Mr Brain

"Thoroughly respectable and honest. Not, perhaps, remarkable for brains."

"Murder on the Orient Express"

Now I think about it, it's been easily over a decade since I first read about this book...

Magical Zunou Power!! ("Magical Brain Power!!") was a long-running primetime television quiz program presented by Bandou Eiji and featured a mostly fixed pool of participants of television personalities, some of which are nowadays so huge they have their own television programs like Tokoro George. The program consisted of several rounds of various quizzes with which you could earn 'Brain Power' and of course, the one who has accumulated the most BP at the end, wins that week's episode. The show itself ran from 1990 until 1999, but for the mystery fans, the period that is of interest, is the early days of the show, from 1990 until 1992. For it was during this period, the final round was the Magical Mystery Theater: a short 5-10 minute drama show where a mystery would be presented. While the Magical Mystery Theater segments are all very short, there is "continuity" between them: in the 'series', we follow the private detective Nakatani Shouichi and his niece Natsuko, a college student who acts as her uncle's assistant. The difficulty of each 'story' would be indicated with a Brain Power value, which was also the maximum of points you could earn if you got the answer right (you could be rewarded points for getting it partially correct). After watching the video, the participants would have to guess how it was done or who did it, with an explanation of course. Once everybody had presented their answers, a final, one minute video would follow with the solution. As it's just one round in a quiz program and participants need to be able to briefly explain their solutions, most of these stories are fairly simple in set-up and often revolve around just one single idea, but even so, some of the ideas seen in these segments are actually quite interesting. That is easily explained, when you learn that among those who provided the screenplay writers with the core mystery plots, there are mystery writers like Orihara Ichi, Abiko Takemaru and Shinpo Hirohisa. According to Abiko, Magical Mystery Theater was actually the highest-rated part of the program initially, but even after the overall show started to get higher ratings, this segment's ratings didn't really change accordingly, so it was eventually cancelled.

Shinpo Hirohisa, one of the 'mystery plot' writers, would later revisit some of the scenarios he wrote for the show in Satsujin Trick Gekijou - Nandai Mystery 11 Renpatsu ("Murder Trick Theater - 11 Difficult Mysteries", 1996). The concept of this book is quite interesting. On one hand, it is a book for fans of the original Magical Zunou Power!! corner: Shinpo gives us a glimpse behind the scenes of the Magical Mystery Theater segment, describing what they were going for, how ideas would be discarded and how the segment eventually was cancelled. The eleven stories featured in this pocket are also all followed by an essay on the specific story, noting when the corresponding Magical Mystery Theater segment was broadcast, reception on the quiz, the creative process behind the story/trick etc and what authors/works he drew inspiration from for the trick. This makes this book very informative also for mystery authors I think, as you get an idea of how a mystery writer might develop an idea seen in work X into a different idea, but with the same "foundation."

On the other hand, the eleven stories in this volume are also decidedly not Magical Mystery Theater stories... because obviously, Shinpo doesn't own the show and the characters created for that show. Because of that, he has rewritten all these scenarios with new characters, as well as sometimes changing the plot/trick/clues to accomodate for the book format. It's not the detective Nakatani nor his niece Natsuko who stars in these stories, but we mostly follow Yukiko and Fuyumi, two friends who after graduating haven't quite decided what to with their lives, and so Fuyumi suggest they become detectives, much to Yukiko's shock. They apply at the agency of the detective Mei, but while they don't get hired, they remain on friendly terms with him, occasionally getting him involved in the incidents they end up in, or vice-versa. One important thing to note is that this book also features many original illustrations by Noma Miyuki, the creator of the extremely long-running mystery manga Puzzle Game ☆ High School. They really add a lot of character to this book, especially as it's not 'just' character art, but also depictions of scenes from the stories etc.

Ultimately, these stories were created to be quizzes, so they are by design very straightforward and simple, usually only utilizing one single idea. The book acually retains the "Brain Power" concept of the original show, with each story being worth a number of points, and there's usually also a story section before the solution, that is considered optional: you can skip it to get a high score, or read it to be pushed in the right direction. Note that this optional section isn't just a list of hints, it's a proper part of the story with dialogue and sometimes even story developments.  But because many of them are really just single-idea concepts that you may have seen elsewhere already, I am not going to discuss each story this time.

