The Witch's Curse

Fire burn and caldron bubble

"Macbeth"  

Now I think about it, it was probably the cover art that put me on the wrong foot... 

After his lover was burnt on the stakes as a witch, Rosen quit his job as a lecturer in law at Ernst University and started travelling with his companion Lili, the younger sister of his lover. During their travels, they witness a few more witch burnings, but each time, Rosen is to late to prevent another tragedy from happening. Things are different however when they arrive in a small isolated village in the Schwarzwald, where they learn a witch trial is about to start. Rosen introduces himself as someone who has been involved in witch trials before, and he is introduced to the village elder, as well as to Landsen Einstein, the lord of the region. The people of the village believe strongly in Saint Menininumus, who championed for those with disabilities and thus many people who live in the village have one, as no other village would accept such people. Rosen learns the the defendant in the upcoming witch trial is Anne, the local medicine woman and extremely attractive too. Her mother had been a medicine woman too, but she had been burnt on the stake a few years ago as a witch. People had been suspicious of Anne too all this time, but now suspicious deaths have occured in the village, which prompted direct accussations of witchcraft. The first victims were the elderly judicial officer and his wife, who suddenly died with no obvious cause, even though both were healthy people. A few days later, Galgad, a servant of the Einstein family, passed away too, and he was found with a strange burn on his chest: the mark of the witch. These three deaths in quick succession led to Anne being held captive and her death seems inevitable. Rosen however insists the matter must be investigated thorougly according to the witch laws, and Landsen Einstein seems amused by the idea, and welcomes Rosen's suggestion. While the people in the village are all convinced Anne is a witch, Rosen slowly uncovers clues that not only point at Anne's innocence, they even seem to suggest she's being scapegoated. Can Rosen however convince a whole village of witch-believers that not all is as it seems in Kimono Arata's Majo Saiban no Bengonin (2025), which also bears the English title Witch Trial Defense Attorney on the cover? 

Alright, let me start of with admitting I honestly and without any doubts at all thought this was a light novel-esque fantasy book, with a vaguely European high-fantasy setting. Turns out I was wrong. Of course, the book starts with a person called Rosen who travels with a young girl, so at first, I had no reason to assume otherwise. Perhaps I should've started doubting myself already when the book first started mentioning real country names, but it was only by the time the book started naming laws and stuff about witch trials, I realized that this book *was* indeed about witch trials in Europe in the middle ages. The book also features a bibliography list at the end, so the author definitely did his homework on the matter. The tone of the book is not gritty-realism by the way and reads easily enough, but the way it depicts how a witch trial would work, is realistic enough.

I also vaguely assumed this would be something like Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney, similiar to how Konno Tenryuu's Cinderella-jou no Satsujin ("The Cinderella Castle Murder" 2021) wore its inspiration on its sleeves. And here too I was proven wrong, and very much so. In fact, at first it bothered me quite a lot the story seemed to develop so slowly: the first third of the book is dedicated to introducing us to a time period when witch trials existed and were a real part of everyday life, showing us the village and its villagers, and showing how the villagers, with all their preconceived ideas about people, ended up accusing Anne of witchcraft (and of course, all the evidence they provide is fairly flimsy). This part is well-developed, and also introduces us to the villagers' strong belief in Saint Menininumus, which leads to a kind of "special setting" mystery. For example, Landsen Einstein and his men do not hail from the village and do not strongly believe in Saint Menininumus, unlike the local people. Landsen Einsten at least follows the traditions surrounding Saint Menininumus, but the third victim, Galgad, did not place an anti-witch protection charm at his door, like all other people in the village did. This, according to the villagers, is proof a witch (Anne) killed him: it was the only house in the village not under the protection of Saint Menininumus. It is this belief in the traditions surrounding Saint Menininumus that also forms an obstable to Rosen's investigations at first. He is so convinced of his right and of the power of logic and reasoning, he completely neglects the human psychology that forms the foundation to the accusation towards Anne and his efforts to prove he is right, only end up hurting his own case with the villagers as they sense he's dismissive of their ideas and their saint. This belief in Saint Menininumus works effective as a "special setting", because while there are not many specific rules, the reader can easily understand what limitations this strong belief provides to Rosen's investigations and the willingness of villagers to help him.

This is also why the book is not like Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney in terms of story structure. The trial doesn't happen until the very end in fact and is relatively short. Yet it is hard to say much of the book is truly dedicated to a thorough investigation of the deaths. Mood-setting is definitely more important at first: important clues only come into Rosen's possession relatively late, and that's only because it's only then he finally gets a true chance to investigate vital pieces of evidence. Most of the story is more focused on seeing Rosen finding opportunities to actually conduct a true investigation, which actually makes sense as everyone in the village is already convinced Anne's a witch, and while Landsen would find it interesting to see Rosen turn everything around, it's not like he cares whether Anne's convicted or not, as long as peace is restored in his village. Any efforts by Rosen to investigate the case have to be considered carefully, as he himself might be accused of being a witch, or at least an ally of the witch, too. The book is good at portraying this sense of dread, where anyone might be accused of witchcraft or being in cahoots with a witch with one wrong move.

As a mystery, the plot is less built around physical evidence and interpretation of them, and more about the logic derived from the pyschology of the involved characters. If Anne were a witch, would she have done X (as shown by the crime scene) even though she knew condition Y? If Galgad wasn't killed by a witch, what motive would a murderer have to kill him? The mystery crafted by Kimono makes great use of the unique "witches are real and have to burnt on the stake!" psychology portrayed in this book, with good logical deductions based on the actions of characters, considering their beliefs and fears. It is a mystery built with elements that only work in this world and that is always when a mystery novel makes the most impression on me, when it's a mystery that works in, and unique to the world depicted (i.e. in Ellery Queen mystery novels everything has to be rational and actors always act logical for their own causes, so the longer deduction chains work perfectly for that world). Majo Saiban no Bengonin works as a mystery because it is set in a remote village in Medieval Europe when people believed in witches.

The epilogue addresses a few more matters not discussed in the actual witch trial, which adds a completely new angle to the matter too. I think some people might not like the added information: I myself think that while mystery-wise, the epilogue adds cool bits and pieces, I think the overall message of the epilogue falls a bit flat, with the overall message of the book being stronger and more consistent up until the epilogue. I do like the little clues and odd passages being addressed properly in the epilogue though. 

I enjoyed Majo Saiban no Bengonin a lot on the whole though. Whereas there is mystery fiction out there that utilize the theme of witch trials, they are usually fantasy-inclined, so it's interesting to have a book that's actually based on European history. Because of the structure of the book, I am a bit reluctant to call it a true courtroom drama, as most of the relevant plot developments don't even take place in the actual witch trial, but nonetheless, I enjoyed the book a lot due to its good take on the theme and I look forward to future works by author Kimino, as this was actually their debut novel!

The Third Bullet

"Sometimes, I just want to put this gun right against her head, and ever so gently, pull the trigger."

"Death on the Nile" (1978 film)

Huh, it's been over 13 years since I first heard about this book, and through that the Mikikaze series... and I end up reading this one as the last of the novels in the series...

