I know I'm late to the party, but The Strange House is pretty cool, innit?

Gotta love YouTube horror creators, huh?

On October 30, 2020, someone calling themselves Uketsu uploaded a 22-minute video to YouTube called Real Estate Mystery: The Strange House. Uketsu appeared in the video covered head to toe in a black bodysuit and wearing a crudely-made white mask, and they put their voice through a voice-changer to further obfuscate their gender. They described how a friend was asking for advice about a house he was thinking of buying. But there was something strange about its floor plans.

There's something strange about this house, don't you think?

Uketsu called an architect friend, Kurihara-san, and together they examined the floor plans. What was that mysterious empty space between the living room and kitchen on the first floor, constructed out of two superfluous walls that only served to make the kitchen smaller? Why did the kid's room smack-dab in the middle of the second floor have its own toilet but no windows, and why was its only entrance airgapped from the master bedroom, not to mention a ridiculously long walk from the stairs? The more they pored over the floor plans, the stranger the house seemed to get, until Kurihara-san posited a horrifying explanation for all the house's mysteries.

The uncanniness of the scrambled voices contrasting with the unflaggingly polite tone in which the characters talked to each other, not to mention the fridge horror of mundane wrongness somewhere you'd never expect to find it, created a cult hit, and at time of writing, this video has 24 million views.

But of course, my dumb ass didn't become aware of this until I saw the flyer for its live-action movie adaptation last year. I thought its presentation, inviting you to look for oddities in a floor plan, was a genius hook, and though I never did go see the movie, I still have that flyer. Around the same time, a coworker of mine, who was a fan of Uketsu, talked about it at one of our weekly meetings and encouraged the rest of us to check the IP out.

So naturally, I promptly forgot about it and went on with my life. But it never fully left my head. I was seeing its novelization and manga adaptation in every bookstore I went to, and when I saw its spiritual successor, The Strange Pictures, in stores just the other day, I finally caved and bought them to see what all the fuss was about.

And boy am I glad I did! I'm having a jolly good time with the series. The book expands on the contents of the video, fleshing the story out with two more houses to unpack and expose the darkness of the family that built them. I wouldn't say it's all that scary, per se; I'd sooner classify this story as a suspense thriller. It lives and dies by the strength of its conceit, sleuthing based on a house's floor plans, and I'd say it does a damn good job. Sure, it can feel a little convenient sometimes, but Uketsu hit upon a unique premise here, and they managed to keep it fresh and exciting the whole way through.

Plus, like in any good horror story, the storyteller is a key character. The book is narrated in the first person, and the protagonist never reveals their name or gender. The in-character afterword by Kurihara-san refers to the author as Uketsu, and he has a line within the story suggesting that Uketsu is not a woman, but they take a rather androgynous appearance in the manga that, to me, leans slightly feminine but could go either way, especially with those super baggy clothes they seem to like. At any rate, Uketsu strikes a perfect balance between chronicler and participant in the story, mostly remaining a passive listener to the subjects they interview, but still directing the story's flow by their choices of how to investigate what. We learn very little about who this character is as a person beyond a couple of their professional connections; everything about Uketsu is subdued, but that's not to say their character is underdeveloped. In a way, their character is like the design of this website: by shedding any and all extraneous elements, the things that are there stand out even more. Perhaps a good comparison might be Goblin Slayer. He's not a complicated character by any means; his characterization is simplistic, direct, and one-note. But that minimalism narrows your focus down to what's really important, and it also creates a nice contrast with the more elaborate setting he fits into.

Uketsu's self-insert tends to be drawn fairly cutely, but they have some more masculine-looking moments, too.

The book ends with a nice, good "It's all over now... or is it?" to give you one last zing, rounding out an incredibly solid story, not unlike that one LN series about the JK what abducted a totally-not-self-insert. It's not an especially long read; the book's only a couple hundred pages long, and a lot of page real estate is taken up by repeated diagrams of the floor plans as characters discuss different elements of them. But it tells a complete story, with no superfluous elements. All in all, it's a great little piece of mass entertainment... and it has a sequel. How do you top that sensational story?

Well, Uketsu didn't even try, and I mean that in a good way. They knew they wouldn't be able to recreate what made The Strange House what it was, so they decided to take a new approach to the premise: The Strange House 2 presents eleven separate vignettes about the effects our homes can have on us. One story is about how construction companies' attempts to cut costs can result in home design that causes its occupants stress that could boil over into murder. Another is about a hallway to nowhere whose implications caused friction between a girl and her mother. Multiple of the stories are about how cults can use the architecture of their headquarters as symbolism to heighten their mysticism and bring their adherents further under their thrall. On the whole, it's more subdued and meditative than the first installment. I love seeing what Uketsu comes up with for these stories just based on floor plans. All this said, though, all eleven of these seemingly disparate stories do tie together into one single narrative, laid out by Kurihara-san in a lengthy chapter at the end of the book, but they're all satisfying as standalone pieces in their own right.

And as an added bonus, it even develops Uketsu's character a little bit! They do a bit of sleuthing of their own in this one, even managing to correct a shortcoming in Kurihara-san's deductions. They also take a more proactive role in investigating the stories, sometimes even venturing out to explore the houses in question. All in all, this was an excellent sequel to an already excellent work.

The manga adaptation of these two books is at five volumes so far here in Japan, and that covers the entire first book, minus Kurihara-san's little afterword. But at the end of volume five, they made sure to advertise that it wasn't over: volume six, coming this autumn, will begin the adaptation of the second book, and I have to say I'm excited for it. I don't know if the books are available in English or not, but I know the first two volumes of the manga are.

Wait, what was that about pictures?

