There is nothing strange in this world

Author: Tern
First published 2023/12/25

Merry Christmas everybody! This is your site administrator beef2929 here to introduce the latest rising star to join our roster of unpaid employees here at SKULLFUCKERS Industries. Now, as you've no doubt gathered from my overwhelming air of class and worldliness, I am an experienced adventurer and scholar of this pale blue dot we call a home. On one of my numerous treks through picturesque European countrysides, I found myself in the quaint village of Brodilovo, Bulgaria. It was here that I happened upon and took into my own care a young orphaned boy named Ternasyl with nothing to his name but the clothes on his back, a fire in his heart and a working laptop with a pre-installed copy of BALDR SKY Dive2: "RECORDARE" recently completed on Easy difficulty (worry not, dear reader, he has since finished the game on Very Hard difficulty under threat of eviction). Yes!—as it turns out, Bulgaria has a thriving community of eroge-loving 9GAG users to whoma I wish to extend a cross-cultural olive branch by way of this collaboration.

You see, one afternoon, a scant couple of months ago, Tern had just returned home from an exhausting day of enriching education at the American Kindergarten I enrolled him in when, to my alarm, he suddenly collapsed in our foyer. His backpack slid open to reveal the approximately fifteen thousand pages of popular Japanese literature he had bought using my credit card. “Mother,” he spoke in a hoarse whisper, “my peers do not respect me. Every day I am bullied on the playground for my love of homoerotic Japanese computer games. I’m afraid this generation has turned its back on that most important of virtues: media literacy. My classmates lack intellect; their brains have been addled by TikTok and they know nothing of great literature. I wish to post to SKULLFUCKERS, Mother. I know that I am only six years old, but I have already learned so much, so very quickly. I believe not only that I am ready for this undertaking but that the world is ready for me.”

So touched I was by this remarkable display of maturity that I granted his request on the spot. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado: please welcome my son Ternasyl.

Hello every body my name Ternasyl I come from small village of Bulgarian, I big fan of gay person, and I want talk about book.

This how I look like nice to meet.

Now, let's get on-topic.

During my stay in Japan, I got into a very curious mystery series - Kyougoku Natsuhiko’s 百鬼夜行 (Nightly Parade of a Hundred Demons, Hyakki Yakou from here onward) series. It had previously been introduced to me as an intricate mixture of traditional murder mystery elements, folklore and psychology set in post-war Japan, which made me quite curious. I was very eager to test myself and hopefully obtain a new hyperfixation. So, how did that go?

Long story short, I DID become obsessed! I struggled quite a bit with keeping up a normal reading pace and sometimes would get distracted for weeks on end, but pretty much nothing could get in the way of my general enjoyment. During my stay, I only read the first Hyakki Yakou book, 姑獲鳥の夏 (Summer of the Ubume), and several hundred pages of the second book, 魍魎の匣 (The Mouryou Box) and that was enough to convince me to impulse-buy all of the series. ALL of it. I was just that bewitched by the unique and captivating writing style, the thick atmosphere and the goofy character antics. I expected a generally interesting, but dry writing style but got something a lot more refreshing and fun. Since then I’ve only finished Mouryou, meaning I’ve read just two entries in the series. Considering Hyakki Yakou consists of 10 massive mainline novels and 6 relatively big spinoff anthologies, that really isn’t a lot, but somehow it was more than enough to convince me to gush about these books and the man behind them for the duration of a whole overlong blogpost.

Now, considering how little of the series I’ve read and how much more I intend to read, I’ve decided to employ a novel (ha!) release model for my thoughts on it. Dear reader, I would like to welcome you to SKULLFUCKERS’ very first Live Service Book Report. It is my intention to use the following post as a base for any further Hyakki Yakou observations and gushing, updating it as I go through the series and find new things to say about it.

Without any further ado… my name is Terny-P and I welcome you to…

HYAKKI YAKOU XIV: A SUMMER REBOXED

The current post version is 2.0.

0. Kyougoku Natsuhiko and his Demonic Parade

0.1. Kyougoku Natsuhiko and his DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

Before we get into what the books are like and why I think they’re very interesting and deserve more recognition in Japanese-reading Western communities, I’d like to show you a photo of the writer behind them, Kyougoku Natsuhiko. 

Look at this guy. Like, just look at him. Look at him and tell me he doesn’t leave one hell of a first impression. In most, if not all of his public appearances, Kyougoku wears traditional Japanese clothing and black leather gloves, which are so emblematic that replicas of them are being sold by Kadokawa. He has a very unique presence - mysterious, kinda snarky, oftentimes more than a bit pedantic. Although one can easily access information on how he became a writer (a bit more on this later get hype y’all!!), little is known about his personal life. There is some footage of his study, however, and it, too, fits the character he’s built up for himself.

Thanks to his captivating public presence, it wouldn’t be a lie to say that I had become a fan of his before I even started his work.

Despite the lack of details on his personal life, however, he’s forthcoming about his practices as a writer, and a lot of them are deeply intriguing. Something that particularly stands out to me is his proactive involvement in the design of his books. His prose is fairly notable for using a lot of older kanji, including kyuujitai, which makes it sound very intimidating… but surprisingly enough, it isn’t. The Hyakki Yakou series is set in post-war Japan, primarily during the 50s, and its prose aptly reflects that. Kyougoku loves using older writings for everyday words or employing obscure, lesser-known terms, but he also personally inputs the furigana for them and reiterates it at carefully thought out intervals, making it possible for the reader to have a taste of that delectable literary Showa-era Japanese, while also ensuring the prose is digestible and flows pleasantly for a modern audience.

Originally a graphic designer, Kyougoku also personally designs the layout of his releases. He has a very specific philosophy - no sentence should overflow from one page and continue onto the next. The reader shouldn't be forced to turn the page and keep reading for a few more rows just to finish the sentence from the previous page. Kyougoku believes that his books should be easy to put down and pick up again, without the nuisance of having to look for your specific place on the page each time. As such, he meticulously designs all of his releases around this philosophy - the shinsho books, the tankobon, the bunko versions, even the “split-into-several-bunko” releases. It’s honestly really damn impressive.

