Hard-Boiled - Witness Statements

It takes me ten minutes to explain the plot of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. It takes this guy about 1 minute to do it.



Via Tv Tropes,we have a list of elements that are in the novel. [Contains spoilers]

• Big Eater: The librarian in Hard Boiled Wonderland is a thin woman who seems to always be hungry.


• Cyberpunk: Hard-Boiled Wonderland


• Downer Ending


• Empty Shell: The citizens of the town at the End of the World are basically this, and it is implied that the narrator will become like this once his shadow dies and he is fully assimilated into the town.


• Epiphanic Prison: The End of the World (To escape the prison set out by the story, the character has to have a moment of realisation(epiphany))


• Fate Worse Than Death: What will happen to the narrator at the end after his mind self-destructs.


• Identity Amnesia: The narrator of The End of the World can't remember anything about himself before coming to the town.


• Living Shadow: The narrator of The End of the World has been seperated from his shadow, which seems to have a mind of its own and which desires to get inside the town so that it can reunite with him.


• Loss Of Identity: A major theme


• Mind Screw (You're going to be thinking Mind Fuck while they mean use of heavy symbolism)


• Nameless Narrative: None of the characters in the book have names.


• Neuro Vault: The protagonist of Hard-Boiled Wonderland has top secret data hidden inside his subconscious to prevent the anti-government Semiotecs from getting at it.


• Ontological Mystery (Here they mean characters in a story who have no idea to their identity, purpose and are in a restricted environment.)


• Those Two Bad Guys: Two thugs show up at the narrator's home in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and trash it, but their purpose is unknown.


• Two Lines No Waiting (Two narrative threads that are interwoven)


• Unicorn: At the End of the World, there are beasts living outside the town that are described as unicorns, although they are quite different than the traditional description. The narrator uses their skulls for "dreamreading". The narrator of Hard-Boiled Wonderland also encounters a unicorn skull at one point.