Boogiepop Darkly: The Scat Singing Cat

When a Towa agent -- the awesomely named Thelonious Monkey -- goes missing after a fight with a mysterious MPLS known only as Scatterbrain, Reset dispatches the infamous "strongest" -- Fortissimo.
Fortissimo is a bit like the Daleks in Doctor Who. He's inherently awesome, and cheapened by overuse. I know he isn't in every Boogiepop novel, but he's been in far too many of them, and been far too ineffective in most of them, so I was a bit disappointed to see him playing a major role this time around. But I'm guessing Kadono wanted to revamp the character a bit, because I honestly don't think he's been this fucking bad ass since his first fucking appearance. Walking on water, evaporating said water with a flick of the mind, ignoring crowds of zombies attacking from all sides as they bounce off him, making his own heart explode and reform so he can free himself from a mind-control spell with a bit of temporary death -- he's single-handedly Jojoing the shit out of this volume, and it was awesome to behold. I hope Kadono has the sense to keep him out of the spotlight so the next time he shows up his very entrance provides a thrill.
This is possibly the closest to outright horror the series has been in years. The section where Fortissimo reads Thelonious Monkey's cryptic journal, encountering puzzling references to a cat set randomly between accounts of people she knows not remembering her, and her not remembering people who clearly know her, is some genuinely chilling stuff.
The other story cross cut with Fortissimo's investigation involves the local junior high's photography club searching odd corners of the town in the hopes of finding evidence that Boogiepop exists. These four are archetypal Kadono characters, all presented as stock types before their interactions serve to knock each other off balance, their reactions never quite what we expect, so that they gradually take on a life of their own.
The structure here is classic Jojo's Bizarre Adventure -- a mysterious power is at work, and the bulk of the book is spent figuring out what it is and how it works, while being more than a bit afraid of it. For once Boogiepop is forced to play a fairly active role, even if that largely just means the climax of the book has more than it's fair share of cryptic riddle-speech. For better or for worse, Kadono is a man who never strays very far from his own set of foibles. But The Scat Singing Cat is definitely on his better side.