Now I think about it, I have probably seen much more of Pinocchio: The Series (the Tatsunoko anime) than the Disney adaptation...
Don't forget: Netflix will be releasing the adaptation of the first book Akazukin, Tabi no Tochu Shitai to Deau ("And On Her Way, Little Red Riding Hood Met A Corpse" 2020), and it's directed by the person who also did 33pun Tantei!
By now, you should now the drill with these Once Upon A Time short story collections by Aoyagi. Akazukin, Pinocchio wo Hirotte Shitai to Deau is the fourth book in the series. The first and third books, titled Mukashi Mukashi Aru Tokoro ni, Shitai ga Arimashita ("Once Upon A Time, There Was A Body", 2019) and Mukashi Mukashi Aru Tokoro ni, Yappari Shitai ga Arimashita ("Once Upon A Time, There Really Was A Body", 2021) respectively, had Aoyagi turn well-known Japanese fairy tales and fables into puzzle plot murder mysteries, where the magical and fantastical of the original stories were used in surprising ways to present wonderful detective stories. The second volume however was about Western (European) fairy tales and fables and also had a slightly different set-up: whereas the "Japanese" volumes featured short stories which were not related to each other besides their themes, the four stories found in Akazukin, Tabi no Tochu Shitai to Deau ("And On Her Way, Little Red Riding Hood Met A Corpse" 2020) all formed one larger narrative together and featured a recurring detective character in the form of Little Red Riding Hood, who was travelling with her basket and who usually had to solve the murders along the way so she could continue with her journey. The fourth volume in this series follows this same set-up, with four stories (+ one intermezzo) that form one narrative about Little Red Riding Hood and (parts of) Pinocchio travelling together as they try to retrieve the marionette's body and make him a real boy.
Mokugekisha wa Deku no Bou ("The Eyewitness is a Wooden Boy") starts with Little Red Riding Hood finding Pinocchio's arm and learning about his predicement, so she quickly stuffs his arm in her basket and makes her way to the nearby town, where the circus is. She eventually watches the show and sees how Pinocchio (without one of his arms) is forced to do an act, but when she demands his release, Little Red Riding Hood is thrown out of the circus tent. She returns home with Pinocchio's arm to contemplate their next move, but the following day, Little Red Riding Hood is visited by the police, as the fox Antonio has been murdered in one of the circus tents last night, and there was an eyewitness who states Little Red Riding Hood was the killer. And this witness happens to be... the head of Pinoccio, a boy who can't lie or else his nose grows. And thus the weird situation arises where Pinocchio positively states Little Red Riding Hood is the killer of Antonio, even though she's here to save him. I have to admit I have never read Pinocchio or seen any adaptation completely, so I only know bits and pieces, a scene here and there. But while the idea of Pinocchio, a boy who can't lie, stating Little Red Riding Hood (our protagonist) is the killer, is a pretty funny to use pre-existing elements. In this story, we learn that Pinocchio had been taken apart as a punishment for messing up his act earlier in the day, and a series of accidents led to his head being in the tent just as Antonio was being killed, but so much of this mystery plot, about how Pinocchio could've "witnessed" Little Red Riding Hood commit the murder, hinges on elements that, as far as I know, don't come directly from the original Pinocchio story, so you can easily guess that these original elements will feature in the mystery one way or another. Which makes it a rather simple story, and where you also feel the story strays too far from the original Pinocchio story, taking away a lot of the charm. So I thought the opening story rather weak.
Onnatachi no Dokuringo on the other hand stays much closer to the source fairy tale and is also much more fun. It is a kind of inverted story, where we first learn about Hildehilde, a beautiful girl born in a village of witches, but who had no talent for witchcraft herself. She eventually ran away from her home village, with her mother's magic mirror, which allowed her to see anything she desired. Hildehilde eventually married the king of the Apfel Kingdom, who already had a daughter Snow White from a previous marriage. While things were good between Hildehilde and Snow White eventually, things soured after the king's death, and now Hildehilde sees no other way but to kill Snow White. However, the hunter she hired to kill Snow White betrayed her, and now Snow White is living with the seven dwarves in the forest, a fact she learned through her magic mirror. She now still plots Snow White's death. Little Red Riding Hood, having retrieved Pinocchio's head in the previous story, is still after the rest of his body as it was stolen at the end of the story, runs into one of the seven dwarves, and is invited for a meal at their home. Hildehilde witnesses all of this through her mirror, and eventually comes up with a plan to poison Snow White with a poisoned apple, but how will her plans go? This is a funny inverted-type of mystery, where we follow both Hildehilde and Little Red Riding Hood. In the Hildehilde side of the story, we see how the queen uses information she sees via her mirror as clues to come up with her poisoning plot, while in the Little Red Riding Hood parts, we follow a plot where first one of the dwarves is killed and Little Red Riding Hood slowly realizing what is going on. Telling more would be spoiling the best parts of the story, but this is a huge improvement over the first story, for while things like Hildehilde's backstory and everything may be original inventions, the core mystery plot makes good use of familiar elements like the magic mirror and the poisoned apple to present a fun 'battle of the wits'.
