Customer Reviews

The Ring, Vol. 4: Birthday (v. 4)

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Meimu, Birthday (Dark Horse, 2004)

Birthday, known in its film incarnation as Ring 0, is exactly what the film title would lead one to expect: a prequel to Ring. It's told in three interconnected short stories,that focus on Sadako (if you have somehow not yet found yourself involved some way in the Ring trilogy, read the first novel, or watch the first film; you'll get up to speed pretty quickly. Note: Ring Two is an "offshoot," not the actual sequel [that's Spiral, the film version of which was called Rasen and has not been remade in America as of this writing], and so you may get thrown off track if you think of it as canon).

I can't really call Birthday bad, per se, but am more than willing to entertain the idea that I'm not doing so because I have a fondness for Koji Suzuki's wonderful novels and Hideo Nakata's film versions. What Birthday is is more disjointed. It's hard, despite the presence of Sadako, to figure out exactly how it all fits in some pieces of the story (not to mention how we get from point A to point B; where does the title [and last frame] of "Lemon Heart" come from, anyway?). There are enough events from Ring here (told, of course, from different points of view) for us to get an anchor, but the boat itself is being battered by constantly-shifting winds.

Still, it's not a bad little book. The impressionist feel of the delivery, while sure to alienate those who like their stories straightforward, does give the whole thing a creepy sensation, and the stuff that comes at you from out of the blue (like that whole "lemon heart" thing) can be unsettling, as long as it doesn't completely jar you out of the story.

For Ring fanatics only, but will be a valuable addition to the completist's collection. ***