The first story, Hito wo Kuu Heya ("The Room That Eats People") is the story that first made me aware of this book: it was mentioned in a mook on locked room murder mysteries edited by Arisugawa, being mentioned in a long list of recommended short locked room/impossible crime stories. In this story, we first see Fuyumi and Natsuko visit the detective agency of Mei, who decides to test the two girls with an excercise in a stake-out. He puts his assistant Dan in a room, and tells Yukiko and Fuyumi to keep an eye on the room, making sure his assistant doesn't escape. Fuyuko is told to watch the door from the corridor, while Yukiko is brought outside and told to watch the window from the street. After a hour, the two are to swap places, and after another hour, Yukiko is to enter the room and apprehend Dan. The two girls do as told, and two hours pass by without anything suspicious happening in the room. But when Yukiko enters the room, she finds the room empty. How did Dan escape? The trick behind Dan disappearing from a room under observation is pretty simple and it's likely you will have seen a variation of the same idea before, but Shinpo does a great job at planting the clues that point to that solution, and I would have loved to have seen the Magical Mystery Theater segment. In the essay, Shinpo mentions how Miyabe Miyuki told him how she really liked the tale, only for Shinpo to reveal he actually got the idea from a Miyabe story, transforming it in a way so even she herself didn't recognize it!

In Shide no Tabi ni mo Kinen Satsuei ("Taking Photographs Even When On Your Way to the Afterlife"), the comedian Hashiba Kenzou wants Mei to help him, because he received a letter from an unknown sender, saying "she wants to return her key, but also talk with him on the 7th, when he's filming at a cliff: Hashiba suspects it's one of his three exes with a key to his apartment, but he finds the letter very creepy, especially as she apparently knows his work schedule and wants to meet him at a cliff. Mei declines the job because he is not a bodyguard, nor does he like the playboy comedian, but then Hashiba is indeed murdered, having been pushed off the cliff.  Miraculously, someone managed to take a picture of Hashiba as he was falling, which provides a vital clue to finding out which of three women pushed him, but how? Once again, the solution is very simple, but I love how it does make very good use of the original visual format: while the illustration by Noma does wonders to support this story in the novel format, I imagine it would have felt more intuitive as an acted segment on Magical Mystery Theater.

In Totemo Kimyou na Yuukai ("A Very Curious Abduction"), Mei tells Fuyumi the tale of the abduction of Yuuka, the daughter of a client, with whom he often played shogi. Mei was present when the father received the call, instructing him to go to a coin locker at the station with a stash of money. Mei is sent instead, and in the coin locker, he receives further instructions to make a phone call to a certain number from the public payphone in a nearby park. The number given goes to Osaka, but the man answering the call says that while he does know Yuuka, he doesn't know anything about an abduction. Because of that, the money deal with the kidnapper seems to have failed, and Yuuka is soon found murdered in a nearby park. Police investigation show that the man answering the phone call in fact did have a perfect alibi for killing Yuuka, but how could have kidnapped Yuuka and killed her in Tokyo, if he answered a phone call in Osaka? The trick itself I find remarkable because it is so much a trick that only works in the period this story was created: it wouldn't fly at all now, because society has changed so much and we don't use certain things anymore. But that is why I really liked this story: it is a simple, but clever trick, but it would also be very understandable to people who don't have any interest in mystery fiction, because it used an object people would know in the nineties in an original manner, but also a manner which would make you go "Aha!" because it's actually so simple. There are a few other stories that have a similar vibe, using everyday life objects/customs of the early nineties which feel out-of-date/not obvious anymore, like in Satsujin yo, Kinou ni Kaere ("Murder, Go Back to Yesterday"), where an alibi is shot down by pointing out a certain object isn't where it should be, but which nobody in Japan nowadays would really think of.

