Has it been three years already? One of my favorite mystery reads of 2018 was the Sharaku Homura manga series by manga artist Nemoto Shou: originally this impossible crime-focused puzzle mystery manga had been self-published under the doujin circle name Sapporo no Rokujou Hitoma at comic conventions and other events, meaning the comics had only been available to a limited audience. In 2018 however publisher Bungeishunju (Bunshun) made the series available as e-books through all the major e-book storefronts in Japan. At the time, they published three volumes, each bundling 4, 5 issues and I devoured all three of them (reviews of the first, second and third volume here). The adventures of the clever girl detective Sharaku Homura and her assistant Yamazaki "Karate Kid" Yousuke were absolutely brilliant, combining Scooby Doo/Edogawa Rampo-esque set-ups with villains dressing up in creepy/silly costumes to scare their victims, with cleverly written and illustrated impossible crime situations. From locked rooms to impossible disappearances, the series had everything and what was surprising was both how clever the set-ups were, but also the focus on the visual aspect. Panels would hide clues in subtle ways, and you wouldn't notice until you get to the end and you see all the page references that point you back to the exact corresponding page/panel where you'll see the necessary clues had indeed been there all along for you to see.
I'll also be leaving the links to Kourei Yashiki ("The House of Necromancy") and Youtou Shikabanemaru ("The Demon Sword Shikabanemaru") here, so I won't discuss these stories in detail here anymore. These two stories don't involve murder, but other types of impossible situations (a jewel disappearing during a seance even though everyone had been tied to their chairs, and a sword that starts bleeding suddenly) and I liked the first one especially.
So for this post, I'll only be looking at the two issues included in volume 4 I hadn't read yet. Spriggan is the weird one of the collection. After purchasing a haunted jewel, the jeweler Uehara Yuuji is, well, being haunted. The jewel used to be part of a collection of a jewel collector who, in an attempt to protect his jewels from a robber, swallowed them, but was then murdered and cut open by the robber to get the jewels out of his corpse. Afterward the murderous thief was caught, the jewels were sold off by the victim's family to various parties, but every new owner has since been haunted by the ghost of the murdered collector who wants his jewels back. Since his purchase of one of these jewels, Uehara has been hearing voices around his house too, but his employees think it's just a prank of someone who must've heard about his latest purchase. Still, Uehara hasn't had any sleep since, so he decides to stay in a hotel for a while. Staying in a room on the third floor, he decides to take a nap, when suddenly he's awakened by an alarm clock he didn't set, followed by a ghostly figure opening his room door, stealing the jewel and knocking Uehara out. Uehara asks Homura to help him figure out how the ghost managed to get inside his hotel room: his room was on the third floor, with no other buildings in the neighborhood, the hotel doors lock automatically and the keycard to his room had been lying on his desk all the time and the code is changed every time a new guest arrives, meaning old keycards used by previous guests won't work on this door. The story is rather short, so Homura pretty much figures the whole thing out once she had a look at the room, though I have to say I didn't like the solution that much. The main clue hinting at how the ghost managed to open the door is slightly lacking, meaning it's difficult to come up with how the whole thing was pulled off exactly if you do recognize the significance of the main visual clue. The manner in which the impossible crime is 'dressed' and presented to Uehara/the reader is rather clever though, adding an extra layer of mistifying mystery even though at the core the problem is fairly simple. The way the title Spriggan connects to the actual contents of the story is absolutely weird though.
Kageboushi ("The Shadow Man") tells about a series of mysterious nightly abductions of people living in Block 1 of Nanjou-ku, Shimoyama City by a mysterious Shadow Man. Homura is one of the victims who is taken away during her sleep, only to wake up in a creepy forest with the mysterious Shadow Man. After some banter the Shadow Man decides to hang her down an old well, where Homura faints, but when she wakes up, she's back in her room again. It turns out more people in the neighborhood have had similar experiences during their sleep, but nobody knows why the Shadow Man is doing this. There doesn't seem to be any link between the victims besides their address, as there are male and female victims, of various ages and of various professions. The mystery first focuses on the missing link angle, which ultimately leads to the question of who and why. The matter of the missing link is so simple in its concept that I completely missed it. It's actually cleverly hidden because if you don't realize a certain fact first, you won't see the missing link at all because it doesn't seem likely. Not a very complex mystery, but it's worked out very competently, and the story even has an extra surprise by adding a Challenge to the Reader after the main mystery is solved, asking you to solve a riddle that had been hidden beneath the main story. This one is probably easier to solve than the main mystery, but still entertaining. No impossibilities this time though.
On the whole though, Kaiki Tantei Sharaku Homura 4 - Hagoromo no Kijo is a pretty solid volume. Of the five issues collected in this volume, I think the three issues I had reviewed already were stronger on the whole than the two issues I hadn't read yet, but overall the quality of this mystery manga is still very high, and the title story alone makes this volume worth the read. It's a phenomenal mystery story, and the other stories included also show off quite well how fantastic the visual medium of a comic works with the mystery genre. As these are self-published comics, assuming Nemoto won't stray too much from his release schedule, I guess we can expect a new volume in about three years.... but I'll likely keep my eyes wide to see if I can read the individual issues earlier than that, because the Sharaku Homura series has yet to disappoint so I'd rather read new issues sooner than later!
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