Real World (Riaru Wārudo, 2003) is a novel by Japanese author Natsuo Kirino.

It was published by Vintage Books on July 15, 2008 in an English translation by Philip Gabriel.

[2] According to Barbara E. Thornbury, "The English term "real world"—phonetically transcribed into Japanese using the katakana syllabary—is a complex signifier that simultaneously expresses resigned acceptance and angry resistance.

"[3] The story takes its inspiration from two murders committed in 1997 by a fourteen-year-old high school student using the alias "Sakakibara Seito.

She hears loud crashes coming from Worm's house, and suspects a robbery.

After leaving cram school, Toshi discovers that her bike and mobile phone have gone missing.

After learning that the girls regard Terauchi as the smartest amongst them, Worm calls her and demands that she ghostwrite a final manifesto for him.

To stop Worm and Kirarin from escaping the police, the driver swerves the car off the road.

They casually speculate that the girls worked together to help Worm evade the police, which angered Terauchi, and led to her calling in the anonymous tip.

She states that her parents are good people, but incapable of understanding how Toshi has been "assaulted by commercialism."

According to Toshi, Terauchi is a "cute-looking girl" with a "low and cool" voice, and the "smartest and most interesting" in their friend group.

Terauchi performs well academically, but Toshi worries that "someday her cleverness might really get her in trouble."

In her suicide note, Terauchi writes that she is a "superphilosophical kind of person" and that it makes her life miserable.

She is described by Toshi as "cute, cheerful, a well-brought-up, proper young girl."

For example, she initially seduces Worm by acting innocent, convincing him to meet her in person.

Toshi describes Worm as "a lanky, stoop-shouldered boy with small, gloomy eyes."

Worm attends one of the top high schools in Tokyo, but ranks near the bottom of his cohort.

He also resents her for discovering his perversions: she insisted that the family relocate after she caught Worm trying to steal a neighbour's underwear.

An anonymous reviewer writing for Kirkus Reviews found the novel to be "Exasperating:""The fact that [the characters'] brutal idiocy varies in quantity, rather than in quality, from that of the typical teen should be a source of horror as events spin irretrievably out of control.

[6] Publishers Weekly was more positive in their assessment: "Kirino uses her considerable narrative gifts to evoke the tedium, pressure and angst her teenage characters suffer.

the book feels overcrowded and the characters underdeveloped: five is too many to juggle adequately here, at least the way Kirino does it .

Worm's actions are extreme, but the way the girls act is equally disturbing and unpleasant .

"[8] Kathryn Hemmann, in Chapter 10 of Rethinking Japanese Feminisms, writes "The unhappy endings of these girls’ stories may thus be understood as a form of literary attack against cultural double standards that allow no middle ground for young women to negotiate their own identities as they move into adulthood.