All of this ties into his writing philosophy as well. Kyougoku believes that rather than simplifying an overly complex work in order to attract a wider audience, it must instead be made more accessible without sacrificing its inherent complexity. What he strives to achieve is specifically writing a story that’s interesting enough to pull in the reader and make them instinctively put in the effort to understand it and enjoy it despite its complexity. According to his philosophy, an “easy,” intentionally simplified work is most often consumed more passively, creating a rift between reader and story, while a more difficult read that requires active reader effort is more capable of forging a bond with its reader. As such, his stories are not dumbed down in any way, but there’s a lot of work put into making that complexity appealing and accessible. This effort is expressed both in the prose and the graphic design of his releases.

His graphic design experience is apparent with the book covers of his releases, too. Please look at this photo of a few of his Hyakki Yakou bunko releases which I shamelessly lifted from Mercari. 

It’s a fairly unique style, wouldn’t you agree? Something which I find absolutely captivating about his bunko covers in particular is that they feature papier-mâché​ yokai statues commissioned to the artist Ryo Arai specifically for the purpose of being used for Kyougoku’s books. They are beyond gorgeous and I cannot gush about them enough. Please look at the Mouryou bunko covers (old and new), the inner colored page, and the statue used for them:

Thanks not only to the unquestionable artistry of the statues themselves, but also the excellent photography that goes into the cover design, they leave a lasting impression and bewitch, invite potential readers. I cannot stress enough how much I love them. There’s a whole artbook full of Ryo Arai’s yokai designs and honestly I’d really love to get my hands on it one day. 

The bunko releases also come with bookmarks themed around the respective book’s yokai. I’ve already started using Mouryou as an example, so please take a look at the bookmark for it:

How vibrant and expressive! The quote above the illustration (which is drawn by Kyougoku himself, by the fucking way!!!) is taken directly from one of the folkloric sources referenced in the beginning of the book. 

There’s one final thing Kyougoku’s books are particularly famous for in the visual/physical department. That would be… their size.

Two of the books actually couldn't even fit on my shelf so you can't see em here!

Widely called 読む隕石 (readable meteorites)、読む鈍器 (readable blunt weapons) or サイコロ本 (dice books), they are all remarkably chungile. Please note that the only thinner books outside of the very first one, Ubume, are all short story anthologies.

As we can see, Kyougoku not only has a very magnetic public presence, but also puts a lot of effort into making the reading experience of his work palatable and enjoyable, both through the design of his books and the writing style he employs. What about their contents, then?

(EDIT: One last thing. I forgot to mention one of my favorite pieces of Kyougoku "trivia" - the fact he was called "the Japanese Neil Gaiman" (a fairly erroneous description!) in the blurb for the English release of Summer of the Ubume. Please behold: )

0.2. The 百鬼夜行 series

The Hyakki Yakou series (also known as the Kyougokudou series) is somewhat hard to describe. It’s a series which is in a lot of ways focused on yokai, but also denies their existence as physical entities. It’s, fundamentally speaking, a mystery series, but at the same time it pays no heed to mystery conventions and does its own thing all the time. It’s obviously got a lot of folkloric influence and leans heavily into horror at times but calling it folk horror would be a great mistake. To a degree, it feels like rather than being fit into a certain mold, it's just doing whatever it needs to communicate the author’s highly specific ideas. And man, is it an Ideas kind of series. In a lot of ways, these books are dedicated exactly to THE MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS - the reader is faced with pages upon pages upon pages of oftentimes pedantic discussions of esoteric and not-so-esoteric topics, as well as lengthy recollections of the past and explanations for the events of the story. A sizable chunk of the fabula of these books is contained within the recollections and explanations rather than the ongoing plot. For example Ubume, in particular, feels like it’s presenting its audience with the slow unraveling of events from the past, the aftermath of which is slowly coming to its end in the present day. This approach to storytelling means that the books are fairly dense with information and present the reader with lots of different food for thought, which does take a while to digest… but I could hardly call them boring. The books rarely ever tackle subject matter that’s irrelevant to the larger plot Kyougoku wants to tell and it is very satisfying seeing all the information you’ve been fed slowly come together in an abstract, multi-layered bigger picture. Some of the information may not be directly relevant to the case at hand, but it's almost always thematically relevant to the plot. To achieve this, the books very often present obtuse and bizarre points of view which are somehow argued really convincingly. Why, yes, I love being gaslit into believing that people are physically made out of memories (gross oversimplification) and people with bad eyesight can see those memories (gross oversimplification)!!!

Before discussing the characters and separate books, let’s first address the supernatural presence in the room. Yes, yokai are the centerpiece of the Hyakki Yakou series and yes, they do not “exist” within these books as tangible entities. Then, how, in God’s name, do they even figure in the books? Are these stories just a more adult version of Scooby-Doo where money-hungry old men are pretending to be scary ghosts in order to scam people out of their wealth? As far as I’ve read, the answer is anything but.

The yokai in Hyakki Yakou aren’t by any means “characters” which appear in the plot directly, but they’re not exactly Jungian archetypes which inhabit the characters either. It is hard to explain their presence in simple terms, but if I must attempt that (as the writer of this post, I am kind of obliged to), I’d say they are akin to thematic frameworks for the stories they inhabit. Throughout the duration of a Hyakki Yakou book, the reader encounters more and more information on the symbolism of the specific yokai, on the national/regional mental processes that went into the creation of said yokai, on the specifics AND general cultural background behind it. At the same time, these details are also related to the more down-to-earth, ongoing plot, and express various facets of it in a more abstract manner. It’s a highly convoluted approach, but it works very well despite its complexity. Kyougoku himself claims that his main objective with these books is to communicate the vibe of a yokai and that all of them end up featuring convoluted mystery plots because that’s the most convenient plot framework which can be used to present his ideas in the manner he desires. Because of this, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that all of the contents of these books serve to “express” a certain yokai in some abstract manner or another. I did say they’re not exactly comparable to Jungian archetypes, but there’s cases where there IS an overlap with that subject. Sometimes the yokai is equated with a living person, sometimes it is equated with an inanimate object or an event, sometimes it has “possessed” someone and needs to be “exorcised.” But before we get to that, let's talk a bit about the term "mystery" in the context of the Hyakki Yakou series.