Minami Mikikaze, professional photographer and amateur detective, is asked by his high school friend Kazuya for desperate help: Kazuya is the defendant in a double murder case, and the prosecution's case against him is very strong, as he was found together with the two victims inside an apartment room which was locked from the inside. The two victims were ex-convicts, who were working for a company that was actively recruiting ex-convicts to help them get their lives on the rails again. When they didn't show up for work, their boss went to the apartment room, but found it locked with the key, latch and door chain, so the building's caretaker had to break open the door. Inside, they found the two men shot through their head, one lying near the door, the other sitting on a sofa, with an unconscious Kazuya sitting next to him and the pistol lying on the floor. Based on what the three men were wearing, it seemed like they were planning to commit a robbery, but Kazuya denies everything: he knew the two men, because he once helped his brother-in-law who had written an article on the company's commendable efforts to help ex-convicts on their way back into society, but he swears he was not planning something criminal with them: he only had something to discuss with them, but after drinking something, he lost consciousness, so he claims to have no idea why the two men were shot to death, and why the door was locked thrice. The police investigation however fingers Kazuya as the culprit and some months later, the case is all ready to be handled in the court, at which point Kazuya asks Mikikaze to help solve this locked room mystery. Mikikaze manages to get hold of a lead, which leads him to the United States to visit a certain witness, but while talking with this witness, he's knocked out by something in his drink, and when he wakes up... he finds himself lying next to the dead witness he was talking to, in a locked room! Finding himself in the exact predicament as his friend, Mikikaze knows he's on the right track, but can he save both himself and Kazuya in Tsukatou Hajime's F no Madan ("The Magic Bullet of F" 2004)?

F no Madan is the second novel in the Minami Mikikaze series following Agni no Atsui Natsu, and with that, I have now read all the full-length novels in this series (I still have to read two short story collections). Misshitsu Kingdom (Kingdom of the Locked Room) is still by far the best one in the series by the way, but this novel too will probably interest locked room murder enthusiasts, as they will probably recognize the set-up of this novel: yes, this is Tsukatou's take on Carter Dickson's The Judas Window, focusing on the trial of a young man accused of murder because they were found in a locked room, with a murder victim in the same room. Of course, the similarities are in the base setting, as here we don't have a locked room in a large country house, but a very urban setting, with a triple-locked apartment in a city just across a giant department store. And there's the mirrored situation, where Mikikaze visits a witness at a farm in the American countryside and wakes up in a room with a dead body, but the twist here is that Mikikaze is aware the murderer is outside the room and busy "completing" the locked room situation. The book jumps back and forth in time, with the Mikikaze segments being in the present/real-time, and the segments that go over how Kazuya was discovered in the room and the subsequent investigations by his attorney set a few months before that. As you can understand, the Mikikaze segments are far more exciting, as Mikikaze knows the murderer is busy setting things up to make him into a scapegoat, but the fact he's been drugged and his own weak heart (and the fact the murderer is likely armed) prevent him from doing anything reckless to apprehend the killer, even if he knows the murderer is still in the house.

The book itself doesn't hide the fact it's basically a tribute to The Judas Window by the way, and I do recommend reading that one first before reading F no Madan. While the latter does not explicitly spoil the former, it is clearly written as a modern take, and while Tsukatou adds a lot of original, and frankly told very clever twists to it, I think you do get more out of it if you know the underlying context too. 

Purely seen as a locked room mystery, I think that F no Madan has both really clever parts, but also parts that do demand the reader to just with certain things. As a modern take on The Judas Window for example, I think the concept Tsukatou used is really clever, and the way it's a surprisingly safe method for the murderer to commit a double murder in a triple-locked room is quite memorable. However, to get everything into position, the murderer would need to manipulate a lot of moving parts and actors, and especially the latter part feels a bit unbelievable at times. This isn't a murderer who subtly manages to force someone to act in a way that benefits them, this is almost truly being a puppeteer, because it's quite unbelievable different actors would all exactly act in the way the murderer would need them to act without even one moment of hesitation. So in that sense, the locked room situation does feel a bit cheap, as too much works out for the benefit of the killer, simply because it needs to do so. On the other hand, I really love some of the preparations the murderer did do in order to make things go the way they needed to: I still don't think his preparations would've ensured everything would go the way they needed, but that one action they did explicitly take beforehand, in order to ensure at least two actions would be taken by one of the people they needed to manipulate, was done really clever, and worked perfectly to strengthen the trick of the triple locked room. That part alone does make this a memorable locked room, as it shows Tsukatou's eye for detail.

The present-day situation, where Mikikaze finds himself trying to fight the sleeping drugs he's been fed and figure out how to escape the room, without alerting the killer in the house, is an exciting read, and it does hold hints that are also applicable to the Kazuya locked room, but the story moves very slowly in those segments and ultimately, this part is far more simple than the Kazuya locked room, so it's not as surprising mystery-wise. It's more a grand way to allow Mikikaze to solve things and confront the killer.

While the book feels a bit artificial due to the machinations of the killer going so perfectly, F no Madan does happen to also be the one book in this series where Tsukatou clearly tries to work more on characterization and even tackles social school problems: a lot of the Kazuya-focused chapters focus on Kazuya and his stance in life: part of the mystery revolves around the question why he's so reluctant to talk about why he was visiting the two victims, if he was not involved in anything criminal and we learn a lot about his views on societal problems. I thought these parts were a bit too longwinded, but there's an interesting subplot hidden here that deals with his motive for keeping silent, and while it's not really presented as a "solvable" problem, the idea itself is good. Personally, I could've done with a tighter plot with less of the character musings, but your mileage may vary. I do have to admit I was surprised that early on in the book, we get a diagram of the crime scene, and then the narrative moves more to exploring Kazuya's character and his relations to everyone, and when the story returns to the locked room, we get the crime scene diagram again... and I do mean again, because it's the exact same diagram. As if Tsukatou himself suddenly realized he had drifted from the main mystery too much and feared the reader might've forgotten about it, so he showed you the same picture twice to jog your memory.

Also: for some reason the book does not really explain what the "F" in the title means..

Personally, I liked F no Madan the least of all the Mikikaze novels, though that's not very surprising: it's hard to beat the brilliant combination of the locked room mystery with Ellery Queen-esque deductions of Misshitsu Kingdom, of course I'm going to like the even more Ellery Queen-inspired Aru Girishia Hitsugi no Nazo ("A Greek Coffin Mystery), and in the end I prefer the brevity and focus on the mystery of Agni no Atsui Natsu simply better than the more prosey F no Madan, but readers who like more characterization, or the way the book builds clearly on The Judas Window might feel very differently. I do think it's a decent locked room mystery, and definitely worth a read if you have already read The Judas Window.

Original Japanese title(s): 柄刀一『Fの魔弾』

Invisible Green

To do such a thing would be to transcend magic. And I beheld, unclouded by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility might mean to a man—the mystery, the power, the freedom.

"The Invisible Man"

For some reason I thought the original 2020 paperback release of this book had a different cover with a more greenish tint, and the 2022 pocket release had similar, but different art with a more blueish tone, but it turns out they have the exact same cover...

I quite enjoyed the two novels by Atsukawa Tatsumi I read previously, so it was only a matter of time before I would try out his short stories, as I tend to prefer the the short story format when it comes to mystery fiction. Toumei Ningen wa Misshitsu ni Hisomu ("An Invisible Person is Lurking in the Locked Room") was originally published in 2020 and consists of four short mystery stories, which are all unrelated to each other. The only connection between the various stories is that each story has a clear source of inspiration: each story is book-ended with a short bibliography with the stories that served as inspiration or helped deepen his tale. Sometimes, the stories are directly based on the premise of the main inspiration source, sometimes it's just a single sentence that helped this imagination. If I had to voice a "complaint" about this short story collection however, is perhaps that it's rather short, and not having a real connecting theme between the four stories means that while I did generally enjoy all of them, the book as a whole doesn't really leave much of an impression. It's over before you know it and perhaps works well as an 'inbetweener' between longer books, but I think that for example in the future, if I were to refer back to this work, I am more likely to recommend a specific story from this collection, rather than the collection as a whole because everything is so disconnected away. This doesn't mean the book is bad, the opposite actually, but it somehow still lacks impact because it's all over too soon.

