The Man Made Murder

"It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic."

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue"

Always welcoming specific story/volume recommendations for this series!

I have mentioned earlier that while there are definitely stories I enjoy from Katou Motohiro's Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou and its sequel series iff, I don't like the series enough to want to read all of the adventures of the brilliant prodigy Touma Sou and his energetic sidekick Kana, so now I'm picking my stories. Last year, three special "The Best" anthology volumes were released with stories selected by prominent mystery writers, and I already read the volume edited by Arisugawa Alice. Earlier this year, I also read an edited anthology of the spin-off series C.M.B. But now I'm back at Q.E.D. and it shouldn't be a surprise that my return to this series is once again through one of these anthology volumes: Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou The Best - Tanaka Yoshiki Selection (2019) is of course edited by Tanaka Yoshiki, who most people will probably not immediately associate with mystery fiction, as he's best known for his epic novel series like the space opera The Legend of the Galactic Heroes and the fantasy The Heroic Legend of Arslan. Like the Arisugawa-edited volume, this The Best volume contains five stories chosen out of the 50-volume run of the original series.

While I started reading Q.E.D. more seriously from 2018 on, I had already read a bit of it over a decade ago (also watched the drama!). The Faded Star Map (originally from volume 3) was probably the last story I had read before my reading hiatus, because the first three volumes of Q.E.D. have been in my bookcases for ages. The story introduces us to a derelict star observatory on a mountain, once the property of the amateur astronomer Tsukishima Fukutarou. He disappeared twenty-five years ago, but as the surrounding mountains are now all turned into a ski resort, the local authorities want to break the building down, and the local court has invited Fukutarou's two sons (and granddaughter), his brother-in-law and a close friend to the building, to determine who will become the legal owner of the observatory and to work out the financial side of the story. While they poke around the observatory reminiscing about old times, they stumble upon a horrible corpse inside the telescope. It appears someone, probably Fukutarou, had fallen inside the telescope and had been burnt to death by the sun, which would explain his disappearance. Given he was dead and all. The man from the court is sent back down the mountain to fetch the police, but a sudden snowstorm prevents them from climbing up to the observatory. It's the same storm which brings Touma and Kana to the observatory, as they are on a school trip nearby but got lost in the snow. The group is forced to spend the night here, but while the building is old, it doesn't take long for everyone to make the building suitable for shelter again. The following morning however, they find the brother-in-law hanging outside the bathroom window, but determining who could've killed him (and why) that night proves to be quite tricky. A story that makes very good use of its unique setting of a star observatory, but also a story that is a bit predictable exactly because of that, as you can make fairly educated guess about what happened simply based on the very long lead-up to the murder, which has quite a few scenes that don't do much to hide the fact they're going to be important later on. The murder itself has some links to the impossible crime trope, but I think the dramatic underlying back story leaves a bit more of an impression.

A Frozen Gavel (volume 9) starts with a scene beneath the Kachidoki Bridge, one of the many bridges that cross the Sumida River in Tokyo. A decayed hand falls on one of the boats going beneath the bridge, and when the authorities investigate, they find that a corpse has been stuffed inside a pipe, and the pipe itself has been jammed inside an opening between the sides of the lifting bridge. The police can only get the pipe out by raising the sides of the bridge again, which is easier said than done: Kachidoki Bridge has actually not been raised for thirty years due to the relentless streams of traffic here. But obviously, the pipe and the body need to be retrieved and so the bridge is raised again for the first time since 1970. Two surprising discoveries are made: the victim had a strange note in his pocket, but the victim was also wearing a special watch dated 1975, five years after the bridge was last raised! So how did the culprit manage to get the pipe wedged in between the sides of the bridge? While Touma and Kana poke around, they are approached by a strange, old man who seems to know more about the note, and perhaps even the victim, but why would he approach the two of them? A strange tale that has few interesting elements taken on their own, like the impossible problem of the pipe got wedged in the bridge, a strange old man who challenges Touma to solve the mathematics problem of the Seven Bridges of Königsberg and the mystery of the old man's personal history, but I feel it doesn't really work together. The pipe problem is pretty smart, but completely impractical in this specific setting (how would the culprit actually be able to do that on the Kachidoki Bridge?) and the reason to do so is also incredibly vague, betting on a one-to-a-million chance that things may occur in that manner. The same with the Seven Bridges of Königsberg: the solution and the way it relates to the actal case is interesting, but in the end, why go through all that trouble on some extremely minor chance things would go like this? This is a story where the parts taken seperately are far more interesting than the sum.

Crime and Punishment (volume 24) is obviously inspired by Dostoyevsky's book of the same title: we follow the graduate student Sendagawa, who hates how unfair life can be: how can a brilliant man like himself be so poor? When he hears of the news of a burglar being active and succesful in his neighborhood, Sendagawa decides to take matters in his own hands, and commit a burglary too and pin his crime on the real burglar. Sendagawa isn't stupid though, so he first plans to fake a burglary on his own room so the police will think of him as one of the victims. That part of the plan goes well, but his attempt at theft goes horribly wrong though: the moment he realizes the owner of the house he had wanted to burgle was in fact lying very dead in the living room, he also understood that things looked pretty bad for him, as it's a bit suspicious if a burglar is standing next to a dead body. He quickly runs away from the scene, but to his great surprise Inspector Mizuhara (Kana's father) seems to harbor suspicions about the theft at Sendagawa's place, and now he even thinks Sendagawa might've committed the murder! Desperate, he tries to plead with Kana and Touma to help him, and Touma is of course able to pinpoint the real murder rather easily. This was a story with a fairly limited scale, but I do quite like it. Like the original novel, it reads like an inverted detective, as we see how Inspector Mizuhara slowly starts to suspect that Sendagawa faked his own burglary to get himself off the hook, while Sendagawa obviously wants to not only hide that, but also avoid being accused of the murder. The clues that eventually lead the real murderer are a bit basic, but on the whole, Crime and Punishment is a fun story to read.

Caff's Memories (volume 41) starts with a call by Lin, an old friend of Touma's from Taiwan. Lin had gone to the United States to study when Touma was attending high school there, and Touma helped Lin with her English lessons. Later, Lin married Caff Darby, a highly succesful financier, and they lived a happy life together, but Caff is now in prison. Lin begs Touma to visit Caff and to go over Caff's case with him, and that's how we find Touma visiting Caff in prison. At first, the arrogant Caff wants to throw Touma out, but when he hears it was Lin who sent him hear, he calms down a bit, and Touma asks him to tell him his story, and how he ended up in prison. Caff claims he's been set-up, and starts his story how he first met Lin, how he became impressed with her fortune telling skills, and how they eventually fell in love, married and became rich as an investors thanks to Lin's powers. Eventually, Touma points out to Caff what really happened based on the story, but overall, I wasn't too big a fan of this tale. Like many of Q.E.D. stories, the core mystery plots revolves around Touma interpreting long chains of events (often a life story) differently than the persons who experienced it themselves and I think the basic idea isn't bad per se, but come on, Katou is cheating a bit here. It does result in a very emotional story that leaves an impression, but it feels like the story is just written completely around this punchline. It's not a story you'd see in Conan or Kindaichi Shounen, granted and if you're into reading more character-focused mystery stories, this is a good example of Q.E.D. being far superior to those series in that respect, but still, I feel cheated.

