Werewolf in a Winter Wonderland

"Just the right size for the Big Bad Wolf to come down the chimney... unless he's already here."

"The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery"

The voice actor of Hajime in the television anime series of Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, Matsuno Taiki, passed away last week at the young age of 56... While unlike many other fictional anime characters, Hajime actually had seen a handful of different voice actors for various media, ranging from theatrical anime, games and audio dramas, Matsuno played the role for the longest time across the most well-known productions, so most people do associate his voice the strongest to Hajime. Really a great loss. I myself usually read the manga with Matsuno's voice in mind, which is what I also did when I read this story (I read it before Matsuno's death was announced)

Kindaichi 37-sai no Jikenbo ("The Case Files of Kindaichi, Age 37") had a short serialization hiatus because it had been replaced by the limited series Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo 30th, or The Case File of Kindaichi 30th, celebrating the franchise's thirtieth birthday, but with that series wrapping up last year, the adventures of a middle-aged Hajime reluctantly solving crimes continue. In The Werewolf Murder Case, Hajime and his assistant Marin are put in charge of providing support to a special Werewolf (the social deduction game) event. They are responsible for the logistics like welcoming all the participants and the catering, though the game itself is set-up by a different company. At the station in snowy Nagano, Hajime and Marin welcome a group of very fanatic, and well-known Werewolf players, like the influencer Mineyuki Kouta, the musician Fuyiki Gakuto and the idol Touka. Hajime drives everyone to the location where the event will take place: Schwarzdorf, an abandoned theme park themed after a quaint German forest village. They will stay in the Weiss Schloss, which consists of an East and West annex. Upon arrival, the guests all instructed to wear special robes and masks (with built-in voice changers), so they can't recognize each other. They are also each given an in-game name (Alain, Ben etc.) to be used during this game. After that, they are randomly assigned their roles within the Werewolf game (villager, werewolf etc.). One of the participants, "Henry," is assigned the task of Game Master, who will coordinate the game, so Hajime and Marin can focus on providing service. After the initial explanation of the rules, everyone is sent back to their room as the Night Phase of the game will start, where the werewolf will kill one of the villagers. Before this part of the game can start however, Hajime and Marin stumble upon the body of... Henry in the courtyard gazebo! Beneath the mask is the musician Gakuto, who has been stabbed in the chest. It seems a real Werewolf has committed a murder during this game, but the footprints in the snow in the courtyard seem to tell a curious story: snow falling from the roof had blocked the direct passageway between the east and west annex, so people can only go from one building to the other via the courtyard, but there is only one set of footsteps going from the east annex to the gazebo, with none returning. That means that the murderer can't be in the east annex: while one can go to the west annex from the gazebo without leaving any footprints in the snow due to a covered passageway, this is not the case for the east annex. So whether the murderer has a room in the east or west annex, they couldn't have gone to the east annex after the Henry murder. Hajime tries to phone the police, but their mobiles have no reception and the landline has been cut, and their van has also been tampered with. They know of course help will eventually come if they don't return as per schedule, but Hajime fears more murders will take place before they'll be saved...

It's been more than a year since I last discussed the Kindaichi Shounen series! The Werewolf Murder Case is collected in volumes 14 until 16 of Kindaichi 37-sai no Jikenbo, though I have to admit I have only read until volume 15: it's at that point the culprit starts monologuing about their motive for the murders, with the bulk of the mystery has already been solved by Hajime, so I decided to review the story already: I was planning to buy volume 16 once the story that starts there ends, together with the other necessary volumes.

