The Clue in the Antique Trunk

We are all rowing the boat of fate
The waves keep on comin' and we can't escape

"Life is Like a Boat" (Rie Fu)

To be honest, if I were to fish something out of the canals of Amsterdam, I wouldn't be expecting anything good in the first place...

It was a late August day in 1965, when a child noticed a suitcase floating in the canal of the Jacob van Lennepkade in Amsterdam. The men around lift the suitcase out of the water, but to the great shock of them, the smell and color from the suitcase immediately them it's no treasure they found, and they immediately notify the police. The contents of the suitcase are determined to be the torso of a man: the hands and legs are missing, as is the victim's head. It's obviously a murder and Inspector van Berkum is put on the case. While the hands and face of the corpse are missing, clues like clothing and the brand name of the suitcase suggest a Japanese link, leading to a search for a missing Japanese male. This man is eventually found in Belgium, where a businessman Sakazaki, who recently arrived in Brussels as his trading company's European local man, hasn't been seen since a while by his landlord and other acquaintances. The joint investigation between the Dutch and Belgian police forces isn't going smoothly however, and when the prime suspect dies in a car accident, it seems the case is destined to go unsolved forever. That is until several years later, a Japanese journalist and Dr. Kuma Ukichi make their way to the Netherlands to see if they can clear the name of the prime suspect in Matsumoto Seichou's novella Amsterdam Unga Satsujin Jiken (1969) which was released in Dutch as De Amsterdamse Koffermoord (1979).

This novelette by Matsumoto Seichou, father of the shakaiha movement of realistic, socially aware mystery fiction in Japan, is based on an actual murder case that happened in Amsterdam in 1965, where indeed the body of a Japanese man was discovered, assumed to be the missing Kameda Yutaka. The case was never solved, but the sensational details of the case were of course too good to forget. This novellette by Matsumoto Seichou was written a few years after the case (and he apparently even did fieldwork), but there have been other Japanese mystery writers who found a bloody muse in the case of a Japanese man being cut-up in pieces fished out of the canals of Amsterdam: Arisugawa Alice (Gensou Unga) and Tsumura Shuusuke (Gisou Unga Satsujin Jiken) for example have drawn inspiration from this case too.

Matsumoto's story is clearly inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, which it also references. The first half of the story is a relatively dry account of how the body was found, and uses news articles and other sources to explain the efforts of the police investigation. I gather that Matsumoto was sticking relatively close to the actual case here, even if he did change the names of the people mentioned. Like with Marie Roget, the idea is that while the 'appearances' of the case may have been changed for the story (small details, names etc.), the important details of the tale are left as they are and that the story is thus like a thought experiment. In the second half, the duo of the narrator (a business journalist) and Dr. Kuma Ukichi are introduced, who travel to the Netherlands and Belgium on behalf of the deceased suspect, hoping to bring a new light to the case.

Which, unsurprisingly, they do (it wouldn't be much of a detective story, right?). Don't expect a mindblowing reveal based on long chains of deduction with a labyrinthine puzzle plot, because that's precisely what Matsumoto didn't like, but the story does a good job of presenting a story that can, more or less, be deduced beforehand. Most of the important information is presented in the dry accounts of the first half, and while the narrator and Dr. Kuma ask around a bit after their arrival in Europe, the attentive reader can definitely make an educated guess as to the truth behind the Japanese torso. Matsumoto makes clever use of contradicting news reports here to string the reader along, while it gives an interesting answer to one of the biggest hurdles of the investigation: why was the body decapitated and were both hands cut off, while the at the other hand, the murderer didn't seem very occupied with the idea of really hiding the victim's identity considering the suitcase and clothes. The answer Matsumoto provides is believable, but has just enough of the romanticism a mystery story should have.

The Dutch volume De Amsterdamse Koffermoord features three other short stories by Matsumoto by the way (one of them Kao, Matsumoto's debut story), while in Japan, this story was bundled together with Saint Andrews no Jiken ("The Incident at St. Andrews").

