Furikkāshiki: Kagami Kimihiko Ni Uttetsuke No Satsujin

by Yūya Satō

283 pages, Paperback Shinsho

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Yūya SATŌ (佐藤 友哉).

Reviews

[Sam · Rating 1 out of 5]

In Satou Yuuya's 2001 Mephisto prize-winning debut novel Flicker Style, protagonist Kagami Kimihiko owns a car. That he owns a car is pretty important to the plot — Kimihiko routinely needs to travel long distances with heavy items in a short amount of time, and be able to do so relatively discretely. There are a handful of things we learn about his car over the course of Flicker Style. He bought it used. I has an automatic transmission, It doesn't have a stereo. The contents of the trunk are not visible from outside the car (i.e. it's probably not a minivan). On the other hand, there is a whole lot more that we are never told about Kimihiko's car: The exact make/model, how long he's had it, what color, what shape it's in, any repairs it's needed over the years, etc. I'm sure it depends on where you live, but from my understanding it's not uncommon for people living in Japan to never get a driver's license, when and why did Kimihiko get one? Is there an interesting backstory there?

The car is necessary for the plot of Flicker Style to happen. But that is where it's presence in the story begins and ends.

Satou Yuuya is a hack author and Flicker Style is a half-assed book.

[Novu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first chapter is a slog filled with stiff dialogue that informs us every few minutes on how Kagami family is oh so crazy. If you live through that, flicker actually turns out to be a morbidly entertaining thriller that definitely can prove his "crazy" with actions. The second storyline adds a much needed dynamic to the book and a more sane pov is a godsend as Kimihiko can really tire one out. Direct comparisons with other books and writers would spoil a tad too much so I'll just say that right until the final chapter I was having a blast, much to my own surprise, even if some events almost made me take a pause. It's hard to say that flicker is "well written", it's very rough around the edges, but the absurdly curious and fast-paced plotting makes it worth experiencing, the chaotic stream of interconnected events at times almost makes it feel like a more dark and perverse Narita Ryogo book.

On the other side, the ending is a very mixed bag. The guy threw every twist and turn he could think of into the infodumpy last chapter making it feel barely coherent by the end of the epilogue. It's a pity as some of the ideas work really well but get diluted as a result. It's also cliffhanger-y and the main conflict doesn't really get resolved but I doubt anyone will ever translate the rest of the Kagami saga and I'm not even sure if they are a continuation of this story in any form so there's that. Oh well.

[yuri · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is bad. I mean, it's somewhat enjoyable through the middle of the story, and by being written in such a flashy way is kinda easable to read. It starts being so overly pretentious that hurts, the author keeps reinforcing the fact that Kagami family is so weird and different, so broken and unorthodox that just gives me pain. Kimihiko doesn't help too, what a boring narrator and even more boring character to accompany trough the plot. In that way, the Asumi narrative is more enjoyable and kinda refreshing, but the character is under utilized in the end, making her kinda useless, just being there for the sake of plot device (by the convergence of the different plot lines). This style of narrative, that goes from one perspective to the other, makes Flicker Style entertaining in the middle of the book, and somewhat "cleans" the negative that had get to me in the beginning. But, in the end, everything is simply thrown apart. It's shock factor for the sake of shock factor, twist for the sake of the twist. I found it kinda funny, the last chapter + epilogue made me think of the book in a goofy way; its really difficult to take it seriously after that. What I can say is that different of others authors like Nisioisin and Otaro Maijo, the weirdness of Yuya Sato is not compelling in the slightest. It feels just free and makes me regret the time I invested trough the book. At least it was funny in the end.

[Shinya]

重い。読み終わった後に「あー読み終わった。」みたいな感触は一切無い。他の鏡家サーガを読めば認識は変わるのかもしれないけど、消化不良。

[Cz Volt IV · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wont lie, that was definitely the most fascinating pro-abortion PSA i have read.

[Tarlo Viola · Rating 4 out of 5]

One possible charm of how this book is structured is that it shoots a whole series of rabbits out of your hat in the final parts, rewriting in retrospect everything you have previously read. It's an interesting way to break mystery conventions (I knew it was a shin honkaku but it's funny to see how it pisses over the knox decalogue).

Some of the choices may seem very questionable, but they are part of the personality of a culture of extreme postmodernism that you don't see anymore these days.

Purity talk is something that may seem an alien topic in the way here is explicated, but it's actually true that if one (male) stops to reflect on the relationship of attraction to the opposite sex then the motive of that killer is not so far from reality.

Smooth reading, I expected a little more given how much it is praised, but I admit that it's a novel that acquires quality over time when you think back on it every so often.

[📗 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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