The title and opening story Toumei Ningen wa Misshitsu ni Hisomu ("An Invisible Person is Lurking in the Locked Room") is inspired by H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man and tells about a worldwide disease which makes people invisible. People slowly turn completely invisible, including their bodily fluids and human waste and for the moment, No permanent cure has been found yet, and society has learned to adapt to the people with invisibility condition. Modern society generally only works if everyone is visible, for even doing groceries or walking down the street can be difficult if people can't see you and constantly walk into you, so invisible people are expected to either use make-up to become visible, or take daily inhibitor pills that turn them visible again, The story starts with narration by an invisible married woman, who one day learns a professor at a nearby university is close to producing a permanent cure to the invisibility disease. The woman decides she needs to kill the professor and destroy his research, and plans his murder: her plan involves parking near the university, undress completely and in her invisible state, sneak inside the lab offices and kill the professor. She meticulously plans her deed, plotting which route to take so she won't bump into people, stop taking her inhibitor pills early in the week so she becomes invsible again, but masking that fact by wearing make-up and even making sure to have an easy to digest breakfast, as until the food is digested, you'd see food flying around. The woman manages to slip in the lab and indeed kills the professor, but then loud cries come from the other side of the door. At that moment, we switch to the viewpoint of the husband, who first thought his wife might be cheating on him and hired a private detective to trail her, and eventually, the two realized the woman was planning to kill the professor. They arrived at the lab just after the murder occured, and together with two students, they enter the room and immediately lock it behind them, for they know the murderer, the invisible murderer must still be inside the room. And thus starts a game of cat and mouse, where the four men try to catch the invisible murderer hiding in the lab, while our murderer knows that if she manages to escape this locked room, they can never prove she killed the professor.

An incredibly fun premise and it's almost a shame this is a short story, because there is a lot of potential for more! Because of the relatively short length of the tale, the game of cat and mouse is over pretty soon, but it's a fun one: the four men know the murderer is somewhere in the room as the professor is dead and nobody had opened the door since he was last seen alive by his students, but it's a pretty spacious lab with desks for the various students, so how are they going to find an invisible person here? They try all kinds of things to search the spacious room, but also have to be careful she doesn't attack them suddenly in an attempt to escape. Meanwhile, the invisible woman has staked all her bets on one attempt to escape this room, and it's a pretty daring one and while after a while, you probably start to guess what she's doing, it's a perfectly well-clewed solution to her situation. But it's all over rather soon, and you just wish Atsukawa had done more with the idea of the invisibility disease. Perhaps as a follow-up novel?

Rokunin no Nekkyou Suru Nihonjin ("Six Enthusiastic Japanese") is inspired by Mitani Kouki's play 12nin no Yasashii Nihonjin ("Twelve Gentle Japanese"), itself a parody of the film Twelve Angry Men. In Twelve Angry Men, we had jury members in a murder trial who were immediately convinced of the defendant's guilt, 12nin no Yasashii Nihonjin started with the jury members all being convinced the defendant is not guilty, so what is this story about? The narrator is a professional judge, who together with two other professional judges and six lay judges are deliberating over a murder trial. The defendant and victim were both fans of the idol group Cutie Girls, and they had been travelling together to attend to a two-day event of Cutie Girls. The victim had been murdered in their room at an inn, apparently they were watching a DVD of Cutie Girls together when they started arguing resulting in an unfortunate lethal blow. Initially, most lay judges seem to agree the defendant is guilty as he has confessed to the crime, but one isn't convinced, and as he starts zooming in on all kinds of facts at the crime scene, the others are slowly won over and together, they arrive at a rather surprising solution... This story is really funny, and definitely intended as a kind of parody. The crime scene is rather unique in that the story utilizes a lot of "idol otaku props", like glow sticks, idol calls and more, and you get surprisingly deep deduction chains about something like the proper way to store a glow stick. The big climax of the story is really something you have to behold, and while I think that the individual deductions are not super memorable, the "punchline" of this story definitely is.

Touchou Sareta Satsujin ("The Tapped Murder") introduces us to Mimika, a young woman who works at a detective agency and who has superior powers of hearing, being able to make out the smallest of noises. But that's all she can do however, so usually, it is her boss who has to make the connections based on the evidence Mimika heard. Their current case however, is special. For the last week, they had been investigating Kunisaki Chiharu, whose husband suspected she was cheating on him. With the help of the husband, they planted a teddy bear with a sound recorder inside it in the sitting room, but one day Chiharu was killed in the sitting room. When the teddy bear was discovered, the detective agency of course became a momentary target of investigation by the police, so now Mimika's boss wants Mimika to help clear their name. The teddy bear had indeed recorded the moment of the actual murder, and while listening to the audio file, Mimika hears a faint dissonant tone, but she can't figure out what the noise exactly is. Because they know the husband himself was actually also cheating on his wife himself, they suspect he might be the murderer, and they come up with an excuse to visit the apartment and the crime scene again, with Mimika trying to figure out what the dissonant tone was she heard during the murder and whether it can help them solve this case. This is a story that I really would have wanted to experience as an audio drama! The mystery of the dissonant tone and other hidden "audio" clues in the audio file are all fairly clever, though I do think more clues pointing directly to the murderer would've been nice, but reading about these clues you were supposed to hear does make it feel a bit less impressive than I think it should be. Definitely a fun take for a mystery story though. In fact, it's a shame you don't really have "direct-to-audio" mystery fiction...

Dai 13-gou Senshitsu Kara no Dasshutsu ("Escape from Cabin 13") is inspired by Jacques Futrelle's The Problem of Cell 13, but with a very modern twist: escape rooms! Kaito is a high school student who is attending a special invitation-only preview of an escape room event of the popular series Great Detective Sakuragi. The murder game event is held on a ship and has the participants solve a series of puzzles which will eventually lead them to the identity of the murderer. At the event, Kaito runs into his classmate Masaru, with whom he has a kind of a rivalry going. Masaru and his younger brother Suguru are sons of a wealthy family who happen to be sponsoring this event, which landed them the special invitations. During the game however, Kaito and Suguru are abducted by men dressed as sailors and held captive in Cabin 13, while for some reason Masaru keeps on playing the escape room game. Why were Kaito and Suguru captured, can they escape their predicement and why is Masaru still playing the game? I believe this is the longest story in the collection, and it is pretty "busy": we have Kaito and Suguru trying to figure out how to escape the cabin, but meanwhile Masaru is playing the escape room event as planned, so we get the four puzzles in the event to solve ourselves too. Of course, the big surprise is to see how these two plotlines eventually connect back together again, and while I do like the basic ideas behind this story, it somehow didn't quite work for me. The plot of the story is a bit reminscent of Detective Conan treasure hunts, with a few puzzles with a hidden meaning behind them, and while I like the big connection that is revealed, the actual puzzles of the escape room didn't really interest me (they are also discussed rather briefly), while the escape attempts from Cabin 13 also move rather slowly. 

As mentioned in the introduction, I think Toumei Ningen wa Misshitsu ni Hisomu on the whole has some pretty good stories: three of the four I really like, and I don't really dislike the last either. But the stories are all very short, so especially the first story feels like it has an underutilized premise and because the book is so short, I also kinda hesitate recommending this in this specific form, as a short story collection. I will gladly point to the title story if I happen to be talking about invisible murderers in the future, but perhaps some of these stories will make their way into an anthology or something like that, and you might as well read them there then. 

Original Japanese title(s): 阿津川辰海『透明人間は密室に潜む』:「透明人間は密室に潜む」/「六人の熱狂する日本人」/「盗聴された殺人」/「第13号船室からの脱出」

Cross Purposes

「本当のことを言わねぇのが人間だ」

『羅生門』

 

"It's human to lie."

"Rashomon"

Finished the console original arc Kageboushi (the Answer chapter to Someutsushi) of Higurashi: When They Cry, so added my thoughts on how it involves the main mystery to the memo page for my playthrough of Higurashi: When They Cry. The chapters are only getting longer and longer now and I've been reading Higurashi for over a month now, so I'll probably slow down a bit now, because it does take up a lot of time... I do hope I'll be done with the main story by the time Haru Yukite Retrotica (The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story) releases in May...