Touma meets up with Koyuki, a professional editor who sometimes needs to pick Touma's brain for her work regarding specialistic topics. In Pilgrimage (volume 46) however, she wants Touma's help for a more personal reason. Her deceased father was a well-known writer of non-fiction books, always based on meticulous research and great journalistic work. A while back, she came across an unpublished manuscript by him titled Pilgrim. The words "Coincidence? Or Intentionally?" scribbled on the folder seem to point to the reason why it was never published, but she doesn't understand why her father held on on this story, and she hopes Touma can shed light on the matter. Koyuki's father had done research on Usui Shigeru, a talented man in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during World War II. His wife had been murdered soon after they had gotten married in 1940. The murderer was an ordinary street robber Yamai Seimei, who had immediately fled the country. With the ongoing war, not much could be done about Yamai, but when the Japanese army occupied French Indochina, they stumbled upon Yamai, who was now finally captured for good and had to await his trial in Hanoi. Usui is given permission to travel to Hanoi to attend the trial of the murderer of his wife, but after passing Shanghai and arriving in the city of Nanchang, he gets off the train and tells his assistant he plans to walk the remaining 1000 kilometers to Hanoi. While the assistant tries to talk him out of it as it's not only an extremely long trip, but also very dangerous, Usui has made up his mind. It takes a harrowing two months for Usui to arrive in Hanoi, but at the trial, Usui makes a surprising statement: he advises the court not to give Yamai the death sentence, even if Yamai did kill his poor wife. In the end, nobody knew exactly why Usui made his pilgrimage on foot and why he had forgiven Yamai.

First of all: wow, I can safely say I'm absolutely sure that this is the first time I've read any story set in French Indochina during the Japanese occupation in World War II. So cookies for originality. Like Caff's Memories, this story is about Touma reinterpreting the events in a way completely different from the other people, though I think the reader can probably make a guess as to Usui's motives for pleading for Yamai's life and for going on the pilgrimage (especially as the other characters in the story propose a lot of theories, but seem to be avoiding one certain line of thinking). Ultimately though, I think Pilgrimage is an excellent example of the human-drama focused mystery tale that you definitely don't see in Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen and what really sets Katou's style of storytelling apart. These stories that focus on stories set in the past (often related to some actual historical event), about characters with very unique and strong-headed personalities that clash with each other and eventually do something that seems like a total mystery until Touma shows how one can interpret their actions in a way that seems logical to those specific characters.

By the way, I can sorta get Touma always flying across the world for a case, but how come Kana's also often going along abroad in this series? It's like these high school students get to go abroad every other volume...

Whereas the Arisugawa-edited volume seems to have focused more on stories with tropes like the impossible murder, locked rooms and serial killings, Tanaka Yoshiki's selection seems to be focused more on stories that focus on the human drama that eventually results in death. In that sense, I think Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou The Best - Tanaka Yoshiki Selection makes a better case for this series to show what makes it unique and distinct from other mystery manga series. For people who want more fleshed-out characters in a mystery tale and a focus on their drama and motives, Q.E.D. seems a far more logical choice than Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen, which focus more on the case-of-the-week. I do like how these two The Best volumes are so radically different in terms of theme, so it's likely I will eventually pick up the The Best volume edited by Tsuji Masaki to see what his take on the series is.

Original Japanese title(s): 加藤元浩（原） 田中芳樹（編）『Q.E.D. -証明終了- The Best 田中芳樹Selection』

E=Murder

aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ

(Fermat's last theorem)

I'm horrible at the exact sciences.. I imagine that if Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou did its unique style of mystery telling not with mathematics or similar fields of science, but with literature or a field like that, I'd be a lot more enthusiastic.

After reading a couple of volumes of Katou Motohiro's Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou series and the sequel series Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou iff the last year, I realized that I don't have any interest in reading all the adventures of the brilliant, MIT-graduated prodigy Touma Sou and his classmate Kana. There are definitely some interesting stories in this series, especially when the stories involve mathematics and other special fields of interest of author Katou himself, but few stories are truly memorable as mystery stories, so I have decided I am just going to pick my stories now, instead of going through all fifty volumes of the original series, and another dozen or so for the still running sequel iff, as that's just too pricey. Fortunately for me, special anthology volumes were released earlier this year, with the three mystery authors Tanaka Yoshiki, Tsuji Masaki and Arisugawa Alice each editing their own volume. These volumes seemed interesting enough, and when I asked for story recommendations a while back, I noticed a number of the recommendations I got happened to have been selected for Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou The Best - Arisugawa Alice Selection (2019), which made it the most logical next step in my reading of this series.

The volume starts with Jacob's Ladder though, which I already reviewed earlier, so I'll be skipping that story. The second story is Infinite Moon (originally in volume 20) and starts with the arrival of an email from Touma's Chinese friend Hu. Which is a bit strange, Hu was presumed dead, due to a heart disease he had been suffering of his whole life. The email to Touma also prompts a visit by the Shanghai Police, who tell Touma that Hu is known to them as a member of Xi Xing She, a crime syndicate in Shanghai led by four men: the two Liang brothers and the two friends Huang and Wu. While the gang was basically divided in two factions (the Liang brothers, and the two friends), the four bosses carefully kept everything in balance, until three weeks ago, when Huang was fished dead out of the river. While the police had trouble getting information out of the lower-ranked members of the Xi Xing She, it appeared Huang's murder was retaliation by the younger Liang, as Huang had killed the elder Liang brother earlier. The police hope that Touma's friend Hu can tell them more about the power struggle going on, but time is ticking as the remaining Xi Xing She bosses kill each other off, while Touma has to figure out Hu's mysterious message: Come to ϕ. I have read several stories with a series of murders, where the murderer becomes the next victim and then the second murderer becomes the next victim etc., so Infinite Moon was not really surprising to me. I like how Katou links the story with mathematical theories in infinity and 0, but the core mystery plot is not really surprising: a lot of pages are used to simply explain the basic setting, but after that, you don't really need much explanation/clue-hunting to figure out what's going on.

The Kurogane Manor Murder Case (volume 36) reunites Touma with Karasuma Renji, a cocky assistant-professor in Physics who has a soft spot for Touma. Karasuma is a "person of interest" to the police in the investigation into the suspicious death (apparent suicide) of Professor Kurogane of K University in Kyoto. It was Kurogane who had sent Karasuma away from K University all the way to A University and even then, Kurogane kept the brilliant Karasuma shackled: he arranged so Karasuma's research at A University would become a joint project with K University under the supervision of Kurogane's own pupil Shida, which would mean Karasuma's name would end up below both Shida and Kurogane's names on his own research paper when published. Kurogane however was found hanging in his study in his manor one day ago, precisely when Karasuma returned to Kyoto. Kurogane had no reason to commit suicide, but murder also seems impossible as there were no footprints in the snow around Kurogane's study, nor did the help see anyone come or leave the study that day. The police can't really pin anything on Karasuma, but at the wake in Kurogane's manor, a more obvious murder happens: an arrow is shot right in Shida's neck during the night, but due to the long, covered galleries of the traditional Japanese house, none of the suspects could have shot Shida with a bow and arrow from their respective positions, due to the distance and most importantly the low ceilings of the hallways.

