Introduction

In life, everything must be balanced. There is always a good for every bad. On the other hand, there is always a bad for every good. The world is not so kind to allow us to only have wonderful fun dreams at night. There will also be days when we will be haunted by the darkest, scariest nightmares our imaginations can muster. Usually, these bad bad dreams feature heinous evil creatures like monsters and fears. But, imagine living a life wherein we are living in that very nightmare. Oh, but this time, we aren’t the victims of the haunt, rather, we’re the ones doing the haunting. Think it’d be fun? Well, At Night, I Become a Monster tells otherwise.

Discussion Time

As they say, everybody has some sort of skeleton stowed away in their closets. For high school student Adachi, he is that “skeleton”. Even though he seems rather normal during the day, everything changes, quite literally, during the night. Once the sun takes its slumber, Adachi grows multiple eyes and a hell lot of legs. By now, we've been thinking whether or not he’s the bad, scary multiple eyed and legged monster or the good main character. Well, even Adachi has no answer for that since he hasn’t seen himself. He only knows how it feels, so there’s a bit of a lack of information. But by how he describes himself -- he even cries black tears! -- he’s pretty daunting.

1. Absolute Written Masterpiece

Yoru Sumino’s At Night, I Become a Monster is a literary masterpiece. A downside we’ve noticed in reading light novels is the abandonment of form. There are a dozen light novels in the market that mainly focus on eye-catching themes, catchy titles, and even trendy plots. In pursuit of this new story that would sell, however, comes the price of abandoning the art of storytelling. At Night, I Become a Monster is one of those novels that focuses on everything. The way of storytelling hooks us, the readers, in a vivid live show. Each detail is very well described to the point that we can easily visualize the scene in our minds, and hey, we haven’t even started talking about the plot yet.

2. Shows The Disparity of The Human Psyche

So, Adachi has become a monster. For some reason, he easily accepts his new fate like it was as simple as adopting a new pet or something. After a few weeks of exploring his new state, he finally got accustomed to it. On a fateful night, he unfortunately left his homework inside his classroom. He then sneaked out of his house and into the school in the middle of the night. However, he had another discovery during that night -- his classmate, Yano. Yano is that outcast that the class unanimously decided to ignore or torment. As time grew, monster Adachi and Yano became quite close during the night. But when human Adachi meets Yano during the day, he continues to ignore her as he usually does. Yes, that’s even when he felt quite protective of her during the night.

1. Trigger Warning: Bullying

First and foremost, bullying sucks! We are aware that there are a lot of people out there who could be triggered by bullying themes, as well as psychological torture. Before we even delve into that part of the story, please close this article or drop this novel.

Yano somehow got into the bad side of the school’s more influential students. As such, she usually gets treated like trash and gets a lot of bullying. Not only that, the whole class joins in this ostracization like some sort of high school cult. That includes our monster protagonist, Adachi. Even though the novel did an amazing job portraying character development, as well as Adachi’s maturation, it also delves into how a friend could easily take part in bullying. In fact, turning a blind eye in itself is bullying.

Final Thoughts

At Night, I Become a Monster is an undeniable masterpiece that should be appreciated. It doesn’t cut corners in terms of storytelling, plot, description, and character development. This novel gives us a terrifying, but unique kind of haunting. It does not give us terror by providing graphic haunting creatures, rather, it makes us realize that humans and our behaviors are the true horrors.

Writer

Author: Christian Markle

I am a copywriter, proofreader, and editor. I love watching anime, reading manga, and writing my own stories. Watch out in the future as you may see one of my works one day. Manga and anime were big parts of my childhood. I grew up watching Yu Yu Hakusho, Slam Dunk, One Piece, and Dragon Ball Z. Those were probably one of the happiest and most carefree days of my life. In fact, most of my values are probably molded by manga. No, that's not an exaggeration.

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