Bibliography: Ruten/Rinne
Jan. 21st, 2013 04:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamsincolorRuten ("the vicissitudes of life") and Rinne ("transmigration", written with the kanji for "bell" and "sound") are Mitsuya's first proper "cell phone novels". Ruten was her first major work, and garnered the majority of her initial fandom; Rinne, which is nearly done but still in progress, has fewer fans thanks to being a massive case of mood whiplash from the outset, which has only gotten worse as the story goes on. Nonetheless, thanks to Mitsuya's audience being what it is, there are still some who enjoy the turn the piece has taken.
Plot
Ruten and Rinne are, in short, Mitsuya's take on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype. Saiwai Yasuyo is a young salaryman, fresh out of Toudai and ready to settle into an ordinary life. Tengeji Maya is a high-school senior who bumps into Yasuyo on the street and claims to recognize him as the reincarnation of her lover from a past life. She proceeds to pursue him, insistent that "fate has brought them together". Ruten is about the gradual rekindling of their relationship and the changes in Yasuyo's life as a result, culminating in his leaving his company to travel the world.
Rinne picks up where Ruten left off. Yasuyo's ill-considered trip has begun to have severe consequences, and when he considers parting ways with Maya, she reveals that (as hinted but never explored in Ruten) she can yandere with the best of them. A jilted lover from Maya's past life begins to pursue the pair in a jealous rage. The present unfolds as the past did before it, while Yasuyo frantically tries to escape his appointed role, only to be drawn inexorably back in by his own prior reincarnation manifesting. Rinne contains heavy bell motifs; the sound of bells drives the spirits away for a time, and bells accompany many major moments in the novel.
Characters
Saiwai Yasuyo: A 23-year-old recent graduate from Toudai (he failed the entrance exams on his first attempt), now working for a large, unnamed corporation. At the beginning of Ruten, he is sensible, hardworking, eager, a meticulous planner, and said to have a bright future ahead of him, though he's a little lacking in the sense-of-humor department; overall, he's Joe Average Salaryman-in-Training, though he has oddly old-fashioned sensibilities when it comes to certain topics. He's not quite sure what draws him to Maya, save that it's something "deep inside" him.
Post-Ruten, he's much more open, creative, and spontaneous, even a little overly impulsive and reckless sometimes. Over the course of Rinne, however, as more and more bad things happen to him and his prior incarnation's pull on him strengthens, he retreats more and more back into his shell as though in protest.
Tengeji Maya: A 17-year-old high school senior being possessed by the spirit of a young 1920s-era upper-class lady killed in a lovers' spat gone badly awry. In those moments that Maya herself shows through (more in Rinne than in Ruten), she appears to be a quiet, unassuming girl, terrified by and despairing of her fate. For details about "Maya" as she appears throughout most of Ruten/Rinne, see Ishibashi Haruko, below.
Ishibashi Haruko: The spirit possessing Maya throughout most of Ruten and Rinne. Playful, impulsive, and willful, Haruko offers Yasuyo a whimsy missing from his dreary existence--but clings to him desperately out of a selfish fear of losing him, either to death as she did in her previous lives, or to his simply getting up and leaving her. In Rinne, when he threatens to leave her, she takes drastic measures to get him to stay.
Plot
Ruten and Rinne are, in short, Mitsuya's take on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype. Saiwai Yasuyo is a young salaryman, fresh out of Toudai and ready to settle into an ordinary life. Tengeji Maya is a high-school senior who bumps into Yasuyo on the street and claims to recognize him as the reincarnation of her lover from a past life. She proceeds to pursue him, insistent that "fate has brought them together". Ruten is about the gradual rekindling of their relationship and the changes in Yasuyo's life as a result, culminating in his leaving his company to travel the world.
Rinne picks up where Ruten left off. Yasuyo's ill-considered trip has begun to have severe consequences, and when he considers parting ways with Maya, she reveals that (as hinted but never explored in Ruten) she can yandere with the best of them. A jilted lover from Maya's past life begins to pursue the pair in a jealous rage. The present unfolds as the past did before it, while Yasuyo frantically tries to escape his appointed role, only to be drawn inexorably back in by his own prior reincarnation manifesting. Rinne contains heavy bell motifs; the sound of bells drives the spirits away for a time, and bells accompany many major moments in the novel.
Characters
Saiwai Yasuyo: A 23-year-old recent graduate from Toudai (he failed the entrance exams on his first attempt), now working for a large, unnamed corporation. At the beginning of Ruten, he is sensible, hardworking, eager, a meticulous planner, and said to have a bright future ahead of him, though he's a little lacking in the sense-of-humor department; overall, he's Joe Average Salaryman-in-Training, though he has oddly old-fashioned sensibilities when it comes to certain topics. He's not quite sure what draws him to Maya, save that it's something "deep inside" him.
Post-Ruten, he's much more open, creative, and spontaneous, even a little overly impulsive and reckless sometimes. Over the course of Rinne, however, as more and more bad things happen to him and his prior incarnation's pull on him strengthens, he retreats more and more back into his shell as though in protest.
Tengeji Maya: A 17-year-old high school senior being possessed by the spirit of a young 1920s-era upper-class lady killed in a lovers' spat gone badly awry. In those moments that Maya herself shows through (more in Rinne than in Ruten), she appears to be a quiet, unassuming girl, terrified by and despairing of her fate. For details about "Maya" as she appears throughout most of Ruten/Rinne, see Ishibashi Haruko, below.
Ishibashi Haruko: The spirit possessing Maya throughout most of Ruten and Rinne. Playful, impulsive, and willful, Haruko offers Yasuyo a whimsy missing from his dreary existence--but clings to him desperately out of a selfish fear of losing him, either to death as she did in her previous lives, or to his simply getting up and leaving her. In Rinne, when he threatens to leave her, she takes drastic measures to get him to stay.
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Date: 2013-02-04 11:52 pm (UTC)Hello. I hope you don't mind me commenting on your journal, but I found it through an interest hunt. How do you do! I'm an avid fan of all sorts of literature, particularly romantic stuff and, oh, it's not every day that one sees stories like these, with past lives and all that. An unusual subject! I appreciate the theme of fighting against one's inexorable fate.
If you don't mind me asking, how did you come up with the theme of bells?