Moriarty the Patriot #01 — Spoiling the Criminal in the Title

October 4th, 2020

 

It's extremely unfair for this show to have two nigh identical blonde dudes.

This is a Sunday show, but it doesn't start airing until next Sunday. Again, not digging deeper than the show's official page, which doesn't give any indication of where this episode came from. Good job, guys.

Also, Opening Act's 'first' episode ended up being a pre-air staff-talking-about-it-thing apparently, with the actual episode 1 coming next week. I don't think there are any other Sunday shows, but I'll check back later in case I missed something.

Impressions:

The best part of this episode by a long shot was when the ED kicked in. Not just because it signaled the end of the episode, but because, as befitting for a pointy-chinned pretty boys show, it was goofy boy band pop, and it kicked in over Vigilante Tailor going back to work next to pictures of his avenged kid. Yeah, rocking boy band pop was definitely the perfect music for that scene. In any case, this would fall into the same category as the other shows of the day; things that spoiled their twists ahead of time. Here, it's especially strange because the original is his origin story of committing the perfect crime to worm his way into being a faux Moriarty. This episode, instead, is quite literally titled "The Crime of the Count," and then, shockingly, it turns out that the Count did the crime. 

It still misses the point of a who-dunnit, not the least because it tells you before the episode even starts. A propery mystery, or even a procedural, has a story to it. A narrative. A progression of events. The first time we even see the culprit whatsoever is when Moriarity is explaining to him how he knows that he's guilty. Rick and Morty had a gag of 5 second mysteries that were just the mystery being declared and then a dude confessing and handing over the evidence, and I can't help but feel like this is just that, stretched out over 20 minutes. The denouement is the high point of a mystery, so let's make it a third of the episode and skip all the boring stuff on how we get there. Just use some excessively dramatic shots of eyes.

Also, I think the coachman character deserves a special shoutout for having zero lines at all, and just a bunch of indistinct grunting noises. Also, to their weird cropping of filler English text. Cotton goo, eh?

       

Posted in Moriarty | 3 Comments »

3 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • residentgrigo says:
    October 4, 2020 at 10:57 pm

    One of the more readable current Jump things but whatever. The IP targets teen boys even if it doesn´t feel like it.

    Imagine if someone actually adapted From Hell or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Imagine…

  • residentgrigo says:
    October 4, 2020 at 11:11 pm

    This could be an anime original ep btw as I didn´t spot this story when I sampled the manga.

  • CatsB says:
    October 18, 2020 at 8:51 pm

    It randomly started with some kid in america readying Sherlock stories and then goes into an into, like wut? It did not get spoiled for me. the face at the beginning could have been anyone and I did not read the tile plus there are tons of counts. maybe Im just dumb, for example I did not know coachman was a coachman until I read your post. I assumed he was a cop on the take.

    Reason I found it boring was because it was ultra rushed and had no mystery or subtlety. No red herring, no moral qualms. I would even say it was more like a checklist than a story.

    It could have been a perfectly fine 2-3 ep story where you got to know the characters better. maybe someone would even suspect Moriarty after seeing him talking to the other orphan. What we got instead was moriarty having a supposition and it being proven correct at every step. He finds a club as if thats supposed to make it harder to find the culprit(since its not a private house) and needs an invitation to the club. he gets on invitation off screen and the waiter tells him all he needs to know. apparently the clubs founder likes to sit in the one special chair has a view towards the victims location. Moriarty confronts the guy and he almost does that crappy show thing of confessing everything at the slightest promoting. Meanwhile another character goes to one of the victims father and offers him a chance at vengeance but that presumably emotional conversation is left off screen. guy assuming that Moriarty is trying to use him to remove a rival or questioning his deduction, nah. instead we later get a flashback of Moriarty asking the guy if he is sure he want to do this.Moriarty captures the murderer off screen and leaves the father to take his revenge but only for a cigarettes length.

    This is more annoying than an outright bad show because the framework itself could have been used to tell a pretty good story.