Zaregoto Series
Zaregoto

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The first volume is more traditionally a mystery novel than the rest of the series. It has a case, the narrator acts as the detective who the solves the case, and a blue haired girl named Tomo Kunagisa acts as his assistant. Nisioisin subverts a couple tropes to keep things fresh – the detective, rather than being an all-powerful Sherlock Holmes type figure, is largely unimportant and incompetent relative to the genius-level intellects of the people on the island. The plot is very tight. It’s clear a lot of thought went into considering the case from multiple angles. Nisioisin does a good job at wrongfooting ... the reader into various pitfalls to keep the plot from being too predictable.

Scattered between each major event of the first novel is a series of conversations between the narrator and himself, the narrator and Kunagisa, and the narrator and the residents of the island. These conversations are the real meat of the story and are really what gives the series as a whole its distinct flavour, that flavour being one of doom, gloom, and heavy sadness. As the reader, you’re meant to take the mood created seriously, and sympathize with the narrator’s state of mind but Nisioisin tries so hard to convey a sense of pain and depression that it loops all the way around the emotional spectrum and ends up becoming unintentionally comical. Characters, without any prompting, will walk up to narrator-kun and tell him, without warning – ‘hey you should kill yourself’. These moments come out of nowhere, and happen for no discernible reason. One of the geniuses secluded on the island, a psychic named Maki Himena, routinely shits on our boy for existing, and tells him that he’s dirt and worthless. Again, without any prior motivation or provocation. It’s kinda funny. Not really laughable, but funny in an ironic sort of way. Side-characters aside, the narrator is a pretty funny guy himself. He has a very quirky way of walking into areas of clear and immediate danger without any regard for his safety and with no means of defence. Try as I might, I just have no idea what possible justifications can be made for these moments of madness beyond the simple enough explanation that Nisioisin was very depressed while writing Zaregoto and that this slips in to the writing in the various ways mentioned.

The level of perversion is actually pretty low for Nisio standards, the first three novels are pretty tame, it only really ramps up at the middle and near the end. Nisio’s status as a pervert has always kind of troubled me, not in a moral sense, more so because it’s seemingly at odds with his very righteous attitude. Put another way, he’s very liberal when it comes to expressing his attraction to women, and thus you tend towards the assumption that’s equally liberal everywhere else, but he’s more conservative in his mindset than anything else. Put another way yet again, he’s very concerned with making sure that his protagonists are shown to be doing the right thing, to the point that he feels the need to point out the guilt of his protagonists every time they do something unlawful, even if it’s as something as minor as hopping the school gates like in Kizumonogatari.

There’s also the very strange prejudices his protagonists have towards certain characters. Araragi’s dislike of Oshino Meme’s general demeanour always seemed to me to be unjustified, and the same thing goes for the narrator of Zaregoto and his dislike of his science teacher from foster’s home for imaginary characters. I don’t really have a point to make with this, its just really weird. I don’t think its good to confuse your readers like this when they should always be at least sympathetic to the main character’s feelings.

Anyway, getting back to the series, the first book is, by my evaluation, the most professionally put together. It has the best mystery and the best cast of characters, has the most work put into the foundation and structure of its story, and best showcases Nisio’s general mentality when it comes it writing the series, as shown by the ending. Better explain the ending. At the end of Kubikiri Cycle, the best detective in the world, Jun Aikawa, invalidates the narrator’s hard work and shows him that while he may have thought he had the mystery figured out, he was merely scratching the surface, and that he really had no clue at all. More than the authorially professed theme of the series, ‘people never change’, its this mentality of nihilism, or futility, that best sums up the series as a whole. Zaregoto is not really a glib, tongue-in-cheek series that playfully mocks mystery conventions. It’s a work produced by a man who believes that the work itself is pointless.

The second novel, Kubishime Romanticist, is the best novel in the series, a contender for the best light novel ever written, and is certainly the closest I’ve seen a light novel come to challenging actual literature. It is also the sloppiest entry in the series, with a very aimless narrative and with numerous digressions that serve very little purpose. Nisioisin claims to have written the novel in three days. The book being written in three days is probably what gives Kubishime the greater honesty and pathos lacking in the more polished entries in the series. As explained earlier, Nisioisin’s very conservative in his way of thinking and this is probably for the worse, as it probably leads to him self-censoring himself and not writing what he really means half the time. However, since he didn’t have time to think in the three day time span, he likely instinctively wrote what he truly thought and felt to a purer degree than what he would write otherwise. The result is that Kubishime is the realest Nisioisin ever gets and the closest the reader ever comes to peering into his mind. It depicts the narrator’s isolation in a very sympathetic and pathetic light, as well as the siege mentality that people get forced into and the doubts they have about themselves when they feel they’re being pushed to the fringes of society. It’s very compelling, very honest, and very moving.