Satsujin Trick Gekijou isn't really a must-read for mystery fans, though I would definitely recommend it to those who used to watch Magical Zunou Power!! as the behind-the-scenes essays are really interesting (and I say that as someone who hadn't even seen the show!). And of course, I do have an interest in mystery shows that are formally divided in problem and solution sections, so being able to experience the show in some manner, even if in a different format, is something I appreciate a lot. While most of the stories in this book are very simple, focusing on single-idea tricks that you likely have seen in other mystery-themed quizzes, or other mystery stories already, I find the presentation of this book very consistent: Noma Miyuki's illustrations do some of the lifting, but Shinpo's writing is easy, and while the main tricks are pretty simple overall, he does a very consistent job of properly clewing everything, making these stories a bit more involving than just single-concept mystery quizzes. 

Original Japanese title(s): 新保博久『殺人トリック劇場　難題ミステリー11連発』

Last Song

Time after time
君と出逢った奇跡

「Time after time～花舞う街で～」（倉木麻衣）

 

Time after time

The miracle of having met you

"Time after Time ~In The City of Dancing Flowers~" (Kuraki Mai) 

2018's Honkaku Mystery Comics Seminar, the seminal study which explored the history of mystery manga, points to the trio of Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, Detective Conan and Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou in the early-to-mid nineties as the watershed moment that really popularized the genre. These series are serialized in magazines with boys as their primary audience (though the magazines are also widely read by girls and I think especially Conan has more female fans than male). People therefore might have a tendency to associate mystery manga with a male audience, but Honkaku Mystery Comics Seminar also clearly shows how mystery manga first flourished in magazines aimed at girls. The seventies and eighties were the formative period for originally written mystery manga with puzzle plots (not adaptations) and its champions were mostly women too. I have been exploring this formative period the last year with for example Takashina Ryouko's Murder series, the mystery tales sometimes featured in Maya Mineo's Patalliro! and Yamada Mineko's Alice series.

It came as a shock to everyone when it was made public in May this year that manga artist Noma Miyuki had passed away at the young age of 59 earlier that month. Noma was probably the greatest veteran of mystery manga: her long-selling Puzzle Game ☆ High School started in 1983 and was still running in 2020 until her sudden demise, meaning the series had been running for over 35 years! It pre-dates the three watershed series by a decade, and while Puzzle Game ☆ High School may not have been the commercial succes like Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo and Detective Conan with countless of adaptations, videogames, merchandise tie-ups etc., it has remained a reliable cornerstone of the puzzle plot genre since it started with a loyal fanbase. It's no wonder so many mystery authors (not just of manga) responded to her sudden death, because she's been in the industry for so long and considered one of the giants because of Puzzle Game ☆ High School.

Earlier this year, I posted a short article on the first two volumes of Puzzle Game ☆ High School. At that time, I of course never could've guessed that Noma would pass away a few months later, but I had been reading the series on and off, and in the last few months, I've finally finished the complete original 34-volume series which ran between 1983-2001 (I read the bunko release, which is 18 volumes long) and I think it's about time I'd pick a few of the highlights from this lengthy series which I've grown to like a lot. But first a short introduction. As the title suggest, the series starts with a high school setting: Hazuru High School is a school with numerous school clubs and circle with an extremely high degree of autonomy and these clubs are exclusively governed by the student council: not even the school administration can interfere with these afterschool activities. Second-years Kazuki and Daichi are two childhood sweethearts who start their own new club: the new Mystery Club is also joined by Kazuki's best friend Mimei, a girl who can find out anything about everyone at school, and the shy first-year student Takuma, who also dabbles in stage magic. The Mystery Club's goal is to solve mysteries, of which there are plenty at school. From poisoned Valentine chocolates to blackmail attempts on clubs to vandals who paint the water in the pool red: Hazuru High School's unique club environment is also a breeding ground for countless of mysteries.