The Hyakki Yakou series isn’t a conventional murder mystery series. In fact, calling it a murder mystery series in itself is probably incorrect. The mysteries in this series often involve murders, yes, but as a single aspect of a much larger mystery. In both novels I’ve read thus far many intricately entangled plot threads weave together a very expansive and complex mystery framework. While most “traditional” mystery novels feel like puzzle gameboards, Kyougoku’s mysteries are more akin to labyrinthine puzzle worlds. As I already said, telling a traditional mystery story is not Kyougoku’s objective and it really shows - on one side, the vague plot outline can often be guessed from a fairly early point, but on the other side the meat of the mystery is almost always shocking and unexpected. The most central reveals are completely unpredictable and frankly often tend to be balls to the wall insane. That might sound disappointing to orthodox mystery fans looking for something grounded but I believe this actually is to the books’ benefit - it’s not easy to find quality fiction like the Hyakki Yakou series which is somehow pedantic to a fault and absolutely insane at the same time. I feel like a lot of mystery fiction tends to have a scary tinge to it for atmosphere’s sake during its first half, when the mystery is being built up, and has that tinge disappear as the mystery’s actually solved. In Hyakki Yakou’s case the exact opposite scenario can be observed - a plot that’s creepy to begin with keeps ramping up until it gets absurdly fucked up in its imagery and implications. It’s great. I’m still thinking about both books’ climaxes.

And man. Here we go. The 憑き物落とし (tsukimonootoshi or “exorcism”) aspect of the series. This should come as no surprise given the previous lengthy paragraphs, but the Hyakki Yakou series is famous for its specific approach to mystery solutions - an approach which differs in some ways from traditional detective fiction’s methodology. How could it not differ? After all, the mysteries present in this series are fairly different from the standard honkaku model. The mysteries in Hyakki Yakou involve a lot of prejudice, personal misconceptions, and mistakes in one’s perception of reality. They involve obsessive thoughts and blind beliefs which are causing harm, sometimes regardless of whether they’re fundamentally wrong or not. The mysteries in Hyakki Yakou almost always are concerned with such abstract concepts which tend to possess people, akin to supernatural presences of sorts. Kara no Shoujo fans will undoubtedly recognize the similarity to that series’ concept of “paranoia” (hilarious mistranslation on Innocent Grey’s part, by the way). 

The “main” “”detective”” of the Hyakki Yakou series is Chuzenji Akihiko, also known by his professional alias - Kyougokudou (hey, mr. Kyougoku. Real funny naming choice.). He’s an antiquarian bookseller and is suffering from a terminal case of bookwormism - the entire reason he’s running an antiquarian bookstore is because he needs more space to store his library. He’s extremely well-read and is one of the most pedantic characters I’ve ever encountered in fiction. He’s the infodump machine/armchair detective/case resolver of the series. However, when solving cases, he doesn’t act as a bookseller. The cool thing about Kyougokudou is that he’s got two jobs - he's a bookseller and… a Shinto priest/onmyouji. That’s right - whenever the climax of a Hyakki Yakou novel approaches, Kyougokudou dons the raven-black attire of an onmyouji and enters the beast’s den to perform an exorcism. However, Kyougokudou is a skeptic. He doesn’t easily believe in the supernatural as it is understood by the masses and, if anything, repeatedly insists that “there is nothing strange in this world - in it, only what must exist will exist, and only what must happen will happen.” He believes that while there may be things that modern science cannot explain, they aren’t fundamentally supernatural but are simply yet to be explained. However, he doesn’t lean just into that line of thought - he’s very aware of the deceptive nature of human consciousness and how even simple strings of events can seem as deeply mysterious and inexplicable when presented in the wrong order. He isn’t a blind skeptic - he is a thinking skeptic who adapts dynamically to the bizarre cases he deals with.

How does Kyougokudou go about solving cases? He sits in his house and observes. He barely involves himself with the case until the climax, choosing to instead sit at home and compile and process all the information he needs, like a typical “armchair detective.” And then he dramatically enters the scene. And talks. And talks. And talks talks talks talks talks talks talks talks. He explains every minute aspect of the case in almost excruciating detail and dives into the reasons the case occurred to begin with. So far, this is somewhat standard. However, the main difference from honkaku detective fiction is primarily the degree to which he challenges the beliefs of those involved in the case. He doesn’t simply lay down the facts behind the mystery and point the finger at the culprit. He methodically and oftentimes trickily challenges their mistaken, harmful beliefs and roots out the issue. Through talk, reason, sometimes even smartassery and sophistry, Kyougokudou melts down the case and puts a complete end to it. For this reason, he is even described as an “assassin of stories” at a certain point in Mouryou no Hako. 

To grossly oversimplify an extremely complex and layered method, that is what his “exorcism” consists of - not simply handing out the answers to a mystery, but also resolving the inner inconsistencies of those “possessed” by the case. Mind you, dear reader, the ones “possessed” by a case aren’t necessarily just the direct culprits - sometimes even the victims and the other detective-like figures can be “possessed.” Dude’s got a lot on his hands!!

To a degree, the Hyakki Yakou novels feel almost didactic in some twisted sense but… I’d argue they’re not exactly that. It is obvious that Kyougoku has a lot to say and also simply wants to fill the reader’s heads with his research and opinions on complex topics, but even the views of his obvious mouthpiece Kyougokudou aren’t quite treated as an absolute truth, which I do like a lot, given how bizarre some of his arguments and beliefs can be. Even if I’m reading too much into how the messaging of the stories is handled, I appreciate that the books are capable of challenging my own way of thinking, either forcing me to adjust to what the author is attempting to communicate, or making me think about why exactly I hold a certain belief and why I think it’s more correct than what’s stated as the “correct” answer.

God. I kept delaying writing the part about the “exorcism”-like mystery-solving for weeks and after typing all of this I understand why - that’s a whole damn PAGE of text about just a single aspect of these books! What the fuck!

0.3. The characters

Anyway. Now I’d like to quickly introduce the main cast of the series as of the second book (I’ve been informed it gets larger. And larger. And larger.).

Of course, first we have Chuuzenji Akihiko/Kyougokudou himself. I already talked a lot about his methods as a detective so I'll just list some other basic stuff about his character. He's constantly gloomy and extremely snarky, often straight up insulting the intelligence of one of his friends, Sekiguchi, and always ready to debate and beef on the topic of extremely obscure folkloric/cultural subjects. He personally likes having his visage compared to the vengeful spirit of Akutagawa Ryuunosuke. Go figure.

Despite his antisocial exterior, however, Kyougokudou is fundamentally a philanthropist who has a lot of empathy even for the most heinous of criminals. He often gets involved in the series’ mysteries not out of curiosity, but out of necessity, and he does so unwillingly, precisely because he feels too much for those involved in these tragedies. I feel like up to the second book the reader is only presented with the uppermost layer of his character, which makes me deeply curious about how he's going to develop from now on.

