I read this book for the Honkaku Discord server’s book club.
If you’re someone who plays mystery games, then you have doubtless heard of the Danganronpa franchise. The series is set in a world of “Ultimates,” masters of their certain talent: Idol Singer, Chef, Scion, etc. The main series games involve groups of these teenagers being kidnapped and forced to play a murder game by the robotic bear Monokuma. Kill your classmate, and they’ll be a Class Trial. If the others solve it, the “Blackened” will be executed. If they can’t, the culprit goes free and the others are executed. You know, fun school activities.
I mentioned in my review of The “Lapis Lazuli Castle” Murders that author Takekuni Kitayama really rose to prominence thanks to his work on the Danganronpa series. The Danganronpa Kirigiri series is one of his contributions. It’s a prequel to the main series, starring Kyoko Kirigiri from the first game as a middle schooler. Though she’s not our viewpoint character. No, instead, the book opens with narrator and teen detective Yui Samidare waking up handcuffed to a bed. She’s trapped in picturesque (“depairesque”) Sirius Observatory. She and four other detectives were invited to the observatory by an unknown client, before suddenly passing out. Yui quickly frees herself and searches the place, stumbling on an unconscious Kyoko…with a bloody pair of shears next to her. The reason for that blood becomes clear on further searching: The other three detectives lie dead in their beds. Decapitated. And dismembered. And with the body parts swapped around.
Complicating matters is that the observatory is totally cut off from the outside world thanks to heavy snowfall, and there’s no trace of anyone else in the building. Therefore, the killer must either be the narrator, or the girl the series is named after.
But little do our heroines know that the observatory has been chosen as the stage for the Duel Noir. A shady organization known as the “Victims’ Catharsis Committee” is approaching the victims of crime and offering them an opportunity to get “catharsis,”…revenge on those who’ve wronged them. The client gets the weapons, location, and even the tricks for a fee, which can be paid for with sponsorships from the Committee. An itemized list of these items is sent to a detective (in this case, Yui, although she didn’t know the context) as a challenge. If they can’t solve the crime within 168 hours, the Committee will give the client a new identity to live in peace. If not, they expect to be paid back. In full.
Danganronpa Kirigiri is that rare mystery that combines the closed circle and the locked room. As I said, Sirius Observatory is cut off from the outside world, but at the same time, the only possible culprits are our heroines. Kirigiri touched the killer’s hand before being knocked out, but that doesn’t help them much. I believe that most savvy readers will at least suspect the trick the killer used, but Kitayama cleverly throws in enough complications to obscure just how they did it. And the answer is very good. Is it fair play? Mostly. I knew part of the solution going in and picked up on the clues for that part of it, but I would be surprised if most readers really solved it. It requires some lateral thinking. Though I’ll concede that I breezed over a key point because I thought I knew the whole trick. I admit I was skeptical about that part of it when Kirigiri explained it, but after looking up some details, I’m willing to give Kitayama the benefit of the doubt here.
My main complaint is that the book is quite short. It’s just over 130 pages, and a fair bit of those pages are spent on set-up, explaining the backstory, and looking at Yui and Kyoko’s investigation into the Committee once the dust has settled. So the actual mystery falls by the wayside a bit. The one-shot characters are also pretty whatever; if it weren’t for the (very good) illustrations I wouldn’t be able to describe them at all. Yui and Kyoko fare better. Yui is fun but doesn’t exactly get to strut her detective bonefides here. And maybe it was just me, but I had a hard time picturing Kyoko as a middle-schooler, which made her come off as quite bland instead of the stoic and brilliant girl with a trolling streak from the games.
But you know what? I still enjoyed this book. It’s a good mystery and both the main mystery and the “Duel Noir” are excellent hooks. Outside of a couple of mentions of “despair,” “talent,” “Hope’s Peak Academy,” and a few other references, there’s really no connection to the wider Danganronpa franchise, so you can enjoy this even if you’re not familiar with the series. If this sounds intriguing, or if you just like Kitayama, this comes Recommended.
You can find the translation *here.
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