There are prolific writers, and then there was Nishimura Kyoutarou. He is a household name in Japan when it comes to mystery fiction, which isn't strange onsidering the massive media output that is associated with his name. His Wikipedia page records nearly 650 books (!!!) And that includes short story collections, so that's even more stories, and anyone who's been in a Japanese bookstore, especially the used bookshops, will probably recall those long, long rows of Nishimura books you'll always find there. But that is not all: there have been countless of adaptations of his work for television, ranging from series to television films and there was a time where you'd find his name every week in the television schedule, as there'd always be a rerun of an old Nishimura Kyoutarou television film somewhere in the early afternoon. Even gamers will know the name, as there have been several games based on his work, especially in the Famicom (NES) era. It's simply impossible to not have heard of Nishimura Kyoutarou if you've been into Japanese mystery fiction somewhere in the last 40, 50 years, and even people with no interest in mystery fiction will know the name: so much has his name become part of "normal" Japanese popular culture. 

The unbelievable quantity of his output of course also influenced the quality of his work:  a lot of those nearly 650 books feel very samey and uninspired. There's a reason why everyone associated Nishimura with Stereotypical Nishimura Kyoutarou Story: a story starring Inspector Totsugawa and his team of detectives like Kame investigating a murder which will require Totsugawa's men to travel by train to a faraway destination and/or the victim/culprit used the train and the detectives have to figure out how the use trains is connected to the murder (alibi tricks etc.). If you do the association game with "Nishimura Kyoutarou", nine out of ten times you'll get "Trains" as the response. But while the bulk of Nishimura Kyoutarou's output is often assumed to be uninspired, by-the-numbers stories that just retell the same ideas in a slightly different way, his earlier output can be quite interesting. Koroshi no Soukyokusen was genuinely fun as an And Then There Were None-inspired novel and the crossover series with Ellery Queen, Maigret, Poirot and Akechi Kogorou is always entertaining.

Nishimura Kyoutarou sadly enough passed away earlier this month at age 91, so I decided to pick up one of his earlier, and better received puzzlers: Shichinin no Shounin ("The Seven Witnesses", 1977) is an Inspector Totsugawa novel, though it feels nothing like a Totsugawa story in terms of set-up. The book opens with Totsugawa waking up with an enormous headache, and he finds himself... in a recreation of a street, built in the middle of a small island. The intersection of two streets has been meticulously recreated here, complete with all the stores (with store inventory), parked cars and apartments. Totsugawa finds seven people who had also been knocked out the previous night and brought here: some of the people actually live or work along this intersection and can even show Totsugawa their rooms or shops, while others don't live here, but they do remember this place: one year ago, a murder took place around midnight at this intersection, and all seven people (besides Totsugawa) were witnesses in that case. Their testimonies eventually put young hoodlum Sasaki Nobuo behind bars: some of the witnesses had seen him have a fight with a fellow customer in a bar, others saw him stab the victim outside on the street with his own knife and yet others saw him flee the scene with the knife and the victim's wallet. It is at that point that an elderly man reveals himself to the eight persons on the island: Sasaki Yuuzou is the father of Nobuo. He had left Nobuo and his mother when Nobuo was young and had been working in Brazil, where he had been succesful, but upon return to Japan last year, he learned his son had died in prison, but that Nobuo had always maintained that he did not commit the murder, despite the testimonies of the seven witnesses. That is why Sasaki used his fortune to meticulously recreate the entire intersection on this small island and abducted the seven witnesses: he truly believes his son had been innocent, so there must be a mistake in the testimonies and he wants the witnesses to go over their own testimonies once again, with Totsugawa acting as a referee. The rifle held by Sasaki leaves the seven witnesses little choice, even though each of them swears their testimonies at the trial were accurate, but Sasaki's done his homework and little by little, he manages to point out little contradictions in each testimony. But while the party is going over the old testimonies, one of them is killed, and because they're all alone on this small island, it is clear that the murderer has to be one of them. 

Someone not content with the original verdict abducting witnesses to do a non-official reexamination/retrial? Yep, that reminded me of Settled Out of Court. Which reminds me I should really read more by Henry Cecil...

Shichinin no Shounin feels nothing like what I would expect from a Totsugawa novel: no trains, instead of an urban setting we have a closed circle situation on a small island and ultimately, Totsugawa can't even do much but look on while Sasaki's forcing everyone go over their testimonies again and pointing out contradictions in their stories. In fact, it wouldn't really take that much of an effort to rewrite this story to leave out Totsugawa's presence. It's definitely not the book I'd tell you to read if you wanted to read a Totsugawa novel, but I'd definitely recommend you to read Shichinin no Shounin if you were interested in Nishimura's more interesting mystery novels, as this one defnitely is one.

With Sasaki and his rifle cross-examining each witness' testimony and slowly poking small holes in each of them, I was of course reminded of Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney games while I was reading this book, and I think that is also why I feel the execution of this book doesn't quite match the potential of the premise. The book is set-up in "testimonies", with Sasaki going over each of the seven testionies in turn. So he starts in the bar, where the owner of the bar and another customer saw how Nobuo had been arguing with the later victim and how after the victim left the bar, Nobuo went out too. As Sasaki listens to them, he reveals he had used this year to investigate the witnesses and the exact circumstances of that fateful night, so he then slowly reveals information that contradicts the witnesses' testimonies at specific points, usually not very important on its own, but having consequences for later testimonies. So then he moves on to the next witness (for example, those who saw him leave the bar and go after the victim), rinse and repeat. And the way Sasaki does this is fairly entertaining, pouncing like Columbo on very small points to pull out a bigger revelation. But the problem is: Sasaki is at an advantage here. The reader doesn't learn the new information Sasaki has uncovered, until he reveals it to everyone and confronts the witness with his findings/his suspicions, and Totsugawa too can only listen to whatever theories Sasaki has. Ultimately, Sasaki is proven correct on all his small points, slowly changing the testimonies of each witness, and while seeing this happen is fun, it's a bit frustrating the reader is never allowed to take on the puzzle themselves. You never get a chance to figure out the contradictions yourself because the relevant information isn't given to you beforehand, so all you do is watch Sasaki do all the heavy lifting. The contradictions ultimately are pretty solvable for readers if the relevant information had been presented beforehand in some manner, so it's a shame we never get a chance to solve the thing ourselves, especially as it's quite satisfying to see how all the smaller contradictions add up to something bigger. The type of contradictions and the "difficulty level" is about what you'd expect from one of the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney games, which is exactly why I felt this was a missed opportunity: even with the exact same story and contradictions, the book could have been written in a more interactive way, rather the rather passive mode it now has. This extends to Totsugawa's role in this book, who most of the time is just standing there and listening to Sasaki's theories just like us.

Sasaki is focused on slowly poking holes in the testimonies and trying to find a way to prove his deceased son's innocence, but the witnesses also get a few breaks in between, and it is during one of this breaks, when everybody is somewhere else on the island, one of the witnesses is killed. Obviously, everyone suspects Sasaki did it to get revenge on the witnesses for putting his son behind bars and ultimately "killing" him, but Sasaki denies the crime, and Totsugawa too at least feels there's not nearly enough evidence to implciate Sasaki alone. But they are alone on this island, meaning the murderer must be one of the witnesses then, but why would any of them want to kill another of the witnesses, as the seven people basically don't know each other and only saw each other once, at the trial. It's here Totsugawa finally gets something to do, as he tries to protect Sasaki from the other witnesses, and the other way around. There are some interesting deductions regarding the "current" murderer near the end of the book, like about the motive and the murder weapon used, but there's also a large part of the story that is basically just Totsugawa making wild guesses and the only reason the current murderer is caught in the end is because they decided to react to Totsugawa's baseless accussations rather than just ignoring him, so the ending feels a bit weak/forced, There are some moments where the current murder ties in to the murder one year ago in interesting ways, but the focus is definitely on the past case.

