In Volume 1 we met mystery hunter Sorawo, who nearly died while visiting an “other” world that had access points in our own and Toriko, the beautiful blonde who saved her life. In Volume 2 Toriko and Sorawo and their broker for artifacts, Kozakura, learn of the research into this other world, known as the Ultrablue. Sorawo meets an admiring kouhai, Seto, and proceeds to do everything she can to distance herself, all the time haunted by the mysterious Satsuki Uruma, who clearly connected with the hearts of Toriko and Seto, but whom Sorawo sees as a threatening and manipulative presence.

Now in Volume 3 of Otherside Picnic, after a terrifying brush with death and madness at the end of Volume 2, Sorawo and Toriko decide to take a more aggressive view of the UB, and face it head on. They customize an agricultural vehicle and head into the world to try and map it. With Sorawo’s one UB eye and Toriko’s transparent hand, they have the ability to see the reality of creatures in the UB. But Sorawo can see something that she’s not telling Toriko, who is becoming more and more dear to her. Sorawo can see that Satsuki Uruma…is watching them.

We get a few random glimpses into both Sorawo’s past, which helps explain a lot about her, and Toriko’s, which doesn’t, but offers tantalizing hints. They encounter a foe whose UB ability is deadly and, for the first time, we run into something that actually frightened me as a phenomenon. As a result I kind of want to talk about the horror author Iori Miyazawa bakes into this series. The author’s notes fascinate me, because they are themselves a kind of second-hand urban legend that the work purports to draw upon. “I read this on a board that’s gone now…” is pretty much the Internet version of  “a friend of a friend told me….” The horrors themselves are random and inexplicable, often being “explained” away by something even more inexplicable, which is charming, but doesn’t make the scare any scarier…unless it coincides with something you, personally, carry. Then it’s fucking terrifying.  ^_^

You may remember we tend to stay in Ikebukuro and we know the corner where the Junkudo is across from the ramen shop well. Yes, that ramen shop with a long line is real. The line starts about 10:30 in the morning and goes all day until the shop closes. It’s mostly Japanese folks, but sometimes has foreigners in it…and it’s on my list of things to do, to get on that line and eat there. ^_^ Well, a few years ago, my wife and I had a scary and strange experience nearby. I won’t get into details, but suffice to say the whole scene outside that Junkudo make me deeply uncomfortable to the point of being genuinely terrifying. Which is when I realized how Miyazawa’s horror works.  All the stories need to do is to evoke a place or a feeling that already scared you, and you’ll fill in the rest. Stories of weird beach houses and toilets in the middle of the hotel room, or strange looking constructions in the middle of the woods might not get you, but if you had stayed in a creepy beach house, or a really weird hotel room or saw some kind of bizzarro structure in the woods, you’d be looking for that light switch as you walked down the hall. ^_^;

Volume 3 ends with an important moment, but one that can’t really be considered a climax until we see if anything will come out of it. Toriko and Sorawo need a heart-to-heart ….but it’s not Satsuki Uruma that they need to talk about.

shirakaba’s art is less-irrelevant than usual, which was nice. Hats off to translator Sean McCann and editor Krys Loh, because translating made up fake horrors and making them make sense is way harder than translating things that exist and making them make sense.  

Ratings:

Story – 9
Character – 9
Service – 3
Yuri – 6

Overall – 9

Volume 3 is available on Kindle, Bookwalker Global  and directly from J-Novel Club.  Volume 4 just came out in Japanese in March, so I imagine it will be a while before we’re getting the next installment! If you can’t wait, you can grab it digitally on Bookwalker Global, as well!

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.