Manic Emo Dream GhoulReading The Ring series for the first time. It's entirely not what I expected it to be. I'm saying this as someone who consid Ringu formulative to my taste in my later years.
I did not expect this.
I need to preface this with that I'm a massive fan of the original Ringu. I was around 11 when I was introduced to it, told it was a documentary. Bastard move by that adult, don't change that it shaped my life in ways I'd never expect. Not just in the sense that I ended up falling into the horror genre well and never crawled back, I also have unusually strong affinity toward short reel films of vaguely creepy stuff, the more student-film the better.
The novel would've been better if I've never seen the film. It felt closer to a thriller than a true horror, where the dread is there the entire time, but the key is unmasking mystery and race against time.
I think it's intentional, that the entire cast are severely unlikeable. The protagonist is a complete coward who has zero regard to anyone except anyone immediately affecting him. The best friend is... Fuck that guy, I don't even care if he lied about raping a woman because he's a disgusting incel shit, as far as I'm concerned he is a rapist. And the person who raped and murdered Sadako is... Look I'm already committed to I hate the cast, but I do wonder if there were external causes that lead to this guy's behaviour. It makes no sense to me on why Sadako spared him otherwise. I also really get the vibe that the writer himself hates his own characters as well, which makes it a lot more bearable.
I don't know if Sadako is necessarily trans based on this novel along, she's most certainly intersex and hasn't been well treated because of it. I found the grudge-genre of horror particularly interesting, as it's just so so East Asian. Like our marginalised women can only imagine a hint of fairness by being the grudged ghosts coming back to haunt their tormenters, and that's the only traditional justice porn we had.
I'm kinda starting to see why there is a sub-sub-sub genre of Ring fan work where it's basically equally miserable people intentionally watch the videotape, summoned Sadako over, just so they can be friends and hang out? Sadako and her mum just wanted to be left along ffs.
I'm pretty cautious about the whole "intersex icon" thing, consider I'd imagine a good proportion of people rightfully don't want to be represented by a ghost-serial-murderer. I'm always on the incline that I prefer a well fleshed out villain rep than a performative bland skin-swap "othered" hero, that hasn't changed.
Then again, with the novel yet the other question becomes how much of Sadako's action is within Sadako's control? It has an unusual fixation with smallpox virus and TB: it might be shaping out to be where the plot really is. If so, it's pretty impressive because afaik at the time the book was written, the carcinogenic effect of herpes wasn't well known yet.
I sure sure sure do wish that some amateur/fan film maker would make the short reel of the video in the book. It is hella creepier than the version in 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
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.
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.
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.