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煙突ルンババ不可解
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April 11, 2022
"Yukio, tell me, haven’t you thought about how stories only really happen to those who can tell them? Well now, what if it’s something inexplicable."
My thoughts after reading: Smokestack Runbaba Inexplicable (煙突ルンババ不可解)
Written by Ehimegawa Juuzou
Some context:
This was Ehimewaga’s first novel, published back in 1990 this is the first entry in the Run&baba 12 series. It’s incredibly niche, and pretty much haven’t heard about it from anyone else except for the small cameos Runbaba gets to make in some of Maijo’s novels.
The series continued for a bit, and after its end, Maijo made the Runbaba tribute: The world is made out of closed rooms.
The story:
“Tokyo, Chofu, Autumn, a Western house, a corpse on top of a smokestack, inexplicable. It got worse; great detectives appeared. The birth of an inexplicable masterpiece by an unknown new author!”
Banba Junjirou, a mere middle schooler, suddenly finds himself in a strange situation. While on a school snow trip to Fukui, a corpse is discovered on top of the smokestack of one of the buildings at the western-style ski resort they’re staying at! With a heavy snowfall and pretty much no contact with the outside world, the tragedy continues when each morning a new corpse is found in an inexplicable way on top of that old smokestack.
With the help of Baba 11 (an old detective staying at that same resort) Junjurou tries his best to protect his classmates and find out the twisted truth behind the place they’re staying at, the people who run it, and what’s the deal with the smokestack?
Enjoyment:
Well fuck, this was amazing from start to finish.
Junjurou (later in the book Runbaba 12) is truly an amazing character, his childish way of thinking and actions are perfectly real to that of a real kid of his age, something that Ehimegawa really kept realistic throughout the book is that a kid his age really would act like he does (being extremely afraid, making childish deductions, and just being quite naive in a lot of aspects.
One of the most fun parts of the book is his relationship with his family, all the members of the Banba family are so interesting (especially his sister, Ryou-chan), fun, and have such an enticing backstory. The flashback chapters sprinkled between the book were an amazing break from such a wild and gruesome mystery, and to be honest I may have liked them more than the chapters happening in the present.
The mystery is also quite good, and it absolutely fooled me for most of the book, Ehimegawa is just a madman, the sheer mention of “inexplicable” in the title comes as pretentious, but holy shit, the solution was really inexplicable, the narrative trick used was just so fucking clever. The reason as to why halfway through the narrator changed to Yukio instead of Junjirou was just so good. (and I’d love to talk about how clever this narration trick was, but I don’t want to explain the “inexplicable” of the smokestack murders)
The action scenes, the fight scenes, the fun moments, the sad moments, the serious moments, the dumb talk, and the tragedy of this book really made it something unforgivable and something that I couldn't put down.
It's such an amazingly fun and enjoyable read.
How difficult was it to read this novel in Japanese?:
Surprisingly not very difficult, I felt very confident over how much I understood and didn't have any trouble while reading it.
For being an Ehimewaga book it definitely was something you would call an "easy read" and it feels like a proto-light novel in that aspect, the prose and overall structure of the book are quite light, and flows incredibly well.
In any case, If you want to read this book in Japanese, made a vocab list and an Anki deck with the words I had to search up while reading it: https://drive.google.com/drive/fo
The verdict:
It's a very wild book to debut with. It has an amazing story and some of the most fun characters I've ever seen. It has some scenes that made me jump out of my seat, some that made me well up with emotion and cry.
It's a book that at the end of the day really surpassed my expectations. And for being the first book of the Run&baba 12 series, it's definitely the strongest start a series could have.
One can definitely see how this series, later on, influenced the likes of Seiryouin Ryusuui, Maijo Otaro, and even Kasai Kiyoshi. It’s criminally underrated how little is known about the actual Ehimegawa (not Maijo’s character), and how little information about his works is on the internet, hopefully, the manga adaptation that recently started (art by Suka Horoe) will change that.
"Yukio, we are all born mad, some stay so. It wasn’t my fault, but to follow the smoke rising from the smokestack you just sometimes need to blow an orphanage up."