Overall though, I think Shichinin no Shounin is an amusing courtroom drama-style mystery novel in the same vein as 12 Angry Men, Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney or something like Columbo, even if the book is not actually set in the courtroom. Seeing how a lot of smaller contradictions add up to one bigger reveal is always satisfying, and this book is no exception. It's just that I think this book could have been even more fun if the plot had been presented in a more interactive way, allowing the reader some time to contemplate the evidence and figure out the contradictions themselves too, instead of just listening to Sasaki playing the great detective. But still, this was a good early Nishimura novel and one I'd recommend if you'd want to read a detective novel by Nishimura that doesn't feel like just a standard formula.

Original Japanese title(s): 西村京太郎『七人の証人』

Sabotage at Sports City

All that glisters is not gold

"The Merchant of Venice"

I've always had a weakness for murders mysteries where the crime occurs during a public event like a sports match, though I guess I haven't seen many where the crime occurs during the award ceremony...

Defense attorney Naruhodou Ryuuichi enters the Judicial Olympics as a contestant because his assistant Mayoi has set her eyes on the special tour of entertainment parks all around the world awarded to the gold medalist. The Judicial Olympics are organized by the International Judicial Federation to determine the ace attorney-at-law of the world. Naruhodou is surprised to see that his old opponent, the prosecutor Godot, is head director of the Judicial Olympics, but also to spot other familar faces among his fellow participants, like his rival Mitsurugi Reiji and the whip-carrying prosecutor Karuma Mei. Naruhodou learns from Mitsurugi that there have always been shady rumors about the International Judicial Federation and that he's making use of this special event to investigate the Federation. The contestants compete in several weird competitions like a rap courtroom battle and dance-offs, and after several days, the winner of the Judicial Olympics is finally determined. But right after the winner is given the gold medal, one of the contestants is murdered on the ceremonial stage. At first, it appears clear as day that the protestors against the IJC who jumped on stage with the knife in her hand committed the murder, but Naruhodou isn't quite convinced. The IJC too wants to play an open hand and it's agreed that the suspect's trial will be broadcast live on television, with Naruhodou as her attorney. Can he find out what really happened in the 2019 stage play Gyakuten Saiban: Gyakuten no Gold Medal ("Turnabout Trial - Turnabout Gold Medal")?

If you read this blog often, it's impossible to not know the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney franchise, as it's featured a lot here. While it started out in 2001 as a comedic mystery adventure game series starring a defense attorney defying unsurmountable odds in crazy trial, it's grown to be a multimedia franchise, with spin-off games (like this and this one), an anime, manga,  musicals, novels, drama CDs, and stage plays. Three stage plays were performed between 2014-2016, being Gyakuten Saiban – Gyakuten no Spotlight (“Turnabout Trial - Turnabout Spotlight”), Gyakuten Saiban – Saraba Gyakuten (“Turnabout Trial – Farewell, My Turnabout”) and Gyakuten Kenji -  Gyakuten no Teleportation ("Turnabout Prosecutor - Turnabout Teleportation"): all three of these plays were produced by the same company and featured more-or-less the same cast. Gyakuten Saiban: Gyakuten no Gold Medal however features a new cast and also feels quite different from the previous three plays.

With so much spin-off material available, it shouldn't surprise when I tell you that some of this material is designed to attract new audience, while other media is pure fanservice that'll mostly only appeal to existing fans. The live-action film and the manga for example are obviously designed to appeal to a wider audience, hoping to capture new viewers from a new medium and bringing them back to the original games, but the stage plays have always been produced with existing fans in mind, which is pretty logical considering the limited number of viewers a small stage play can attract. The stage plays were full of inside jokes, with familiar characters being put in new situations to entertain the viewers and motions or scenes made to invoke the feeling ofthe original games. But still, I'd say the previous stage plays were also workable as standalone mystery plays (especially the first and third one), with plots that were relatively focused on the core story and not just character interactions.

Gyakuten Saiban: Gyakuten no Gold Medal however seems more focused on fanservice than the previous plays, resulting in a play that might be entertaining for existing fans of the genre, but it's not going to be that interesting for those who are primarily looking for a mystery stage play. The play is a bit over two hours long, but the first hour is basically just fanservice: the Judicial Olympics are just an excuse to see the familiar characters in situations you'd otherwise see them in, like a rap battle or a catwalk competition. While I'm a fan of the franchise, I've always been more interested in Gyakuten Saiban as a mystery franchise rather than as a character-focused drama, so while the idea of Naruhodo rapping might be fun, I was utterly bored for the first hour or so because basically nothing of importance occurs in regards to the mystery plot. One or two scenes might've been okay, but an hour long of 'hahaha, look at our characters in these wacky scenes!' is too much for me.

The murder finally happens during the award ceremony of the Judicial Olympics, but the mystery plot this time is not particularly interesting, to be honest. Gyakuten Saiban is at its best by pointing out little contradictions one after after, the argument slowly crawls towards a grand reveal. What made the games fun was that the contradictions were solvable by the player themselves using the evidence available to them and that that it showed how by even solving relatively easy contradictions, you could eventually reveal a greater picture. In Gyakuten Saiban: Gyakuten no Gold Medal however, a lot of the deductive moments that could have been more memorable, fail to be really impressive, as often, the 'evidence' needed to contradict a point is either kept completely out of sight or tucked away in a tiny corner on the set, so when Naruhodou suddenly says that something's wrong and shows the evidence to back his story up, the viewer is not impressed by his deductions, but just wondering where the hell that evidence just came from because it surely hadn't been shown to the viewer yet. At other times, the story tries to be clever with 'in plain sight' clues that just fall flat because the logical jumps to them cover too much ground. Ultimately, when you look solely at the mystery of the man who got stabbed at the ceremony and the circumstances leading up to that, it's disappointingly minor and easy to see through.

A sequel to this play, with the same cast, was originally going to be performed in spring 2020 by the way, but it was put on hold due to the pandemic. For the moment, it seems they still plan to do it whenever it's possible, but the story introduction at least makes it sound they'll stick to the more fanservice-focused approach with that play too...

So unlike some of the previous stage plays in this franchise, I'd say Gyakuten Saiban: Gyakuten no Gold Medal is really just for the existing fans, and not worth watching if you're not familiar with the franchise and only looking for an interesting mystery play. As a detective story, there's just too little that manages to impress, with too much distractions going on that, resulting in something that's just so uninspired and contrived you're wondering why it also needed an hour of fanservice as a set-up. Your mileage may be very different if you're a fan of the characters of the series and want to see them thrown in all kinds of crazy situations, but even then it's hard to deny the core mystery plot feels like it's playing second fiddle to the fanservice

Original Japanese title(s): 『逆転裁判　逆転のGold Medal』

I Just Didn't Do It

‘We were thirteen. Some fellow failed at the last minute. We never noticed till just the end of dinner.’

"Lord Edgware Dies"

Anyone seen the movie I Just Didn't Do It? (Soredemo Boku wa Yatteinai). I remember we watched it in class while I was studying in Japan, which was... ages ago.

While there are certainly also merits to analyzing works of fiction as being pieces of art on their own, as completely independent, standalone creations, I always read mystery fiction with the awareness that a certain work is just one part of a larger context, with, ideally, more recent works building on, and going beyond what previous works in the genre have done. The mystery fiction genre has always been a very meta-conscious one, so if you're just going to copy an idea from G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown series for your mystery story in 2020, readers will be aware of that, and will likely take that with them in their final thoughts on the work. Of course, it's impossible for anyone to know all stories that have ever been written, so it's quite possible that a best-selling puzzle plot detective story published in English in 2020 turns out to have the exact plot as a story originally written in Tibet in 1920, only that the latter never manages to gain as much attention due to lack of translations/lack of readers etc. But in general, whenever I read a mystery story, I do tend to compare it to all the stories I have read previously: sometimes elements are used exactly the same, sometimes a story does something surprisingly different with the same basic elements, etc. Especially with popular tropes like the locked room mystery etc., you're usually inclined to see connections between the work in question and other stories. But context also means time: when was a book first published and what was "the normal" back then, and in what way is that utilized in the story? For example, Queen's The Tragedy of X has a pretty famous dying message that probably made more sense back then, but people nowadays are not likely to guess the meaning of that.

