Earlier this month, I reviewed Aosaki Yugo's short story "Knockin' On Locked" (2014), introducing the eponymous "Knockin' On Locked Door" series, which specialized intertwining intricate plots with equally puzzling motives – nominated in the first round to compile a "New Locked Room Library." Alexander, of the Detection Collection, heads the project commenting that the results of the first round of nominations is exquisite. I called part of the selected titles "exotic material" for a reason. The fanlation of Aosaki Yugo's short story is one of them, but not the most surprising one that came out of the first round.
Royham Malone is an Australian who has "the name of a gangster in a poor-man's Raymond Chandler novel," but "the soul of a samurai" committed to the bushido code and rattling his katana. In reality, Malone is a shut-in obsessed with Japanese culture whose room is cluttered with empty cans, bottles and takeout containers surrounded by a collection of manga and body pillows – always having to say "I'm not a creep, you know." Like a catchphrase. Although he has years worth of questionable content, "terabytes of cartoon smut," stored in the cloud and spends his mother's money on a Vtuber, Osamu Rako. And for those readers not up on their niche-and subcultures, everything explained in the story. Royham had thrown a lot of money at his beloved Vtuber that he was invited to a private stream with Rako. Malone is thrown in a turmoil and the stream is a disaster, which is not only due to Malone being oblivious to his lack of social skills. The stream ends with Rako screaming, growling ("...I'll carve you") and another voice saying "treating her fans like shit," before a crash hurled the stream offline.
So
what to do? Malone not only adheres to the samurai code, but also has
a motto: "when in doubt, just ask Iri." Irene Bluth is the
one known as Iri, pronounced eerie, who was in the high school Film
Club together with Malone ("just like something out of
Kindaichi"). She has been his tard wrangler
adviser/soundboard ever since.
Iri believes the whole thing is a hoax to drive up views ("...youtubers do this all the time"), but decided to help when all of Rako's accounts get deleted overnight. She makes an astute deduction about the wording of the invitation emailed to Malone suggesting the person behind the Vtub persona of Osamu Rako is also Australian. So they began to dig through news reports and obituaries, which were scanned and dismissed until one name remained, Anna Hitae – a twenty-one year old pharmaceuticals student. Anna Hitae had apparently committed suicide by leaping from her apartment balcony around the same time the stream ended. What's more, when they begin poking around the scene, they discover the doors to both the apartment and somehow the balcony were locked from the inside when Hitae supposedly jumped to her death ("...classic locked room shit").
I assume this brief outline of the first handful of chapters still sounds reasonably conventional to most, despite some of the obvious modern touches to the characters. Something along the lines of Sharyn McCrumb's Bimbos of the Death Sun (1987) meets Ellery Queen, but Bunraku Noir is more than a quirky, Japanese-themed locked room mystery populated with a couple of unusual, dodgy characters. Enigma basically wrote a what-is-it? making it difficult to describe or comment on what happens next without spoiling the fun. That and the fact that the story, plot developments and characters get a lot weirder and metatextual at times. Bunraku Noir rooted itself in the soil of Ellery-in-Wonderland complete with a lengthy "Challenge from the Reader." However, I can make a one, or two, veiled comments and observations.
First of all, the story introduces a third detective who, in a way, takes charge of their private investigation. A character who could not have existed in any previous era of the genre and truly a fitting detective for the modern, online age, but even better was his first meeting with Malone – which handed the book its most memorable scene. The first meeting between the two can only be described as a shonen manga style battle, "more than two detectives on a case is far too much," ending in a truce. But it was close. And you have to read to understand why. Hey, if you're going for absurd comedy, you might as well go all the way. That scene is going to ensures Bunraku Noir stays lodged in my memories for a long time to come. Interesting to note here is that this third detective imitates the voice of the famous private detective Oscar Poole ("his thing was solving real-life impossible crimes") to interview people over the phone, which recalls the voice altering gadget Conan uses to imitate Richard Moore. Case Closed is referenced several times.
Where the plot is concerned, the handling of the locked room situations stands out. Not because of an ingeniously-contrived or original trick, certainly not that, but how it ended up answering that age-old question why someone would go through the trouble of creating a locked room mystery. However, the strength of the story doesn't hinge purely on a good idea, trick or plot-twist (or several of them), but the surprising picture that appears when all the pieces are clicked into place – allowing for some unexpected revelations and turns of events. There's a small, subtle difference between fooling people and surprising them. Enigma did both with Bunraku Noir. On top of being tremendously entertaining, odd and unorthodox at times, but fun and entertaining nonetheless. That's not bad for a fan written web release and urge Enigma to get a physical edition published, because it would be a shame if something this good and fun becomes forgotten and lost in ten, twenty years time due to internet decay.
So cutting another needlessly long, quasi-coherent rambling short, Bunraku Noir is better than a fan written web release has any right to be. A shrewdly plotted, genre-savvy parody that comes strongly recommended. Only one, small caveat. The more purist minded should try going into the story with an open mind. Just like Faust's Gospel of V (2023), Bunraku Noir is going to make some wonder what the hell you're reading, but it's going to change up, freshen and enrich your (neo) GAD reading. Just not in the way we've come to expect from other traditional-minded locked room specialists. Feel free to disagree. You can find, download and read Bunraku Noir here.
I'll leave you with this short excerpt from a disastrous conversation between Malone and one of the suspects, Ellen.
Ellen: "I don't really want to say this but it's a good thing you're real. If I was reading a book and you were the detective I was meant to live vicariously through, I'd shut it, throw it in the trash, and demand my money back."
Malone: "What if the book was free?"
Ellen: "Then I'd find the author and beat their ass."
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