Juuni Kokuki
The Twelve Kingdoms

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I won't repeat what i said in my anime review. I compared "Juuni Kokuki" to "The Lord of the Rings". This comparison stands.

One review here calls "Juuni Kokuki" a "disordered mess". I am puzzled. The title is "Juuni Kokuki". Why is it that one ends up surprised that the author talks about the Twelve Kingdoms, and not just one of them? Tolkienn did the same with the "Middle Earth". He wrote "Bilbo the Hobbit", "The Lord of the Rings", "Tales of the 1st and 2nd Age", and a compendium of mythological stories made into "The Silmarillon" by his nephew (i think). This is what a ... litterary fantasy cycle is meant to look like. Juuni Kokuki works the same way as Tolkienn's works and many other fantasy cycles. Millenia of History, countless characters, and story threads in different eras and times. But each story thread could be adapted in a 30 to 100 episodes anime. So, it is not like stories are truncated or "messy". This is what you would expect of an actual world: it is not about only one character. How many stories are worth telling in regards to even our own world? What of Socrates and how he was executed? What of Darius, the persian king, and his son Xerxès? Of Alexander of Macedonia? Hatchepsout? What of Mulan, or the 1st chinese emperor, what of Joan of Arc, Guillaume the Conqueror, Gengis Khan or Harald? What of the Epic of Gilgamesh written 4000 years ago and the city of Uruk he is meant to have ruled? This is what creating a world from scratch is like. If Ono Fuyumi were to write more, she would probably write more different stories. Because in 2019, she published 4 more volumes that conclude the story of Taïki and Taï. There is no loose ends per say anymore.

I have been feeling conflicted for a very long time now. "Juuni Kokuki" is just so good that i could never have enough of Youko's story. The one i discovered through the anime, the main story of the litterary cycle. But is there really no conclusion? I believe there is a conclusion. She reached the place where she was meant to be. I crave more, but at the same time, my imagination have been working so hard these past 12 years, that i would probably be disappointed by whatever the author may have in mind for a possible sequel, unless she makes her destiny grand. Writing what follows would possibly hurt the story as a whole. The author told us a story, and the epilogue is actually up to us. This is frustrating because i crave for more and always will and can probably never be satiated, but it is probably for the best. I wish i could have the answer to this one question Rakushun asks Youko in En. This one question that is about the future. But again, answering it would probably defeat the purpose of even writing this story.

When thinking of "Juuni Kokuki", i always have an erhu play in my head. This is a millenia old chinese instrument for those who don't know (look it up yourself). I still see myself walking around this place with this erhu music floating in the air. There is a sense of peace to this. A sense of a harsh, simpler, but fulfilling life. I have travelled so much in my imagination thanks to these novels that any actual travel in this world feels less appealing. There is nothing that is "in ya face" in Juuni Kokuki. This is merely a believable world not unlike our own (China), with its imperfections and inherent charm. And destinies that cross one another's path in what is seeemingly en endless cycle. But some threads are meant to last more than others, and this is what makes them remarkable and remembered fondly by the inhabitants of the kingdoms. And what Juuni Kokuki offers is a glimpse at some of those destinies in various times and places.

But quite frankly, if you feel like it, you can simply read the books that are about Youko. There is probably 6 of them. Her story is intertwined with others, too, and maybe reading the Taiki story thread too would be satisfying. You don't need to read everything. I will possibly never read everything. But whether you read these stories or make new ones in your mind, the Twelve Kingdoms are vast and long lasting. You can never be certain what kind of stories may unfold in their legends. And neither the "youma" nor the gods under Tentei will ever show you their world, or tell you of their nature or their truth. And very few are the lucky ones invited to see this world above the Unkai, the "sea of clouds", where gods are rumoured to govern the world from. You will have to walk this path feeling like a mortal to whom some secrets will never be revealed. But we live with it, as they do. Or... you may dive in the retold stories of those in the know. And you will then need a fertile imagination to see and feel what they did. But if you do, there is no telling how much of yourself will remain stuck in the Kingdoms forever, as a kaikyaku trapped for life by a one way shôku.

It is about a world made up of Twelve Kingdoms. With its heroes, villains, myths, culture, values, and time flow. You won't see dragons, waifus, orcs, submissive elves masochists, crass humour, otaku fantaisies, japanese exports everywhere in fantasy land, or anything like that. In many ways, Juuni Kokuki never had this "anime vibe". It always had this "fantasy cycle" vibe instead. Because this is what it is.

Juuni Kokuki is one of my favorite series--not just among manga and light novels, but among fiction in general. If you are coming here fresh from watching the anime, you'll find the novels even more enjoyable. Here I will be reviewing the entire series, not just the first novel.

Unfortunately, Juuni Kokuki is not a complete series. But according to recent tweets on the author’s twitter account, Ono Fuyumi is working on another novel, which is exciting as the last one in the series, released in 2001, ended with a cliffhanger of sorts. Don’t let it’s incomplete status deter you from reading it, though–Juuni Kokuki ... is a truly excellent series. In some ways, it reminds me of the Narnia series, as it is a kind of spiritual fantasy, but instead of promoting a Christian worldview it explains the Buddhist/Daoist worldview of Chinese religions. Unlike Narnia, the characters have to undergo intense personal trials to reach their goals, and the novels ask the question, ‘What is the meaning of human suffering?’. Youko, the main character for much of the series, is one of the most dynamic characters I have ever read, and it is amazing to watch her transform from a self-centered schoolgirl into a powerful leader who listens to others.