Ashibe Taku's Juusanbanme no Baishinin ("The 13th Juror", 1998) is a novel that was ahead of its time, even too much perhaps, in a way: so many elements seem less surprising or innovative now, but it must've been an incredibly original mystery novel when it was first published in 1998. After a short prologue that talks about an unforeseen disaster at a nuclear reactor (yep, long before 2011's Fukushima disaster), the reader is introduced to Takami Ryouichi, a young man without much luck in his life. One day, he's approached by an acquaintance in the publishing world with a very curious offer. This Funai is working on a series of non-fiction documentary novels supervised by none other than the legendary journalist/non-fiction writer Kohinata Akira and they want Ryouichi, aspiring writer himself, to be their writer for their project on miscarriages of justice. They'll fabricate a murder case and frame Ryouichi for the fictional crime. The expectation is that the police and Ministry of Justice will jump on the flimsy falsified evidence pointing to Ryouichi, and when the time's ripe, they'll release the evidence to show how Ryouichi had been framed by the authorities for a crime that never even happened. Ryouichi will then write the book based on his own experiences as a murder suspect. Ryouichi agrees, and undergoes a special medical procedure that will allow them to even fool the police's DNA examination. The "murder" is played out by arranging to have a certain house to be under observation by a third party. They'll make it seem like a woman enters the house, followed by Ryouichi. He'll make a lot of ruckus and leave evidence suggesting a murder and then flee the house. The plan is executed as such and soon after, Ryouichi is paid a visit by the police. But to his great surprise, he's not only being investigated for the fabricated murder, but also for the rape and murder of a woman several months ago: not only did the M.O. of the fabricated murder correspond to the actual murder earlier, Ryouichi's DNA also matched that of the culprit in the rape murder. Ryouichi's utterly confused by this turn of events, as his plans to be falsely accused of a crime he didn't commit, turn to an actual case of being falsely accused of a crime he didn't commit. Luckily for him, the attorney Morie Shunsaku, who happened to be one of the people who had been observing the house, takes an interest in this case and intends to save his client in the courtroom. But Morie must not forget that this trial is different from others: it's also the very first trial with jurors in the region, which means he must play the game differently this time.

Ashibe Taku has a tendency to use his series detective Morie Shunsaku for a variety of story types. You have stories where Morie's like those old master detectives solving crimes in creepy manorsin the middle of nowhere with weird gimmicks like hidden passages, like in Wadokei no Yakata no Satsujin. Young and upcoming reporter/amateur detectives solving impossible crimes? Done that. Historical and bibliomysteries? Yep, got that covered. Great detective versus the great criminal? Yes. Science-fiction mysteries about parallel dimensions? Morie has been there... You'd almost forget that Morie Shunsaku is supposed to be an attorney. In the fifth novel in the series, Morie is finally back to doing his actual job, but in a setting that was ahead of its time. For while Morie's involved in a jury trial in this book, there were no jury trials in Japan in 1998. Japan would introduce the lay judge system in 2009, with the legislation for that being signed in 2004, so it's interesting to see how Ashibe's invention for this novel would come true later on. Note that Ashibe's version of the Juror system is based heavily on the American model, so the workings portrayed in this novel are very different from how they are in real-life now. Ashibe would later write another book where Morie tackles cases involving the real lay ludge system in Japan (Saibanin Houtei) and comparing the system as imagined by Ashibe in today's book, and then how it turned out to be in Saibanin Houtei can be interesting. In this book for example, we have twelve jurors and one professional judge (in the Lay Judge system, it's six lay judges and three professional judges), and the layout of the courtroom as imagined here is also quite different from how it turned out to be.

By the way, the introduction of the Lay Judge system in Japan did lead to an increase of mystery fiction involving jury trials. Besides Ashibe's Saibanin Houtei, I've also discussed the game Yuuzai X Muzai and the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney spin-off novel/guidebook Gyakuten Houtei (and the 2007 game Gyakuten Saiban 4 also handled the Lay Judge system), all published around the same period. By now, mystery stories that do involve jury trials are therefore not rare anymore, but that's what makes Juusanbanme no Baishinin so special, as it was in a way pioneering, with a detective plot that involved jury trials in Japan back in 1998. Like with Ashibe's own Saibanin Houtei but also game Yuuzai X Muzai, there's a strong social school voice to be heard in this work. It's obvious that the author sees trial by jury as an important tool for a working democracy and a necessity to protect the public from political games. 

Anyway, the novel is split in two parts, the first part is where we see Ryouichi prepare for the falsified crime and eventually being prosecuted for an actual crime, while in the second half we have a good old-fashioned courtroom drama with Morie and the prosecutor battling in the courtroom to convince the jury of their respective stances and where of course most of the mystery-solving occurs. The mystery is set-up in such a way that over the course of the various sessions, Morie is able to address several unclear points in the prosecution's view of the events in succession. Some of these parts are perfectly solvable for the reader in classic puzzler fashion, like explaining how the woman vanished from the house under observation, while they did see Ryouichi go in and out of the house. The solution is simple, but fairly clewed. Other parts are a bit too ambitious: as you may guess, Ryouichi's involved with a pretty large conspiracy in order to be in his current situation (a falsified falsified crime) and the scale of the background story reminds more of those social school mystery stories of Matsumoto Seichou with high-ranking government officials scheming things and stuff like that. These elements seldom make for good puzzle plot mysteries: this book is no expection.

And then you get to the part about how Ryouichi's DNA turns out to match a rapist-murderer from a case several months earlier and how the real culprit managed to fool the scientific investigation, and that part is... unsolvable unless you happen to know the trick. Which strangely enough, I did. For you see, I have read two other mystery stories that revolve around the same, fairly obscure, underlying idea, though those stories are more recent than this 1998 book. I assume that in 1998, this was a more surprising, exactly because it explains how DNA investigation also has pitfalls despite its pros, but this critique of DNA investigation is of course less surprising to the modern reader, and in my case, I had already seen the same in other stories, even if they are dated after this book. Still, this part of the mystery remains unfair to the reader, as there's simply no way they are going to guess that based on the little clewing/explanation in the novel: it just requires too much specialistic knowledge. It may be surprising if you haven't come across the underlying idea before (it's not that common, I just happened to have come across it a few times), but it's not like you'll think this was brilliant plotting (though I admit the plotting to support the main idea was okay.

Is Juusanbanme no Baishinin a puzzle plot mystery though? I think that it isn't for a large part, though the aforementioned disappearance from the house definitely is, as well as the conclusion of the trial. Morie's job is of course to save his client from a miscarriage of justice and the clever manner which allows him to do that, is ultimately found within the workings of the juror system as envisioned by Ashibe (so different from the actual Lay Judge system). The clewing is a bit vague, but it works and it does give a good reason for Juusanbanme no Baishinin to actually be a mystery novel about jury trials, rather than a normal courtroom drama based on the actual systems at the time.

Perhaps it's because I read them out of order, but the Morie Shunsaku novels tend to go all kinds of directions in terms of story types, and in Juusanbanme no Baishinin's case, it even has a rather eerie prophetic vibe going on with its criticisms on DNA profiling in police investigations, the introduction of jury trials and even a background event like the nuclear meltdown. It's a novel with a clear vision by the author, but as a mystery story, it's also a bit unfair at times. But as usual with this author's works, there's always something to chew on mentally and as a courtroom drama mystery, it's fairly entertaining.

