Yoru Sumino is a Japanese author who's works have been adapted into Manga, films, dramas, and anime. He is most know for his novel: I Want To Eat Your Pancreas which was made into a film after the novel sold many copies. This novel is his third to be translated into English language.
A student becomes a monster at night when he can't sleep and watches his classmate be greatly bullied during the day. He though that him and his bullied classmate live in two different worlds inside the same space, until he runs into her in his monster form at school during the night.....
This novel is a complete idea with incomplete structuring. As you read about the main character's experience from night to day, you find yourself not going anywhere in the flow of the story. At Night, I Become A Monster stays this way and only really progresses in character development as Adachi learns what kind of person he wants to be as the story continues to shift. The idea of what one might see has a monster is very figurative because Adachi is the real unknown beast in this story who is surrounded by other beings who seem much more frightening than him: his classmates. I found myself more on edge when reading about the classroom situation than I did about Adachi protecting Yano at night. There's also a lot of Japanese cultural customs that are present in how the classmates socialize with each other. Even Sumino's writing style is very indirect in what he's trying to convey. It's not always clear what Yano is trying to say or even the way some of the other classmates use different ways to express themselves. I for one, wouldn't try to have a full conversation with someone who answers every question I have with "mmh". So what I ended up focusing on was wether or not Yano deserved to be bullied. She's a strange girl who deals with situations on her own but feels pretty nonhuman until toward the end of the novel. A sadness invokes through the pages when you really get a chance to peak inside Yano's head. Then you see the whole picture of what is happening in her head as she gets bullied by her whole class. Pages start to turn quickly for me when Adachi is forced to choose who he wants to be. It seemed that Yano saw who Adachi was from the start opposite to the fact that it took the whole book for Adachi to see everything that Yano always was.
Monster isn't a scary novel at all. The plot touches more on psychological issues mixed together with fantasy. Adachi's monster form is honestly a big symbolism for mental health issues. The bullying scenes are annoying since Adachi is a bystander to all the goes on. He gets in on the action a little bit and watches as another classmate becomes a second target before Yano puts a stops to it on the low.
At Night, I Become a Monster is not a fun read. It's just very tedious until the final chapter. Nothing much happens before then to justify a means to an end. You just basically learn that people wear masks to hide who they are. Who was the real monster here?
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