I do confess that my own interest in Amsterdam Unga Satsujin Jiken derives for 90% from the fact it's a story by a famous Japanese mystery author, about a case that happened here in the Netherlands. The case happened long before I was born and I have never ever heard anyone talk about it in any other context, so I guess I'd never even have known about the real case if not for this story, so it's interesting read in that aspect. It has a novelty aspect to it, and the story, while nothing phenomenal, is interesting enough if you happen to have an hour go read.

Original Japanese title(s): 松本清張『アムステルダム運河殺人事件』

Double Death

ざわめき Cry 大空へ飛び立つように時を通り抜ける

哀しい位ささやか　淡い記憶　やさしくそそぐ光

「Nostalgia」（Garnet Crow）

Noisy cry / Jump in the blue sky like you're passing through time

A memory so faint and small it's sad / The light gently pouring in

"Nostalgia" (Garnet Crow)

Every year, I try to return to Fukuoka, even if it's only a fictional version...

The dead man and woman lying on the beach of Kashiihama in Fukuoka seemed like a clear-cut case for the local police at first sight. Considering how neatly they were lying next to each other, a double suicide seemed like a reasonable conclusion. However, the deceased man was a ministry official who been the target of a large-scale corruption investigation back in the capital Tokyo, and fact is that his superiors can breathe a lot easier now they know he's dead and can't talk anymore. Detective Mihara of the Metropolis Police Department can't believe the man committed suicide and suspects someone set him as a scapegoat, while detective Torigai of the Fukuoka police too suspects the apparant love suicide might hide something more sinister. The trail eventually leads to a certain suspect, but there is one major problem: the suspect must have been in Fukuoka on the southern island of Kyushu on the night of the double suicide, but he has an iron-clad alibi that puts him all the way in the northen outskirts of the country, in Hokkaido that night! Can Mihara and Torigai break this unbreakable alibi in the 1958 film Ten to Sen ("Points and Lines")?

The movie Ten to Sen is based on the first full-length novel written by Matsumoto Seichou with the same title. Matsumoto is best known as the main figure in the shakai-ha (social school) movement, a school in mystery fiction that places emphasis on the social backgrounds of crimes, and is often juxtaposed against honkaku orthodox puzzle plot mysteries. And while his first novel does include shakai-ha elements (the corruption scandal that lies at the heart of the case), it's also a classic alibi-deconstruction puzzle plot mystery in the spirit of Freeman Wills Crofts. The book ranked in 6th in the 2013 edition of the Tozai Mystery Best 100, making it one of the most respected Japanese mystery novels of all time. And speaking of time: the original novel must have been incredibly succesful from the beginning. For the original book was serialized between 1957 - 1958, and the film was released only a few months later in 1958!

The film follows the book quite faithfully, so what you get is a classic puzzle plot mystery about a detective attempting to break an alibi that seems perfect, as his one suspect was on the other side of the country. The story is definitely a bit outdated now, and a lot of modern readers will probably think the main trick seem obviously simple, but imagine yourself in Japan in the late sixties, and you might understand why it was more impressive back then. And even then: the mystery plot has much more than that. The story interestingly enough makes use of actual time schedules from 1957, resulting in one of the more famous "moments" in Japanese mystery fiction, often referred to as the "Four Minutes At Tokyo Station": you'll have to watch the film or read the book to get it. The short story Yonpun wa Mijikasugiru by Arisugawa Alice has a nice meta-discussion about the topic by the way). Anyway, if you like Crofts, I think you'll enjoy this film too. That said though, the film is fairly short at 85 minutes, so while it handles everything in the book, it goes really fast, so you'll need to pay attention, or else you'll miss the connections between the scenes. An additional ten, fifteen minutes would've done wonders for this film.

