In Volume 1, we are taken to the “other side” along with Internet legend-hunter Sorawo and Toriko, a woman looking for her missing friend. In Volume 2 of Otherside Picnic, by Miyazawa Iori, Sorawo and Toriko gain more understanding, but get no closer to the truth.
The volume begins as the two decide to return to the Otherside to rescue the trapped and desperate group of US marines who wandered in from Okinawa. To do so, they start to put together a map of the entry and exit points. They barter their rescue for guns and weapons, and have started to expand their use of their changed bodies. Sorawo uses her blue eye to see things on the Otherside more accurately and Toriko uses her transparent hand to open portals between their worlds.
While their rescue attempt is successful, Sorawo is forced to make some real-world decisions. College is becoming increasing difficult, with excursions (and recovery) that take a toll on her body and mind. And, she finds she’s getting a reputation for being weird. So when another girl roughly her age asks her for help with a weird thing, she’s not in the mood to oblige. But she ends up helping “Karateka” (her nickname for Akari, who has actual hand-to-hand fighting skills,) anyway and are the three are immediately catapulted into a whole new set of Internet legends together.
Yuri continues to be complicated. Sorawo is attracted to Toriko, and jealous of Satsuki, the missing friend. Akari’s interest in Sorawo makes her more aware of Toriko. Sorawo is being pulled in several directions at once. She wants to help Toriko….but she doesn’t want her to find her friend (who was probably more) Satsuki, who is beginning to look like she may be the center of the horrors they are facing. Sorawo wants to spend time with Toriko, and resents the intrusion of her new kouhai…but also kind of likes her. When Kozakura introduces them to the organization that is researching the Otherside, they learn that they’ve been in more danger than they even realized….and come to a crisis that requires Sorawo to open up to Toriko to save them both. Only, she still hasn’t admitted everything. At some point Toriko and Sorawo are going to have to come clean about Satsuki. I look forward to that.
The more we’re faced with creepy-to-horrific circumstances of the Otherside, the less realistic the legends seem. Although Miyazawa is at some pains to document the boards on which he learned about them, the less convincing “I wish this board was still in existence” sounds. ^_^ Ninja cats are funny-creepy, but, to be frank, the complexity of “kid on the beach beaten up by thugs, who kill the kid, but then they all turn on you” kind of loses me. I’m not inclined to be taken in by Internet horrors – I was so tired of seeing warning articles about the Momo challenge, I tracked it all down to the hoax it was, before the wikipedia article was written. Nonetheless, the slow-burn of constant horror, slowly building into climactic real/fake horror was a terrific bit of writing and worth re-reading.
Ratings:
Story – 9
Character – 9
Service – 3
Yuri – 5
Overall – 9
Of everything weird and inexplicable we’ve been asked to believe, the one thing that sticks with me is the “New York style” toilet in the hotel room. I am 100% convinced that that was probably real (although not common or trendy in New York, but maybe it really was in a resort the author visited.) I once stayed in a B&B in Birmingham, England, that had a completely clear-glass walled shower in the middle of the bedroom. It happens.
I avoided booking a room in a hotel once in Croatia as all the reviews luckily noted that the bathroom’s walls were entirely glass – the toilet was clearly visible from the bed.
Additional bathroom trivia – in Black Sea coastal rural Bulgaria, hotel bathrooms commonly lack shower stalls or tubs. Instead, there will be a hose with a shower head, and a drain in the middle of the floor, as the expectation is that you were sit on the toilet to shower yourself off.
My wife and I had a Parisian hotel where the toilet door was glass. It was not fully clear, but pretty see-through. We just delicately busied ourselves in the opposite direction when the other was busy. It also had a bizarre bath with a curved bottom. Made for very fast showers.
My only “weird” bathroom story isn’t really that weird for a Japan-focused readership, but it’s still a little funny. During my study abroad year we were all deathly afraid of getting caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and having no option but a benjo (old Japanese style toilet in the floor) for… certain bathroom needs. NONE of us felt any confidence in our chances of using the thing cleanly and precisely – it’s not exactly something they teach you or that inspires any kind of gung-ho experimentation. My poor friend whose host family lived in an older house with no Western toilet at all had mapped out the location of every suitable public facility in a mile radius of his house.
Never did do the public bath, I imagine that would have been its own comedy of errors.
The old traditional toilets are always a matter of logistics for me. If they are clean I don’t mind them…but they so rarely are.
I remember reading someone online swearing that Japanese women loved them, but as I visited over a decade, they all just went away. Now I mostly only see them at old landmarks, like temples. Airports and department stores are all western style now. So much for them being loved.