Anime

I said it in the episode 1 thread already but I really dislike how the show seems to rate the viewers intelligence so low.

For mystery shows I have basically two reactions. One is something like "NOW WAY! That is so clever and comes so out of the left field but if I'm honest, all the hints have been there so I'm unsure now how I wasn't able to see it before!".

The other is "OH MY GOD just fucking arrest the guy already! Everyone knows what happened long before you did and stop looking so smug while giving your unnecessary explanation you clown".

This first mystery was definitely one of the later reactions for me. It's like some drunk uncle at a family gathering trying to impress me with some ultra-shitty magic trick he managed to trick a toddler with.

The second episode of our two-parter resolved the mystery. I can't say that this one was too shocking. I had originally thought that it might have been the guy from the construction site that first found the body since he went to that nearby clinic instead of just calling emergency services right away. However, basically as soon as they started interacting with that doctor from the clinic he was sus as hell.

I am hoping that this was more or less a tutorial mystery to help establish things in this show and that they will become a bit more complex from here. A mystery show lives and dies on how good its mysteries actually are, and this one was pretty simple at the end of the day. This show is going to be running at the same time as Apothecary Diaries, and it is going to need to step up its game if it doesn't want to be seen as the lesser of the two Sherlock-esque series this season. They even had a mind palace sequence like the recent Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock used to do @[email protected]

I wasn't really impressed by this one. One of the things I love mystery shows for is their ability to show you clues and then piece them together in a way you didn't think of, and in that way the two cardinal sins are 1) making the puzzle too easy and 2) not even giving you all the pieces. I believe this anime (in this mystery at least) does both.

For the former, I was able to instantly guess the t-rex twist because it was the only large animal maw we'd been told about (though maybe also because Psych used it first). Similarly, when you're only given one suspect to work with, finding out whodunit ultimately can't be to surprising.

For the latter, medical mysteries are always going to have some element of "the detective knows more than you" because the audience really can't be expected to know the medical information they're acting on, but this additionally had stuff like the info on the gangs, which was only introduced when it was immediately relevant to peeling back a layer of the mystery. (Maybe we got a flash of it as a news story on a screen at some point? I know I didn't catch it, and it feels like there should be better ways to give the audience clues than making them pause and read seemingly-unimportant text)

Ultimately, the mystery felt to me like an "along for the ride" kind of deal, where you have no hope of feeling clever yourself or being impressed by the characters' cleverness, you just engage with the detectiving as if it's a normal drama. Which can definitely work well if the characters and their interpersonal relationships have meat to them (IMO that's how House worked well). But the characters here felt a little thin. Even the most fleshed out, Ameku MD herself, mostly just felt like a selfish and willful child who demands everyone around her do what she wants at all times.

Maybe this will get better. Maybe the characters will get more depth and more interesting dynamics and the future mysteries will be more engaging. But as it is, I don't really see a reason to stick around. Overall I give this two-part premiere a 3/5 - definitely watchable, but nothing special.

ETA: I always love seeing english signage in anime and this gave me some good ones, namely Famoly Mart and Bemmy's

I really enjoy the deductive reasoning of Dr. Ameku. The way she solves the mystery with a clinical and rational eye, without resorting to conventional methods, it’s no wonder people are calling her the "Dr. Sherlock." The revelation of the poisoning and the circumstances involving the dinosaur skeleton were a good twist.

I hope the secondary characters are developed more, and if possible, her interaction with the medical team could be explored further. I felt that the resolution of the mystery was a bit rushed. The poisoning was interesting, but the episode could have explored more details about the motives behind the crime. The resolution was cool, but it would have been nice if it had been more elaborate. That said, I wouldn't consider this a negative critique, far from it. After all, it wouldn't make sense to focus too much on one thing in an anime with only 12 episodes.

7.5/10