What makes Puzzle Game ☆ High School so unique however is that while it starts out as a high school mystery series, soon several sub-series are introduced that are set in different periods in the lives of Kazuki and Daichi. These chapters are published not in chronological order, but the series jumps back and forth time. The Puzzle Game ☆ Jr High School chapters for example are of course set during junior high before Kazuki and Daichi were officially dating, but there's also Puzzle Game ☆ Pre-Stage, which is set after Kazuki and Daichi are graduated from high school: Daichi is in college, but Kazuki is doing all kinds of part-time jobs to obtain various qualifications and diplomas for their joint dream. Puzzle Game ☆ The Professionals actually makes up the bulk of this series with thirty chapters: by this time Daichi and Kazuki are in their mid-twenties and have opened their own detective agency. These chapters tend to be the most interesting plot-wise, and often start with Takuma, who is now a journalist, hiring Daichi and Kazuki to help him in some investigation. It's in these stories where you understand why Kazuki was doing all those part-time jobs in the Pre-Stage chapters as Kazuki is always going undercover and I'd say that in terms of tone, The Professionals chapters are the most like the stories in Conan or Kindaichi Shounen. But there's more: at one point the  Puzzle Game ☆ Next Generation chapters start, which focus on Hinako, the ten-year old daughter of Daichi and Kazuki! Hinako is a child-model who not only has inherited her looks from her parents, but also their sharp brains and she tends to get involved with crimes in the model and entertainment industry.

This focus on the chronology is what really sets this series apart from series like Conan and Kindaichi Shounen. Sure, Hajime might be 37 now instead of 17, but that's one single jump in time: Puzzle Game ☆ High School however is built around the notion that we see all these protagonists in various stages in their lives and the various sub-series all have a different theme and tone that fit the ages of the characters: the classic High School chapters for example seldom feature murders and focus solely on the students of Hazuru High School (you hardly see any teachers or adults around, as most of the 'crimes' are kept inside the school), while the Pre-Stage chapters make use of the idea that Kazuki is doing all these part-time jobs to introduce a diversity in settings. I only named the main sub-series above, but there are eleven titled sub-series, and they all feel distinctly different, even if they all feature the same protagonists. The three Puzzle Game - Maternity chapters for example all focus on mysteries revolving around pregnancies, while Puzzle Game ☆ Hong Kong Connection is like full-blown HK crime thriller. But as I said, these chapters are not published in chronological order, so for example the reader had already seen Hinako appear several times as a ten-year old detective before the Maternity chapters were published, and it's fairly common to see a few The Professionals chapters followed by a Jr. High chapter. The story The Goddess of Fortune makes interesting use of this plot-device by the way: the first chapter of this two-parter is about a money theft at Hazuru High School. While the school is sealed off immediately, the student council can't find the money even though it's a pretty large sum (meaning the bills are bulky). Kazuki and Daichi of course figure out the hiding spot for the money, which is actually quite clever. They identitfy the thief, but they can't figure out why that person out of everyone would ever want to steal the money The second part of The Goddess of Fortune is set six years later, when Kazuki and Daichi have established their own detective agency. The thief is finally released from prison, but now they finally learn why the thief committed the crime. This second part is not as surprising plot-wise, but it's a nice story that transcends time (and sub-series). The mini-series Tea for Two also spans across time: three tea-themed stories, one for every year in high school. The first one is the best: Daichi is living on his own now his parents have to move to the US for work, and he becomes a customer of a nearby cafe specialized in tea. Daichi and Kazuki learn that the wife of the owner died in a car accident nearby some years ago and Kazuki remembers she did saw that two bouquets and some drinks had been placed at the accident site out of respect. But when Kazuki visits the place again, she notices how one bouquet has been removed, but why, and why only one bouquet? The solution is perhaps a bit easy to guess, but it's a nice short mystery you of the type you aren't likely to come across in other mystery manga soon.

In general, the stories in Puzzle Game ☆ High School are fairly easy to solve for yourself, also because Noma is playing the game very fairly and offering fair-play puzzle plots. She definitely set the template for successors like Detective Conan, Kindaichi Shounen and Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou, coupled with the series set-up with a regular cast of main characters and recurring characters and an internal chronology, with characters sometimes re-appearing after a few years. But while the stories may be a bit simple at times, there are still quite a few stories that stand out: as I'm writing this I can already see I'm not going to mention all the titles on my list, because there are just too many. In my earlier article, I already mentioned The Secret of the Red Pool in my first post, a fantastic school mystery about they mystery of why someone would throw red paint in the swimming pool, ruining the water. The motive for this 'crime' is both original and fitting the setting. Yasashii Hanzai ("A Gentle Crime") is set at the school festival, which has been threatened by a bomber. The gang of the Mystery Club eventually reveals a rather surprising truth lurking behind this truth. It's the type of story you might see in Q.E.D. or C.M.B. but not told like this.

