Resident Evil: The Book

by Hiroyuki Ariga

Resident Evil: The Book is an English adaptation of the novella BIO HAZARD: The Beginning, by Hiroyuki Ariga, which was originally published as a portion of the book BIO HAZARD The True Story Behind BIO HAZARD. Resident Evil: The Book was distributed by Capcom U.S.A. through a mail-order offer via their official website in 1997.

Genres: Horror

127 pages, Paperback

First published July 25, 1997

Reviews

[Bonnie_Rae]

Thanks to the Internet Archive, I was able to find and read Resident Evil: The Book, which came out a few years before S.D. Perry would begin writing the games and other side-stories into a book series. This serves as a non-canon prequel leading right up to the events of Resident Evil. We follow the dumb as rocks himbo Chris Redfield as he gets an early morning call from his friend Billy. Chris Redfield soon gets in over his head as murder after murder stacks up. He and Jill Valentine end up encountering zombies (before they step foot into the mansion!) and having to deal with the murky machinations of Captain Albert Wesker and the seriously skeevy Police Chief Brian Irons.

This books is unintentionally hilarious and camp at times, which is why I love it. I have no idea if the translation is accurate or not but I feel it captures the spirit of the early games set/produced in the 1990s. Here are a few gemss starting with the first lines from the first chapter:

Whenever the phone rings in the middle of the night. I know someone's dead who wasn't dead the day before. Happens all the time. Except when it's a wrong number. Like this totally drunk woman who thought I was her long lost lover. Or the idiot who tied up my line with a long monologue in Portuguese.

Yeah, when that phone rings late at night, it's a good bet something bad's going down. Like a half hour ago. I was having my favorite dream, the one where I'm a rock star besieged by adoring female fans.

This is Chris distilled down to his purest form:

I put on the same clothes I'd taken off two hours before, grabbed another bottle of spring water from the refrigerator and swigged down half in one big gulp. The other half I poured over my head on the way to my car. If I had to hit the road in the middle of the night, I figured it was better to be wet and awake than dry and dead.

The dynamics of Jill and Chris are fascinating - Jill is clearly more competent and frankly smarter than Chris, but Chris does rely on her and trust her quite a bit. Even way back when, Chris was described as a lone wolf. Which, given the name of his squad from RE8 & RE9, fits:

"It's a long story, Jill," I said, not wanting to tell her I'd been attacked by a corpse. I figured that as part of the S.T.A.R.S. team, she'd find out what we were up against soon enough. "Look, I've got something important to do. Can I drop you somewhere?"

Jill fixed me with her Rock of Gibraltar look; a kind of stare that says only the total destruction of the planet will sway her. "Why are you so anxious to get rid of me?"

"Whatever put such a wicked thought in your head?"

"Cut the bull, Chris. I know you. You're working on some angle, aren't you? You always were a lone wolf."

"And you want to join my solitary pack."

"I would kill for the chance."

I didn't need to ask her who she would kill. "You know, Jill, you're the most beautiful person who's ever threatened me. Okay, you're in."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

There is a chain of events leading up to this exchange. Basically, Chris tries to investigate what his friend Billy, who worked for Umbrella, was up to, including going to Umbrella HQ (I guess?) to talk to a Human Resources manager about said friend. Umbrella gets the wind up and calls Chief Irons (secretly on Umbrella's payroll) who in turns chews out Wesker (also on Umbrella's payroll), who tasks Jill to bring Chris to his office. Anyway, the way Wesker is described is something else. But it does shows how much Wesker depended/trusted (?) Jill to do what he commanded and sets up the messed-up trifecta between Wesker, Redfield, and Valentine that would dominate their lives (and a good portion of Resident Evil's narrative) going forward.

"You know what a control freak Wesker is. He's furious, but you'd never know it by his face or demeanor. The man is as smooth as silk and strong as steel."

"Anything else I should know?"

"Yeah, Chris. Wesker sent me to personally bring you into the office."

"So that's why you were on the way to my house."

"You got it. The man has a real strong desire to see you."

"He's going to love it when he finds out that you went on a joy ride with me while he was waiting."

"For both our sakes, this angle of yours better pan out, Chris. Know what I mean?"

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good read for super dedicated Resident Evil fans who want to dive into the history and explore supplemental stuff!

It's a nice little prequel story to RE1 and it was a very quick read (at least for me). It does have some localization weirdness that you can read more about on the RE Wiki, but it didn't take me out of the story.

I still enjoyed it despite it being non canon and getting contradicted by later entries. Makes it work well for a standalone mini story.

[Chris White]

Quick read with some interesting events preceding the original 1996 resident evil. Several details no longer work with Resident Evil 0 and RE1 Remake, but it was likely considered cannon at the time and it’s fun to imagine this being mostly how things went with the investigation that Chris and co. did regarding the “bizarre murders” preceding the first game.

[Malachi · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's fine. It doesn't add a whole lot besides introducing police chief Brian irons before RE 2. If you're a massive resident evil fan you might enjoy it