The death of Kurogane in his study itself is rather simple, though I do like how it makes clever use of the way a traditional Japanese manor is built (Katou studied Architecture in college). One important hint to the whereabouts of the culprit at this crime site is rather brilliant though, being a reference to Zeno's arrow paradox, though it does expect the reader to guess a certain's character behavior for it to work. Shida's murder is... original, but kinda hard to swallow. The way the building is used to create an impossible situation is great: it makes references to a special archery competition that challenged people to hit a target from one end of a covered gallery to another, the low ceiling making it difficult to shoot an arrow far enough (as an arrow needs to get high to be able to fly further). Karasuma for example had a clean shot on the victim from his position for example, but he'd need to be the strongest person around to have made that shot straight across the gallery. The trick behind the murder however requires you to kinda roll with it: it's original and it definitely works better due to the visual format of the story, but it kinda expects you to a) to know that's possible in the first place and b) that it would actually succeed in one try (even if with some practice), for the arrow was just as likely to hit a non-vital part or simply miss the target. In fact, an acquaintance with experience with archery basically rolled her eyes in disbelief when she saw the solution.

Locked Room No. 4 (volume 40) brings Touma, Kana and Himeko as members of the Sakisaka High School Mystery Club to the classic mystery setting: a mansion on a remote island. Sparrow Tours is a small tour operator/planner specialized in unique experiences, and now they're planning to do a mystery tour on this island, where the participants have to solve a mystery (locked room murders) during their stay. The story for this tour is written by the mystery author Yoimiya Sodehara, and the three kids have come along to act as a test panel. Another 'outsider' is Komaki, the head of Accounting of the parent company World Tours, who says Sparrow Tours' expenses are way too much and that he needs to take care of it right away. Once the group arrives on the island, Komaki goes off on his own, while Toum, Kana and Himeko are presented with the three locked room murder situations of the tour (the victims being played by the various employees of Sparrow Tours who have come along). The three kids quickly solve the three locked rooms (to the frustration to the author Yoimiya), but when they go to the dining room to rest, they find it locked. When they unlock it, they discover the body of Komaki sitting at the dining table, with lit candles illuminating the knife in his chest. With the door locked and the window looking down a cliff, it seems the gang is being presented a fourth, unplanned locked room in their tour. The first three locked rooms are pretty much child's play, and the gang manages to solve them almost instantly. The fourth, main locked room is of course more interesting: it's not super complex, but makes clever use of all that has presented before (like always Q.E.D. stories usually take a long time to set the story up). It's pretty obvious who the murderer is once you see through the main piece of misdirection, but I think this was a nicely plotted tale within the usual 100 pages.

In Question! (volume 44), Touma, Kana and Loki arrive at a mountain lodge house after Touma receives a mysterious letter that says "Question!", featuring Fermat's theorem inside. Included were also directions to the mountain lodge, and curious as to the meaning of this letter, the trio decide to go there. There they find two other groups, who happen to know each other from the local family court: both an elderly couple and a younger couple with a daughter who are living seperately now and busy working out a divorce. At first, the two groups figured this was some kind of last effort by the family court to have the two couples talk things over, but Touma's presence obviously proves that idea wrong. All of them have received the same mysterious letter, though with different riddles. The story unfolds as a kind of treasure hunt, with the solution of each riddle pointing towards another riddle and all coming back to Touma's Fermat's theorem. Don't expect to do much mystery solving yourself as the reader, as that's pretty much impossible and a lot of the story is also devoted to Touma's lecture on Fermat's theorem. It's pretty easy to guess what the story is really about though. Detective Conan also often features stories like these, but I find them more enjoyable there, as they work better as standalone mystery stories with a riddle that can be solved by the reader themselves, whereas even with knowledge on Fermat etc., Question! is mostly just guessing.

Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou The Best - Arisugawa Alice Selection is on its own a fairly entertaining volume. Not a big fan of the opening and ending story of this selection, but the middle part is good Q.E.D. stuff and include some of my favorite stories I have read until now of this series. Arisugawa also obviously selected stories that showcase Katou's interest in mathematics and other academic fields: those topics are often mentioned in the Q.E.D. series, but they play an especially important thematic role in most of the stories included in this volume. I might also pick up one of the other The Best volumes in the future, as I think this approach (picking my stories to read) is probably the best way to enjoy this series for me.

Original Japanese title(s): 加藤元浩（原） 有栖川有栖（編）『Q.E.D. -証明終了- The Best 有栖川有栖Selection』

The Ozark Witch Switch

"A false tongue will never make a guilty person."

Susannah Martin (From the Rev. Parris account of the examination at Salem Village Meeting House.)

Funny how Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou never got an anime adaptation actually, while it did have a live-action adaptation.

When I asked for recommendations for Katou Motohiro's Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou series earlier, I was pointed to a storyline that starts in volume 10. The mysteries the young teenage prodigy Touma Sou and his impulsive athletic friend Mizuhara Kana usually encounter in Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou only span one single chapter, but In The Hands of the Witch was the first time a story spanned two chapters, and it even had a seperate story that acted as its conclusion in volume 12. I was quite interested to see what Katou could with the series when using a different format for his stories for a change so I decided to read these two volumes. Volume 10 (2001) opens at Kana's home, where Kana is entertaining Touma Yuu.Yuu had traveled all the way from the United States (where she lives) to visit her big brother only to learn that he's not at home, so she decided to hang out with Kana for the moment as she knows nobody else in the vicinity. Yuu has brought a postcard that was addressed to Sou in the United States. The postcard is not signed, and shows three children dressed for Halloween, with the message "See you again in the next winter." The children stand in front of what appears to the Witch House in Salem, and Yuu explains to Kana about the Witch Trials in Salem and how the town's relatively close to MIT in Cambridge, where her brother studied some years ago. She then remembers a case her brother was involved with five years ago that had to do with "witch trials", when a young Touma Sou had just started his studies at MIT at the tender age of 10.