I'm not too familiar with older Japanese films, so I knew few of the actors, but I was surprised to see Takamine Mieko in a major role: she also played big roles in Ichikawa Kon's film adaptations of the Kindaichi Kousuke novels in the 70s (Inugami Matsuko in Inugamike no Ichizoku and Higashikouji Takako in Jooubachi). Main actor Minami Hiroshi on the other hand had only just debuted as an actor two films earlier, and his stilted acting creates some unintentional comedy: the way he suddenly decides the man in front of him is suspicious is hilariously odd, making him seem delusional.

Ten to Sen, as a story, is definitely a precursor to the travel mystery genre championed by Nishimura Kyoutarou, where travelling and domestic tourism becomes an integral part of the mystery story. The visual medium of the Ten to Sen film obviously strengthens this concept of travelling, as we actually see the police detectives travelling to Fukuoka, Tokyo and Hokkaido. An advantage of this film having been produced around the same period as the original book's publication is that everything looks exactly like'd you'd expect. Recreating the past through proper art design is of course a thing in TV drama, but nothing beats the real thing, right?

I have mentioned this countless of times, but I have lived in Kashiihama, Fukuoka during my studies there, my dorm being located about five minutes away from the crime scene in the opening. The presence of two stations nearby, JR Kyushu Kashii Station and Nishitetsu Kashii Station, plays an important role in the story, as the movements of the dead couple become the focus of investigation. It's pretty odd that those two stations are so close to each other (basically the same street), and the way it's described in the novel shows that Matsumoto really knew what he was talking about, as he ingenously incorporated the two stations in his story. I remember I myself got on the wrong line when I first lived there, arriving at a different Kashii station than the one I had expected. While the film was not filmed at location, the set was nearly identical to the actual Kashii Stations, if we compare old photographs of the stations to how they are portrayed in the film. By the way, the current building of Nishitetsu Kashii Station is moved slightly to the back compared to the original one, so they planted a cherry blossom tree at the place where the original building stood to commemorate it. It is called the Seichou Cherry Blossom as a reference to Ten to Sen, which made the station famous.

The film Ten to Sen is thus a faithful adaptation of the book, which really benefits from actually being produced in the same time the book was written in the first place. The main story about an unbreakable alibi is still a classic tale of mystery, even if it's a bit outdated nowadays. The film suffers slightly from its short runtime, with the story developing at a high pace, but it's an atmospheric, entertaining adaptation. There's also a two-part TV drama adaptation from 2007 by the way, starring Beat Takeshi, which in general has been lauded as a great adaptation too, as it's supposed to have done a great job at recreating the late 1950s atmosphere.

Original Japanese title(s): 『点と線』

A Frightened Hound Meets Demons Underground

Now Garm howls loud | before Gnipahellir, 

The fetters will burst, | and the wolf run free; 

Much do I know, | and more can see 

Of the fate of the gods, | the mighty in fight

Völuspá (Bellows translation)

It was in the year of 1987 that the world first got to know the ever-smoking private detective Jinguuji Saburou in the Famicom Disk System videogame Shinjuku Chuuou Kouen Satsujin Jiken ("The Shinjuku Central Park Murder Case"). It was a hardboiled detective adventure game that, for that period, was surprisingly aimed at an older audience, as the investigation into the mysterious murder of a woman found in the middle of Shinjuku Central Park would bring protagonist Jinguuji and the player to the seedier side of town. While a kindhearted, if somewhat silent man, Jinguuji would not stand for injustice and had the guts to face yakuza gang if the case demanded it. Three other games followed on the Famicom (some of them written by Nojima Kazushige, best known for various Final Fantasy titles), and while the series never scored a real hit, the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou ("Detective Jinguuji Saburou) series somehow managed to survive various game console generations, with releases on hardware like the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable and the Nintendo 3DS.

The series not only managed to outlive several console generations, it even manage to outlive two companies. The series was originally conceived by Data East, but they went bankrupt in 2003, with the intellectual property moving to WorkJam. WorkJam then released new games in the series at a fairly steady pace of once every two, three years, but this came to a stop five years ago. Earlier this year, Ark System Works announced they had gotten possession of this series now from WorkJam, which was  just in time too for the thirtiest anniversary of the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou series.

