Death of the Living Dead

「君死にたもうことなかれ」 

与謝野晶子

"Prithee do not die"

Yosano Akiko

Once again time for a Short Shorts post, where I write shorter reviews/thoughts on multiple mystery media, as opposed to longer, focused reviews. Mainly because I can't think of enough (relevant) material to fill a complete post with. Short shorts are usually only posted once in six months or so here, but this is the second post within the month! Anyway, just two topics for today. 

The latest volume of Detective Conan, volume 88, was released over a month ago, so I'm a bit late with this review. The volume starts with the last chapter of The Secret of the Big Couple, which was fairly disappointing. The first two chapter of this story, collected in volume 87, were absolutely hilarious. This final chapter focuses almost solely on explaining who the murderer of the restaurant owner is and how it was done. The trick was fairly original, but read on its own, this chapter is incredibly boring, especially given how fantastic the first half of the story was. Maybe I should read the story in one go. The volume also ends with an incomplete story, The Girl Band Murder Case, where Sonoko's idea to form a girl band with Ran and Sera Masumi brings them to a rehearsal studio. A murder is (of course!) committed there, and the suspects are all members of another girl band practicing at the studio. I'll have to wait for volume 89 in April for the conclusion of this story, but to be honest, it looks like one of those fairly predictable stories that are technically well constructed, but not really memorable. Okay, there's the namedropping of a Black Organization member called Scotch, but that's it (No, it's not a real spoiler. They actually put that little fact on the obi of the volume).

Volume 88 features only two complete stories. The Suspect Who Uses Too Much Condiments brings us back to the (relocated) ramen noodle restaurant from Deadly Delicious Ramen from volume 73. The police recently chased a robber who killed his victim down to the restaurant, but they have no idea which of the three regular customers present is their prey (the three regulars all arrived around the same time). Of late, the three have also gotten new eating habits: one uses a lot of pepper in his food, another uses a lot of soy sauce, and the last a lot of vinegar, but how does this relate to the crime? Overall, a fairly chaotic story. I loved the setting (Deadly Delicious Ramen was one of my favorite stories of the year!), but even I'd say this story feels more like a collection of random ideas with little cohesion. Also: it's strange this story follows right after The Secret of the Big Couple, because they have one point that is really similar.

The Tragedy of the Zombie Mansion on the other hand features Hattori, which is always good for bonus points. Kogorou drags everybody along to a mansion where an old zombie film featuring his favorite idol Youko was filmed. They come across a small filming team, who reveal they're here to film material for a trailer for the sequel to that film (not starring Youko though). But mysterious thing happen: the producer apparently commits suicide, while later his dead body is seen killing another staff member. And then the whole mansion is attacked by a horde of zombies! What's going on? A lot! I'd say this was a decent story, but nothing more than that. The main trick of the dead coming back alive is fairly flawed, as there's absolutely no way nobody wouldn't have noticed that! There's also a bit about an impossible disappearance from a room that was better, but even still not particularly inspiring (though I thought the hint was quite clever). Overall, I'd say that volume 88 was a bit disappointing: there were only two complete stories and only one of them was okay. Oh well, let's hope April's volume is better.

Last week, the TV drama  Rinshou Hanzai Gakusha - Himura Hideo no Suiri ("The Clinical Criminlogist - The Deductions of Himura Hideo") started. The series is based on Arisugawa Alice's Writer Alice series. Himura Hideo is an university teacher of Criminology, who often helps with official police investigations (as his "fieldwork"). He is accompanied by his best friend and mystery writer Arisugawa Alice. While I don't like all the books in the series, I do enjoy the series overall, so I was quite curious to this adaptation of the series. The first episode was based on the short story Zekkyoujou Satsujin Jiken (" -The Castle of Screams- Murder Case"). Like I already mentioned in my review of the audio drama adaptation: it's an okay story, but nothing more than that. A bit underwhelming for a series pilot, but at least the episode already gave us some glimpses of what will follow (there was a set-up for Shuiro no Kenkyuu / "A Study in Vermillion" for example).

But I'm still not sure what to think about the series in general. One thing I really loved was that the series has a distinct Kyoto flavor. Himura teaches at Kyoto's Eito University (= thinly disguised Doshisha University) and the series features a lot of nice shots of the ancient capital of Japan (the opening has a nice Kyoto-atmosphere too). But some of the director's ideas didn't set too well with me. The series blatantly tries to copy Sherlock for example. They dress Himura in a long dark coat, show him in manic states, show text from a laptop on the TV screen for the viewer and more. Heck, they even have Himura jump off into the dark in a dream sequence. To be honest: it only hurts this series, because this isn't Sherlock and it shouldn't even need to try to emulate that series. Also, the Himura in the TV series is a bit different from the one in the books (I've read). There's a bit of Sherlock's Sherlock in him and for some reason Himura's catchphrase has become "This crime isn't beautiful", even though that would seem like the last thing Himura from the books would ever say! Alice was okay though in the first episode, and it was fun hearing him refering to some of the stories he wrote (which are the books known as the Student Alice series). Anyway, some good, some bad.

And that's it for today. A new volume of The Young Kindaichi Case Files R was released a few days back, but I'm still not sure whether I'll wait for the next volume to do them in one go, because stories in that series often span two volumes. Considering the publication schedule, I might wait until the next Conan volume (in April).

Original Japanese title(s): 青山剛昌　『名探偵コナン』第８８巻, 有栖川有栖（原）　『臨床犯罪学者　火村英生の推理』