Short Story Review : Super Frog Saves Tokyo by Haruki Murakami (2002)
“I’m an absolutely ordinary guy. Less than ordinary …..I live a horrible life. All I do is eat, sleep and shit. I don’t know why I’m even living. Why should a person like me have to be the one to save Tokyo?” — Katagiri
Murakami’s work is never just an ordinary story. Even the title is very stand out to catch my attention when I saw it the first time.
“Super Frog Saves Tokyo huh!? looks like some epic children’s book….by Haruki Murakami!!? This is gonna be interesting.” So weird, warm, and mystery adventure has begun.
Super Frog Saves Tokyo is a short story written by a Japanese, Haruki Murakami. This short story is about a salaryman “ Katagiri” who lives his normal life — nothing special, every day looks the same. One day he arrived home from work and met a human-sized talking frog in his home. Frog introduced himself as “Frog” and he wanted Katagiri to help him fight an underground giant worm that is angry enough to destroy Tokyo by an earthquake.
The story turns dark quickly, too dark to put in the superheroes genre. The essence of adults and real world came in: financial problems, works, and death. The most important scene of this changing tone is when Katagiri was shot then Frog had to fight to worm alone and came to die in Katagiri’s hospital room to say goodbye. All of the events went wrong but everything is still normal no earthquake, no people dead, and Katagiri is not even hurt or wounded. This leaves the blank ending to the reader to further end this story by themselves.
If this is just a typical anime, Katagiri could rewind the time to change the outcome of the event. Avoid getting shot and help Frog to fight worm together, Happy ending. But this is real, this is the truth that we need to accept not to change it.
“What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real.” — Frog
Or this is not real, why is there a human-sized talking frog, why is there a giant worm that can cause an earthquake in the middle of Tokyo, does the cheer from Katagiri really help to fight the worm. This is fantasy, why I still say this is real. You know what? Sometimes “Imagination is more important than knowledge — Albert Einstein.” (I start to act like Frog that likes to quote now haha). If we try to find true intellectual understanding without any belief and imagination, how can we know that is the “true” understanding. Even we say that the whole story is just made by Murakami but can we ignore the emotional impact of the unreal events? The answer is HARD, we can’t dump all of the experience that we met, let this be the imagination.
I really like the characters in the story. Frog is my favorite character that has CHARACTER. He is a well-manner and learned frog. He is very supportive and he knows what he is doing. The most important is he never hesitates to fight the problem even he is alone. His death caused an emotional attack on me, once in a while that I feel lost to some character like this. For Katagiri, he is just me but a salary-disgusting man — the man who questions everything to get answers and struggles between reality and imagination. Moreover, I like the beginning act of the story, such a heartwarming and slow-going pace.
However, I am not a fan of the left-hanging ending or blank ending of any story. It is good to leave space for imagination, but as I mentioned earlier I need to know the answer — the ending of the story. I can’t move on to think of any new topics. The story is slow but packed with overwhelming confusion — although this is Murakami style I can’t argue, 60% is understandable 40% is ??? The climax Frog death is shocked me to another level.
Sorry for spoiling but how can’t I? Even I include some climax and the main plot of the story. I would recommend you to experience this bizarre story of Murakami by yourself
Grab a book, brew some tea, and prepare your imagination. — this is not an easy fight, and I need you to read this :)