Tantei Jinguuji Saburou series 
1: The Shinjuku Central Park Murder Case (1987) [Nintendo Famicom Disk System]
5: The Unfinished Reportage (1996) [Sony PlayStation / SEGA Saturn] 
6: At the End of the Dream (1998) [Sony PlayStation / SEGA Saturn] 
7: Before the Light Fades (1999) [Sony PlaySation] 
8: Innocent Black (2002) [Sony PlayStation 2]  
9: Kind of Blue (2004) [Sony PlayStation 2]  
10: The White Phantom Girl (2005) [Nintendo GameBoy Advance] 
14: Ashes and Diamonds (2009) [Sony PlayStation Portable] 
15: The Red Butterfly (2010) [Nintendo DS] 
16: Rondo of Revenge (2012) [Nintendo 3DS] 
17: Ghost of the Dusk (2017) [Nintendo 3DS]
18: Prism of Eyes (2018) [Nintendo Switch/Sony PlayStation 4]

Novels
The Ghost of Shinjuku (2006) 
A Bright Future (2007)

Tantei Jinguuji Saburou: Ghost of the Dusk ("Detective Jinguuji Saburou: Ghost of the Dusk", 2017) is the seventeenth main series entry in the adventure game series and meant to be a thirtieth anniversary game. The main scenario is the titular Ghost of the Dusk, which starts with our hardboiled detective hanging out in his usual bar when he overhears an agitated man saying he found a dead body inside an abandoned mansion in Shinjuku.  With his interests piqued, Jinguuji decides to check up on the story and indeed, he discovers a dead homeless man inside the decrepit mansion. While at first it appears it was just the man's health that did him in, Jinguuji soon discovers that there might be more behind the man's death. As he digs into the unfortunate death, he also becomes acquainted with the current owner of the abandonded mansion, who lives in a small shed on the mansion grounds. The owner, a former doctor, confides to Jinguuji the mansion is cursed, which is why he doesn't live there himself and the curse soon proves itself to be true as more people die on the premises. Jinguuji has faced the most dangerous gangsters and killers in his long career as a private detective in Shinjuku, but can he also win against a decades-old curse?

The sixteenth entry in the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou series was released five years ago, and while Fukushuu no Rondo ("Rondo of Revenge") was supposed to be a work to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the series, it turned out to be a very disappointing game, with a story that at times didn't even feel like it was part of the series, and also fairly clumsy attempts at introducing new gameplay elements. In fact, the game was so bad I feared it meant the end of the series. When Ghost of the Dusk  was announced earlier this year though, it was being toted as going back to basics, going back to the roots of the series. The various key persons in the development team had all worked on the series before (most prominently, the scenario writer for 2002's Innocent Black returned), and like the older games, the focus would be on the story and the music. In that respect, I have to say Ghost of the Dusk did its job very admirably.

With the series having last for thirty years, there are just some things you expect from the series. No Tantei Jinguuji Saburou story for example would be complete without an appearance of Jinguuji's capable assistant Youko, or police inspector Kumano of the Yodobashi Police Station in Shinjuku. Fantastic jazzy music is also a must-have in this series. But the setting is also important, as the games are always set in real-life locations, most prominently the city of Shinjuku (part of Tokyo), which houses not only the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Department, but also the center of the underworld of Tokyo, with its red-light district and various gangs housing there. It was here were Fukushuu no Rondo slipped up, but luckily, Ghost of the Dusk proved to be exactly what any long-time fan of the series would want in terms of story. It starts very familiar with the discovery of the body of a homeless person. Homeless persons are very often featured in this series, as many people with no way out eventually do end up in Shinjuku, and unfortunately, they often end up as the "disposible" victims of various schemes of gangs and other nefarious parties. The Jinguuji Saburou series has always paid much attention to the helpless in Shinjuku, from the homeless, to the people who get engulfed by the underworld operating there, and is thus a form of social school mystery fiction, as it addresses problems in society in conjunction with its mystery plot. Ghost of the Dusk starts off like this too, but eventually moves towards a much bigger plot that is very satisfying to uncover. While it is definitely not a grand puzzle plot mystery , it does a good job at mixing the hardboiled mode with some minor puzzle plot tropes.