Smokestack Runbaba Inexplicable by Ehimegawa Juuzou is a 9/10
My thoughts after reading: Smokestack Runbaba Inexplicable (煙突ルンババ不可解)
Written by Ehimegawa Juuzou
Some context:
This was Ehimewaga’s first novel, published back in 1990 this is the first entry in the Run&baba 12 series. It’s incredibly niche, and pretty much haven’t heard about it from anyone else except for the small cameos Runbaba gets to make in some of Maijo’s novels.
The series continued for a bit, and after its end, Maijo made the Runbaba tribute: The world is made out of closed rooms.
The story:
“Tokyo, Chofu, Autumn, a Western house, a corpse on top of a smokestack, inexplicable. It got worse; great detectives appeared. The birth of an inexplicable masterpiece by an unknown new author!”
Banba Junjirou, a mere middle schooler, suddenly finds himself in a strange situation. While on a school snow trip to Fukui, a corpse is discovered on top of the smokestack of one of the buildings at the western-style ski resort they’re staying at! With a heavy snowfall and pretty much no contact with the outside world, the tragedy continues when each morning a new corpse is found in an inexplicable way on top of that old smokestack.
With the help of Baba 11 (an old detective staying at that same resort) Junjurou tries his best to protect his classmates and find out the twisted truth behind the place they’re staying at, the people who run it, and what’s the deal with the smokestack?
Enjoyment:
Well fuck, this was amazing from start to finish.
Junjurou (later in the book Runbaba 12) is truly an amazing character, his childish way of thinking and actions are perfectly real to that of a real kid of his age, something that Ehimegawa really kept realistic throughout the book is that a kid his age really would act like he does (being extremely afraid, making childish deductions, and just being quite naive in a lot of aspects.
One of the most fun parts of the book is his relationship with his family, all the members of the Banba family are so interesting (especially his sister, Ryou-chan), fun, and have such an enticing backstory. The flashback chapters sprinkled between the book were an amazing break from such a wild and gruesome mystery, and to be honest I may have liked them more than the chapters happening in the present.
The mystery is also quite good, and it absolutely fooled me for most of the book, Ehimegawa is just a madman, the sheer mention of “inexplicable” in the title comes as pretentious, but holy shit, the solution was really inexplicable, the narrative trick used was just so fucking clever. The reason as to why halfway through the narrator changed to Yukio instead of Junjirou was just so good. (and I’d love to talk about how clever this narration trick was, but I don’t want to explain the “inexplicable” of the smokestack murders)
The action scenes, the fight scenes, the fun moments, the sad moments, the serious moments, the dumb talk, and the tragedy of this book really made it something unforgivable and something that I couldn't put down.
It's such an amazingly fun and enjoyable read.
How difficult was it to read this novel in Japanese?:
Surprisingly not very difficult, I felt very confident over how much I understood and didn't have any trouble while reading it.
For being an Ehimewaga book it definitely was something you would call an "easy read" and it feels like a proto-light novel in that aspect, the prose and overall structure of the book are quite light, and flows incredibly well.
In any case, If you want to read this book in Japanese, made a vocab list and an Anki deck with the words I had to search up while reading it: https://drive.google.com/drive/fo
The verdict:
It's a very wild book to debut with. It has an amazing story and some of the most fun characters I've ever seen. It has some scenes that made me jump out of my seat, some that made me well up with emotion and cry.
It's a book that at the end of the day really surpassed my expectations. And for being the first book of the Run&baba 12 series, it's definitely the strongest start a series could have.
One can definitely see how this series, later on, influenced the likes of Seiryouin Ryusuui, Maijo Otaro, and even Kasai Kiyoshi. It’s criminally underrated how little is known about the actual Ehimegawa (not Maijo’s character), and how little information about his works is on the internet, hopefully, the manga adaptation that recently started (art by Suka Horoe) will change that.
"Yukio, we are all born mad, some stay so. It wasn’t my fault, but to follow the smoke rising from the smokestack you just sometimes need to blow an orphanage up."
Smokestack Runbaba Inexplicable by Ehimegawa Juuzou is a 9/10
Displaying 1 of 1 review