Touma had a part-time job inputting data for the district attorney's office back then, which is where he also met Annie Crainer, a young prodigy district attorney and daughter of Daniel Crainer, a prominent figure in the legal world. The first case of the rising star of the Massachusetts District Attorney's Office was the murder on Marcus Osborne. Marcus was a wealthy man who in secret, was also the mastermind behind the arms smuggling in the region, even if the police couldn't find proof of his involvement. One night, cops on their beat heard a loud gunshot near the Osborne house and inside they found the man with a bullet hole right through his right eye. The only other person in the house was his young wife Sarah. The Osborne house stands at the end of a cliff, and the road was immediately closed, and the woods searched, but nobody was found, meaning that the only two persons present on the cliff at the time of the murder were the victim, and his wife Sarah. The fact that Sarah's twenty-two years younger than her husband and that she joined a shady sect called the Path to Arcadia a year earlier to which she donated a lot, raises suspicion with Annie, who soon decides to prosecute Sarah for the murder on her husband for financial gain. As the trial continues however, the defense attorney manages to take down each and every argument Annie can bring forward. Whats more, Annie becomes the target of public outcry, as she is accused of conducting a witch trial, persecuting Sarah only because she married an older husband and trying to get her convicted on flimsy evidence. Meanwhile Touma too is having doubts about himself, as he learns that his advice isn't always appreciated by the people around him. When Annie and Touma have a talk however, the two prodigies manage to give each other some well-considered advice, and Touma even manages to solve Annie's murder with one simple question that reaches the whole crux of the problem.

In The Hands of the Witch explores Touma Sou's past in a way I had not seen in this series yet, and the result is quite captivating. The core mystery plot is not incredibly impressive to be honest, but it works great as a vehicle to tell a genuine tale about Touma and Annie, resulting in definitely the most enthralling Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou story I've read until now. The story unveils itself to be a courtroom drama, following Annie as she tries to convince the jury that the defendant is guilty, while the sly defense attorney does a great job at turning each of Annie's witnesses and exhibits around in the defense's favor. I do like how Touma succeeds in pointing out the truth to Annie by asking her one simple question, suddenly connecting all kinds of small questions and happenings, and changing all the various points into one single line leading to murder. That said, there are still little things about this murder plan that seem rather difficult to swallow, as the whole plan needed either a lot of coincidence and luck, or uncanny planning powers that were not explained, to work out the way it did. The murderer would've needed to obtain a certain object for example, that was 1) not even sure to come into existence in that form and 2) it was unlikely they could actually retrieve the object. Also, the plan needed the presence of a certain person, bringing along a certain object, which again was something they couldn't count on 100%. So I really how Touma manages to point out this plan, but the plan itself is less impressive.

In The Hands of the Witch ends in a tragic way, which convinces Kana to hide the postcard from Touma, as she doesn't want to bring up bad memories again. Volume 12 (2002) therefore opens with In The Outskirts of the Universe, a 'normal' story where a witness drawing of an 'actual' alien is stolen from a storage of an 'authority on alien lifeforms', with Kana ending up as the main suspect, even if it seems impossible for anyone in general to have taken the picture from the suitcase it was kept in, as somebody was near the suitcase all the time. It's a minor story, and it's pretty easy to identify when the picture must've been stolen (which immediately points to the real thief and also in the direction of how it must've been done). Nothing remarkable here but the story ends on a different note as Touma happens to come across the "See you again in the next winter" postcard in Kana's room in the very last pages, prompting him to go to the United States to find out who sent him this postcard.

The Rainbow Mirror forms the concluding chapter of the Witch Trial storyline and opens with the shocking murder on an prison inmate, who was five years ago jailed due to the events of In The Hands of the Witch. The poor woman's drink had been poisoned while she was entertaining a guest visitor, and that visitor is none other than Touma himself. Naturally, Touma is taken into custody on suspicion of murder, and the scene of the boy being ushered into a police car outside the prison are broadcast all over the world, including Japan. Kana is contacted promptly by Yuu and Touma's friend Loki, and Kana decides to fly to the United States to find Touma. The three arrive too late in Massachusetts however, as Touma was already released by the police, as video security footage in the prison showed someone else tampered with the drinks machine in the visiting area of the prison. They learn Touma has gone off to visit the other related parties to Sarah Osborne's case and they chase after him, but to their shock they learn more incidents happen to these people after Touma's visits, like Sarah's defense attorney getting into a traffic accident because his car brakes had been tampered with. Fearing the bad outcome of the Osborne case might've weighed on Touma's mind more heavily than they could've ever imagined, his friends try to trace him, but find they are too late each and every time. But is it really Touma who's committing a series of murders, or is some other force at play?

Well, of course it's somebody else. The Rainbow Mirror concludes this arc in the manga, but taken as a mystery story on its own, it's very weak. There is little mystery as to the how of the deaths and other incidents that occur over the course of the story, while the whodunnit aspect is also rather undeveloped. The precise events that led to the motive are very hard to swallow for example (especially considering the way In The Hands of the Witch ended) and with a character like Touma, there' not even a single second where you'll be doubting whether he really did commit the murders. So the story is mostly just about Yuu, Loki and Kana chasing after Touma and visiting all the people related to the Sarah Osborne case again. It works as a book-end to the storyline, giving you a glimpse at the aftermath of the Sarah Osborne case and the five years that have passed since, but in an attempt to bring an emotional gripping story, Katou goes way too far, pulling cards out of nowhere that just don't seem very convincing.

It was fun reading Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou stories for a change that didn't feel so limited in reach. The core mystery plot of In The Hands of the Witch might not've been super-complex (in fact In The Outskirts of the Universe is far more complex I'd say), but it works well as a device to also tell a story about both Touma and Annie in a courtroom drama setting. The Rainbow Mirror is more troublesome. I definitely recommend reading it, as it's definitely part of In The Hands of the Witch's story, but some of the events that occur there are a bit ridiculous, at least in the world of Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou (had this been Detective Conan, I would've been more willing to swallow the premise).
 
Original Japanese title(s): 加藤元浩 『Q.E.D. -証明終了-』第10, 12巻

The Clue in the Camera

"And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven."

"Genesis 28:12"

Huh, I seldom do a double review nowadays, and now I have two of them in a row...

Last year, I reviewed a few volumes of Katou Motohiro's manga Q.E.D. iff Shoumei Shuuryou ("Q.E.D. iff Quod Erat Demonstrandum"), which is a sequel series to the original series Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou. You will remember I have written very little about Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou in general: my first encounter with the series was long before I started this blog and I never stuck with it, so unlike Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen, I never did reviews of the latest volume as they were released. I've always experienced the adventures of Touma Sou, a teenage prodigy and MIT-alumnus who has returned to Japan to experience a normal high school life, and the athletic and impulsive Mizuhara Kana as reasonably entertaining mystery stories, but never reaching the heights and scale of the other two, more famous series. Anyway, a while back I came across a free multi-volume bundling the first five volumes of the original Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou, so today I'll be doing a double review of volumes 4 and 5 of the original series (not iff). The first three volumes I already read in a faraway past and I don't really feel like reviewing them now, so I decided to jump right into volumes 4 and 5, both originally released in 1999.