The first novel, Sea of Shadow, follows Youko Nakajima, a Japanese schoolgirl, as she enters the fantastical world of the Twelve Kingdoms. Unfamiliar with the world and entirely alone after she is abandoned by Keiki, the one who brought her to the world, Youko must fight to survive from the many creatures chasing her, as well as attempt to find her way home. Along the way, Youko discovers her true destiny and grows into an admirable character.

I don’t want to spoil too much, so I won’t go into depth about the later novels about Youko. My favorite parts of the series are the novels about Taiki, the kirin of Tai. Taiki isn’t human, and Ono makes it clear that he isn’t, yet she still draws the reader into identifying with him as a character. Sea of Shadow is a good choice for beginning the series, but it is also possible to begin with Demon Child, the first novel published in the series, or Sea of Wind, which explains how Taiki came to the Twelve Kingdoms. Don't feel constrained to keep to the order used in the anime when you begin the series.

Demon Child was originally written as a stand alone horror novel, but was later worked into the series. It is told from the point of view of Hirose, a student teacher who has returned to his alma mater to teach before he graduates. On his first day teaching, Hirose notices that one of the students, Kaname Takasato, is different from the others. The other students believe he is cursed, and never speak to him. As Hirose begins to learn more about Takasato, and becomes closer to him, the strange occurrences around Takasato began to strike more fiercely and rapidly towards those connected to him. As Hirose tries to understand Takasato, he begins to identify with him as someone who feels he does not belong in this world.

Both Youko’s and Taiki’s arcs coincide in the most recent novel, The Shore at Twilight, The Sky at Daybreak, which explains what happens after the end of Demon Child.

If you have any interest in Asian fantasy, ‘another world’ fantasy, or just fantasy with personal growth, you’ll enjoy Juuni Kokuki.

A girl abandoned in another world, without companions and without any trust in others, having to learn how to for herself, surive and find out what to do.

I have to admit, the story had me hooked. I was invested in the fate of the main character. Too bad this is not what this novel is about. Not most of it. The one interesting storyline is abandoned after the first few volumes. I kept reading, hoping that this story will continue but the closer I was getting to the latest volume, the more I realized that it all I'll be getting is some cameos here ... and there and there will be no satasifying conclusion.

Juuni Kokuki turns into a disordered mess of stories that would fit much better as a spin-off. "Disordered mess" is in general the biggest flaw of this novel. First, the novel suffers from a severely bad case of infodumping. Now, I'm not against some nice worldbuilding here and there, but when most of the volume is useless side info that serves nothing but to create an illusion that this fictional world is well throught out, that's where I draw the line. And yes, infodumping can be made in an entertaining way. Look no further for example than Legend of the Galactic heroes, which reads as a historical fiction and the occasional infodump is very much in character for the narration and doesn't take your attention away from the story progress.

Another part that makes Juuni Kokuki more of a choir to read is the mess concering names and terms. The cast of this novel is huge. But save for some of the main protagonists, they blend with each other too much. This isn't helped much by the fact that the naming system uses words that all feel so similar, making the cast forgettable by both their character and their names. Which in turn means you'll be getting lost in who's who, what's happening and why should you even care. I'll give you an example: "Sekki, Seishuu, Shoukou, Suzu, Shisui". Those are all names that apperar within a single page of text. Good luck with not losing a track. Up until reading this novel, I found character summaries at the begining of the books useless. I mean, take a look for example at Baccano that does have this summaries. Baccano cast is huge as well, and the story is jumping from one storyline to the other even more frequently than Juuni Kokuki. Yet, the characters are memorable individuals that the reader has no problem to distinguish. Oh, how I wish Juuni Kokuki had the characters summary that Baccano had, maybe it would make more sense.

And of course, this is not just a matter of names of the characters, but the in-universe terminology too. Most of it seems to be based on Chinese and I'm not sure if I should blame the translator here, but the terms stay untranslated. So not only you have to keep track of the characters, you also have to keep track of the world's terminology that only grows more and more tangled. Indeed, later volumes feel not as reading a fiction, but as if reading a boring history textbook. I'm sorry, but I don't exactly like having to take notes in case I want even a hope of having track of everything. And certainly, this end up with you forgetting some of the terms and getting confused more and more as the story goes on and the burden of having to cram terminology to be able to "enjoy" the story increases.

This gets even more ridiculous with the latest novel, in which the translation makes the choice of hyperlinking the names which redirects the reader from the ebook into the translator's notes and also keeping their name in kanji in parenthesis after the name in romanji in every single occurence in the text. While hyperlinking the terms is at this point probably the most viable method to make this even slightly understandable, it also highlights how close to reading a random wikipedia article it feels to reed Juuni Kokuki. And keep in mind, it didn't took me *that* long to get through the volumes (and when I paused, it was because I was bored too much to keep going, not because I had to wait for more to be released). Those that started reading Juuni Kokuki back when it started now had to keep their memory fresh for almost thirty years while more volumes were sporadicaly released. I have no idea how this still has any fanbase.

To expand a bit on the latest (currently) volume, it's a collection of three short stories. Yes, a coherent storyline was apparently given up on. Though, one of them has at least some interesting theme - wheter or not to allow a death sentence. Now this should, at least in theory, be an interesting short story to read. But no, the points and takes you could find in this novel only ammount to what you would find in any randomly picked internet discussion of this dilemma. Juuni Kokuki has long outlived it's lifespan. And again, I'm not against including short stories as a part of longer novels. In fact, Spice and Wolf does this very well with the Spring Log volumes. The difference might be in those stories felling like they still belong as a part of the overal story.

It is by no chance that I have mentioned multiple light novels that do something similar that Juuni Kokuki does and execute that in much better way. Because that's exactly what you should be doing instead of wasting time with this title - read some different, better novel instead.