Forum - View topicREVIEW: Fox Tales Novel
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Juno016
 Posts: 2386 |
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I've always felt like Morimi's stories suffered less from an inability to write female characters and more from an unwillingness to write side characters as anything more than a service to the main character's story. In Tower of the Sun, the main character's ex-girlfriend gets very little in the way of characterization, but it feels intended as the main character turns out to be uninterested in what makes her tick and more interested in his own loneliness due to her absence. You get the same feel for every character in the story except the rival character, who is characterized in service of subverting the main character's expectations. In Tatami Galaxy, the main character purposely avoids the girl he likes much in the way TotS's main character does, albeit with more sympathy, and the same goes for everyone except his "best friend", who, again, exists in service of contrasting and questioning the main character's motives. I haven't read Fox Tales yet, but I plan to soon. Maybe I can elaborate a bit more then.
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BlueAlf
 Posts: 1502 |
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This. I feel this way too. Seeing his past works, I get the impression it's more because of preference rather than lack of skill. But still, it could be both. Regardless, I always love the nostalgic fondness he uses to describes Kyoto, so I look forward to this work. |
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Dumas1
Posts: 75 |
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I wonder if that's a result of how very self-absorbed several of his protagonists are and how few bonds they form with other people. The narrators Tower of the Sun and Tatami Galaxy seem to live almost entirely in their own heads, one being a sort of proto-incel and the other one eventually disappearing into a one-room labyrinth. The male narrator of The Night is Young, Walk on, Girl is much the same, and even the girl seems to mostly drift through a web of loose acquaintances with few close friends.
Yashiro from Eccentric Family seems like he doesn't have his head so firmly up his own backside, at least in the anime, despite being a rather selfish and hedonistic young tanuki. The side characters feel more strongly drawn, with more focus on each of them. It's a bit of a shame those novels aren't available in English to compare with Morimi's other work. |
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Big Kahuna
Posts: 43 |
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Completely agreed. I sure wish someone would translate the other Eccentric Family novels (don't know if Morimi has completed the series yet). The two seasons of anime adpatation is one of the best adaptation of light novels, ever, period, way better than the Nisnosin's Monogatari series. Now I love the full court horndog press of Monogatari, but Benten is so much more classier and melancholy in her womanhood it makes Monogatari seem juvenile (which it is). And has there even been a greater love letter to a singular city in multi media? Kyoto is such a living character it gives Ratatouille or all the Woody Allen and Spike Lee films a run for their money, and I would put it on Eccentric Family. Too bad a 3rd season anime has about as much chance as convincing Americans the democracy + capitalism is a lousy combination (yeah, don't know where that one came from, but I'm going with it), but barring that, novel translation as the better than nothing (actually, way better nothing)
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AQuin1904
Posts: 264 |
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Pretty sure Eccentric Family isn't a light novel. It's under a general literary imprint and not illustrated. Also, I believe there are only two novels out, although there were supposed to be three and it's been like seven years since the second one. (NisiOisiN mostly works with light bungei labels, iirc.) |
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