Come on exorcise me emo boy

Up next there’s Sekiguchi Tatsumi, a pathetic little man who primarily writes fiction, but sometimes also pens kasutori1Simply put – tabloid/pulp press. Vulgar and crude in the subject matter they treat and the manner in which they present it. magazine articles under various pseudonyms - a guy’s gotta eat and all. He may not be a minor but he sure as hell is neurodivergent and (if I’m understanding correctly, don’t take my word as absolute fact here) insinuated to be on the autism spectrum. He is shy, has a blushing problem, has a history of heavy depressive episodes and tends to go non-verbal. Unrelated to all of these factors, he’s also probably the most dense of all of the main characters in the series. He’s one of Kyougokudou’s oldest friends and often acts like a “companion piece” of sorts to him - while Kyougokudou represents the author communicating his often obtuse and complex messages, Sekiguchi acts as the reader who’s constantly confused and asks for elaboration time and time again. That can admittedly get a bit tiring from a character perspective, because Sekiguchi oftentimes tends to come off as outright stupid, but from a pseudo-dialogical viewpoint I think it lets Kyougoku as an author slowly unravel his ideas in a very convincing way. For that reason I’m honestly a bit thankful every time Sekiguchi goes “But Kyougokudou, that makes no sense!! You’re just making shit up to troll me now!!!” Honestly? They’re kind of like yukkuri kaisetsu Reimu and Marisa. 

Sekiguchi has all of the ingredients needed to become a fan-favorite scrunkly little meowmeow but personally I’m not his biggest fan, for REASONS unrelated to any of the above mentioned. He’s grown on me a bit, but he’s still my least favorite cast member.

Honestly I think he needs to trip and fall a few more times. That'd be funny.

Next up we have one of my absolute favorite characters in the series - Enokizu Reijirou. He is an old friend of Kyougokudou and Sekiguchi’s. While Kyougokudou is the de facto main detective, he does not call himself a detective. On the other hand we have Enokizu, a manic pixie dream rich boy who is Very Normal (/s) and who has given himself the gaudy title of the Rosenkreuz Detective. Why? Because Kyougokudou told him about the Rosicrucian Order once and Enokizu thought the name sounded cool. Enokizu runs the Rozenkreuz Detective agency together with his assistant Yasukazu Torakichi. His detective work is fairly non-standard - Enokizu doesn’t ever investigate anything. He just doesn’t. That’s his creed. Instead of dealing with mundane footwork and annoying sleuthing, Enokizu simply sees things. For some reason, he is capable of seeing people’s memories as images floating in their vicinity. He cannot do this selectively and his ability is thoroughly limited, but his intuition is good enough to help him resolve most cases simply by seeing some stuff and asking a few questions about it. Surely an individual constantly subjected to seeing people’s abstract memories is going to be well-balanced and sane, right? Of course not. Enokizu is a manic, thoroughly deranged individual with possibly the most potent quirky white boy energy I’ve ever witnessed emanating from a Japanese man. He’s supposedly terminally straight but he’s got an insane yaoi aura to him. He effectively plugs his ears and goes “lalalalala” during ¾ of the plot explanations and somehow still gets the gist of what’s going on. His idea of a detective-like outfit in Ubume is the outfit of a pilot, while in Mouryou he dresses up like a bartender. He has disposed of at least one motorcycle on the grounds of a shrine because “it’s a piece of absolute garbage.” He has prevented at least one tragic suicide by pretending to be a cult leader. He keeps calling Sekiguchi an ape without a single worry in the world. He’s a piece of shit and I love him. Funny insane little man. I want to put you in a jar and shake it so hard you get 40 consecutive concussions. Anyway.

Look at this dashing fellow.

Then we have the box-shaped, fridge-sized bara husban– I mean, the serious police officer Kiba Shuutarou. He’s a bit more normal than Sekiguchi and Enokizu, being very to-the-point and somewhat crude at times. However, below his rugged exterior, he’s a sensitive and intelligent man who simply acts the way he looks because that’s the societal role he fits most easily into. To a degree, he intentionally plays into the archetype of the rugged police officer. Despite his intelligence, however, he’s also a man of impulse - his motto is “instead of thinking, move!” and that finds a lot of expression in his actions in Mouryou no Hako specifically. Despite being a policeman, he has a lot of issues with the police’s approach and doesn’t shy away from criticizing the institution or going against orders if he believes his actions are what is just (even if they aren’t.). For Kiba the word “justice” is of utmost importance and a big part of his character arc consists of him being disillusioned with both the army (thank fuck) and police (thank fuck) as “systems of justice.” He’s also struggling a lot on the romantic front. How moe.

It’s MY blogpost and it is I who gets to decide what images to use OKAY?

Then we have Kyougokudou’s little sister, Chuuzenji Atsuko. She’s a responsible journalist working for a magazine called Kitan Monthly. Snappy, curious and generally a delight to be around, her personality is almost antithetical to her brother’s. However, she displays the same sort of intelligence as him, often providing helpful insight into the cases at hand. She’s a spunky and fun presence which adds a lot of color to the books. 

Honestly, a queen.

Finally, we have a friendly beefy journalist himbo (salivating emoji salivating emoji sorry sorry sorry I’m going back to being normal) called Toriguchi Morihiko. Debuting in the second novel, Mouryou no Hako, he's somehow like a goofy helpless animal and extremely intelligent at the same time. The guy is capable of sleeping like a log for days straight, gets lost constantly, keeps saying proverbs wrongly and has a signature mating call (erm. I mean. Phrase which he uses whenever he's surprised or panicked) - “uhee.” And yet, he's probably the person who understands the rants of Kyougokudou with the most ease out of the entire main cast. He works for the kasutori magazine Jitsuroku Hanzai (lit. “True Crime” lmao) and somehow manages to be a respectable journalist which is… honestly admirable. All in all, he's another of my faves. Which is to say that I need him carnal--

Look at him, isn't he the cutest thing.

There’s honestly a good amount of other recurring characters but listing them all would be an absolute ordeal so I’m gonna leave it at just those few.

On the topic of the books themselves…

I honestly don’t think I could tackle the books’ contents expansively in a blogpost like this so the “general Hyakki Yakou introduction post” approach has saved my hide here. I will, however, attempt to summarize bits of the books and make some Observations and Comments on them.

