May 25, 2020
Surely I can't be the only one who got clickbaited into reading this thinking it's some sort of obscure crossover with Haruhi, right?
Let me start with saying that I'm not a fan of Miku and not really interested in vocaloids in general. I've heard like 3 or 5 song (and the one this novel is based on wasn't among them) and that's it, so I was going into this practically blind. If you're a Miku fan, maybe you will enjoy this more than I did. And maybe not.
While reading The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku, it felt like it wasn't written to be a literary work,
...
it felt like it was written as a product. A stock of paper with Miku's face slapped on it to ensure the sales. The plot is bland and boring. First half of the book is just completely uninteresting slice of life-y of boy who got to the guide of real life to an android because of some convenient testing of his personality that was done unknown to him. I imagine his lack of character si done on purpose to ease the self-inserting into a Miku dating fantasy. It really says a lot when the least one-dimensional character in the story is Hatsune Miku.
Then, about half way through the novel the author probably realized that the story sucks ass and is boring as hell, so he tweaked the genres and changed the story without any sort of foreshadowing. From this point on, the novel no longer reads like a boring slice of life story. It now reads as a boring action movie for young kids. The plot is stupid and riddled with coincidences (it's so handy that the dj friend also happens to be a genius hacker thanks to which the gang of good guys can enter the building of the bad guys). The villain is laughable and the finale leaves no impression. The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku is truly a soulless product from start to the end.
Also, some small pet peeves:
1) Considering how the protagonist and Miku are introduced to everyone as cousins as part of the cover, why is everyone so quick to assume they are dating or want to be in a relationship? Did the author forget the cover he wrote himself for those characters and which the other characters were supposed to believe?
2) There's a weird amount of "bruh she's only 16 that would be illegal" comments through the mouths of the characters in this novel. It feels so much out of the place I wonder if wasn't added just as a part of localization of the English release. With how unnatural it feels in the overall flow of the novel I also have to wonder if it was done because of desperate attempt to claim a moral high ground, or it the age was mentioned so much because of its fetishization.
For an afterword, after I've finished the novel, I went to listen to this song to get the "full experience". It's actually awful. I couldn't make it past half of it as it was giving me a headache. My rating of this novel may be 4/10, but I'm giving 1/10 to the song.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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