Most of the series consists of The Professionals chapters and some of these stories take on a rather large scale: in the three-parter Tokibus Tour, Daichi and Kazuki are hired by Nonose, their former student council president who is now a lawyer. One of his firm's clients owns a touring bus company, but rumors have it that these touring buses are used to sell stolen art: potential buyers are given instructions to board certain buses on certain days and then the thieves will somehow contact them. The client has information that a recently stolen painting will be offered on one of the buses soon, and Daichi and Kazuki decide to go undercover by planting allies in and outside the bus to figure out who the thieves are and where the painting is. The story features a lot of familiar faces from the high school days who help out Kazuki and Daichi by pretending to be normal passengers and as a kind of ransom story like you'd see in Kindaichi Shounen (like the Shinsengumi story), it's fairly entertaining. The two-parter Panic in Hospital feels like Detective Conan movie: Daichi, Kazuki, Mimei and Takuma are visiting Nonose in a private clinic. At least, that's their excuse, because their real reason to come is to spy on one of the other patients. During their visit however, the clinic is taken over by an armed gang who take everyone on the floor hostage. Kazuki happened to be disguised as a nurse at the time, and with the help of the real nurses and doctors, manages to keep up the game and given some freedom to go around the floor to 'check on the patients.' As time passes by however, she starts to suspect that the gang's real goal isn't the ransom money.

There are some other minor gems in The Professionals: Listen to the Eternal Song is a fantastic everyday life mystery, where at a small party in a karaoke hall, Kazuki notices that the young man in the room opposite theirs is constantly repeating the same old song, but he does not sing and just sits there looking at the television. The young man is also visited by an elderly man, who seems to have a minor argument with him. The gang follows the man when he leaves the karaoke hall, only to find he's gone to another karaoke hall, where he plays the same song again! The explanation for this seemingly meaningless act is touching and very original. A Small Affair puts Mimei in the spotlight: her appearances in the series tend to be minor as Daichi and Kazuki are the main detectives, but she's not a founding member of the Mystery Club for nothing. In this story Daichi is investigating a doctor who's selling inventory to a dealer. He follows the dealer to his home and instructs Kazuki to tail the dealer by telling her where the dealer lives. When Kazuki arrives at the apartment the following morning however, she finds the man has moved everything away. She doesn't manage to pry information from the estate agent, but Mimei miraculously manages to find out where the dealer has gone too. It's pretty easy to guess what Mimei did differently than Kazuki, but the set-up is really good. In Worthy Juniors, Daichi, Kazuki, Mimei and Takuma are invited to the school festival by the current members of the Hazuru High School Mystery Club, who are dying to see the 'legendary' gang. Their project at the festival is a mini-murder play: a room has been changed into a murder scene and it's up to the participants to guess who the murderer is. But it turns out that the body in the room is really dead.  The reason why there was a real dead body in that room is quite original and it's really fun to see how these new members of the Mystery Club seem to have some of the guts the original members have.

The chapters with Hinako can be fun too: the single chapter Puzzle Game ☆ Angel is about Hinako's first model gig as a baby for a wine company. The night after an event of this company visited by Daichi, Kazuki and baby Hinako, the son of the company's owner is found murdered at home: a burglar stole several bottles of the wine collection of the father and killed the son. Hinako however helps Daichi and Kazuki solve the case despite being still a baby. The plot is based on a certain Columbo episode (not the one about wine...), but the punchline is completely original and really funny. Hinako relly shows of her own deductive skills in Police Station Chief for One Day, where she and her boyfriend Juri (also a child actor/model) are made "boss of the police station for a day" in a campaign to bring youth crimes under the attention. Naturally, this usually just consists of participating in all kinds of events during the day, but Hinako manages to stop a crime-in-progress that nobody had even suspected simply by combining all the information she hears over the course of the day.

There are more chapters I really though worthwhile, but this post has been going for too long now. As I mentioned earlier, the original series ran from 1983-2001, but the series continued more-or-less non-stop with other publishers and other magazines. These various series too focus on different phases in Daichi and Kazuki's life: some return to the high school setting, some continue telling stories about their lives as professional detectives etc. Puzzle Game ☆ Mystere was the eight follow-up series which had only just started when Noma passed away (she had only finished the first chapter), so unfortunately this is where the series stops.