1. 姑獲鳥の夏 (Summer of the Ubume)

Summer of the Ubume is the first novel in the Hyakki Yakou series, as well as the debut work of Kyougoku himself. The story of its publication is fairly famous - Kyougoku wrote it over the course of several months, at his workplace - at the time of writing, the economic bubble in Japan had already burst and the design jobs he could undertake were scarce. For that reason, it seems he chose to kill the time by writing an obtuse, bizarre yokai mystery novel filled to the brim with interesting trivia and philosophical ramblings. You go, king. When he was done writing it out he felt bad about all of the paper he had wasted, so he contacted a publishing house without ever expecting to actually get published… and the editor who read his work immediately suspected he was an already-famous author using a pseudonym. The book was dense, incredibly interestingly written, and stood out from the currently popular honkaku detective fiction. It seemed very promising. It got published and fairly quickly rose to a status of a cult classic.

I first found out about Kyougoku's work back in 2020, when I was only getting started with reading books in Japanese. At the time, I was getting used to reading works like Ayatsuji Yukito’s 十角館の殺人 (The Decagon House Murders) and Sawamura Ichi’s ぼぎわんが、来る (The Bogiwan is Coming). In other words, I was familiarizing myself with the lighter, easier-to-read side of contemporary Japanese prose. What I was told about Kyougoku Natsuhiko’s work made me very intimidated by it… but also extremely curious. I had heard that his work is complex, pedantic, oftentimes obtuse, and written in fairly difficult Japanese that uses a lot of older terminology and kanji. However, the promise of a PSYCHOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHICAL FOLKLORIC MYSTERY had already gripped me firmly by the pussy and just wouldn't let go. I’ll admit - I tried taking a peek at Ubume way back then and it immediately managed to scare me off. Admittedly, that is at least partly because the book starts on four quotes about the titular Ubume taken from several folkloric sources, some of which date back to… the sixteenth century. Yeah, nevermind, okay, that IS fairly intimidating even now. Either way, I decided to take some time to improve my Japanese and then challenge Kyougoku's work again. And then, 3 years later, I finally mustered the courage to pick up Ubume once again and see what all the fuss is about. So how did that go? Long story short, I am now completely brainwormed by THE KYOUGOKUVERSE2Kyougokuverse may in fact be a more apt term than you’d initially think. Something I haven’t had the opportunity to discuss much is the fact that all of Kyougoku’s work seems to take place in the same universe, regardless of how removed the different series/singular novels are from each other. I cannot comment on it much as I’ve only read two of his novels set in the same series, which is why I’m relegating such an important piece of information to a footnote. Maybe I’ll be able to actually discuss this at length one day!.

Ubume is easily the shortest main novel in the Hyakki Yakou series, clocking in at around 630 pages in its mass paperback release. Does that mean it felt short to me, a first-time reader? Absolutely not lmao lol. It took me a good 3 months to get through it - partially due to real life circumstances, partially due to how dense it felt a lot of the time. One of the things this novel is (in)famous for is its introduction segment - a deranged 90 page long dialogue (which feels heavily monological at times) on a variety of interconnected philosophical and scientific topics. You read that right - one of the most well-loved mystery novels in modern Japan starts with a ninety-page-long philosophical rant. But how does it even get there?

Well, Sekiguchi visits Kyougokudou, seemingly with a new scoop for a kasutori magazine article. The scoop in question concerns a pregnant woman from a family of gynecologists who is claimed to have been heavy with child, unable to give birth, for 20 months straight. Not only that, but her husband seems to have vanished from a locked room about a year ago. Sekiguchi is weirded out by all of this and wants to write a nasty article about how scary and fucked up the situation is. Instead of entertaining him and discussing the case directly, Kyougokudou immediately starts challenging his general worldview through an extremely roundabout approach, talking about one’s subjective perception of reality, one’s subjective perception of history, metaphysical ideas, folkloric topics (including the titular Ubume, a yokai tied together to the concept of maternity) and even quantum physics (yes, Schroedinger’s cat DOES come up, don’t even ask), proving to Sekiguchi halfway through that hastily writing an insensitive article on the matter risks ruining not only the life of the pregnant mother, but also her child’s future. The subjects and ideas brought up during this initial stretch aren’t all related directly to the case as Sekiguchi presents it, but almost none of it feels arbitrary or unneeded in regards to the novel’s plot, which is commendable. What Kyougoku as an author does here is possibly a bit obtuse, but fairly smart - he creates a solid initial framework for the ideas which are often implemented in the stories he wants to tell through these books. From that point onward he just expands upon it, adding new nodes and connections to his intricate thematic web, both in Ubume and in the stories to follow.

Personally, I actually loved this part. I knew of its existence so I didn’t get the whiplash a lot of readers may have gotten from it, for which I’m glad. It somewhat reminded me of a long infodump from a sci-fi VN or some shit, really.

After that, the plot slowly starts to ramp up - more is revealed about the gynecological clinic where the bizarre happenings are taking place, a member of the family in question approaches Enokizu with a request to find the missing husband while Kiba starts looking into an old case which involves the disappearance of several infants from the gynecological clinic. Several plotlines intertwine and weave together a tragic tale where the solution to the mystery is so obvious it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to claim that it has been in front of the characters’ eyes all this time. In a sense, this is typical for Kyougoku’s novels - a mystery resolved is nothing but a tragedy where one’s perception has convinced them there is something more going on. This does not mean, however, that Ubume is lacking in shocking elements. Rather, it only ramps up in that regard and culminates in a gory and disturbing finale which keeps pushing the boundaries of what feels acceptable for such a novel. In a way, the plot of this book felt very… eroge-esque, for a lack of a better word. It simply was insane and taboo in ways that seemed reminiscent of the kind of plot beats story-centric eroge often employs. I don’t think I’m capable of explaining it better than that. 

In a sense, it’s no wonder that I’d find Kyougoku’s work vaguely reminiscent of newer stuff - he is a hugely influential writer and a lot of VNs/VN writers seem to have been inspired by him. From what I know, Nasu, for one, takes a lot of inspiration from Kyougoku’s prose (and even draws from one of the Hyakki Yakou novels in parts of Fate/Stay Night of all things, apparently??? what?????). Kara no Shoujo’s approach to mystery storytelling is strongly inspired by Kyougoku’s body of work as well. My assumption is that a lot of the VN/eroge works I’ve consumed over the years may have been at least vaguely influenced by Kyougoku’s writing, which makes diving into his books all the more satisfying to me.

