I feel like there's a lot to work with here but it suffered from pacing issues and some loose ends that left me feeling perplexed.
Warning for Spoilers!!
PROS:
- the way this depicts a bullying mindset, especially in the eyes of middle school students. Despite the back of the book saying these are high school students, Adachi states that they are junior high students. In Japan, high school actually has 3 grades, the equivalent of 10th, 11th, and 12th grade. Going off that, you can assume these teens are about 14 to 15 years old. The way Adachi goes about the reasoning for bullying is so so SO much like what I experienced in middle school, along with showing that bullying and harassment is not something that occurs exclusively due to the bully having insecurities, like lots of anti-bullying campaigns and after school specials will tell you, rather, its that they find what makes someone DIFFERENT, someone that's a minority in some way or another, and zero in like heat-seeking missiles. In this case, the class latched onto Yano and her behavior which read as glaringly neurodivergent, especially autistic to me. I can say first hand that neurodivergent children and teenagers are HIGHLY likely to be targets of severe harassment and abuse at the hands of their peers. The way Adachi explained it as a "sense of unity," a way for all the kids in his class, no matter their interests or friend groups, could all band together against the class punching bag for daring to not behave like they do, and not even bother to try to understand her. This felt very raw and realistic, and the author nailed that on the head.
- The internal conflict for Adachi of him struggling with his own morals and actions, of being a physical monster at night but a metaphorical one during the day. Whether people think so or not, being a teenager is really a scary time in your life. There's so much peer pressure to deal with in schools, and teenagers can be incredibly cruel and spiteful towards each other. Seeing Adachi struggle with wanting to protect Yano's midnight break but still being unable to stand up for her and even being a bully himself during the day was a very raw and realistic struggle for a character his age, and seeing how he had a serious self evaluation near the end when Yano asked him a question she initially asked when first meeting him, "Which is your real form? Daytime or Nighttime?" was quite intense to read.
- Yano herself is really quite the interesting character. She seems to be heavily autistic coded, as she has an irregular speech pattern, is often told she is "making the wrong face at the wrong time" (a part of her character is that she always seems to be "smugly smiling," we find out later she apparently only does this when she is afraid :c ), and told that she "can't/doesn't read the room." I really liked her character as she's a lot smarter than people think, imaginative, and brave.
CONS:
- THE PACING. WOW. The events of this book all span in about two weeks, but I feel like so much of it is spent with Adachi still initially disliking Yano, and it isn't until the last ten pages of the book that he actually publicly, in front of his class, shows that he acknowledges Yano. He didn't need to share a grand speech to his classmates about their treatment towards her and have them all clap in the end, no, but I feel with even just one more chapter or two where he acknowledges her in class, maybe continues to have midnight break even after he stops becoming a monster at night, idk SOMETHING to show that he's really truly changing. The very ending felt very rushed.
- The main reason that the class has zeroed in on Yano as their target is an incident involving Yano going up to a quiet classmate, Midoriokawa, and throwing her book out of the class window. Midoriokawa is generally well liked, and never says much else besides "Mm," to her classmates, so this sudden act of aggression came as a huge surprise to the class, and caused a lot of hatred to be targeted at Yano. We find out later that Yano and Midoriokawa were friends but some undisclosed event happened that made them fight, leading to Yano's outburst. We never find out what that was!
- There are reoccurring events of property destruction at the school during the course of the story. The baseball clubroom window is broken twice, and a classmate's shoes are shredded up. Midoriokawa makes a mention about Adachi's friend, Kasai, who she says "isn't a good person" when Adachi mentions the property destruction before disappearing. There's never any elaboration on this and leaves me wondering why it was even put in the story if it was never going to be resolved.
Despite the cons listed, I think they could easily be fixed if this wasn't in the light novel format. Light novels are generally under 50,000 words, if there was just more written to wrap up the loose ends and fix the pacing, I feel this would be a near perfect book. If you're curious about it, I still feel it is worth picking up and reading if you're really curious. 3.5/5 stars!