Original Japanese title(s): 芦辺拓『十三番目の陪審員』

The Adventure of the Unspeakable Story

修羅場を演じる時代劇のど真ん中に立ってるみたいだ

「2012Spark」（ポルノグラフィティ）

I feel like I'm right in the middle of a fight scene of a historical drama

 "2012Spark" (Porno Graffiti)

Perhaps I should also reread the Gyakuten Kenji manga...

If you look around on this blog, you'll find a lot of posts that cover the Gyakuten Saiban ("Turnabout Trial") videogame series. While it started a low-key zany Columbo-inspired courtroom drama mystery game on the GameBoy Advance back in 2001, Gyakuten Saiban, better known outside of Japan under its localized title Ace Attorney, is now nearing its twentieth birthday as a multimedia franchise. I have reviewed the various videogames in this series, but also other media outings like novels, serialized short stories, guidebooks on the actual Japanese justice system, musicals, stage plays, theatrical films and probably more. Nowadays you also have events like real life Ace Attorney Escape Rooms, but I vividly remember that the series really started to develop as a multimedia franchise after the release of the 2005 Nintendo DS title Gyakuten Saiban; Yomigaeru Gyakuten, which was also the first game in the series to be released outside Japan with the title Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. This was an enhanced port of the original 2001 videogame, but after this release, it was also announced that the fourth game in the series was in development. It was the marketing surrounding the release of the Nintendo DS game Gyakuten Saiban 4 (AKA Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney) that really made the franchise grow into something much more than videogames.

The serialized manga Gyakuten Saiban ("Turnabout Trial") by Kuroda Kenji (story) and Maekawa Kazuo (art) was probably one of the more remarkable moments that helped the series' development. This limited series was serialized irregularly between 2006 and 2008 in Young Magazine and ultimately collected in five volumes. While it was based on the videogames, basically no prior knowledge is necessary to read this series. All you have to know is that this is a comedic mystery series about the attorney Naruhodou. Each story revolves around a trial, where he and his client face absolutely hopeless situations, but by slowly pointing out contradictions in the prosecution's story and pulling a Columbo, Naruhodou always manages to turn the case completely around and find out who the real murderer is. The stories featured are completely original creations by the mystery author Kuroda and the recurring characters from the videogame that do appear, are properly introduced for first-time readers/players.

So the manga Gyakuten Saiban wasn't a comic made exclusively for existing fans, but it was written to introduce new readers to the world of Ace Attorney, to entice the readers to purchase and play Gyakuten Saiban 4, which was released soon after the serialization of this series started. You'll find no obscure references to in-game events or a story steeped too deep in the lore of multiple videogames: this is simply a highly enjoyable mystery comic that made great use of the characters and setting of the original videogames. This comic was also published outside Japan, and to be honest, at times I do think this series may be better to introduce mystery readers to mystery manga than for example Detective Conan or Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, because it's a fairly compact series at only five volumes, while still featuring a few interesting locked room murders and other types of tales (and the English version features localized names, making it easier to follow for people who can't memorize Japanese names). So I'd definitely recommend this series even if you haven't played any of the videogames or ever read any mystery manga.

This was an interesting re-read for me by the way. I hadn't quite seriously started studying Japanese yet when this series started, and I bought the recently released first two volumes during my first visit to Japan. My Japanese studies started after that and reading Gyakuten Saiban really made it clear how much I was learning. I could hardly read any words when I started with the first volume, but by the time the fifth volume was released, I was already preparing for my first extended study exchange in Japan... And now of course, I can race through these five volumes in the same time it took me to read one chapter in the first volume when I first started. The 2007 prose short story Turnabout Bridge, which I reviewed in 2016, was also written by Kuroda Kenji by the way, so you consider that 'part' of the manga series.

In the opening story Kaze to Tomo ni Gyakuten ("Turnabout in The Wind"), Naruhodou has to defend his childhood friend Yahari, who has a real knack of getting into trouble, and causing trouble for others. He is the suspect in the murder case of Shinjou Hikaru, a middle-aged married man who had an affair with Yahari's girlfriend Suzune. She broke up with Shinjou after finding out he was married, but even though she was dating Yahari now, Shinjou kept bugging her. On the night of Shinjou's murder, Yahari had made a rather threatening call to the victim, and Shinjou was found not long after Yahari's call, stabbed in the abdomen. Making Yahari the perfect suspect. While it's not hard to guess who the real murderer is, I think this story is an excellent showcase of how the mystery plotting of the videogames go, and it works also perfectly in this manga. The reader is thrown into the trial right at once and basically backed into a corner immediately with all the evidence the prosecution has, but you'll slowly uncover small contradictions that string together into an actual line of reasoning. The clues are really good: some make clever use of the visual medium, some require you to also make deductions and conclusions yourself based on previously presented information. There's a really nice flow to the story: you're not waiting until the very end of the story to see things unfold, but you move there step by step, clearing up smaller contradictions one at a time. The way the evidence of the prosecution is turned around in the defense' favor is also great, and if you'd plot all the clues/foreshadowing on a graph and how they sometimes return later in the story, you'd see that despite the simple and short set-up of this tale, it's a very well crafted and fair tale. For example, there's one aspect of the story that requires knowledge that is a bit specialistic, but Kuroda's clever plotting and clewing allows the reader to deduce that piece of knowledge on their own, so even if you didn't know that, you can make an educated guess based solely on the information given to you within this story. So the game is played very fairly.

Naruhodou and his assistant Mayoi are invited to the manor of IT company CEO Komori Akamune in the second story, Gyakuten no Shikeidai ("Turnabout Gallows"). Two weeks ago, his arrogant, but talented employee Kimura Jirou committed suicide by falling off a platform in the park and Akamune fears he may be arrested for Jirou's death. On the night of Jirou's murder, Akamune had invited Jirou to his manor to discuss his attitude, but when Jirou left the house, he was in an extremely agitated state and ultimately made a fatal fall. When Naruhodou and Mayoi talk to Akamune's daughter Sara and Jirou's older brother Hatsurou however, they realize that Akamune had probably murdered Jirou, by making use of Jirou's fear for spiders. Akamune's younger brother Sasao lives in an annex building with his huge collection of spiders, and Hatsurou suspects Akamune tortured his younger brother with those spiders. Later that night, Akamune is knocked out by an unknown figure, and he wakes up to findhimself tied up to a chair in the Spider Mansion. To his great shock, he sees a spider-man walking on the ceiling. His wife, daughter, Hatsurou, Naruhodou and Mayoi had been looking for Akamune in the main manor, and when they use the intercom to contact the Spider Mansion, Akamune explains he's being held captive in the Spider Mansion and that's there's a spider-man roaming around. But then Akamune's killed by a knock on the head and the Spider Mansion goes up in flames. The suspect in the murder case is Akamune's younger brother Sasao, as he was the only one absent during the intercom call to the Spider Mansion from the main manor.

Again a case that makes good use of the theme of a "turnabout" and visual clues. The visual clues are really clever and nicely incorporated in the background, and it really gives you a good chance at figuring out what happened and how the real culprit managed to fake their alibi. It's pretty easy to guess who probably did it, but I really like how you also need find the logical argument to prove that the real murderer did it, and it's here again where the trope of re-using earlier presented clues/evidence in new context really shines. In the videogames, most evidence pieces are used multiple times in various context, and that is replicated perfectly here, with utterances and clues being used in one way in deductions presented earlier in the trial, coming back in a completely different way at the end. The trick behind the murder is really original, though to be completely honest, it's a bit hard to swallow anyone could've prepared all of that within that short time period. It's a lot of work. Still, it's a really interesting case.

