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Kino no Tabi

キノの旅

• by Sigusawa Keiichi
• published by Dengeki Bunko (Japan) and Tokyopop (US)

Currently ten volumes.
I'm actually translating this into English for Tokyopop, so naturally I have an incredibly high opinion of it. At the moment, at least, I have the luxary of refusing books I don't like.
If the Boogiepop novels broke the mold light novels had started in, Kino's Travels takes a sledge hammer to the shards. While I'm not especially well read in English language Young Adult fiction at the moment (I'm at least ten years behind) I think this series is doing something unique, and something very important for that age group.

Clearly, this is going to be a bit more rambling than some other pieces I have up here.
To put it simply, there's a deep seated cynicism to the stories here. I think parents, as a rule, tend to be afraid of cynicism, but I remember, as a teenager, hunting for something darker in the books I read, something that matched my maturing perceptions of the world in a way that children's books no longer did. The standard literary response to that is probable the child with a problem book, which usually is slightly embarrassing for everyone concerned.
But the cynicism in Kino no Tabi is not part of the character's make up -- Kino and her talking motorrad, Hermes, are never anything but detatched observers. The strongest opinions they express tend to be "interesting" or "surprising." The people they meet are unable to perceive the irony, and are much too caught up in their own way of looking at the world. This means the one person who can really savor the book's cynicism is the reader. We sit, waiting for the other shoe to drop, certain that no story in the series will ever be what it seems, and will always turn out to be something much worse, and much more unexpected.

A key sentiment in the first book is that the world is beautiful because it is not beautiful. I've heard people who took this to mean there are pretty flowers even though a child was almost killed by her parents, but nothing about Kino is that shallow or insulting. More and more I find the book's cynicism itself to be beautiful. When that other shoe drops, and things turn out so much worse than you expected, there's a deep seated sense of satisfaction to it. The stark writing style, the total lack of insight into Kino's own thoughts, the matter-of-fact descriptions of horrible events -- all of these drive you into the same detached, observational position Kino and Hermes take.

I'm not sure the book is teaching you the value of this mindset, but it certainly is helping you to define it, to add it to your list of options. I think it makes the series so much more than "girl with guns, but more fucked up."

I tend to be attracted to books with an elusive sort of craziness, something about them that nobody else will successfully be able to imitate, and Kino certainly qualifies as that. The particular brand of weirdness here makes you wonder how exactly the author has sustained this for nine volumes, makes it unsurprising his other works are radically different in tone, but proves that he has found a perfect vehicle for expressing his own unique frame of mind.