The best that can be said about Kurai's novel is that it is entertaining, one of those page turner affairs that can be read on the beach, while drinking a coffee... Because from the very beginning this is silly as they come (and, yes, I had watched Miike's movie, so I knew what I was getting into): a psychopath is attacked by a person with a monster's mask (the lumberjack monster of the title) and gets injured. The injury? A chip in his brain is broken and he is no longer a psychopath. Will he change, will he stay the same, will he...? Really, it is super stupid, from the motivations of the 'bad one', to our main character's behavior (and his friend, the killer doctor). And then, you have the police, totally pointless and just there so the novel becomes a novel (if not it would barely be a novella). And the unnecessary time jumps, characters doing plot exposition, things that happen just too casually ( ).
If you leave your brain on the cover (pun not intended) you may 'enjoy' it.
The best: one of those easy reads
The worst: it is silly as they come, it has so much filling it could be a turkey, so many unnecessary characters
I kept suspecting Sugitani until the very end, and even after learning it was Kenmochi, I kept reading hoping for the Sugitani = Kenmochi theory to be true, thinking that would be way more interesting.
Well, logically, it seems only Kenmochi could have pulled it off, but the motive for the murder felt a bit weak.
Maybe because he was born with emotions, he can't understand people who don't have them? There are other manga where they kill their own kind to stop them from killing others, but if his own kind weren't harming anyone else... I wonder if he really needed to kill them...
Why do people insist on categorizing by kind? What even defines “kind” in the first place? Just one or two shared traits... Even within the same kind, people are different despite similar tendencies. What Kenmochi did might benefit ordinary people, but part of me values individuality and thinks, “Just leave them alone. It's annoying.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.