As of yet, Uketsu hasn't tried to make The Strange House 3. However, as I briefly mentioned above, they recently released a spiritual successor, The Strange Pictures, about sleuthing based on people's drawings. For example, the prologue features a psychologist giving a college lecture in which she analyzes a picture drawn by a little girl she once counseled and who was arrested for her mother's murder. The girl's difficulty drawing a mouth on her stick figure represented how she struggled to force a smile at home despite the abuse she suffered, and the lack of a door on the house she drew represented her guardedness, her desire not to let anybody in to her heart. The pointy branches on the tree were symbols of aggression and hostility, but the bird living in a hollow in its trunk showed a desire to protect and care for the weak.

I know I called The Strange House "mass entertainment," but this is some real Criminal Minds shit right here: pseudoscientific babbling meant to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Fortunately, this character's conclusions are called into question later, and when another character tries to apply the same logic in a different case, she turns out to be entirely wrong. No, most of the pictures in this book are used for actual sleuthing, like how the order in which a child drew his picture can be divined based on how crayons interact with each other, or how a grid of creases in a paper can shed light on when the picture on it was drawn. Funnily enough, the first chapter's pictures come from a certain character's personal website-slash-blog, which the chapter's protagonist notes harkens back to the internet of the early 2000's. Brought a smile to my face.

Mmm, you can practically smell the early 2000's. There's nothing at that URL, by the way.

Unlike The Strange House, The Strange Pictures has a third-person narrator, and each chapter has a different protagonist, though they do come together into a singular narrative. Kurihara-san makes a few appearances, but Uketsu's self-insert is absent save for some offhand references at the end. Surprisingly, this book is written like an actual, well, novel. Nearly all the dialogue in The Strange House was presented in interview format, but this one uses good ol' quotation marks. As a result, the text is denser than The Strange House's. Still, you can tell that Uketsu has evolved as a writer.

Nothing's going to surpass The Strange House, but I can still confidently say that Uketsu has done it again. The Strange Pictures is yet another good-ass book from this quirky YouTuber. Despite being much more recent than the already-young The Strange House, this one has a manga adaptation too, currently at two volumes. Based on the pacing, it'll probably cap out at five or six.

Shoutouts to my homeboy Danielewski, too

And yeah, I can't mention houses in horror without talking about the OG: Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, the only book I brought over to Japan with me from my now-toppled homeland. Young Californian tattoo shop apprentice Johnny Truant happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time one day: the cleaning-out of the apartment of a dead old man named Zampano. Zampano had been penning his magnum opus, and with it, he left a note praying that whoever found it would finish his work, yet also expressed his hope that the masses would pan it. It was a critical analysis of a documentary called The Navidson Record, filmed by Pulitzer-winning photojournalist Will Navidson about the new house his family was moving into. Just one problem: it's bigger on the inside.

Two problems, actually: Johnny can't find any evidence of Navidson or this documentary's existence.

Fascinated by Zampano's persistence in writing excruciatingly impenetrable exegesis of a documentary he made the fuck up, Johnny feels compelled to compile the old man's work, even as the effort erodes his life and sanity. Multiple layers of reality fold together until the boundaries between Navidson, Zampano, and Johnny's lives become unclear. This is reflected even in the presentation of the text: just as the house's labyrinthine halls confuse and disorient the exploration team, so too is the reader led astray in a labyrinth of footnotes. Text will bounce all over the page, and at times, a footnote from Johnny will drag on for several pages as he describes some girl he had sex with before devolving into drug-addled word salad that definitely doesn't have anything to do with his traumatic past.

The fridge horror in House of Leaves is simply sublime. Right away, you know something's just a little bit off because every instance of the word "house" is colored blue, even in other languages, and all struck text is colored red... but so is every instance of the word "Minotaur." A secret message appears hundreds of pages before you know what it means, and in a place it shouldn't possibly be able to exist. A different secret message appears not too far from where you'd expect it, but its writer couldn't have been able to produce its contents. On the whole, the text is characterized by sections that don't belong where they are, creating the uncanny notion that anything could happen, nothing is safe, it could be anywhere, right beside me, maybe right beside you, but don't look, that's how it gets you, you have to keep your eyes focused right in front of you, try not to imagine the speed with which it'll rip out your throat, the sensation of its claws plunging into your stomach, the hot stench of its breath assailing your nostrils as it growls right into your ear.

Crucially, the story never shows the monster, the implications of which are lampshaded within the text itself. It lends itself to all manner of interpretation, and no matter what direction you decide to take your thoughts, you'll be rewarded for it. You'll discover something new about the story with every reread, and that killer finale will take your breath away every time. Most of all? Even though you'll find it in your local bookstore's horror section, it's really a love story at heart.

That's a big reason why I like Umineko too, honestly. Both of these works present the most tender and earnest of love stories, and they do it in that special way that only horror and mystery can accomplish. Speaking of Umineko, I've actually managed to get my hands on most of the light novels. Only one I'm missing is Requiem 1, which I can only find for 30k yen. And this might come as a shock, but I have to think very carefully about how I spend 30k yen.

Wait, that's it?

Yeah, I know. Bit of a short post this time, especially given how long it's been since my last one. I can't keep these lengthy analyses up forever, you know? A few years back, I wrote some really long VN reviews for Reddit, and I still have the documents where I drafted those. Maybe I'll post some of those every now and again.

But then, why should I restrict myself to media analysis for my blog posts? I can do whatever the hell I want here. That guy in The Strange Pictures used his as a diary, gushing about his wife and upcoming child nearly every day. Maybe I can write about my daily life too, though I must warn you that it's not terribly exciting. Maybe not all of my posts here need to have "a point." We'll see.