Title: 夢が覚めるまで
Author: 三秋縋
Pretty short book by Sugaru Miaki based on an AMV concept trailer by loundraw (https://myanimelist.net/anime/35932/Yume_ga_Sameru_made). It’s a story where Miaki took the catchaphrase from the animation video paraphrasing a bit: “what is the correct answer sacrifice a girl to save the world? or save the girl and let the world end?” to make a short novel about a girl carrying the key to save humanity from a disease that blocks humans from forgetting sad memories. I guess it counts as some sort of novelization, but watching the trailer it’s almost an entirely new thing with the same concept and two main characters, it does still have some scenes from the animation, so it was cool to watch it after finishing it. It’s especially interesting since Miaki’s approach seems like the complete opposite that the one loundraw thought, but maybe I’m reading too much into a 1 minute video.
The protagonist Souta is kind of lost in life after finishing university and entering the job hunting market, feels like he doesn’t want to give the next step in his life and it’s doing some escapism resulting in falling behind his pals, things going badly with girlfriend and falling into depression. One day he finds a 15 years old seemingly running away from home and decides to give her accommodation for a while, helps him as an excuse to keep delaying stuff and freezing time even more. The story is divided in two chapters one from Souta’s POV, and other one from the girl Yuki’s, with a small prologue before that kind of lets you know the gist of the story.
I love this kind of セカイ系 plots so no doubt I really got into it despite the short length, it’s one of those books that manages to spotlight a good close relationship and makes you want to root for them, having a long pov from both probably also helps. I was worried Yuki’s side was going to be a boring rehash, but it was also fairly interesting with a complete new twist to the story. It delivers to hit the emotional parts and have a pretty satisfying ending, in general the last few pages are godly altogether. Having a Miaki plot without supernatural elements also makes it easier to read, I always complain about that in his books, here the SF aspects are so light and common in this kind of stories that I think it plays in its favor focusing the entirely of the story in the characters.
This book is also kinda infamous for being impossible to get and having to pay 20k yen+ in the second hand market for a copy, but this year they released an ebook version + a reprint that is still ongoing, probably not for long but Amazon still has copies left so I’d give my heartfelt recommendation to grab it before it’s gone, especially if you are a physical enjoyer. It’s not the most innovative piece and it’s kinda expensive at 1.5k yen for only 130 pages but the quality is up there and Miaki’s writing is always nice to read.