Ring Trilogy

The Ring Trilogy is a series of novels by Koji Suzuki: "Ringu" ("Ring", 1991), "Rasen" ("Spiral", 1995) and "Rupu" ("Loop", 1998). Suzuki also wrote a collection of short stories, "The Birthday" (1999).

Relationship to films

The "Spiral" film of 1998 was an alternative sequel to "Ring", made by a different production company, which moved the story closer to that of the novels.

Plot summaries

Ring

This story is set in present-day Tokyo. When four teenagers unusually die one night at the same time, Kazuyuki Asakawa, a journalist who is the uncle of one of them, investigates. This leads him to a holiday resort called Hakone Pacific Island. There he watches a videotape left behind in their room which contains a series of abstract and realistic images. At the end of the sequence of images, a warning appears: "You watched the tape. You are destined to die seven days from the hour you watched this tape. To stop this from happening, do everything that is written here. You must—" but the rest is erased by an advertisement. This has a strange mental effect on Kazuyuki and without a second thought, he believes it to be true.

He enlists the help of his best friend, Ryuji Takayama, a philosophy graduate and an admitted rapist. When Ryuji hears Kazuyuki's story, he watches the tape, and asks Kazuyuki to make him a copy for him to study at home. Their investigations lead them to the volcanic island of Oshima. After Kazuyuki's wife and child also watch the tape, Kazuyuki realises he must find the truth and perform the "charm" to prevent the deaths of both his family and his friend.

Then their investigations lead them to search for a person named Yamamura Sadako. Sadako was the daughter of Yamamura Shizuko who was known for her exceptional ESP abilities but later branded as a charlatan. In depression, Shizuko jumped into Mount Mihara's crater. Later they learn that Sadako, who lived 30 years ago, was still missing. The evidence leads them back to Hakone where they find a well. At the bottom lie Sadako's remains; Kazuyuki sets her free by giving her a proper burial. Thinking he has performed the charm, Ryuji and Kazuyuki go home convinced. At Ryuji's deadline, he is watching the videotape. But the space around the TV becomes distorted. He dials Mai Takano, his assistant. The television shows the scene of rolling dice. Ryuji tries to telephone and yells "Get me out of here!" before screaming to his death.

When Kazuyuki realises that the charm was to copy the tape and show it to somebody else, he rushes to his family to save them.

piral

The events in the story occurred a day after Ryuji's death. By chance, Ando Mitsuo, his former university classmate, was assigned the task to do the autopsy of Ryuji. He and his colleague, Miyashita, found a benign tumor in Ryuji's throat which is believed to be his cause of death. They were puzzled because the tumor they found was looked a lot like the smallpox tumor formed by the person contracting the disease and because smallpox was long eradicated 30 years ago. Ando, with his colleague, Miyashita, found out that an organism called Ring Virus caused this tumour. The virus is transferred to the body via the tape and a begins to grow a tumour in the viwer's throat. When the charm is not performed, the tumor grows to block the airways and kills the person. To stop this, the tape must be copied and showed to another person.They also found a cryptic inside his stomach with a the word RING and a series of cryptic message. This further makes Ando perplexed.

In search for the cryptic's meaning, he came to meet Ryuji's assistant, Mai Takano. Mai, who seems to know something about the videotape and tells Ando the curse but is unable to know how Ryuji died. As a scientist, Ando laughed at Mai's explanation. He also went to talk to Kazuyuki but found that he and his family was involved in a car accident. It is found that Kazuyuki's wife and child were dead before the crash. Kazuyuki is critical and unable to talk to and in the accident's site lies a crushed videotape. When Mai was suddenly lost, Ando was further motivated to investigate until he stumbles upon Ryuji's files with the title THE RING. He is uncertain because it contains supernatural events and contradicts scientific explanations.

The virus mutated and used the report as a medium. After reading the report, he has thoughts of Sadako and the well. In a series of events, they were led to the well in Hakone.

Days after Mai's disappearance, he met a beautiful woman named Masako who introduced herself as Mai's older sister. He fell in love with her. In doing so, they made love one night and ended up Masako pregnant. Later did he knew that Masako and Sadako are the same. One night he received a parchment from Sadako/Masako that says; "Don't ever disobey me because you don't know who you are dealing with." Ando chose Sadako and he is told to publish Ryuji's files to public and dominate the world.

