My expectation of a sequel was how the Sadako tape exponentially multiplied, so that didn't happen. In fact there were total of four tapes ever made, all were destroyed early in the book.

It's now primarily scifi with a hint of horror. Essentially what's happening is Sadako inoculated the first video tape with smallpox virus as carrier, then she abandoned the video tape method and started using more efficient "viral replication" methods. Viral here both in terms of literal variola virus, as well as going-viral as cultural concept. Consider the book was published in 1995, the memetic mutation theory was out but not quite as well-known, it's almost like a cultural archeology exercise.

Again, the man protagonists are pretty sleazy. Consider the forced birth wasn't described in a for sexual gratification way, I now feel that as a horror, this series is Tomoe-like. I don't know if the writer's intend is to wound allohetero men who consider women only exist as defenceless sexual/romantic objects, I do find it's telling that for all these men who love to claim they love their wives , their wives are merely generic "pretty, submissive, birth children for me" interchangeable.

Then came along Sadako. Not that creepy girl out of a well, but a highly manipulative though fairly sociable beauty. Her initial grudge was less about her death but more about she wanted to let the world know how she and her mother suffered, then it progressed into something much much more. An extra element was Sadako being intersex, I really feel that this was to unsettle the men with whatever internalised homophobia they had.

Have to say though, part of this book was really a drag. Like how even though I loved Raging Loop, I have to acknowledge that Raging Loop started with 13 hours of people playing Mafia badly? Yeah like that, but here is a dude being bad at puzzles and far too many pages of him sucking at puzzles.

#TheRing #TheSpiral

Um

It just went full scale Three Body Problem.

#TheRing #TheSpiral

Apparently a film based on second book exists. No shit I've never heard of it. It's like 121 minutes of a dude cracking DNAbase based codes by trial and error.

#TheRing #TheSpiral

An important disclaimer is that Koji Suzuki is no Akane Shimizu. So far the internal logic are solid, as a reader you just need some... Strange moments, like extracting DNA from mature red cells.

Having said, it's a series maybe possibly about killer video tapes, so we can suspend some disbelief.

#TheRing #TheSpiral #Ringu

"What do you mean The Ring novel series isn't what the films made it out to be?"

This is literally a page from book 2 roflmao

#TheRing #TheSpiral #Ringu