The atmosphere and general feel of the book are remarkable. There’s so many scenes which are strongly elevated by Kyougoku’s dense, atmospheric prose - when these books want to have your attention, they WILL find a way to acquire it. That being said, it is gloomy and dark, but the main characters often brighten it up and bring in a much-needed dose of quirkiness and fun to it. The balance between depressing content and quirky antics feels really well-measured. 

Something that I deeply enjoyed about Ubume is how important the ethnological aspect of the story is. The symbolism, mythological origins, regional variations of the ubume are all discussed thoroughly and nearly all of that information ties into the plot’s thematic framework in some way. It is hugely informative, well-researched, and just a blast to read. Not only that, but there’s some other very interesting ethnological observations that are very important to the plot, such as the xenophobic, discriminatory roots of the belief in tsukimono-suji - bloodlines which are said to be capable of controlling supernatural entities in order to bring about misery to the villages they reside in. I was gobbling up tens of pages on some folkloric topic and feeling like the happiest, most well-fed boy on Earth.

So what is an ubume? Well… there isn’t a single answer, honestly, and that’s part of the point. Several different iterations of an ubume are discussed throughout the book and basically all of them end up being relevant in some way. In Toriyama Sekien’s 画図百鬼夜行 (Illustrated Parade of a Hundred Demons, a real yokai picture book from the Edo period), the ubume is depicted as the apparition of a woman carrying a child and looking deeply… troubled. This picture depicts her similarly to a lot of the Japanese interpretations of this yokai, where it is examined as a phenomenon which occurs when a pregnant woman dies during childbirth.

The Chinese entity 姑獲鳥 (important: read as こかくちょう/kokakuchou), imported into Japan and eventually conflated into the yokai 産女 (うぶめ/ubume), is a woman capable of turning into a bird who steals newborns or makes them sick using her blood. 

There is a regional variation of the ubume, which, instead of being a grown woman, is actually an infant which died during childbirth.

There’s several more iterations and details I didn’t feel like digging into, but as you can see, the way a yokai is presented in these books is multi-faceted and completely disregards the notion that you could summarize folklore using a clean, easily digestible explanation.

The novel discusses at length the way these concepts have grown simultaneously and how they have affected each other, as well as the way they tie into the symbolism of the case at hand. Pretty much everything to do with the yokai ends up being relevant to the case in one way or another, even if sometimes the connection is very abstract, which is honestly kinda crazy.

All of this being said, I did have a good amount of qualms with Ubume. Its pacing felt kind of uneven, some of its contents were a bit dated and I generally just didn’t vibe greatly with parts of it. While I did enjoy it a good amount, it was far from a favorite and yet… it felt bewitching and alluring all the same, despite its faults. I was very tired by the time I finished it and thought I’d like to take a rest from this author for a bit… but I just couldn’t shake off the desire to read more of his works. Which is what brings us here, really.

Finally, I'll urge you to check out the cunty awesome book trailer that was released for Kyougoku's 30th anniversary as a writer:

You can hear Kyougoku himself say the NOTHING STRANGE IN THIS WORLD catchphrase here isn’t that fucking sick

2. 魍魎の匣 (The Mouryou Box)

Sorry for the asset reuse, budget constraints over here at SKULLFUCKERS make it hard for us to pump out 100% original content all the time.

Mouryou no Hako, the second book in the Hyakki Yakou series, is almost twice as large as the first, clocking in at 1060 pages. It’s the first real brickbook and man. Is it good. Like with Ubume I can’t say I didn’t have qualms about it, but it’s kind of impossible to have a book this large and complex and not have a few duds among the bangers. 

I honestly found Ubume to have a fairly static plot which was interesting to read about, but was lacking in terms of ongoing intrigue. Mouryou fixes that by introducing so much ongoing intrigue in its first 200 pages that it’s enough to make the reader’s head spin. There’s a certain sense of dynamism and mystery which had me in a chokehold and never really let me go. There’s a puzzling, uncomfortable in-world short story about a living girl in a box. There’s toxic codependent reincarnation-based yuri. There’s a mysterious box-shaped laboratory in the woods. There’s a series of dismemberment murders and, of course, the victims’ limbs are found stuffed into wooden boxes. There’s a psychic with a cult following who seals the worries of his believers in a sacred box. Or rather, to be precise, he seals their mouryou. Because of course he’s sealing mouryou. In a box. Get it. Because it’s the Mouryou Bo– a comically large anvil falls on me and flattens me but specifically in a non-erotic way.

Mouryou has a huge fixation on boxes and introduces absurd amounts of imagery that deals with boxes. It’s honestly impressive how it manages to find 6+ different ways to bring boxes into the story without the bit ever becoming stale. Kyougoku has previously commented on how each book chooses a yokai as the “theme” and a second thing as the “system” through which that theme is expressed and this writing philosophy is especially apparent here. I am especially impressed by the fact Schroedinger’s cat isn’t brought up even once. 

Mouryou’s plot is somehow both fairly simple and super complex. One can fairly easily deduce a good chunk of what’s going on, but the way things come together is often unexpected and fun. A lot of this book (and Hyakki Yakou in general) is about finding the connections and causal links, digging into the background of the larger case at hand, as well as the way these details tie into the themes Kyougoku as an author is trying to communicate, rather than laser-focusing the narrative exclusively on the whodunnit, howdunnit, whydunnit. Something else I really liked about this book’s storytelling is how it kind of rides off the emotional damage experienced by the cast throughout Ubume’s course. It doesn’t just brush aside the toll that story took on its participants, but rather builds aspects of some characters and the way they act upon it. From all I know, continuity is the name of the game in this series, so I’m excited to see how Kyougoku will develop that from now on.

It’s hard to talk about Mouryou without mentioning the absolutely splendid atmosphere it maintains throughout its entire 1060 page length. It’s melancholic but also deeply, unsettlingly bizarre. Kyougoku’s prose is absolutely delicious and when it needs to, it describes a vibe so dense and present that you can not only taste it, but sink your teeth into it and take a bite. The thematic groundwork is stellar as well - so much of the mystery is built upon Themes and Kyougokudou’s weird-ass takes and it brings a really refreshing nuance to the already captivating story.

