Kagerou Daze

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[UPDATED] At the time of this review, I've read the all 8 volumes of Kagerou Daze.

STORY: 9/10
The story of Kagerou Daze is a strange and weird one. It is told in a nonlinear way, switching from the past to present frequently. The main story takes place on August 14th and 15th, though goes past this as the story progresses, and is about strange eye powers that reside in the main characters, the Kagerou Daze, and different timelines.

Kagerou Daze is a route of Jin (Shizen no Teki-P)'s Kagerou Project, and is technically a sequel to the songs and manga according to him. Despite this, ... it still stands on its own for the most part, but I felt it needed a more finite conclusion and expanded more on some of the "Route XX" parts of the songs. In my opinion, it's overall the best version of the Kagerou Project story, but still recommend checking out the songs at least if you want an improved experience.

ART: Good/10
Sidu (formerly known as Shidu) is an incredible artist and one of my personal favorites. Sidu's style is very distinct and noticeably improved greatly each volume, which is a plus because the novels start with good art from volume 1. Kagerou Daze also has some of my favorite character designs, which were done by Sidu and Wannyanpu, but Sidu perfected Wannyanpu's designs which created incredibly appealing designs.

CHARACTER: 8/10
The characters in Kagerou Daze are well done and interesting. Each main member gets a focus throughout the story.

The only particularly weak character of note is the main antagonist, who I felt should've been better fleshed out more, but is still a decent antagonist that doesn't drag the story down.

ENJOYMENT: 10/10
I LOVE the Kagerou Project franchise (songs, novel, manga, anthologies, anime) and this is my favorite light novel. The novel is well written and I can feel how hard Jin had worked on these novels and I truly appreciate it.

OVERALL: 9/10
I highly recommend this light novel, I love it deeply and if you like nonlinear storytelling, this would be to your interest. If you enjoyed the songs or Mekakucity Actors I severely recommend reading this.

Like with the manga, I should start with a warning that this isn't a stand-alone work. Kagerou Project is a multi-mediafranchise and the other media are essential. Even if you don't want to wade through the clusterfuck that are the songs and music videos, at least read the manga before picking up this novel.

Now, let's get to the actual reviewing. So, what should you expect from this novel? Well, simply said it's another route of the loop. You shouldn't expect an actual conclusion to the overall franchise story. This is closer to being a sort of "side story", perhaps an "info dump" or "filler" would ... also be fitting description.

One of the two problems with this novel are the characters. You see, the novel really assumes you're already familiar with them - and more importantly, you already like them. This means that the novel isn't exactly trying to make them into likeable, interesting characters, something to root for or at least something to remember. No, they feel just like cogs in the machine of the story. More of a plot device than actual people. The manga does this a bit better, but if you decide for this novel to be your introduction to the franchise, you're not going to have a good time. To give you an example, it takes 6 volumes for a character trait that feels unique to appear. Admittedly, it's the fact that one of the characters has a foot fetish, and it isn't later expanded upon, it's just a throwaway line, but at this point, even that feels like one of the more memorable moments of the novel. Just to give you an idea about the level of writing we're at.

The second problem is one that unfortunately a lot of light novels have - a writing style. Or more specifically, the lack of it. You see, at some point after reading more and more books, you start to crave unique writing styles. Like with drawn art, something that show the authors personality and maybe even their soul. Style is what could make even more mundane events an entertaining read. But don't expect that here. The writing of this novel has no style, it's literally just a description of what is happening with simple language. This gives the text a very bland feeling that just isn't interesting at all.

The concept of the story itself is interesting, but it's not exactly the first work that raises the idea of being trapped in a time loop, and lot of them are done better than this, including other versions/parts of Kagerou Project. Honestly, if you're already familiar with the basic story of KagePro, you might as well read just 7th and 8th volume and not miss out on much. And 2nd volume, if you'd like more Ene backstory. Should you want to go the extra mile, you could even read the summaries of rest of the volumes on Kagerou Project Wiki. Really, reading the summaries felt less boring then reading the actual volumes.

While I'm giving it a 5/10, even though I personally didn't enjoy this much, I'm sure that most of readers who already are fans of KagePro will like this to at least some extent.