Little Red Riding Hood's quest then brings her to Hamelin in Hamelin no Saishuu Shinpan ("The Last Judgment of Hamelin"), where 45 years ago, the Pied Piper took away the town's children after the town refused to pay his reward for saving them from a plague of rats. The Pied Piper however was caught, and kept imprisoned in the town prison all this time because the laws don't allow for a death penalty. The Pied Piper has since then always played the mandelin every evening from his prison cell (they don't dare give him a pipe instrument). The people in Hamelin also always play music day and night, a kind of superstition as they are afraid of the same tragedy happening again so the idea is they'll drown out the Pied Piper's luring music. There is still a kind of curse hanging over the town though, as there are still next to no children born natively to the town. Little Red Riding Hood arrives just in time for the Hamelin Music Festival and becomes friends with some of the town council members, when on the first evening, everyone is warned: the Pied Piper has somehow escaped his prison, and killed a guard on his way out. Little Red Riding Hood has to figure out how the Pied Piper managed to escape his prison and how to catch him next. While this story is set decades after the original story, it still builds really well on the lore of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, with a town that is still visibly affected by the fact all the children were spirited away by an eerie tune almost fifty years ago. The mechanical explanation of how the Pied Piper managed to escape his prison isn't really impressive, but the explanation of why now, why he escaped after 45 years of imprisonment is good and is a good continuation of the original story.
The final story, Nakayoshi Kobuta no Mittsu no Misshitsu ("The Three Locked Rooms of the Three Little Pigs"), brings to Oinkburg, a town founded by the three little pigs. The town is divided in three sections with buildings made of straw, wood and bricks, as originally the three little pigs each built their own houses using those materials. And the whole town is full of factories, where.... other pigs work. Or technically, these are humans turned into pigs. The three little pigs have teamed up with a witch, turning humans into pigs and having them work as slaves in their straw/wood/brick factories to pay back their debts. You're supposed to be changed back into a human once you have paid back your debt, but of course, nobody has ever managed to do that. To the outside world however, the three little pigs pretend to be good businessmen who have started their own town with a good running economy, so they try to play nice to the tourists visiting the town, like Little Red Riding Hood. At least, that is only at the beginning, for Little Red Riding Hood soon notices there's a rift between the three little pigs, three brothers in fact, about how to run the town, and when one of the brothers is found dead in a straw house, she immediately suspects it's a locked room murder even though to the others, it seems just like an unfortunate accident of the victim falling on a knife. This isn't the only murder to occur in the town however, for soon a locked room murder follows inside a wooden building, and another in a brick building... This is a story that shares a lot of the points I didn't like about the opening story, in that while the idea of three locked rooms in buildings of different materials is fun, a lot of how these mysteries are resolved hinge on elements completely original to this specific story, which means they stand out and make it really easy to solve them. Both the straw and wooden locked rooms are solved within seconds, and even the brick one, which involves a brick wall being made in front of the (inward-opening) door) is solved rather too quickly, and that one is also clewed rather sloppily. There's more to this story in regards to mystery, as this story also involves the climax of the whole Pinocchio storyline, and Little Red Riding Hood herself is put in mortal peril as she's forced to confront the person who stole Pinocchio's story. This is similar to the finale to the previous collection, which also has Little Red Riding Hood having to use her wits to escape a dangerous situation, and while it's fine as a finale to the collection, it still feels a bit underwhelming in terms of surprise and cleverness.
So all in all, I thought Akazukin, Pinocchio wo Hirotte Shitai to Deau was actually the least entertaining collection of the four released until now. While I love Little Red Riding Hood as a protagonist, and I think the middle two stories are really good at staying close to the source material while also spinning a good mystery story out of it, the opening and finale stories just feel just a tad too distant from the source fairy tales/fables, adding too many original elements that stand out, making it far too easy to guess what the story will do with those elements. Whereas the Snow White and Pied Piper of Hamelin stories stick closer to the source material and build on elements already seen in the original stories, which mean these elements don't stand out nearly as much, making them more surprising when you do see how they were used to facilitate the mystery. I'll still read this series as long as Aoyagi keeps on writing them, as on the whole, it's an entertaining series, but this one was clearly not as strong as previous entries.
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