Perils of Loneliness
When Royham ‘Roy’ Malone – a shut-in, katana-wielding otaku – believes he witnessed the murder of his favorite v-tuber during a private one-on-one stream, he recruits his friend Iri to investigate. The duo, however, before even thinking of solving the murder, must first deal with figuring out where they’re even supposed to look. Since all Roy could see during the stream was a still 3D model of the v-tuber – and the v-tuber’s real-life identity is unknown – they must rely on what Roy heard and the hints that the v-tuber dropped of her private life to link the case to any recently-reported killings.
This is the setup to Bunraku Noir: The Hardboiled Samurai and His Digital Doll, a free 2023 novel written by K.O. Enigma. Full disclosure, I’ve known Enigma for years and am more than happy to say that, without bias, the novel is worth reading. Not just because of the interesting hook – in fact, our detectives solve this initial problem fairly quickly and find themselves solving a locked room mystery – of how a killer managed to escape a locked apartment after throwing his victim off her balcony.
It’s a problem presented in a fairly straightforward manner, but there’s a lot of back and forth in terms of theorizing. And unlike my own writing, it’s actually fairly easy to follow the chains of thought. There’s a decent amount of theories and false solutions. The discussions are fun and move along fairly quickly. In fact, in spite of being just a little over 200 pages, the book itself moves fairly quickly in general – in a good way. The humor, the characters and the mystery all work together to keep things moving.
The story does a lot of things to keep itself interesting, too. Additional mysteries, interludes to a mysterious third party and – oh – a digital program calling itself Pinocchio that inserts itself into the investigation and our detectives’ phones.
The solution to the mysteries – both the main one and the ones that crop up later down the line – are good! In fact, the way in which the solution chapter is structured and delivered is fairly unique and bound to appeal to anyone looking for some genre commentary.
Of course, that isn’t to say that the book only comments on its genre. It comments on a lot of different things, actually – otaku and anime culture, literature, obsession and, of course, ghosts.
But Bunraku Noir’s most important theme is actually its most well-hidden. It puts it just underneath all this other stuff; it doesn’t hide it, it’s actually very obvious and always there, but you don’t come to fully see it for yourself until the end of the book. And I think that’s really clever and something that may seem tonally unusual at first but makes perfect sense when placed into the context of the actual events.
From this point on, there will be some minor spoilers to some elements of the book. Nothing too revealing, as I won’t really be talking directly about the book itself, but I still recommending reading it first if anything I’ve written so far looks interesting to you.
I meant to talk about Bunraku Noir a long while ago. The issue I had at the time was that I couldn’t figure out the right framing for it. What “story” or “theme” I wanna briefly rant about to interconnect with the actual book.
My initial thought was to talk about the themes of coincidence. Whereas the book touches upon the convergence of seemingly unrelated events, resulting in complexity and confusion, my idea of coincidence would’ve been more surface level.
I would’ve talked about Pinocchio.
Back in 2023, while I was in America, the Portland Art Museum had an exhibition of Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. This was a few weeks before I had an inkling of Bunraku Noir even existing.
A month or so after I came back from America, long after I’d finished reading the book, I sat down and played Lies of P – the newly-released Souls-like game which was an elaborate adaptation of Pinocchio’s story.
The Tale of Three Pinocchios. All appearing in my life in short succession.
It’s silly coincidences like that which make me stop and consider – very briefly – if there’s some higher force trying to communicate something to me. Some kind of a warning? “Beware of dolls?” Some kind of a metaphor? “Get a nose job?”
Either way, it’s a thought that lasts only for a moment. Interesting and exciting as it might be, at the end of the day, few of us have the luxury of entertaining the idea we’re characters in some kind of a story. The simple truth is that I saw Pinocchio in Portland because the studio that made it is based in Portland and the exhibition had been scheduled long before my arrival. I saw Pinocchio in Lies of P because I just happened to play it months after it’d been first released; the game itself, and its premise, had been decided a long while before Enigma had even thought about writing a novel with Pinocchio in it.
We assign meanings to these small things because they give us a sense of control. Coincidence can’t be controlled – but giving meaning to it makes it a part of your story. And the story is always yours, for better or for worse. Even when it feels like you’re not the one writing it.
Last week, I was in Stockholm for a business trip. Everyone kept telling us it’s the perfect time of the year to visit – and I had to agree.
The sun sets at 10 PM and rises by 3 AM. I know that, because I usually passed out at around 10 after a long day of walking and kept snapping awake at 3:45 in the morning (almost always on the dot. Another sign?). It’s an odd feeling – waking up in the middle of the night but seeing a bright blue sky outside.
On the whole, I’d say it was good for me. Change of scenery was good. Hanging out with co-workers was good. Food was good.
As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, the past few weeks haven’t been the greatest. Nothing outwardly bad happened – some stuff was bad, sure, but nothing that should’ve affected by the way it did. Stepping away from everything and keeping myself busy gave me some perspective. Reset me a little. It didn’t solve all my problems – it didn’t solve any of them, really – but it never could’ve done that.
My problem is that it’s too easy for me to get tangled up in my own thoughts. I keep trying to tell a story – my own and those of the people around me – and make sense of it. Instead of assigning meaning to events, I keep trying to give meaning to the story itself. The more I think, the more I lose myself in the act of thinking itself.
Not great! Would not recommend!
The more we pull ourselves inwards, the more we convince ourselves that the world and the people around us are a certain way. We hijack the story completely. We fill it with our own lies. We lull ourselves in a state of comfortable delusion; comfortable in the sense that it’s familiar, not necessarily pleasant.
And the more we turn away, the lonelier we feel. “If I can’t make sense of this, how would anyone else? This is nuts. I need to work it all out for myself. I’m unreachable to others.”
Over time, the delusion becomes more comfortable.
All this got me thinking about Bunraku Noir again. Because that’s fundamentally its main theme: loneliness. Members of its main cast all share the trait and deal with it in their own destructive ways. Some lose themselves in their comfortable delusions completely. Others try to escape it.
But you can’t escape yourself. You’re not supposed to. Escape is short-lived.
You can fly to Stockholm. London. Or Barcelona. You can distract yourself. Reset yourself. But sooner or later, you’ll always get back on the plane and have to fly back. The music never stopped playing – you just paused it – and now you have to go back and face it.
It’s not about escaping. It’s about accepting. Not just who you are, but all these things we desperately fight against – the lack of meaning, the state of the world, the day job. Only when you accept can you come to understand the things you can and can’t change. You can agonize less about who you are or how other people see you or who you’re supposed to be and focus on who you want to be. That’s when the work begins.
And you do need to work. That’s the important part.
That’s when you can change.
When you can do better than walk around town with a katana strapped to your hip.
Book Links (itch.io)