Last year, Touma was awarded the first prize by the international April Fools Club for his grand prank, which is also the reason why he's not really looking forward to 1st, April, 1999: he doesn't feel like coming with something this year, but as the defending champion it's expected of him to make a proper effort. As he's thinking about what to do, Touma runs into an old friend from his time in the States: Baum comes from the small developing country the Kingdom of Clavius, where he made it to the honorable position of Foreign Vice-Minister. The Kingdom of Clavius however is in a crisis: the Japanese government has offered development aid funds for economic projects with a tender, and a Japanese company won the bid to provide the technology for a fish farm. By the time Baum realized this company cheated through inside connections to win the bid, it was already too late: the Kingdom of Clavius was duped into buying far too expensive, and too advanced technology, meaning each time there's a problem with the machinery, the local engineers can't fix it themselves and with slow 'support' from the Japanese home company, the fish farm has been producing a lot of dead fish lately. Meanwhile, the development aid is in essence a loan from the Japanese government, so that has to be paid back too despite the not-running fish farm. Baum has now come to Japan a desperate man, as he needs not only force the company to improve their support, but also make them sign a contract for a new mining project. Baum knows the company will try to dupe him and his country again, but is willing to go far to save the future of his country, even 'cheat' by luring his opponents with a 'magnetic monopole'.

1st, April, 1999 is the type of story you don't really see in Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen: the swindle story. Series like Liar Game and Kurosagi are all about stories told from the POV of the swindlers (I really should write something about the live-action Liar Game series one of these days...), where you enjoy the thrills of seeing whether the swindler will succeed in fooling their victim or not. In this story, we mostly follow Kana, who tries to help Baum in his effort in psychologically pressuring the Japanese company in signing the new contract by dangling a magnetic monopole in front of them. As we see the events mostly from her side, the reader has a pretty good idea of what is going on and how everyone is trying to fool each other, so really surprising, this story is not. A series like Liar Game is at its best when you know the protagonist is trying to fool everyone, but you don't have an exact grasp on how that's even possible, but it's less of a mystery here. The way the story juggles the pretty serious government-in-debt-and-corrupt-Japanese-industries theme with the light April Fools Club storyline is good though and the ending is pretty funny spy-action stuff.

Jacob's Ladder starts with an enormous chaos happening in Akihabara: something has caused all the traffic lights to jump to green, resulting in multiple heavy traffic accidents (no deaths, luckily) and all traffic in and out Akihabara being stopped to prevent further accidents. Soon after this incident, Touma is visited by his old friend Loki, who is being tailed by... none other than the CIA. Loki explains to Touma that their friend Eva is now being detained by the CIA, as it was determined that the AI she was developing caused the accidents in Akihabara in Japan. Eva works at MIT as a head researcher on artificial life, and she was running an AI that basically simulated life, following four simple principles (cells have to reproduce, cells will look for best location to reproduce, etc.) At first, her simulation of artificial life had reached an equilibrium state, with three cell tribes living in peace: a hunter tribe that followed orders from a leader cell looking for reproductive grounds, a herder tribe that followed a leader cell who themselves led the way in search of reproductive grounds and a farming tribe that gathered around a leader cell and reproduced in their own area. One day however, the hunter tribe attacked the other tribes, and when they tried to fix the AI program, it vanished from their servers. Touma now has to figure out why the AI suddenly broke the equilibrium state and how it ended up in Japan causing all those accidents in order to save Eva.

Err, yeah, this is a really weird type of mystery story. I could imagine it as a Detective Conan movie plot, but even, so it's really unlike what you'd see in Conan and Kindaichi Shounen. In principle, this is a story that should be based on the scientific field of logic, with Touma trying to figure out how the AI could've done what it had done based on the logic rules Eva had set upon the program as its guiding principles (somewhat like the Three Laws of Robotics in Asimov's novels). However, it doesn't really work in this story. Basically, the solution comes down to super-hacking powers and new elements being introduced that override the basic rules Eva set: so it's basically cheating, because apparently the rules can just be ignored. I've read a few of the sequel series to Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou (subtitled iff), and there I've read much better stories built on the premise of logic as a scientific field, where you combine several true rules or conditions to find a contradiction that allows you to logically deduce what happened). Jacob's Ladder has some interesting imagery going on (the titular Jacob's ladder), but as a mystery story, it hardly succeeds.

The Crooked Melody, the first story in volume 5, opens with the famous cellist Hirai Reiji in his country cabin, having just strangled the president of his sponsor company. The new president had been appointed by the bank to help the financially struggling company, and one of the first things the president wanted to do was stop sponsoring something as silly as music. After killing the president in a rage, Hirai quickly makes some calls, making it seem like the president had changed his mind about killing the sponsor contract and that he had left Hirai's cabin in peace. Just before he has time to hide the body outside however, Touma, Kana and her friends arrive at Hirai's cabin: one of Kana's classmates is a far relative of Hirai, and they had arranged to meet him here. The kids arrive and spend some time there with Hirai. Some days later, the president's body is found in his own house and as Hirai was the last one to have seem him alive, he's questioned, but the kids give him a perfect alibi for the time of the murder. The police suspects Hirai could've killed the president in the cabin, but the kids actually saw everything inside the small cabin during their visit: they had visited the bathroom and they had opened the refrigerator, cupboards and the cabinets, and they hadn't come across a dead body obviously.

Touma of course quickly figures out something's wrong, and the crux of the problem lies where Hirai could've hidden the body during the visit of the kids. Strangely enough, the story seems to ignore the fact Hirai could've simply hidden the body outside the cabin. The reader knows this can't be possible, because we see how Hirai's still dragging the body around in the living room when the kids are almost at the front door, but the police, nor Touma can ever know that, so yeah the body could've been hidden in a trash bin outside, and then all the statements of the kids of not having seen the body inside the cabin would've been completely worthless. Touma first points out some small mistakes Hirai made during the kids' visit, eventually arriving at the hiding spot of the body. It's a simple, but effective hiding spot that could've used a slightly better hint though: by changing the angle in a certain panel, you could at least show that that trick was possible, as not all [certain object used to hide the body] can work in that manner. It's a short, not particularly memorable story, but not bad either.

Afterimage of Light starts at a flea market, where Kana buys an old valuable camera for almost nothing. Touma and Kana find some old negatives with five photographs inside, and after developing them find they include some family pictures, so they trace the camera back to a small mountain village where it was initially sold to a pawn shop. They quickly find that the last photograph was taken at the pawn shop itself (when the camera was tested to see if it worked). They also find an old abandoned storage that was in one of the pictures, but as they explore the inside, they find a dead body was hidden inside the plastered walls. What's even more mysterious is that the body had the one and only key to the storage in their pocket, meaning they were plastered in the wall by someone who could not possibly have escaped the storage themselves, as there are no windows and the one door was locked by that one key (Touma, Kana and their companion broke the lock to get inside initially). They learn the storage used to belong to a girl with supernatural powers who could see through walls, though some thought she was nothing but a fraud. They also trace back the three children (now middle-aged adults) who were on the photographs, and Touma and Kana ask a bit about their family history and what their link is to the storage. Eventually, Touma figures out how the body ended up in the wall of a sealed storage and what they have to do with the photographs they found.