As far as the themes and ideas go… there’s Many and they’re Complex and sometimes Kinda Confusing but always a delight to read about. Summarizing them, especially in a spoiler-free manner, is most likely impossible, so I’ll just quickly list a few that stood out to me and call it a day. Mouryou no Hako delves into a very wide arrange of topics, including:

The titular mouryou is a bit more puzzling than the ubume in the previous book. Unlike the ubume, it's not just a conflation of Chinese and Japanese folklore, it's essentially an import from Chinese folklore and as such it lacks the cultural ground the ubume has - something which troubles even Kyougokudou. Mouryou can refer to a whole onslaught of radically distinct concepts. In some cases, those are small shadows forming around the edges of bigger shadows (written as 罔両). It can also be a yokai with a connection to water (罔象, read as もうしょう/moushou) which are sometimes conflated with kappa and even have a connection to Mizuhame-no-Gami (罔象女神), or simply, Mizuha - a water goddess appearing in the Kojiki. When written as 方良 (ほうりょう/houryou), they most often refer to yokai related to stones and trees. The picture by Toriyama Sekien here depicts yet another form of the mouryou (魍魎) - the (un)dead (?) three year old child of a Chinese emperor which consumes the innards of corpses.

As you can see, the mouryou as a folkloric entity is all over the place. The way its various interpretations connect or differ from each other is very complicated and confusing and even that, in its own weird way, reflects the structure and themes of Mouryou no Hako. There's a lot more to the symbolism of the mouryou which I'm intentionally omitting here, but even this should be enough to tell you how confusing this little critter can be.

Honestly, though, I found that the ubume had a more central role in its own book than the mouryou here. That did sadden me a bit, but at the same time I did find its thematic use appropriate - again, delving into the details would be a spoiler, but the way the mouryou’s symbolism is applied here is fairly complex and fairly interesting.

As a whole, Mouryou no Hako is just an all-around captivating book. It’s easily my favorite read for this year despite some pretty glaring flaws and some dated writing (just like with Ubume, really). I can’t really squeeze much more about it out but I do recommend it to anyone who likes weirdo fiction with a lot of Musings about various kinds of Things. It’s a fun (!) little (?) book (:winky_face_emoji:), do check it out if you can.

Have a trailer:

This one kinda rules too! Voice is provided by the actor who played Kyougokudou in a stage play adaptation of the novel back in 2019.

2.1 Mouryou no Hako adaptations

Several works from the Hyakki Yakou series have been adapted as manga, movies, drama CDs and on one occasion, an anime series. I have yet to check out most of them, outside of taking a quick look at the manga for Ubume and Mouryou and seeing the Mouryou anime and movie adaptations. For that reason, here I’ll focus on these two adaptations of Mouryou for screens small and big.

Firstly, the anime. I'll discuss it less than the movie because it's more easily accessible even to English speakers and I just don't have that much to say on it as things currently stand.

The anime honestly let me down a bit as a reader of the novel - it’s undoubtedly pretty and does a good job visually adapting the book’s prolonged rants about all sorts of topics, but I couldn’t help but feel like it adapts the narrative without really bothering to delve into the thematic framework which is what makes the plot stand out in the first place. For that reason I couldn’t help but find it kind of rushed and confusing. There’s some weird adaptational choices, too - the mystery around the murderer’s identity, for example, is entirely gone, as the anime chooses to introduce them as a Mysterious Menacing Person Doing Bad Things instead of introducing them as a normal character like the book does. The order in which the events are presented is changed as well, making the plot much harder to grasp than in the novel. I definitely wouldn’t say it’s a bad anime altogether - it does a lot of little things that are very obviously fanservice aimed at the series’ fans, for example. For a series that’s so deeply rooted in Gloomy Guys Talking it’s animated well, and aesthetically it does a lot of cool stuff. The music is really nice - the opening and ending to the series are some of my most looped songs this year. It’s a pretty nice companion piece if you’ve read the novel and want to see a different interpretation of the same content, but it’s hard to recommend it as a standalone watch.

Honestly, encountering this opening as I was finishing reading Ubume is part of what made me IMMEDIATELY start Mouryou.I love it so much.

Oh yeah, did I mention the character designs are done by CLAMP? That’s a bit crazy. Guess MADHOUSE were aware that this series has yaoi vibes. Ironically, from all I’ve heard, Kyougoku himself really didn’t like the designs, specifically condemning the design of Sekiguchi for being too bishiecoded.

Now, about the movie…

It is slop. It is a bad adaptation. It’s honestly quite fucking bad. I kind of loved it. 

I was initially going to skip this movie and only talk just a bit about the anime here, but my editor was kind enough to suggest I give it a shot anyway PRECISELY because it’s famously bad and honestly I’m really glad I did. I was glued to my screen within the first 10 minutes and was already going insane with the directorial choices. 

The Mouryou no Hako movie (2007) is a 2 hour 11 minute long epic which I bought a DVD of at my local Book-Off in Tsukuba for like 300 yen. I watched it on my PS5. I used my DualSense controller to navigate the DVD menus and turn the subtitles on. What else. Uh. Hold on. I was supposed to talk about the movie as a movie and not my watching experience. 

Let’s try that again. The Mouryou no Hako movie (2007) is a 2 hour 11 minute long epic which almost entirely misses the point of the novel. It takes its plot and reconstructs it into something that’s similar to the original work but deviates greatly from the authorial intent in almost all of the focal narrative points. The end result is a fairly bizarre B-horror title which honestly works great as a standalone watch and has lots of pure entertainment value, whether intentionally or not, but is severely lacking as an adaptation. Characters are butchered, themes are forgotten about, the narrative’s nuance shifts greatly. What was originally a story which fundamentally appreciates humans even at their lowest, with their imperfections, comments on the unclear nature of the motives a criminal may have, and makes even its most heinous “villains” at least somewhat sympathizable, becomes an over-the-top story with clearly defined bad guys who are driven forward by easily definable motives. Mouryou no Hako, as a novel, is silent and human. Mouryou no Hako, as a movie, is loud and absurd. And somehow greatly entertaining in a way that’s entirely different from the original.

The music for this movie is actually kind of really good, also! I wish I could get my hands on the OST, I loved it.

This might sound insane but I think I ended up enjoying the movie more than the anime, despite the anime being a far more faithful (albeit surface-level) adaptation. Somehow it has just the right combination of funny-bad writing, entertaining character moments and fun direction. It honestly has no great regard for its tone but I can’t say I expected much to begin with, so I could only clap in delight when the most deranged shit happened. Hell, the climax of the movie is capped off with a shot of Kyougokudou hanging off a chain and spinning like a dog tied up over a body of water in a traditional Bulgarian ritual as Sekiguchi screams at him and tries to untangle him. It’s very bad but it’s also great.