Anyway, Puzzle Game ☆ High School turned out to be a very entertaining mystery series with a clear focus on puzzle plots that are perhaps a bit simple at times, but the plot idea of jumping through time and seeing everyone grow really gives this series its own face. The sheer diversity in plots is also very memorable, while the fact the series ran in Hana to Yume (a magazine aimed at girls) also allows it to tackle very different themes than the mystery series than run in boys magazines (even if it can feel a bit too melodramatic at times). Puzzle Game ☆ High School is a series that really grows on you due to its enormous scale in story and the focus on the growth of the characters while also constantly offering different kinds of mysteries to the reader. I do intend to read the post-2001 series one day, but for now I'll take a break to let it sink in a bit.

Original Japanese title(s): 野間美由紀『パズルゲーム☆はいすくーる』(花とゆめ版）

The Secret Garden

`Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, `and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

2018's Honkaku Mystery Comics Seminar was a seminal study that explored how mystery manga developed in Japan by focusing on publishing history. It traces a chronological line starting from the fifties until the present based on over 800 mystery-related titles. While the major watershed moment for the genre was clearly the trio of Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, Detective Conan and Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou in the early-to-mid nineties, the period discussed in the book that interested me most was the period right before that. The seventies provided a space for mangaka to experiment with the format and especially the female writers were very important in this period of exploration, as they did daring and incredible things that really pushed the format. This was the formative period for original mystery manga (not adaptations) and this work was mostly done by women, and this would carry on in the eighties. I have been exploring this formative period the last year with for example Takashina Ryouko's Murder series, the mystery tales of Maya Mineo's Patalliro! and Yamada Mineko's Alice series. But there was of course on one major title I still hadn't tried out, until now.

For how could one ignore Noma Miyuki's Puzzle Game ☆ High School? This series started a decade before Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo and Detective Conan, but in terms of runtime, it's been similarly succesful like those two giants: the original Puzzle Game ☆ High School ran from 1983-2001, which is really long by any standard. But like Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, it's been followed up by several sequel series, so it's actually running even now, more then 35 years after it originally started! As the title suggests, the original series starts at Hazuru High School, a school with numerous school clubs and circles. These clubs and circles have a extremely high degree of autonomy and are exclusively governed by the student council, and not even the school administration can interfere with these afterschool activities. The beautiful Kazuki and handsome Daichi are two childhood sweethearts who start their own new club: the new Mystery Club is further joined by Mimei, who knows about everyone and everything that's going at the school, and the shy first-year student Takuma, who also dabbles in stage magic. The Mystery Club's goal is to solve mysteries themselves, and there's more enough of mysteries and problems to be solved at Hazuru: from rumors of the all powerful student council president blackmailing clubs to let him sleep with the most attractive club members, to kidnapping attempts on a school idol, a vandal who threw a can of red paint in the school pool and the impossible theft of the student council seal, the members Hazuru's Mystery Club have more than enough to do.

Except they don't ever actually study at this school. I mean, I have read two volumes now, but I have not seen one scene where these students actually, err, do school stuff. They're like the whole day busy with their afterschool activities...

The setting of Hazuru High School is utterly nuts though. I mean, the idea of a student council having infinite power is something I can shrug at, but man, the things that happen at this school are far from normal for an institute for education. I mean, in their second case, the Mystery Club is investigating an underground escort club run by students at this school, one of Club's allies turns out to be a professional nude model who's also dating a former teacher of this school (and he was her teacher when they first met), there are more stories about students who had romantic relations with teaching staff, one story's even about a student who gave birth to a baby, some of the clubs are basically organized crime, the council president is a corrupt womanizer who abuses his power: what kind of crazy high school is this! I mean, sure, this school definitely allows the Hazuru Mystery Club to handle a lot of weird cases not even Conan or Hajime ever encounter at their schools, but what parents would ever allow their children to go to Hazuru? Even Hajime's Fudou High (where there's a high percentage that a student will either be killed or turn out to be a ruthless murderer themselves) is a better educational institution than Hazuru.