I haven't read much of this series yet, but this type of story too I recognize from the sequel series iff, where Touma comes across a story about some mysterious event in the past (the girl who can see through walls), that is also linked to a current incident (often a family tragedy) and him solving a historical mystery/crime based on old testimonies and evidence (in this case, the photographs). The mystery of how the girl managed to see through walls is based on a real phenomenon, so it can be easy to guess how it was done, though there's some really well-done misdirection there. The mystery of the man who was walled up in a locked storage is more interesting, and too has some really well-done misdirection there as to the exact order of events, but it does rely on a lot of coicidences. A bit more hinting as to how it was done would've made this story perhaps a bit more satisfying, especially as the photograph hint is nearly impossible to figure out (even if you figure out what the hint says, you will never figure out what it actually is).

I doubt that volumes 4 and 5 belong to the highlights of the Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou series: both volumes contain a story that is fairly entertaining, but not particularly memorable, and a story that is slightly less well-plotted. So I feel a bit indifferent about these two volumes in general .I noticed that they recently published special Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou volumes with editors like Arisugawa Alice picking their favorite stories, but I'd really appreciate it if someone here can offer some specific volume or story recommendations for either the original series or iff, as I really don't feel like going through all 50+ volumes, though I do want to read more of this series to see what heights it can reach.

Original Japanese title(s): 加藤元浩 『Q.E.D. -証明終了-』第4, 5巻

The Bicycle Thief

平坦であれ曲がりくねってようと

クルクルとまわる自転車のタイヤのもよう

「Over Blow」(Garnet Crow)

Stay level

Like the tire tracks of a bicycle turning round and round even as they make a curve

"Over Blow" (Garnet Crow)

Perhaps I should only read the best/recommended stories in this series and the regular Q.E.D. and skip the rest. At least the stories are never spread across multiple volumes like in Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo! And huh, I actually expected more comments on my recent reviews of that one unique Chinese mystery novel, or the highly entertaining alibi-cracking devoted short story collection... I never seem to be able to guess beforehand which reviews attract more commentators >_>

Some months ago, I picked up the first three volumes of Katou Motohiro's manga Q.E.D. iff Shoumei Shuuryou ("Q.E.D. iff Quod Erat Demonstrandum"). I have already reviewed the first two volumes (here and here), and I have in general found this continuation of the Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou series to be more or less what I had expected from it, based on what I had already seen and read of the original series. In terms of story structure, it's definitely exactly the same: each volume of iff contains two stories,  both a "conventional" murder mystery story as well as a non-murder detective story starring the brilliant high school student Touma Sou and his classmate Kana. The third volume, originally released in 2016, too follows this pattern. The opening story is titled The Three Assassins and first introduces us to three different women who find themselves in probably the worst time in their lives. All three women have been swindled out of their money: one lost all the money she had saved to open her own shop to a marriage swindler, another woman lost her father's apple garden and the last woman saw the money she saved for her son's studies disappear in "investments". It won't surprise the reader much that all these women have been the victim of the same man: Yamaguchi Kenji. Fraud is how the president of Art Finance Yamaguchi makes a living, and in the case of the three women, he even made sure he's personally liable for the money they gave him, as he actually doesn't own a penny. His house and assets are all, on paper, property of his company, and a lawsuit targeting him wouldn't return their money anyway. Driven by their hate, all three women appear at an art auction party at Yamaguchi's house, and unbeknownst to each other, they all share one goal: to kill Yamaguchi.

It so happens that both Touma and Kana are present at the auction party too. An acquaintance of Kana was swindled out of their precious plate too, and Kana has dragged Touma along in order to retrieve the plate. At the same time, all the three women proceed their own plans to kill of Yamaguchi... and all three manage to succeed? This story is built solely around the premise that we follow the murder schemes of all three women in an inverted mystery story style, and that at the end, we see all three women succeed with their plans. Which of course can't be the case, because as much as they would like to do it over and over again, usually a man can only be killed once, and not thrice. What makes this case even stranger that eventually the body is found in the pool, rather than the study where the body was left after the murder was first discovered. At one hand, I think the idea behind this story is interesting, as the core mystery is fairly alluring, revolving around the question of how all three murder plans could've succeeded at the same time with just the one and same victim, but it's also awfully easy to guess what more or less must have happened, given the details we are given for all three plans, as none of them are really complex, and it isn't very hard to combine the scarce elements from all three plans to arrive at what actually happened.

The second story in this volume is titled Bicycle Thief and has Touma receiving a call from the past. He is asked to be the witness to the demolition of a certain house in a small, rural village where he spent a few weeks six years ago. Six years ago, Touma was still living in the United States, but as school ends early there, his parents took him back to Japan to experience a month of Japanese school, figuring it'd be good for him. During this time in the village, Touma became friends with Sawaihara Akiyuki and even got hired by Akiyuki's brother Takahiko for a part time job, doing menial jobs for the local elderly like cutting weed or watering the plants. Takahiko's place, where he also ran his little business, is now slated to be demolished. Takahiko himself has been traveling the world on a bicycle for years now, and he only returned to this house once in a while to leave souvenirs, but nobody has seen him in all those years.  For some reason, Touma's sign is needed for the demolition company to carry through with taking down the house. As he tells Kana and his other classmates about his time i this village six years ago, Touma also recounts a minor incident that happened during his stay. One day, he found a bicycle in the bushes while he was cutting weeds. The bicycle had been stolen from the bicycle shop earlier and as there had been a witness who claimed they saw a child taking the bicycle, Touma was accused by the police of having stolen the bicycle himself. The thief was never caught, which surprises Kana, but Touma reveals that while the police never managed to trace who the real thief was, he himself knew who stole the bicycle and more importantly, why.

Hmm, a somewhat weird story. It's mostly a recount of events as Touma experienced in the past, and then suddenly Touma reveals he already knew who the thief was and why. There are some interesting elements: there is not only a false solution which seems fairly convincing, but also a hidden crime within this story, which is quite deviously hidden within the narrative, though the clues pointing to that crime are a bit too meagre and the actual execution of that scheme seems a bit risky (I know it's a rural village, but would nobody have seen X do that?). But on the whole, the story is both straightforward and rather limited in scope, and is perhaps best enjoyed as a "story set in Touma's past" than as an engaging mystery story. Reminds me though that the stories in iff feature a lot of characters with big dreams that either don't work out well. In this story, we have Takahiko who first failed his college entrance exams and then resorted to the weed cutting until he left the village on his bicycle, but then there's the three women in the first story who all had big goals in life which were taken away from them. There were those artists who wanted to go solo and a wannabe scientist in the first volume, and the comedian who had to give up his dream in the industry in the second volume... I mean, it's not strange for persons to have dreams and goals, but it's like each other story you'll find a character in this series who will have some monologue about their goals and dreams in life and it almost never works out 100% as planned.

What was interesting about this volume though was that the characters were all based on... real people! Apparently, they had a campaign where you could apply to have your name featured as a character name in one of these stories: each of these stories is followed by a page with the characters who were based on one of the participants, and all with a one-line comment coming from the actual persons. Kindaichi 37-sai no Jikenbo has a similar campaign going on by the way, tied to the limited edition releases, while the movies of Detective Conan always feature two or three guest child voice actors (which I think are chosen through the magazine Shonen Sunday). These scenes always stand out notoriously by the way, as it's not difficult to recognize the amateur child guest actors among the professionals.

