s another large component to Kubikiri Cycle, and that’s the characters. In most detective fiction the cast is little more than puppets wearing the costumes necessary for their parts. But Kubikiri Cycle is filled with eccentric, anime-style characters. (Once again, it’s a clear reference for Danganronpa.)
I didn’t care for them. The issue is that they don’t go anywhere. It feels like there’s a lot of set-up for the characters, but no resolution. Why do the scholar and painter hate each other? Dunno. Why was Iria exiled from her family? Dunno. Why does the fortune-teller despise the protagonist? Dunno. And so on. When the book makes a big deal of these things I expect that they’re going to be explained, so I wait for that extra information to contextualize what we’ve seen of the character, but then the information never materializes, so I have to make do with what I’ve got… which makes me feel like I’m only working with half a character, since there are all these deep, unanswered questions about them. It’s like only being able to evaluate the front façade of the house. Sure, the door might have some impressive knockers, and there are windows into some of the interior, but it’s clearly not the full experience.
If I enjoyed the characters themselves I might have been able to get over never having them “explained,” but I didn’t. There is plenty of grounded discussion on the crimes, but when they aren’t discussing the crime they're usually conducting bizarre philosophical conversations. And to be frank, I don’t care about whatever philosophies Nisio Isin gave these people. Mainly because most of the discussions are about “genius,” and “genius” in the world of Kubikiri Cycle is so far removed from the “genius” of reality that the conversations feel abstracted and pointless.
I’ve seen Zaregoto described as a series where the protagonist tries not to get involved, gets involved, and then has all his efforts end up being pointless. The first point I don’t particularly agree with—at least for this book. The protagonist and Kunagisa get involved in solving the murder from the beginning, although there is definitely an event that gives them concrete motivation. The second point goes without saying. Then the third point feels like the crux of this description—it’s why the series would be called “Zaregoto,” which means “nonsense”—and it completely falls flat. Even if that description of the franchise is wrong, Kubikiri Cycle does act like the case resolves the way it does because of the protagonist’s shortcomings, when that's not the actual reason. Yes, nothing that happened mattered, but that’s because of the apathy of the entire cast. It has nothing to do with the protagonist (beyond his share of apathy). If any of them cared enough, they could make the case “matter.” But they don’t, and instead they pick out the protagonist and his lack of genius as a scapegoat.
…Wait, am I admitting that Kubikiri Cycle has themes? Better change topic.
According to the afterword, Nisio Isin planned Kubikiri Cycle by conducting fake interviews with the cast to develop their personalities and create quotes for them. And I can see it. A lot of the book does feel like it’s twisted just to give each character an opportunity to give their little spiel. Which probably would have been a lot better if I had actually enjoyed them.
Anyway, I didn’t dislike the characters. I accepted them for what they were on the understanding that the blanks would be filled in by the end, and then they never were. I felt a bit duped in retrospect, but there were no problems on the journey. And the journey still had the totally satisfactory mystery component to entertain me.
We have a decent mystery novel that is resolved by the penultimate chapter (with some pretty neat use of clues), then the last chapter adds a bunch of pointless twists and ends before any of the characters are “explained,” but all without disturbing the integrity of the “mystery novel,” so while not ideal it isn’t really a problem either. If you like mystery novels or Nisio Isin’s character writing you’ll probably like Kubikiri Cycle, and if you like both you’ll probably love it.
Or read it for yourself and see how you feel. After all, this review is just a bunch of nonsense…
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