Anyway, as a mystery manga, Puzzle Game ☆ High School started out a bit uneven for my standards, but by the second volume it really started hitting a stride, and it does make interested in reading more of this series. Like I mentioned, the Mystery Club is called to investigate (or decides to stick their noses on their own behalf) in a diverse selection of cases and that also results in stories that don't always follow a formula. Whereas Conan and Hajime are most of the time solving murder mystery cases and the focus therefore lies on the whodunnit and howdunnit, this isn't the case here. The story about the escort club is more about how the Mystery Club is going to survive this investigation due to the powerful forces behind the escort club and turns into a battle of wits, while the story about the baby is more a sweet, but straightforward story where the club members uses their expertise to follow up on each clue to find the parent of the baby. Not every story is as strong as the other in terms of mystery or how the puzzle plot is constructed, but there are some stories that are surprisingly fun.

The first story that makes an impression is Nishibi no Naka no Alibi ("The Alibi of the Setting Sun"), where Takuma is accused of completely trashing a locked classroom, of which he alone had the key as he was the last one to leave the room. While he denies the act, the fact he has the key and there's a witness who says he saw Takuma trashing the room puts Takuma on the spot. The locked room element of the story is kinda glanced over and the title gives away too much, but this is the first story in the series to actually be a well-clewed mystery, even if it's too simple. But then you have a story like Akai Pool no Himitsu ("The Secret of the Red Pool"), which is truly a great school mystery. One morning, the school's swimming club find that someone had thrown red paint in the swimming pool, ruining the water. The Mystery Club tries to figure out why anyone would want to commit such a meaningless act. The motive for this 'crime' is both original and fitting the setting and the way the story builds towards the reveal is great. Definitely the best mystery story of the first two volumes.

Kin no Monshou Jiken ("The Case of the Golden Seal") involves a minor impossible theft: two persons who had their plans ruined by the Mystery Club in the past conspire together to destroy the club's reputation. They arrange so the Mystery Club's responsible for protecting the golden seal of the Student Council, one of the symbols of the council. It's to be shown to the students at a certain occassion, but our conspirators has sent a warning letter to the council president saying they will steal the seal, daring the Mystery Club to try to stop them. Hazuki is guarding the seal herself as they transport the seal from the office to the gymnasium, but despite that, the conspirators manage to swap the seal with a fake one. The mystery of how this was done is solved pretty easily, but seeing how the Mystery Club manages to regain their reputation is fun.  The second volume also contains Houseki Goutou ("Jewel Theft"), the first chapter of the mini-series Puzzle Game☆Jr., which is about Hazuki and Daichi's time as middle school students. Daichi used to be childhood friends with Hazuki, but his family moved away, until they recently moved back in town and happened to become neighbors with Hazuki once again. The previous inhabitant of the house was a young student who became close with Hazuki, but unknown to her he was also involved with a jewelry theft. Their accomplice hid the jewel somewhere in the house, but a fallout means they can't find the jewel anymore. As a Poe-esque mystery story about finding a hidden object it's pretty decent and interestingly clewed.

Seen from a historical perspective, these stories are exactly like the puzzle plot mystery manga like we know from Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen, and that coupled with the series set-up with cast of recurring characters and an internal chronology, this is definitely the series that directly precedes the triumvirate of Detective Conan, Kindaichi Shounen and Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou. To be honest, I am kinda surprised that Puzzle Game ☆ High School didn't manage to make bigger waves. Perhaps it was just too soon for its time, because in terms of concept, it's really no different from the major mystery series of the nineties with an emphasis on short puzzle plot mysteries.

These were just what I thought were the highlights of the first two Puzzle Game ☆ High School volumes and as I said already, I do plan to read more of the series eventually, though it's likely I'll just buy a few volumes once in a while, so don't expect frequent reviews. The quality of the mystery plots can be pretty uneven, differing widely depending on the story and the overall background setting of this school is crazy as hell, but when a story manages to hit the right notes, it's capable of providing more than entertaining mystery stories due to its unique setting, so I hope to come across more of these highlights.

Original Japanese title(s): 野間美由紀『パズルゲーム☆はいすくーる』第１－２巻