Of the three volumes I've read of Q.E.D. iff Shoumei Shuuryou, this one was definitely the least interesting one. Both stories are not bad per se, but are nothing particularly clever or memorable either, and of course, there are only two stories per volume, so on the whole, it leaves next to no impression. This was the last volume of iff I got and as things stand now, I don't think I'll be making it a priority to follow this series. While never actually bad, I just miss something about this series that really makes me excited to read on. I think I would have enjoyed this series much better if I were actually following the serialization: I really wouldn't mind reading stories like these once a month as they come in as they are definitely entertaining enough, but I don't think they work as well read one after another in a volume.

Original Japanese title(s): 加藤元浩 『Q.E.D. iff -証明終了-』第3巻

The Perfect Plot

 形がないものならば

いつも感じていればいい

「今宵エデンの片隅で」（Garnet Crow）

If it has no form

You can always keep on feeling that emotion

"Tonight, in a corner of Eden" (Garnet Crow)

Speaking of mystery stories about comedians, that TV special a couple of years ago starring real-life Japanese comedians like Bakarhythm, Date from Sandwichman, Hakata Daikichi (who also voice-acted in Detective Conan: Zero the Enforcer) and others playing themselves as suspects in the murder of Bananaman's Himura: that was a weird special.

The second volume of Q.E.D. iff Shoumei Shuuryou ("Q.E.D. iff Quod Erat Demonstrandum") brings us two new adventures of the brilliant high school student Touma Sou and his classmate Kana in this continuation of the original Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou series. As per custom, we have both a "conventional" murder story as well as a non-murder story in one volume, and this second volume starts with the non-violent one. In The Naked Emperor, Touma is asked by his classmate Yuubari to help her brother. Yuubari Yuuki was one half of the rising star comedy duo Order to Leave, but two years ago, his partner stopped to go work in a normal company. Since then, Yuuki's been trying his luck as a solo comedian, but his story is not that one of success, and he has sorta made up his mind to give up on his dream, but not without going out with a bang. The last few months, he has been writing his own one-act comedy play called The Naked Emperor, which is by far the best he's ever produced according to friends and his fellow young comedians. The rumors about his fantastic play however also reach the ears of the highly popular comedian Suzuka Santa and his ruthless manager Akashi, who want to get their hands on that play so Suzuka can star in it. One day, Suzuka visits the dressing room of the venue where Yuuki and several other comedy groups are performing. He first asks to if he could read the play, but when he offers to buy the play from Yuuki, his offer is refused. When Suzuka leaves the dressing room, Yuuki discovers his (handwritten) play is gone, and suspicion obviously falls on Suzuka, but there is one problem: Suzuka was completely naked when he entered the dressing room so how could he have smuggled the play outside without anyone noticing? Touma has not only have to solve the mystery of the missing script, but also find a way to help Yuuki succeed with his play.

The 'impossible' disappearance of the script is just the very beginning of the story, and quite simple to solve, but it certainly makes an impact, as the thief (Suzuka) was completely naked and empty-handed as he entered and left the dressing room. It doesn't take long for Touma to solve this disappearance (it's really simple), but Yuuki's problems aren't solved quite yet, as he's eventually hired by Suzuka as an employee to direct and rewrite the play so Suzuka can star in it anyway (together with Yuuki and some others), and slowly, Yuuki realizes he's being bamboozled out of the play he wrote for himself. What follows is a "mystery" story of a kind you never see in Detective Conan or Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, as we see Suzuka's manager Akashi, but also Touma himself trying several schemes to help out their respective "clients" and while everyone can guess that it's Touma who ends up victorious in the end, the kind of plan he comes up to help out Yuuki is unlike anything in the other major detective manga and almost closer to the schemes in series like Liar Game (watch the drama, it's an excellent mystery series!). It's extremely unlikely everything would go exactly as Touma had anticipated, but it's certainly possible to deduce what his plans are once you're presented the semi-Challenge to the Reader. Like In The Year of Quantum in the first volume, this story requires you to consider several facts mentioned throughout the story and combine in a purely logical manner to see how they pertain to each other and that the implications are. 

The second story, The Form of Murder, is a "normal" murder story. It's summer, and Touma's friend Sid Green, AKA Loki (whom he knows from his MIT days) has invited Touma and his assistants (yes, multiple, as more girls besides Kana wanted to come along) to Malta, where Loki's uncle runs the Hotel Geometry, a hotel for academics who need some rest. One of the guests is Alf Lets, an Oxford mathematics professor, whose wife Camilla was murdered four months ago in Malta, in the very same hotel. Her death was considered a robbery-gone-wrong by the local police, but Alf is convinced it was a planned murder, and has been searching the whole of Malta to find a clue that'll lead him to Camilla's murderer. He's accompanied by his friends the Goodmans and his solicitor Bris, who were also in Malta on the night of the murder. Seeing how Alf is exhausting himself in search of clues, Loki wants Touma to solve the murder, which indeed has a few interesting points.

The arranged marriage between the carefree, partying Camilla and the bookworm Alf was by all means a complete failure, as Camilla was getting worse and worse with his treatment of Alf and quite openly flirting and cheating on him with other men. On the night of Camilla's murder, Derek Goodman warned Alf he should divorce from Camilla, while Franny Goodman was getting quite enough of Camilla hitting on Derek. Bris too was of the opinion Camilla meant nothing but trouble for Alf, but he had no intentions of listening to his friends. That night, Camilla had a hangover and a headache, and asked Alf to get her something to help ease the pain. Alf left the hotel keys with reception as he went out to the store, and the Goodmans and Bris also went their own ways, but when Alf returned, he found his wife dead with a knife in her. The murder was committed in the period everyone was roaming around on their own, but the door and windows to the room were locked and the keys were kept at the reception desk, so even if a robber didn't commit the murder, who did and more importantly, how did they get in and out the seaside hotel room?

Unlike Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, Q.E.D. stories are about 100 pages per chapter (story) due to the magazine in which it is serialized, which gives it the freedom to build a different kind of story than one that is structured around multiple chapters each about 18~20 pages, and with a mini-climax/cliffhanger at the end of each chapter. The Form of Murder however is an example where you can also sense the advantages of a more rigid structure, as The Form of Murder likes to meander a lot, and the pace is really, really slow. Having chapters like Conan or Kindaichi Shounen would've at least brought a more focused way of telling the story. The way in which the locked room was constructed was okay, even if it was a bit unclear whether that certain action was possible or not (better clewing would've been appreciated), but the story kinda stumbles over the things the murderer did, and attempted to do besides the murder, resulting in a somewhat unguided, and at times even confusing story.

Like with the first volume, I find Q.E.D. iff Shoumei Shuuryou 2 to be decent, but not unique enough to get me really invested in the series. The non-murder stories, that employ the scientific field of logic are definitely what set Q.E.D. iff apart from its rivals and can be very fun, but I still haven't come across the story that'll convince me to go out and buy the other volumes. That said, I still have another volume of iff I got in the free offer, so expect a review of that volume in the future.