While you may acknowledge my praise as the novel’s dues, I must also point out that there are far too many digressions and ramblings for Kubishime to be a comfortable read. The Zerozaki sections in particular feel completely irrelevant to the main story. They don’t suit the realistic tone of the narrative, and the conversations between the narrator and Zerozaki aren’t very memorable, funny or interesting. You could take Zerozaki out and you wouldn’t lose out on anything in the novel itself, even though Zerozaki is an important character in the later novels. I also don’t like how the narrator lies to the reader at the end. It’s a cheap trick and opens up Pandora’s box on the entire series and all its mysteries, lending credibility to a theory that the narrator could be lying about everything he ever describes both before and after the fact, invalidating every event in the entire series. But maybe that’s the point.

The remaining novels in the series aren’t nearly as interesting to look at and frankly speaking aren’t worth the effort to read. The third novel is an action story, the fourth and fifth are an attempt to return to the roots of the series, and six through nine concern themselves with an antagonist known as Mr. Fox, who has been expelled from causality and seeks to use that one girl that’s been alluded to throughout the novels to get himself back into a position to where he, Mr. Fox, can directly affect the story. It’s very meta and pretty stupid. A bunch of characters die in an attempt to make you feel something. Doesn’t really work.

The epilogue of the last novel is pretty satisfying, I guess, but I’d be lying if I said that it wasn’t a slog to get through it all. All the characters in the series are pretty one-dimensional, and Nisioisin not having the sensibilities that I normally take for granted in a writer made it a little tiring for me to put up with him. I wouldn’t put the whole experience as a waste of time – Kubishime Romanticist is something you should at least try to read. Try to read the first two novels at least.

The Zaregoto series upon completion has become my favorite story of all time. Being an avid fan of NisiOisiN's works I expected to love the series but I did not expect it to surpass not only everything he's written that I've read but every other piece of media I've completed in my lifetime.

Characters 10/10
Like any NisiOisiN work the characters are easily the highlight of the story. His signature combo of eccentricity and deeply nuanced writing is present here more than ever before. Many of the characters display some of the most fantastic development I've ever seen while simultaneously just being plain fun. Even the ... less developed side characters are dripping with personality in a way that had me smiling ear to ear.

Writing 10/10
Unsurprisingly the writing of this series is also top notch. Every line of dialogue has loads of character and conversations while long never feel boring with NisiOisiN's almost rhythmic way of writing dialogue. This is another aspect that anybody who's experienced his body of work will already be wholly aware of his prowess in. Essentially every character speaks in a way unique to themselves.

Plot 9/10
The plot in most NisiOisiN stories isn't exactly the focus. His narratives are always deeply character driven and often don't have very traditional structure or pacing. This is by no means a negative though as I feel in regards to plot Zaregoto is the strongest of his works I've read. On an arc by arc basis the series jumps from murder mystery to mind games to full on battle shonen and each and every one is fantastic. The strongest of the arcs plot wise would actually be the first arc due to it being a deceptively standard (by NisiOisiN standards) but still brilliantly executed murder mystery. In the end anybody coming to a NisiOisiN work isn't really there for the plot even if its extremely good in this series in particular.

Themes 10/10
The themes of this story are numerous and deeply impactful. Delving into things such as the importance of connection and self love. The thematic struggle shown is one of learning to cope with the pain in life and how this acceptance of pain will allow us to grow into stronger and happier people. Many different coping mechanisms for each individuals struggles are shown in order to portray the many healthy and unhealthy ways people deal with pain and struggle in life. Upon its completion of many character arcs the story then delves into a rejection of fatalism (Belief that the course of the world is pre-set) leading to a deeply powerful and humanistic conclusion that simply upon retrospective brings me to tears.

Setting 9/10
The setting of this series by some miracle I thought impossible is surprisingly deep and multifaceted. NisiOisiN is often know to even more so than plot throw setting to the way side in order to focus entirely on character writing and thematic strength. Despite that Zaregoto's world is fantastic with the atmosphere in many locations being palpable despite the complete lack of setting pictures in the books. The varied people and groups of the world give it a constantly exciting feel as each new location and group brings more understanding to the way this insane world of geniuses, assassins, and people who surround them functions day by day.

Presentation 9/10
This isn't the most consequential section due to Zaregoto being a novel series but the art and character designs drawn by artist Take who's know for also doing the character designs for Katanagatari and the modern Pokémon games are fantastic. The designs are unique hitting a middle ground between Saturday morning cartoon vibes and traditional anime designs. No matter what Take is working on I'm always blown away by the amazing color usage and expressiveness displayed in her work.

