Different worlds: A review of Slum Online

We all know the saying about judging a book by its cover, but in reality the cover is almost always the first aspect of a book that makes an impression on you. This is why publishers usually take pains to create a cover that will entice a bookshelf browser to pick up the book, maybe even leaf through it. A large part of this strategy depends on having a visually striking image on the cover: something that shows the strangeness of the setting, the scale of the adventure, or simply a picture that is visually arresting because of the contrast, say, of pale hands cupping a blood-red apple against a black backdrop. The cover of Slum Online by Hiroshi Sakurazaka (drawn by toi8) is none of those things. I picked up the book because I tend to enjoy Haikasoru's offerings (the publisher specializes in bringing over excellent Japanese speculative fiction with well-crafted translations) and because I'm a fan of the watercolor-manga style art of toi8. But the scene itself could not be more pedestrian: a girl playing one of the ubiquitous UFO Catcher machines in an arcade, a bored-looking boy standing next to her. The blurb on the back of the book places emphasis on an online battle in a massively multiplayer fighting game--anyone who has watched even so much as a clip of the online battle scenes from Summer Wars knows the level of energy and imagination that can be portrayed even in a virtual fight--but you see no hint of that on the cover.

And yet, now that I've finished the book, I can't help but look at the cover, and marvel at how well it captures the essence of what the story is all about. While I won't set out to spoil anything major, as I'll be quoting some lines from the book, Spoiler Warning from here on out.

Ostensibly, as the blurb on the back states, the book is about Etsuro Sakagami, an indifferent college student whose only passion seems to involve become the best fighter in Versus Town, as he juggles time spent with his new friend, Fumiko, with an online search for Ganker Jack, a mysterious character who has been targeting--and defeating--the top ranked players of Versus Town. While these are things that happen in the story, and provide a sort of narrative structure for the events, I wouldn't say that is what the story is "about." Slum Online isn't about solving the mystery of Jack's identity, or about the Blue Cat that Fumiko is searching for, or even about the relationship between Fumiko and Etsuro. Instead, Slum Online is about the different worlds people inhabit, and how, despite that, we can still connect to something other than ourselves.

The worlds that are crystallized in the book are the world of Etsuro the gamer, and, by contrast, the world of Fumiko the student. As a gamer myself (although not hardcore, or a fan of online games) I know that it can be very hard to explain the appeal of playing a game to someone who didn't grow up in a house with a game console (or within shouting distance from the local arcade/internet café). Gaming isn't even a phenomenon that you can make another understand by letting him/her watch you play a game--with a few rare exceptions, gaming simply isn't a spectator sport. It's the element of control that immerses a player in a video game, and that sets it apart from other forms of art and entertainment, the ability to interface with the world onscreen via knowledge of the game mechanics and physical inputs using the controller/keyboard.

The fact that the excitement and fun of playing a game isn't very transitive is one reason that Slum Online may not appeal to anyone who isn't able to place himself/herself in the position of someone playing a game, particularly a fighting game. If Etsuro had been playing an online role-playing game, and been the type of person who engages in in-character role-playing (actually pretending to be your character, so you don't go around saying "LOL!" in a medieval setting) then the book might have allowed the reader to plunge into the mind of the game character, to feel what it was like to engage in fast-paced, hand-to-hand combat. But Etsuro doesn't role-play, and the prose constantly places the action once removed, always reminding the reader that the scene is not an actual battle, but a player manipulating controls: "The instant the cooldown from his last attack ended, Tetsuo dashed forward. Pressing the A button to cancel out of the run, I followed up with a low foot sweep." The fighting game terminology will further alienate or confuse a non-gamer (even someone working on the book itself), but even for those of us who can understand what Etsuro is doing and know what it feel like to "K.O.!" a virtual opponent, the prose simply isn't able to translate that joy (or, well, in Etsuro's case, more a sense of accomplishment) into something most people will feel, even if the book is told from a first person perspective.

What the first person perspective does do, however, is give us insight into the mind of a particular sort of gamer. One of the strongest appeals of virtual worlds (even as developers strive to give players as much freedom as possible) is that, being created on computers to serve a particular purpose, they are governed by rules that a player can actually learn, which makes virtual worlds much more ordered and comprehensible to a veteran player than the "Real World". After a player has spent a significant amount of time in virtual worlds, it's almost inevitable that the player will begin to apply mechanics/strategies/terminology (Etsuro refers to sound as "FX") learned from gaming in the real world , in the hopes, I suppose, of finding or creating the same order and rationality found online. Etsuro says: "Games were a doorway that let players step into a make-believe world with its own set of rules. Computers ruled over these imaginary lands as enlightened despots applying the rules with total impartiality and unflagging faithfulness. I think that sense of a protected environment was part of what drew us to games in the first place." In contrast, when Etsuro talks about the real world (or "RL" - "Real Life"): "Most of what happened in RL gave fair a wide berth."

The above are examples of Etsuro's peculiar view of the world, and it is this viewpoint that makes the narrative--and the book--work. Fumiko calls him a "poet," and he is that, but most of all Etsuro is a philosopher, in the Socratic sense--he is very self-aware. He's drawn to gaming but isn't obsessed with it, and he's as capable of seeing gaming from the point of view of "Real Life" as he is of looking at "Real Life" from the perspective of a gamer. Maybe it's because he distances himself from both of these worlds that he's able to straddle them effectively, but as a downside, what the prose gains in insight from Etsuro it loses in passion. (And this is intentional, as Sakuraza implies in a statement he made about the novel: "If you have been a gamer all your life, you must have developed a double, your own virtual representation. And the cyber you always feels somewhat detached from the real you.") It's one of those elements that you can see from the cover itself--Etsuro's expression and posture clearly indicate his mind is elsewhere. The true arc of the book isn't about finding Ganker Jack or about choosing between the real world and the virtual--it's about Etsuro finding something to be passionate about in each of his worlds, and the answer to each comes through the same mechanism: by forming a connection with another. This might be part of the reason why the "Bonus Round" epilogue--four chapters told from a point-of-view that is not Etsuro's--actually works, as it emphasizes the fact that Etsuro is not alone, online or offline.

Still, for all its merits, the fact that Etsuro spends most of the book disconnected means that Slum Online simply won't cater to audiences who are looking for page-turners of the action or mystery/suspense variety, or for non-gamers unwilling to do a little bit of research/googling to familiarize themselves with game terminology. But for gamers or readers who want a believable (though not universal) representation of a gamer (at least a gamer of this console generation--I don't think it will age well given the leaps in video game technology) then Slum Online is a worthwhile ride. Copies can be found at Fully Booked and Planet X Comics.

Image source: Haikasoru site. Copyright holder/s maintain appropriate rights.

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