Original Japanese title(s): 加藤元浩 『Q.E.D. iff -証明終了-』第2巻

A Question of Proof

「なんで捕まえられないのよ」

「iffです」

『Q.E.D. iff -証明終了-』 

"Why can't Dad arrest him?"

"Because of iff."

"Q.E.D. Iff Quod Erat Demonstrandum"

When I reviewed Honkaku Mystery Comics Seminar a while back, I noted how the informative historical research into the development of mystery manga gave much deserved credit to the trio of Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, Detective Conan and Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou, which formed the water-shed moment for the genre. These three series released soon after another in the early~mid nineties paved the way for puzzle-plot oriented mystery stories and also proved their economic worth as multi-media franchises. Of these three titles, I regularly review Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo and Detective Conan, but you might've noticed I pay next to no attention to Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou here (also: do not confuse this Q.E.D. series with that other mystery series titled Q.E.D....). That is not to say it's a bad series: it really isn't. But long, loooong ago, I tried the first few volumes, and while it was an okay mystery series, I just didn't feel the urge to go out and get the remaining 20+ volumes that were available at that moment (when it was still in 20+ volumes length range). The live-action TV drama didn't manage to change my mind about continuing, and neither did the first volume of the spin-off C.M.B. And from a certain point on, I just didn't feel really like starting with a series fifty volumes long...

But a few weeks ago, the first couple volumes of the series Q.E.D. iff Shoumei Shuuryou ("Q.E.D. iff Quod Erat Demonstrandum") were offered for free as e-books and as I can definitely be lured with free stuff, I decided to return to this series. Q.E.D. iff is the sequel series to the original Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou, which officially ended in 2014 when Monthly Shonen Magazine+, where the series was serialized, was cancelled. In 2015, the new series Q.E.D. iff started in Shonen Magazine R, which is set just a few months after the original series. The protagonists are still the brilliant Touma Sou and his athletic classmate Kana. Touma graduated from M.I.T. at the mere age of fourteen, but moved back to Japan to experience a normal high school life there. One of the few friends he made at school was Mizuhara Kana, an energetic (and sometimes nosy) girl who also happens to be the daugher of Inspector Mizuhara. Kana's busybody personality often leads to her and Touma getting involved with mysterious cases (not always murder), but Touma's highly analytical mind always eventually manages to prove what happened. In Q.E.D. iff (if and only if) Touma and Kana are now in their final year at high school (as opposed to first and eventually second years in the original series) and Touma has moved into a new home, but the adventures they have are still the same. As always, each volume consists out of two semi-long stories (due to the fact Q.E.D. is traditionally serialized in a monthly with long installments). Q.E.D. iff contains the stories iff and In The Year of Quantum Energy.

The opening story iff starts with a short introduction to the characters of Touma and Kana for newcomers, but it doesn't take long for Kana to conjure up a murder for Touma to solve. The plans to renovate the school's kendo dojo have to been cancelled as the sponsor for this project, Misago Taimei, was killed. The famous sculptor was an alumnus of the kendo club and had promised to pay for the renovation, but his sudden death put a stop to those plans. Hoping to still pry some money out of this, Kana visits the art studio of Misago, only to find her father investigating the murder. It appears the man was killed in rather mysterious circumstances. During the day, four people were present at the art studio: two of Misago's disciples, his manager and a model. Misago was found dead in his own atelier at the end of the day with his latest work vandalized, but as his manager had been working at the desk overlooking the door to the atelier, it doesn't seem possible for anyone to have gone inside to kill the man. Kana quickly realizes that the disciple who discovered the body could've commited the murder before telling the others, but Touma points out that while that person could've committed the murder, it does not mean that all the requirements of the murderer apply to them (if and only if), and therefore Touma himself decides to solve the case.

A rather weak opening story. It's not really a locked room murder of course, but it's painfully obvious who'll turn out to be the murderer because of the way the story tries to avoid putting too much attention to one person, and once you're there, it's easy to focus on the parts where that person appears and figure out how the murder on the sculptor was done. Even as an introduction of the title iff, I think it doesn't really succeed well.

In The Year of Quantum Energy is much stronger in comparison, and an interesting story of a type you don't see in either Detective Conan or Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo. A kooky inventor who hopes to fabricate a machine that can transform vacuum energy into electricity is looking in the mountains for a place for a lab together with his real estate agent, when the two find a little deserted cottage. The cottage used to be the possession of the Tategami Sect, a new religion which was active in Kyoto a century ago, but which suddenly vanished completely. Inside the cottage, the two discover a mummified body beneath a heap of rubble, and the corpse is identified as Tategami Kaijirou, the head of the sect who had disappeared at the same time as the demise of his sect. Touma becomes interested in the mystery of how the Tategami Sect went down a century ago, when he manages to buy a few of the 1920s science magazines found in the cottage (sold by the inventor for some quick cash), and discovers among those magazines a diary by a reporter who lived in the community of the Tategami Sect. Touma and Kana visit the inventor at the cottage, where they also meet with the great-granddaughter of Tategami Kaijirou, who too wants to learn what happened to her great-grandfather. Combining the diary in Touma's possession and the documents in possession of Tategami An, the four slowly learn about the curious sect that lived in the outskirts of Kyoto and it doesn't take long for Touma to pick up on some clues that help solve the mystery of why the people in the sect were slaughtered in a massacre a century ago and why Tategami Kaijirou was discovered a mummy in this cottage.

A really neat type of story that you don't see in the other big mystery series, as it revolves solely around delving into historical documents. The historical account of the happenings in the Tategami Sect a century ago take up most of the narrative, so you don't see much of Touma and the others. but the story-within-a-story is fairly entertaining on its own, portraying a somewhat suspicious new religion, but that does do good for the people that believe in it. There is a sort of mystery presented in this historical account about a semi-miracle performed by Tategami Kaijirou (where he can instantly put a doubting Thomas to sleep), but the solution is rather far-fetched and hardly clewed and almost comes down to something as ridiculous "they happened to have a secret machine there to do that and you totally should have guessed even though there were no real clues."

The mystery about what eventually brought the downfall of the sect is much more entertaining though. The whole tragedy is based around a certain realization, which is excellently plotted and integrated in the story. While the jump from this realization to the conclusion that this must've caused the tragedy is a bit big, it's certainly possible to arrive at the realization itself, and if you get to this point, you should at least have an idea that it played a key role in what would happen later. The type of plottin utilized here is actually seldomly used in Conan and Kindaichi Shounen, but it really works well in Q.E.D. iff, as the fundamentals of this concept ultimately lie in the scientific field of logic. As a historical mystery story-within-a-story, In The Year of Quantum Energy is surprisingly fun and a good example of Q.E.D. doing not seen in other series.

In the end, I wouldn't say that Q.E.D. iff Shoumei Shuuryou 1 really managed to convince me to read the rest immediately, but it's certainly nice to see a kind of mystery story not done in either Conan and Kindaichi Shounen. I have a few other volumes of iff I got in the offer, so I'll probably be reviewing those in the future too.

Original Japanese title(s): 加藤元浩 『Q.E.D. iff -証明終了-』第1巻