Individual Novel Ratings

1- Decapitation 8.75/10
2- Strangulation 10/10
3- Suspension 8/10
4- Psycho Logical Part 1 9.25/10
5- Psycho Logical Part 2 10/10
6- Cannibal Magical 10+/10
7- Uprooted Radical Part 1 9.75/10
8- Uprooted Radical Part 2 10/10
9- Uprooted Radical Part 3 10+/10

Zaregoto is a messy series. Even in more modern works, NisiOisiN isn’t the best at narrative construction - leaning more towards characterisation through extensive and intricate monologues - and so in such an early series of his it’s perhaps only to be expected that it’d be at the very least a bit confused. Let’s take it arc by arc for context because a lot of its flaws only come out when examined chronologically rather than retrospectively.

Kubikiri Cycle (Volume 1) was a good mystery story, but only decent setup for the series. It has a lot of good dialogue and the mystery was well put together ... (though I did solve it hehe), but in retrospect it maybe could’ve set up more than it does. It’s clear now that Isin didn’t have a comprehensive plan for the overall story, and as such each arc is more cohesive within itself than as an entry in Zaregoto.

Kubishime Romanticist (Volume 2) was really good, though a little overrated. As far as Ii-chan setup goes it does everything that V1 doesn’t, establishing so much about his unreliability as a narrator and his various character flaws (and personal mischaracterisations). Not only that but the story is pretty damn good in this one too, and the mystery is really solid too (though again I did largely solve it, other than the X/Y thing because that’s dependent on Japanese I think?).

Kubitsuri High School (Volume 3) was… quite bad. It progresses Ii-chan’s character nicely (his character is the only constantly good thing in the series) but the story is uninteresting, the dialogue is uninteresting; everything about it just makes me yell that I don’t care at all.

Psycho Logical (Volumes 4 & 5) were GREAT and I hate how underrated they are. The most compelling storyline in the series, some of the best dialogue (Utsurigi Gaisuke’s convos), some of the coolest Ii-chan characterisation; just all round great to read.

Cannibal Magic (Volume 6) was the best arc. The chapter wherein Ii-chan discovers Hime-chan is easily the coolest chapter in the series; the turning point of his character, a surprising yet inevitable story beat mixed with some beautiful and moving monologising. And the rest of the arc is almost as good, the discourse surrounding Kuchiha is awesome and Izumu is really great. And of course it introduces Mr Fox in a really exciting and intriguing way.

Nekosogi Radical (Volume 7-9) is where it gets the messiest BY FAR. Thus far, each arc has introduced some vaguely related but mostly disconnected ideas and characters, and this arc’s job is to introduce ten times more still and then tie them all to everything up to this point. Now while I do believe it eventually achieves this in V9, before that V7&8 make an absolute dog’s breakfast of it, and fixing it afterwards doesn’t undo that. In theory I LOVE the ideas of found family this arc plays with, the ideas of the chaotic powers of fate, the ideas of bonding through opposition, the ideas of the ‘end of the world’; of closure and despair and dissatisfaction and how it all describes the unchanging yet ephemeral nature of life and its struggles; but for such a long time it makes SUCH a boring story. No, I didn’t know where it was going in V7&8, and frankly it didn’t do a good job of making me care.

Kunagisa and Aikawa had a confusing thematic role and it couldn’t decide what the end of the world really symbolised and there were TOO MANY DAMN CHARACTERS popping out of nowhere and introducing their long-ass Japanese names and the story went every which direction. But as I said, Volume 9 fixed it all (with one exception imo). It explained what Kunagisa meant to Ii, what Magokoro is to Ii and Aikawa to Magokoro and to Ii and what Ii is to Fox and Fox to Ii and Zerozaki to Ii; their dynamics surrounding their various struggles with confronting life are intricate and well written, and I know because Zaregoto SPELLS IT ALL OUT for me in excruciating explicitness; it can only be too vague or too obvious, nothing in between. Regardless, the theme writing all makes sense in the end and I genuinely loved most of Volume 9, especially the last 2 chapters. My 1 exception is that I HATE the trope they used by resurrecting Kunagisa. Like I get that it still works symbolically as Ii moving on from her perfectionism and whatnot, but it’s CHEAP and shallow and would’ve worked better if he’d done a found family type thing with that also. It’s not the worst thing ever but it bothers me, especially as Kunagisa is already a character who I don’t think stands on her own, only being interesting as an aspect of Ii.

Ultimately I think it stuck the landing, Zaregoto, but it remains a thoroughly flawed series to me, emblematic of so many of Isin’s shortcomings as a writer (and a person, did he really have to have Ii GROOM a 14 year old in this LN? Like, she legitimately develops a dependency on him by the end, this is actual child grooming). Regardless, I do see why some value this as one of their favourites, even though it doesn’t quite hit like that for me. Still miles better than Medaka Box after all