YMMV / The Golden Demon

• Anvilicious: Letting the money mess with your relationships is bad, mmkay?
• Memetic Mutation: One simply can't talk about this book without talking about that kick. It even has a statue erected out of it in real-life Atami as a tourist attraction.
• Narm: The notorious chapter 8 of the original book is supposed to be tragic and heartbreaking as the couple tearfully break up and Kan'ichi crosses the Despair Event Horizon and declares That Man Is Dead, but considering what a meme has been made out of the iconic kick and how relentlessly parodied it is, it's hard not to laugh.
• Signature Scene: Again, the kick. It's pretty much the face of the novel, even for those who haven't read it.
• Values Dissonance: Modern readers might chuckle at the characters' astonishment at a ¥300 ring.
• Values Resonance: That material greed ruins relationships and destroys lives is a moral that's as relevant today as it was back then.
• Watch It for the Meme: It's very hard to find people knowing about this novel before knowing about the chapter 8 Signature Scene.
• The Woobie: Miya, hands down. A genuinely sweet girl who, thanks to being Distracted by the Luxury, ends up in a disastrous marriage to a faithless bastard that eventually drives her to attempting suicide and utterly breaks her, and even as she gets to return to the one she truly loves, she never fully recovers.

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