Why was this movie so fun.

2.2 Mouryou no Hako adaptations (derogatory)

(walks MILFily onto the stage)

Hey kids!! I’ve got a frickin riddle for you all!!!

A box without hinges, key or lid,
Yet golden treasure inside is hid.

What is it? What is it??

Egg in the girl? Painting of the girl in the egg? MAMIYA SHINZOU’S MASTERPIECE, ‘GIRL IN SHELL?’ THE HIT EROGE KARA NO SHOUJO? NO! IT’S PLAGIARISM!! YAYYYYYY!!

While I was writing this post, I honestly had started forgetting that Skullfuckers is primarily a blog about eroge. I know that one of my primary theses is that Hyakki Yakou are eroge in book form and all, but still, it’d be a bit weird to not bring up real proper eroge for at least a moment.

Back in 2022 I read 3 out of the 5 games in the Paranoia series - Cartagra, Kara no Shoujo and Kara no Shoujo: The Second Episode (Well, most of it. That doesn’t matter right now, in fact, I finished it in 2023, but it doesn’t matter right now fuck!!). I generally enjoyed all of them, although I felt a sharp lack of something which I couldn’t really describe. Fundamentally, the Paranoia series has a lot going for it. It has a memorable, quirky cast of characters, takes place in post-war Japan and builds a really nice atmosphere off of that setting, features bizarre murders which are a part of a larger picture, involves the primary detective dispelling the weird convictions and fixations of various characters as a method of investigation/case solving and I did really enjoy all of that but… Wait. No. Wait. Wasn’t I talking about something extremely similar until now?

Wait. I need a clickbaity YouTube thumbnail for this bit to work.

There we go! That’s perfect!!

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the Paranoia series takes a lot of inspiration structurally and thematically from the Hyakki Yakou series. It’s obvious and it’s not something to criticize it for - Hyakki Yakou is hugely influential in modern Japanese detective fiction (not only detective fiction, even!) and for good reason. The crime-solving aspect of Paranoia deals with dispelling the unhealthy fixations of the people involved in the cases at hand - something which the games call “paranoia” (a very funny mistranslation of 偏執病). It has a lot of similarities to Hyakki Yakou’s exorcisms, barring the mythological/folkloric aspects of the entire thing, and that is fairly neat, honestly.

However, after beginning to read Mouryou no Hako, something immediately stood out to me. There’s a massive, MASSIVE overlap in plot threads between Kara no Shoujo 1 and Mouryou no Hako. I had previously heard they’re similar but I REALLY didn’t expect the similarities to be so many and so… shameless. It’s hard to discuss the similarities without spoiling both works so I’ll just try to be as vague about it as possible - Kara no Shoujo 1’s overarching narrative largely feels like it’s just lifting a ton of imagery and plotlines from Mouryou no Hako while conveniently replacing the box symbolism with egg symbolism, in some cases without even changing that much otherwise. Characters like the two Toukos are lifted from Mouryou most shamelessly as well. If anyone remembers the weird scene with a man holding an egg with a girl in it on the train and showing it to a random boy - Mouryou no Hako literally starts on an excerpt from an in-universe short story which is basically the same thing but with a girl in a box. It’s honestly really funny how blatant it gets.

The fact that KnS1 seemingly also “takes inspiration” from one of the later Hyakki Yakou books, 絡新婦の理 (Reason of the Jorogumo), is fairly funny too. When I initially finished reading KnS1 I thought it was just a pretty decent gory murder mystery game, but after reading Mouryou no Hako my opinion of it has sadly toppled pretty drastically. 

After watching the Mouryou anime I think I know what exactly I found lacking about KnS1, too - the plot and the murders are all pretty fun and interesting, but they ultimately feel kind of shallow, lacking the thematic groundwork to really elevate them into something memorable. From what I can gather, KnS2 and especially 3 take a lot less from the Hyakki Yakou series, but the situation with KnS1 is honestly pretty dire. All of this is made especially ironic by the fact that the Kara no Shoujo trilogy is laser-focused on topics such as forgery and replication. A good amount of the murders in KnS1 are driven by the desire to replicate a piece of art using human bodies, several characters in KnS2 act as mirror images/replicas of other characters, and KnS3 literally introduces a professional art forger as a new main character, while also throwing in more artsy-fartsy murders into the mix, like in KnS1. And yet the series itself is built upon homages, some of which border on plagiarism (to put it lightly). Lots to think about!

That being said, I did enjoy KnS2 a good amount and am looking forward to finally reading KnS3 at some point in the near (?) future.

In conclusion (for now)

Man I really liked those two books and totally didn’t form a parasocial relationship with a slayful old man!!! 

The Japanese detective fiction which was released around the shin-honkaku boom is quickly becoming one of my favorite genres and I’m very happy to have the opportunity to read this stuff and yell about it on the internet. I hope it was at least half as interesting for you to read this post, dear reader, as it was for me to write it. Despite its obscene length, I can’t help but feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of the series with my writings so I’ll ask you to excuse me if it feels incomplete, overlong or both.

It may or may not show, but this is my first ever blog post and MAN was it a fucking woozy getting it out. I was chipping away at it for more than a month, but I can’t say I didn’t have a lot of fun doing so. Kyougoku’s writing has been taking up a huge amount of my brainspace so it was nice getting the opportunity to just gush about it within such a large blog post.

I do plan to expand on the contents of this post at some point in the future - I’d like to read the third mainline book in the series, 狂骨の夢 (The Dream of Kyoukotsu), as well as to delve into the gaiden short stories collected in the two Hyakki Yakou anthologies (not to be confused with the Hyakki Yakou series!). Kyoukotsu is literally all about skeletons and skulls and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if they get fucked so it’d honestly feel kind of sacrilegious not to talk about it on Skull Fuckers Dot Com. I’m sure I’ll have more to ramble about when I’ve read some more Kyougoku, so... please look forward to the next expansion pack for our first ever live service post,

HYAKKI YAKOU XIV!

So what was the box pregnant with? After many hours of great reflection, I came to the realization… that the box was a present box carrying the greatest gift of all. That's right, the box was pregnant with the true meaning of Christmas: our lord and saviour Jesus Christ.

Terny-P, out.

Special thanks