As I mentioned, I have never played Werewolf myself, but I have read a few mysteries that take direct or indirect inspiration from that game (like Danganronpa Kirigiri 2), so of course, I can understand the potential of using it as a vehicle to tell a murder mystery. In this case, what I did like about the case was that it allowed for all characters to be genre savvy: they are all experts in playing Werewolf, so even after the real murder is committed, all the characters are able to come up with reasonable theories and arguments to point to or away from suspects, and it's certainly more interesting than the "I'm not staying with you in one room, one of you might be a killer!" type of character. At some times, the story tries to portray the participants a bit off, as they seem to approach the discussions about the real murder as if it were a game, with a noticable sense of excitement: Hajime does note more than a few times this is not a game and that they're dealing with a real murderer, but I felt this part fell a bit flat, as ultimately, Hajime does constantly continues the discussion on the murders, so of course, they'd approach it in the way they play the Werewolf game and use the techniques they learned there: not everyone is like Hajime and encountering a real murder every two weeks and have a specific skillset for real murders!Anyway, by having these characters, it feels like we have more delving into theories by various characters than in most conventional Kindaichi Shounen stories (save for those that have multiple detective characters of course), and in that sense, I think The Werewolf Murder Case provided an interesting set-up with far more able characters than you usually see in the series. Also: was I the only one who thought it strange some of the participants also seemed used to discussing the logic behind the footsteps, even though practicality behind the murders in a typical Werewolf game shouldn't be important? A werewolf can just kill a villager right, it's not like they have to "explain" how they got inside or away...

So in terms of the type of characters, this story was interesting, but only if the mystery was the same...

While the story starts interesting enough with all the masks, it's kind of a shame the actual murders basically take place outside the framework of the Werewolf game: not even one round of the actual game is played before Gakuto is murdered, and after that, Hajime of course cancels the game and everyone is free to take off their masks and robes. Gakuto's death isn't the only one to happen, of course, because this is a Kindaichi Shounen story, but by then, it really has nothing to do with Werewolf anymore, with tricks and situations that could have used in any nondescript setting. This was a big disappointment to me, as the Werewolf game offers so much more potential than seen in this story. At the start of the story, Hajime very briefly explains the Werewolf game to his boss, and this was a very rudimentary explanation, but that was really all you ever needed to know, as it's barely used. The main mystery revolves around Gakuto's death: the crime scene suggests the murderer must be one of the persons present in the east annex after the murder.... which of course meta-wise strongly suggests it was actually someone in the west annex, making this an impossible murder. Oddly enough, this story seems reluctant to show you a clear floorplan until relatively late in the story, though this is not really troublesome. But I think this story is far too simple when it comes to the logic pointing to the murder of Gakuto: the way the major trail of clues is laid out to point to who it was, is done so obviously on the pages, the moment the scene comes up, you know exactly what its purpose is. And because it's a one-stage clue (i.e. the clue points at one single person, instead of excluding a Y number of suspects of the total pool of X), you just instantly know who did it. From there, figuring out howdunnit is not difficult, as some parts of the story set-up and presentation stand out too much to not be involved in how it was done. There is a second murder, that also involves most characters having an alibi (a body being placed outside in the courtyard during a time when most of them were chatting together), but again, the clewing for the solution to the howdunnit is incredibly straightforward, as if writer Amagi had no idea how to properly set-up the introduction of this clue, so he just decided to just have it appear randomly on the page.  Not to mention the solution itself is very basic and not at all memorable...

Well, at least Hajime gets to do something memorable he seldom manages to do in the series, and that's cool, though I guess I still don't know what happens in the last few chapters found in volume 16...

No, The Werewolf Murder Case in volumes 14 until 16 of Kindaichi 37-sai no Jikenbo is far from being my favorite story in the series. While the idea of a real murderer taking over a game of Werewolf sounds really cool in theory, this story barely goes beyond that premise, offering a mystery story that in terms of actual content might as well have been a short story. The only thing I thought interesting, was the fact we have more characters who seemed into discussing theories regarding the murder, but that was far from enough to save this tale for me. Volume 16 with the next story is already out, but my guess it won't properly end until volume 18, so it might take another while before I discuss this series again.

Original Japanese title(s): 天樹征丸（原）、さとうふみや（画）『金田一37歳の事件簿』第14+15巻