Mar 7, 2025
Text originally written in Brazilian Portuguese and translated into English through AI. For those who want to read the original text, the link is in my profile.
You know the story of Snow White, right? Imagine if the mirror only answered the witch according to what she believed. What if the mirror said “Snow White” only because the witch stopped believing she was the most beautiful at that moment? Well, the story of Snow White as a whole doesn’t have much to do with the Kamisu Reina Series, but know that Reina Kamisu is a mysterious phenomenon that can change depending on the attribution that each
...
person gives to it.
Fumi Saito is a girl with almost no friends, who doesn’t think she is beautiful and doesn’t see anything interesting about herself. She has one friend – Reina Kamisu – who, in Fumi's view, is cool and beautiful, totally different from her. Reina claims that Fumi is kind, but Fumi doesn’t believe she has anything of value. She is bullied by her classmates, and Reina is her refuge, her happiness. Reina is wonderful, but Fumi realizes she doesn’t know almost anything personal about her friend. Could Reina Kamisu be real?
Throughout the work, there is the opportunity to meet several different characters, one for each chapter, and their relationship with the Reina Kamisu phenomenon. In the first person, we follow the actions, thoughts, and feelings of the protagonists: Fumi Saito, Atsushi Kogure, Shizuka Wakui, Kazuaki Toyoshina, Yukimi Mitsui, Ryoji Kasumi, Sakura Kawai, and finally, but not least, Reina Kamisu. It is worth adding that the epilogues are read from the perspective of several other characters. Each individual with their motivations and circumstances, their feelings and emotions, their past and present. There will be no future – at least for some of them.
The author Eiji Mikage is an expert in the psychological genre. The way he understands and writes about the human psyche is unique and sensational. No character’s circumstance is poorly explained or abrupt – you, the reader, can understand the whole process the character went through and how they arrived at certain actions. All the characters we witness are unique, with complex personalities, and get involved with each other and with the Reina Kamisu phenomenon. Themes like bullying, depression, suicide, and abuse are addressed, which makes the story heavier. Most people who encountered Reina Kamisu went through one (or more) of these scenarios.
In its two volumes, the story is not entirely built in a linear fashion. Each chapter is not necessarily a direct continuation and temporal follow-up of the previous one. The sequence of the parts of the work is strategically chosen to provide clues about the phenomenon to the reader slowly. In the first volume, characters with special circumstances who became involved with the appearance of Reina Kamisu are introduced. One of the goals of this volume is to show the reader, little by little, the rules for the phenomenon to appear to an individual. The second volume tells the story of Reina Kamisu and how she became a phenomenon, in addition to introducing other characters who were involved in some way in this process.
The series was released from 2005 to 2006, a time when there weren’t as many light novels as there are today. The story elements follow certain trends from that time, which consisted of the arrival or emergence of a phenomenon in a school environment, affecting the school or even the city in some way. Examples of works with this type of plot include Boogiepop Series and Suzumiya Haruhi Series. The authors pushed the limits of creativity and wrote unique and interesting narratives, with unforgettable and differentiated characters.
If you have read Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria, nicknamed HakoMari, Eiji Mikage’s most famous light novel series, know that when comparing it with Kamisu Reina Series, you can notice that the second doesn’t have as creative plots as the first. Moreover, the characters of Kamisu Reina Series don’t develop as much throughout the narrative to become as memorable as the main couple in HakoMari, due to the difference in length between the two works. Even so, Kamisu Reina Series is an excellent read for anyone looking for a smaller series, with numerous well-developed characters and a very interesting psychological mystery plot. The experience of reading the work is quite satisfying and highly recommended.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