Gyakuten no Showtime ("Turnabout Showtime") is a much shorter case, but still interesting. Narohodou and Mayoi are visiting the entertainment park Kira Kira Land, but during the Kirarin Show with the three mascotte figures Kirarin, Pikakorin and Dekarin, one of the actors collapsed on stage. When they realize he's so bleeding heavily it's seeping out of the suit, they try to get the actor, Ichinomiya, out of it but the zipper in the back has been glued tight. It's already too late when they finally get him out, but to everyone's great surprise, Ichinomiya had been stabbed in his stomach. As the three suit actors can't zip themselves up (the zipper is in the back, but it's impossible with the suits' arms and hands to even attempt to zip up yourself), suspicion of the murder falls on the actress Juri, as she is the only one of the group who doesn't wear a big fluffy suit and could thus unzip Ichinomiya, stab him, and zip him up again. Everyone has a few moments backstage during the show, so the police suspects Juri stabbed Ichinomiya while they happened to be backstage together. Assuming that Juri's innocent though, it means Ichinomiya died inside a locked room: he was inside a mascotte suit that had no exterior damage at all (so the knife did not pierce through the costume), yet all the other suspects were zipped up and none of those two could unzip themselves or Ichinomiya in a swift manner to stab him in the stomach. I love this story: the setting of a murder during a mascotte costume show is really original as is the notion of the "smallest locked room murder" as Naruhodou calls it. You're constantly presented with information that at first seems to be in your favor, then dismissed in a logical manner by the prosecution, only to come back again later in the trial in surprising manners. The theme of "turnabout" (the situation being exactly the opposite of what you assumed) is used fantastically here too.

In Gyakuten no Yogensho ("Turnabout Prophecy"), Naruhodou and Mayoi visit the fortune tellers' corner at the local department store, where they also meet with Kaede, a high school student with a love for the occult. The corner houses five different fortune tellers, and because of the immense popularity, visitors are put in time slots and scheduled for three fortune tellers. Naruhodou is having his palms read when he hears a woman's cry from the room of Oracle Reika, a fortune teller who is considered the real deal. They break the locked door open to find a shocked Kaede inside. Reika however has been brutally murdered with the Deathscythe which usually decorated the wall. Because the two doors to the room (one connecting to the plaza in front, the other to the backyard) were locked from the inside, it appears only Kaede was capable of slaying Reika, but Kaeda swears she couldn't have done so, as Reika had instructed the girl to put her arm through the Hell's Gate and that a demon on the other side held her hand until moments before she herself found Reika's body.

Are fortune tellers corners a thing in Japan? It seems so extraordinary, but I've seen the same setting (a courtyard with various fortune tellers with different specialties) used in series like Puzzle Game ☆ High School and 33pun Tantei now... I think it's a shame these stories always feature such a small cast, because you can usually guess who the murderer is (not very imporant) and as a result, make an educated guess about what happened (I find this more disappointing). In this case, I think it becomes pretty obvious soon in the story how the locked room of Oracle Reika could be penetrated, but I do think the explanation of how that trick was done and why everything was arranged like that was really good: the foreshadowing for that reveal is excellent.

Tengoku kara no Gyakuten ("Turnabout From Heaven") is the most minimalistic story featured in this series, and has no impossibility/perfect alibi angle whatsever. The story revolves around the death of Kanenari Nihachi, the elderly owner of a famous buckwheat manufacturer. Ironically, the man had developed a buckwheat allergy recently, and someone had swapped his medicine for buckwheat, which obviously killed him. The suspect is his daughter Tsukimi, who was the only other person at home that night. She however claims it must have been her mother who killed her father. Tsukimi's mother died 16 years ago, but lately, Tsukimi has been seeing her a lot in her dreams, especially in the dreams about when she was kidnapped for a few days when she was young. She was saved by her mother then, and she believes her mother's ghost killed her father, as he had been abusing Tsukimi. The story seems to revolve around who could've swapped the medicine with buckwheat, but then turns into a very different story as Naruhodou has to prove the motive of the killer. I love the theme of turnabout here, and this story offers a very weird experience you don't even really see in the games. It's very different from the more technical murder mysteries in this series, but I think it's a welcome change of pace.

Gyakuten Kuishinbou ("Turnabout Gourmet") is about the televised food fighter competition The Strongest Gourmet King Competition. Naruhodou, Mayoi and her cousin Harumi are watching because their local ramen food stall will be offering the meal that will be used in the finals: whoever finishes the Yatabuki Special Super Spicy Miso Ramen Muscle (Super-Sized) the fastest, will be the new Gourmet King. Justice Masayoshi manages to beat his rivals Muscle Taketora and Eko Risa, but he's halfway through his victory speech when he falls down dead. The announcer becomes the defendant in the murder case, as he was the only one who could poison Justice's bowl of ramen, but was it really a case of a targeted murder? Perhaps the most disappointing case in the series, even if it's fairly entertaining on its own. The murderer's plot consists of hoping a lot that characters will do exactly as planned, which is plausible for one single action, but not if multiple characters have to do various things at various stages. I think the case does make good use of the visual medium, and the way Naruhodou deduces something had been going on behind his back is pretty good, ultimately, this is definitely the story that stands out the least in this series.

The final story in this series is titled Gyakutenryoku VS Jinzuuriki ("Turnabout Power VS Supernatural Power"), which reunites Naruhodou and Mayoi with Kaede from the fourth story. She's been interested in the shady sect The Great Tengu Association, a group which worships the Heavenly Tengu. Naruhodo had been calling Kaede everyday during her stay, but when she stopped answering his calls, he became worried and decided to visit the Association together with Mayoi. When they arrive at the cult's five-storeyed pagoda in the middle of nowhere, they find that the Association is also being harrassed by a private detective, who is determined to prove the sect and its founder Hime Tengu to be a fraud. Naruhodou and Mayoi find a safe Kaede, who has become a true believer of the Tengu. After a discussion with the founder, the detective takes the elevator down to the ground floor, an act witnessed by every member of the sect, Naruhodou and Mayoi, but when the elevator arrives on the ground floor, Kaede (the only person at the reception desk), swears the elevator is empty. The sect fears the detective is still snooping around the premises, so they search the pagoda going from bottom to top, but can't find any trace of the man. When the group is about to give up and decide to take the elevator downstairs again, they find the detective's body lying in the elevator! As Kaede was the only one who had been alone at the time, prosecution thinks she killed the detective, hid his body and later put it back in the elevator, but Naruhodou is of course sure Kaede wasn't the murderer.

A disappearance from a moving elevator! I love the trick behind it, and the clewing is really good too. There's plenty of visual clewing going on, some of them directly related to the actions of the murderer, but also a lot of clewing and foreshadowing that is utilized during the trial segments, when the defense and prosecution go back and forth with their arguments to prove or disprove Kaede's involvement in the case. Because these stories are not only about uncovering how and whodunnit, but also about making a logical argument during a trial that moves from the question of whether Kaede's guilty or not, to building a case to accuse the actual murderer, the plots in this series are usually really packed with all kinds of smaller mysteries/contradictions, and this is another great example of that leading to a story that is engaging start to finish. There's always something happening, the reader is always put in position where they're able to deduce things themselves and in the end, this is without a doubt a highly entertaining mystery story with an original impossible angle.

This post has become rather long as I decided to discuss all seven cases in this five-volume series, but as I said: Gyakuten Saiban is a really good mystery manga that is also recommended to people who don't know anything about the videogames it's based on. The stories Kuroda wrote for this series feature really original plots, most of them featuring some kind of impossible or locked room mystery, but they also do a great job at playing with the "turnabout" theme of the videogames, with the deduction battles between prosecution and defense going back and forth. The way the series makes use of the visual medium is also great and considering the series is only five volumes long, I truly think this is an excellent entry point for those who want to try out mystery manga.

Original Japanese title(s): カプコン（監修）、黒田研二（脚本）、前川かずお（漫画）『逆転裁判』第1-5巻