Loop

This story circles on a medical student named Kaoru Futami who had his father contracted a deadly disease called Metastatic Human Cancer(MHC), a cancer involving both animals and plants. Then, he knew that his father was involved a massive supercomputer project named LOOP. The LOOP was a computer simulation on the emergence of life but still unable to simulate such thing. It is known that everyone who was involved in the LOOP have died with the same cancer.

In the course of events, he met a woman named Reiko and he fell in love for her. Because of that, they mated and made Reiko pregnant, which is too, made rReiko vulnerable to MHC. Kaoru continued in his investigations which led him to a man (and the last surviving person involved in the LOOP) named Amano. Amano revealed to him that LOOP was a project involving a hundred of supercomputers stringed together to aimed to recreate life. Amano told Kaoru of a lab in New Mexico where another scientist might be alive. Kaoru ventured only to find the scientist dead. Then, he went in lab and found a pair of virtual reality goggles and gloves. He tried it and minutes later, he is in the LOOP.

In the loop, he saw everything but one event intrigued him, the emergence of Ring Virus. There in the LOOP, he saw complete details of the events in the previous novels in different angles. After some discussion with Amano, he knew that the LOOP's creator wanted to recreate Ryuji's death and by doing that, he could clone him and insert into someone's womb. But what they made was a cloned Ryuji with the Ring Virus in him. When Ryuji was born, the virus escaped and mutated.

Desperate to find a cure for MHC, he ventured only to encounter a storm and leave him dying. Then, he was saved by an old man. After revealing him the truth, it turned out that Kaoru was Ryuji's clone. Because of that, Kaoru has an exceptional gift, immunity to MHC.

In order to know what made Kaoru immune, he had to be anlyzed. An analyzation machine was created. The bad side though that the analyzed object mustbe molecularized meaning that Kaoru could die. As a hero, he agreed.

After that, the old man transferred Kaoru's analyzed molecules in the LOOP. He promised that his wife could see him through the VR Goggles and Reiko won't be alone. In the LOOP, Kaoru is sitting watching the stars, thinking that Reiko is watching over him.

The Birthday

It is an anthology consisting of stories related to the "Ringu" novels. It is also the conclusion to the Ring series.

Floating Coffin – This covers the final moments of Mai Takano's life within the premises of Spiral.

It began when she watched the tape. She was ovulating then and Sadako's DNA was impreganted in Mai's egg cell. After viewing the tape, she feels nauseated. Unknown to her, she is conceiving Sadako in her womb. Days later, Sadako is of total control of Mai maybe because she lacks of will to resist Sadako. Exactly seven days after viewing the tape, Mai gave birth to a baby Sadako. When Sadako was reborn, she killed Mai with her psychic powers.

Lemonheart – The second story of the anthology, and tells about the story of Sadako when she was still 19 years-old in her school in Tokyo. This events happened 30 years prior to the Ring. When Sadako graduated from high school, she joined the Hiroshi Acting Troupe as an apprentice. As days goes by, she fell in love with Toyama, the soundman. One time, she was caught doing nensha with a turned-off TV. This made her alienated to the group. One time, while she and Toyama are intimate, a spite member of the troupe recorded their conversation. Sadako told Toyama that one day, a machine similar to a videotape. When the member played the recording, everyone who heard it died after five days. Because of that, Sadako fled to Hakone to her father in the hospital.

One day, while standing at a well, a doctor attempted to rape Sadako but she defended herself with a psychic attack on the doctor. The doctor retaliated by strangling Sadako which incapacited her powers. When Sadako was helpless, she was thrown in the well. Before dying, she had a vision of being reborn in Mai Takano's womb which happened in the first story.

Happy Birthday – The final story of the anthology. It further develops the storyline of the last novel, Loop, while incorporating new information disclosed in the previous two short stories. It depicts the last events taking place in the Ring universe chronologically, and is also the conclusion of the series.

At this point, Reiko questions of giving birth to a child if the only world he'll arrive is death, with his son lost and the father of her unborn child still missing. There she goes to a lab and learn the final secrets of the LOOP.

Sources and external links

* [http://www2.tba.t-com.ne.jp/ymkazu/t-loop.html Loopkai Project] - (Japanese)
* [http://www.theringworld.com/ the ringworld] - Contains detailed information on the Ring cycle.
* [http://www.obrasilero.com/ring/ the Ring AREA] - Contains of the cursed videos of the Ring cycle and their scene-by-scene analyses, as well as lots of other useful information.
* [http://www.vertical-inc.com/ Vertical Inc.] - Publisher of English translations of the Ring novels.