...

Ghost Train (Short Story)
Ghost Train (Movie)
Ghost Train (Game)

I am somewhat behind on my reading goals for the year, but I have read something in Japanese finally after mostly focusing on Spanish reading. Jirō Akagawa's first short story, "Ghost Train'! Akagawa is one of the most well-known Japanese mystery writers, so it was nice to finally read something of his. The main reason I did and am posting about it is because I wanted to play the Famicom adventure game based on this story. There's also a tv movie that I might post about too.

This is the first story in Akagawa's Ghost series, following police investigator Uno and college student Yuuko Nagai as they solve several cases. Or so it says, I only read the first story. The mystery? 8 people get on a train, but by the time the train reaches the next stop, they're all gone! Uno is given a "vacation" by his boss to the area to unofficially investigate the mystery. He crosses paths with Yuuko and they start to investigate the case together.

An all together breezy read (about ~70 pages) that I had a well enough time with it. It was entertaining trying to figure out the mystery, and I got at least part of it right lol

Spoilers for entire story

I was able to figure out that it had to do with trying to save the town, but I thought it was going to be all fake and that the eight people were still alive. I was very wrong... The whole poisoning thing though isn't something you could really guess before it is revealed. The story ends on a burgeoning potential romantic relationship between Nagai and Uno that is apparently expanded in the next stories. I read a blog post that said that age-gap relationships in Akagawa stories are common, but it also made me wonder does this happen in mystery stories in general? Or rather, in Akagawa-inspired mystery stories? There's at least two mystery games I've seen that do this also, and if I remember correctly one of them literally references his stories?

I'll probably add to this post when I finish the game and maybe the movie. I'm interested to see how they both adapt this. Stay tuned!