thoughts on Spiral by Koji Suzuki
Where Ring could be feel a bit meandering sometimes but was held together by a strong central concept and a well executed ending, Spiral has a much more engaging intrigue that's a mix of medical and paranormal thriller that falls apart from muddled concepts and a nonsense ending.
thoughts on Spiral by Koji Suzuki
The idea that I like: The evolution of the idea of the ring curse as a memetic virus that can adapt to different media. Some forth wall-leaning ideas about the Ring existing in-universe and therefore the implication that the book you already read was a carrier of it.
thoughts on Spiral by Koji Suzuki
But it fails to go all the way in that. Ring in-universe is not credited to Koji Suzuki and the movie adaptation mentioned in the ending doesn't line up with the movie that was coming out when this book was written, it's being made far too soon.
thoughts on Spiral by Koji Suzuki
The virus is less a force of nature or, well, virus, and more a monster with a will and its own agenda. That's less interesting to me and it doesn't help that it's agenda is complete nonsense.
thoughts on Spiral by Koji Suzuki
Ryuji haunts the entire novel. Suzuki clearly thought he had come up with the most engaging character ever with this stupid edgelord. He apparently masterminded everything, even though it makes absolutely no sense and contracts his inner thoughts that we see in the first book.
thoughts on Spiral by Koji Suzuki
The ending of Ring is undermined from all angles and this Spiral tries to try to repeat basically the same ending again (only much stupider) with the main character choosing a chance to be with his family over the fate of humanity.
thoughts on Spiral by Koji Suzuki
I will say that, as much as I don't like the resurrection plotline, the fact that Sadako is not actually the mastermind pulling the strings here and has no idea how she came back to life, then just goes to the cinema, is really funny. It makes a very sharp contrast to the usual image of her from adaptations.
thoughts on Spiral by Koji Suzuki
@cailleach this thread makes me wonder how the Spiral manga compares to the book…
thoughts on Spiral by Koji Suzuki
@meena the reason I'm going through these is I really want to compared all the different adaptations as well. If you know a good place to download manga I'd like to know because it's not something I'd normally be looking for.
thoughts on Spiral by Koji Suzuki
@cailleach i usually use Tachiyomi to read manga on my phone
it looks like MangaPark has it
thoughts on Spiral by Koji Suzuki
@meena thanks!
thoughts on Spiral by Koji Suzuki
@meena Even more conveniently it turns out that someone uploaded a couple of the them to the Internet Archive.
thoughts on Spiral by Koji Suzuki
@cailleach i just really like reading on my phone
and Tachiyomi's ux is really good!
if i ever get an eBook reader, i want one you can install Tachiyomi on!
thoughts on Spiral by Koji Suzuki
It also undermines that implied existential threat to the reader by making the virus much more arbitrary in its behaviour. It spares people it thinks will be useful. It kills people it has no need for even though they follow what were assumed to be the original instructions. The week deadline doesn't really apply any more if it wants you.