You won’t get spirited away by Missing

Missing: Spirited Away
Gakuto Coda

So, this review is a little different. After reading the synopsis of the manga by the same title, my interest was piqued, and I decided to take a look at the Missing series. Unfortunately, when I got to the book store, only the novel was available. I’m an avid reader, so I purchased this book against my better judgment.

The most striking thing about this book is it’s cover, which is brilliant. I love the photography. The color scheme is good, it goes well with the image. Also, the same guy who did the cover designed the interior, and it definitely sets the ambiance of the book. I just wish they put as much effort into the actual text as they did the designs.

Unfortunately, the moment the cover is opened and the first page is turned, Missing begins to disappoint. Even the chapter names are uninspired and dull. Often when text is translated from its native language, there is some je ne sais quoi which is lost. Subtleties, metaphors, idioms and the like cannot be translated word for word, and are never as beautiful as they originally were.

Reading just the first page of the prologue confirmed my fears. The translation and editing are lacking. There are technical mistakes which really should have been caught. For instance, there are some tense issues on page six. Also, there were more than a few typos, the worst and most memorable being on a page where Kijou is called Kouji. These are two entirely different names, and it just shows how inattentive the staff was. Maybe I should apply at Tokyopop; they’ll hire just about anyone.

Utsume and Ayame in the manga, perhaps?

Worse, however, is the fact that the text feels hollow and sterile. The writing feels as if it’s been simplified for a younger audience. Where is the issue in that, you wonder? Well, the issue lies in the fact that the reader feels that the writing has been simplified. It seems almost as if Tokyopop is mocking us, questioning our intelligence. Missing reads on an about fifth grade level, but the subject matter is dark and psychological, much too deep for the complexity of the novel. This causes the entire book to feel out of sync; I just couldn’t get into it. Instead, I found myself laughing at the descriptions of problems and the characters’ (over)reactions. Moments that could have been truly frightening were merely somewhat or hardly creepy due to the “lite” style of the prose. Nothing seemed to the reader as it did to the characters, which is problematic in a novel. Normally, a novel should provoke some sort of emotion from the reader, but I felt detached and removed while reading Missing. I just didn’t care; I felt as if I was simply watching the events of the story unfold without any sense of wonder or suspense.

Another fact that didn’t jive with me was the lack of originality in the characters. They were all obvious archetypal anime characters. In Missing, we have the cold, bossy, glasses-wearing nerd girl; the sweet, unintelligent beauty; the slow-witted but well-meaning friend; the natural born leader martial-artist; and the enigmatic, distant, shrewd-minded central protagonist. The characters were so one dimensional, I could never get any of them but Aki and Utsume straight, as they came closest to actually portraying some semblance of a personality. The others seemed as if they were simply going through the motions . I felt as if I was reading the English novelization of a bad Japanese soap-opera.

Missing is slow-paced, and anti-climatic. The drama flat-lines early on, I felt more could have been done to create a sense of tension so that at the resolution of the climax there would be a greater sense of catharsis. Essentially, I want a deeper plot and a better ending. There is not much of a dénouement at the close of this volume, but that could well be due to the fact that there are several volumes following this one.

I don’t have much else to say about Missing. Coda has some interesting concepts, and I would have liked to have seen more done with them. I’m willing to bet the book would be much better in Japanese, but there really is no telling. Overall, this is a mediocre book that could probably be enjoyed for light reading over the summer, assuming one does that type of thing. It’s only $7.99 in the US, so it’s not too pricey, but if choosing between this novel and another, I’d call a Missing lower priority read.