There’s a timeline included in Sadako at the End of the World that shows you just when this franchise, which began as a novel 1991, had a period of attention that exploded all across the world. But after 2002, it didn’t see any new material until 2012, but when it came back, it wasn’t content to just be a film — you had crossovers and novels and manga from that period to now.
We’re starting to get a few of them over here now — Seven Seas will be releasing Sadako-san and Sadako-chan later in 2021, but this release by Yen Press is expected to tide you over until then. But does it?
Sadako at the End of the World brings Sadako into a world where two little girls played a VHS tape, she emerges, and now they’re fated to die in a week. Her problem? That world just had its apocalypse so there’s no one actually around. However, thanks to iPads and intuition, the two girls, Ai and Hii, end up befriending Sadako and decide to look for more survivors with her. So they begin to roam around a decimated Japan, stumbling upon a beautician, an old woman, and a ghost searching for a plate along the way before arriving at a very particular well that Sadako’s very familiar with.
So revisiting Ring and Sadako is interesting since I’m going in remembering very few things about it. Like I’ve probably consumed both the first novel and the Japanese film version of Ring maybe 5-7 years ago. This manga still follows that if you see Sadako, death is generally imminent, but this is told in a humorous way. Follow it up by setting it in a post-apocalyptic world with two adorable girls, and now it’s more Sadako has to conform to what’s happening around her. This means we’ll see moments where she reacts comedically (like there’s an aside where she goes “woo-hoo!”) and wants no one to touch her hair, which is amusing.
The main issue, however, is these stories are fairly uninspiring. They don’t particularly stir a reaction aside from, sure this is somewhat amusing but where are we going with this? Maybe more hardcore fans would enjoy this, but I was mostly just pleased the story didn’t overstay its welcome. The humor could’ve been stronger and the tales with these three could’ve been more interesting, but by the end, the afterword where the author took a tour of the production of the Sadako film (2019) was something that was fun to me.
The art does stand out for the most part, with the cutesy effect clashing with what we know of Sadako that makes moments kind of funny, and there are details in the background and characters that make it nice to look at. This is a one volume series and paced well enough that you likely finish it 30 or so minutes. But overall, it’s not really something worth going back to, though if you’re into the whole Ring franchise, it’s another title to add to your collection.