天下制覇

CRIME SOLVER POWERS ACTIVATE!

Impressions:

This kicked things off magnificently, providing half a minute of exposition against a blank screen. After that, cherry petals. And bloom and filts. Another goddamned typhoon of cherry petals capped with terrible filters. Also, one of the very, very few times in this that the camera actually moved, which looked all the weirder with the bushes not quite moving at the correct speed. What's important is that they choose the right technicolor filters to show her magical crime sense at work. Everyone knows that's the best part of Sherlock Holmes; when he explodes in a parade of neon animal skeletons and then uses his crime vision to solve the case. No, I am not joking about the crime vision. Her eyes open wide and everything is bathed in filter and the case is immediately solved at a single glance. Once the hapless protagonist finally shut up, we just got another fairly generic procedural in that curious Japanese not-a-procedural-at-all way where the lead is from Mars. Or the kooky chara… Wait, I used that in the previous post. It still holds. It's yet another crime solving adventure starring Dullard McWhiteBread and Quirky vonIncapableOfNormalHumanInteractions, a partnership only seen about seventythree thousand times before.

What I always love about these is that the writers are still struggling to reach the same kind of policework and forensic analysis that Detective Conan set down. Yes, I understand that you're a smug youngster from a light novel, and are therefore better than adults at everything, now could you please stop pawing at the crime scene? I might consider it a cultural thing since the west has been going through an arms race of procedurals within itself, especially over the last decade, but again, Detective Conan's mysteries still rise above magic technicolor spidey sense as far as detective stories go, and I'm pretty sure what you'd get for barging into an active crime scene, throwing things out of your way, ordering CSIs around, and trying to steal evidence is going to win you at least an overnight stay at Hotel Policia, not prove your genius to those foolish, dumb adults. Japan seems overly in love with that old Sherlock cliche where he spits off a dozen facts about incidental observations, which is pretty much all the 'mystery' was here so far. It's an okay introductory trick to show someone is smart, observant, clever, etc, but it's not something requiring an entire episode, and here it comes off as especially smug and self-satisfied with itself.

Next Episode:

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