The Spring 2024 Light Novel Guide

The God of Nishi-Yuigahama Station

What's It About? 

On the first day of spring, a train derails, causing numerous deaths. Two months later, rumors spread of a ghost at Nishiyuigahama Station with the power to send others back in time to the day of a terrible accident. The story attracts a woman who lost her fiancé, a man who lost his father, and a boy who lost his unrequited love. A chance to go back, to see those dear to them, seems almost too good to be true. What will they do now that they have it?

The God of Nishi-Yuigahama Station has a story by Takeshi Murase. English translation by Giuseppe di Martino. Published by Yen On. (May 21, 2024)

Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Grieving is intensely personal. We all cope with loss in our own ways, and each death we mourn is unique among the losses suffered. The God of Nishi-Yuigahama Station seeks to explore that concept as it follows the lives of people left behind by a deadly train crash: a fiancée, a wife, a son, and a lonely boy yearning for his crush. Each story is separate in its depiction of grief, but all are linked, interconnected by not only the train crash but also by the being the book is named for: the ghost who haunts the platform of Nishi-Yuigahama Station. If you go there at midnight, the legend says, you will meet her and see the translucent form of the doomed train, and should you board it, you can meet with your loved one for a final time. But some rules must be followed, and if you break them, it is entirely possible to die with the doomed riders on the train.

This could very quickly have been a painfully maudlin book. Grief is a complex subject to express, much less write about universally, and the novel runs the risk of devolving into torture porn. Fortunately, it never does – care is taken to slowly build towards a satisfying conclusion that brings the entire narrative together, and nothing ever suggests that people find full closure by seeing their loved ones on the train; they may be able to move on, but there will always be a hole in their hearts that can never truly heal. Acknowledging that is a crucial factor in the novel's success because there are no neat ribbons to be tied around grief. It's always there; we learn to live with it. Ultimately, that's what this is about: learning to handle grief in a way that allows you to continue to move forward, even when that feels like the hardest and worst thing to do.

While all four interconnected stories are well-written, the first is undeniably the strongest. It lays out the framework for the novel and spends the most time with the characters and their emotions. Higuchi and Nemoto's story is given to us from the beginning: their meeting in high school, the growth of their feelings, their engagement, and finally, Nemoto's death and Higuchi's attempt to reconcile herself to it. The narrative is predictable in places, but the sense of loss is real, and while all four stories made me tear up, the first is the one that made me sob. There's a horrible inevitability that hits like a ton of bricks, but something beautifully sad as well. The third and fourth stories replicate that somewhat, but they lack the impact of the first, longest piece.

The God of Nishi-Yuigahama Station isn't a light novel, although it is published under the Yen On imprint. It's more literary fiction exploring the nature of grief and what the dead want from us. It's hampered a bit by a translation that occasionally attempts a regional dialectic feel and by its own predictability, but those aren't enough to truly detract from the narrative. There are discussions of suicide, so be aware of that, but ultimately, this is a quietly positive book about moving on.