『なぜベストを尽くさないのか』

「時が経つことに怯えて泣いてた変わりゆく人の心に」
 Garnet Crow, 『夢みたあとで』

"Scared of the passing of time and of how people's hearts change, I cried"
Garnet Crow, "After seeing my dream"

Ignoring whether the product is good or not, you'll have to admit that Japanese companies are quite good at cross-marketing their products. When the Detective Conan movie was released, some convenience stores had special Detective Conan promotions, while other chains sold exclusive Conan DVD's. The upcoming Odoru Daisousasen movie is accompanied by a videogame and probably more stuff.

And strangely enough, to promote movies based on television drama, they usually broadcast a special episode, which is nearly as long as the movie they're supposed to be promoting. The previous Trick special was as long as the Trick movie it was supposed to promote, and about the same for the Galileo special and movie. They might as well release two movies. Or two specials.

Anyway, I had seen the awesome Trick movie earlier this week, but the Trick week was still not over as the second Trick TV special was broadcast yesterday. Which was OK. It was definitely a Trick story, even more so than the movie, with a more contained story and less big action scenes. But that was the 'problem' maybe, having seen the grander scale story of the movie, I just couldn't help being somewhat underwhelmed by the special. If I'd seen the movie and the special in reverse order, I would've liked it more. I should've watched it in the special-movie order, I gathered from the dialogue, but that's strange as the movie debuted a week before the special was even broadcast.

And then there was the Trick game for the DS. Having played the horrible, horrible DS game of Galileo, I was kinda weary to purchase this game, until I discovered WorkJam had developed the game, the developer responsible for the current Detective Jinguuji Saburou games. Which are awesome.

So with a relieved heart, I purchased my copy of Trick DS and I am glad I did. As it was truly a fun game. Short, very short, but it was like playing an episode of Trick myself. The dialogue and story, while not written by the original writer, feel like they were lifted out of the series. The music is in fact the same as the series and the game even has the same opening animation. The story progress mimics the Trick tradition perfectly, with lots of problems which are solved one after another in relatively short time, but which together make up one big problem.

And the sleuth system... is actually quite interesting. In my years of gaming, I have seen my share of translating detectives to games. Games like Detective Jinguuji Saburou hardly let you think, but focus on telling a story. A game like Detective Conan - The Mirapolis Investigation tries letting the player deduce the culprit, but fails horribly by being so easy. The Keyword system in Detective Conan & Kindachi Shounen no Jikenbo was OK, but the story progression was not always as good (as well as the Conan-part being longer, but more tedious). The system Trick uses is somewhat similar to the system of the latter game, but a lot more fun.

It works by offering a problem that needs to be solved ("How did the killer get away?"), which can be solved by a combination of key elements (Items, circumstances, location, persons). The cool part is that every time you combine elements, a hypothesis is made. While most hypotheses are just unbelievable, others are at least plausible and thus make you think. You then bring your hypothesis to the confrontation scenes, where you'll have to defend your hypothesis; this being different from the system in Detectve Conan & Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, as you have no idea whether your ideas are correct until you've actually tested them in the confrontations. In terms of difficulty, the system is somewhere near the Gyakuten Saiban system, the latter being more difficult as it does not offer hypotheses, but it's still an interesting system.

Translating detectives to games is not always easy and while I think the Gyakuten Saiban series does it excellently, I'm very content with this system of WorkJam and I really hope to see it more often in their games. I'm also very surprised to see such a fun system in a game based on a drama, but as I'm a big fanboy, I'm just very pleasantly surprised.

Now make me my Furuhata Ninzaburou game, WorkJam. Do it.　

Original Japanese title(s):　『TRICK 新作スペシャル2』、 『TRICK DS版 ～隠し神の棲む館～』、『名探偵コナンと金田一少年の事件簿　めぐり合う二人の名探偵』、『逆転裁判』

「お前のやったことは、ぜんぶ全てスリッとお見通しだ！」

「通信教育で空手を学んでいたんだ」
『トリック』

"I learned karate through correspondence courses."
"Trick"

Having deleted several drafts of this post in a row, I give up on trying to write a comprehensible summary of the Trick franchise. What started out like a comedic detective series is nowadays more a bizarre comedy with detective-elements, but it's still, together with Furuhata Ninzaburou, my favorite Japanese drama. As a detective drama, it's somewhat like Jonathan Creek as it features a magician solving crimes, but that's as far as the comparison goes. Trick is all about comedy, with just a bit left for mystery. You shouldn't even think too much about the mysteries.

What's so difficult to explain about Trick is in fact the bizarre comedy. Besides the 'normal' comedy derived from text and story, the screen is so much an element of Trick's distinctive flavor, with crazy angles, cuts to other scenes and running jokes in the background, it's something you have to see to understand. And this year is the 10th anniversary of the Trick franchise and a new movie was released some days ago. Which I had been looking forward to ever since I saw the trailer.

So using my Ueda-like powers of persuasion, I dragged my own self-proclaimed beautiful and talented magician with me to the theater to see Trick: Psychic Battle Royale. Like the title subtly implies, the story revolves around several (self-proclaimed) psychics who fight for the title of the shaman kamihaeri. Among them are psychics who can not die, psychics who can read the future and psychics who can cast curses. And self-proclaimed magician Yamada, who once again tries to get her hands on money by pretending to be a psychic and as a magician herself, is capable of seeing through the tricks of the other fakes. And the scientist Ueda is of course there to... do stuff. Nothing new here.

Which is good. Trick has never been about doing something completely new, it's about strange people interacting with each other, with a mystery-subplot beneath. And this movie did it the best of all the Trick movies. The mystery subplot was not very impressive and some other stuff have been left unexplained, but that doesn't really matter. Even if you solved the mystery the moment it's shown on screen, you'll still get goosebumps when Yamada points her finger at the culprit to proclaim she has seen through all. Trick is just that awesome.

It is in fact quite amazing the bizarre comedy saves this from being just a casual detective with no redeeming qualities whatsover (yes, I am looking at you, Yonshimai Tanteidan) and actually transforms it in a fantastic series.

Oh, and the tie-in at the end to first episode of the first season? What. Was. That?　

Original Japanese title(s): 『劇場版TRICK 霊能力者バトルロイヤル』