While the series had some interesting experiments with gameplay (like mechanics where you zap between various protagonists and managing assistants), the Jinguuji Saburou series has always been more focused on presenting a hardboiled mystery story than diverse gameplay, and that holds true for Ghost of the Dusk too. You'll only be using the commands to move to the next location to speak with person X or Y, which will drive the story forward, allowing you to go a different location to speak with person Z, etcetera. Most of the story is "read", rather than "played", but the stories of Jinguuji Saburou are usually interesting enough to keep the player hooked. Occasionally, you'll be prompted to interrogate suspects or find evidence in a room, but these segments are always very simple and it is impossible to fail the game or hit upon a game over screen, or even really get stuck. The simple hint system that has been in place since the first game is also still here: Jinguuji can smoke at practically all times, which will give him an idea of what to do next.

The scenario writer (Kaneko Mitsue) commented that while Ghost of the Dusk's main goal was to go back to the roots of the series, but she also wanted to feature something refreshing and new, which eventually became the focus on the cursed mansion. While country houses and mansions with hidden passages are a staple of mystery fiction, they are hard to do in a hardboiled setting, especially one that is set in the metropolis that is Shinjuku. And indeed, the setting had not been used before in the series, but Kaneko did a commendable job at integrating this trope in this series without making it feel out of place.

As a standalone story, Ghost of the Dusk is a short, but captivating scenario, but this is not the only story included in the game. While this is the seventeenth game in the main series, there exists also a spin-off series of application games originally made for cell phones (not smart phones). If one would consider the main series the "novels", than these application games would be the "short stories". Twenty-four of them were released in the past for cell phones, and twenty of them had been ported to the Nintendo DS/PlayStation Portable in the past. The final four should've been included in Fukushuu no Rondo of five years ago, but were excluded for some reason. These final four application games are included with Ghost of the Dusk. Each of them lasts for about two hours, and are even more focused on telling a story than the main scenario, but are very entertaining too.

Onihime-Den ("The Legend of the Devil Princess") starts with Jinguuji being hired by the wife of an actor who will star in a film based on the popular book The Legend of the Devil Princess. She suspects her husband is cheating on her, and wants Jinguuji to investigate him. To his surprise though, it appears the actor is cheating on his wife with.... Jinguuji's assistant Youko. Eventually, Jinguuji gets involved in an investigation into the death of an actress who died during an earlier attempt at filming The Legend of the Devil Princess. In Ai ga Yue Ni  ("Because of Love...") Jinguuji is hired by a young boy to protect his mother, who has a small bar in the backstreets of Shinjuku. She is being harrassed by land sharks, as a new building project is planned right in the block where her bar is. The story is very talky and at times it seems like the writer just wanted to vent their own thoughts on what love is, but overall an okay story. The best of the four applicatoin games is Wasurenagusa no Omoi ("The Feelings of the Forget-Me-Not"), which has Jinguuji finally fulfilling a request he was hired to do eight years ago. The story jumps between the present and eight years earlier, when Jinguuji had just started in town as a private detective, and it's great to see how different he was back then. In Yurameku Hitotose ("Wavering Hitotose"), Jinguuji becomes friends with the two young owners of the antique store Hitotose, and just as the right time, as he is also hired to locate a Buddhist statue which was stolen from a monesetery in Thailand, which has found its way to Tokyo. The story is a bit predictable, but entertaining nonetheless. Also a note: various characters from this short story return in Fukushuu no Rondo (which makes it even more strange that Yurameku Hitotose wasn't included with Fukushuu no Rondo).

Ghost of the Dusk also includes one mini scenario where Jinguuji and Youko solve a murder at a school festival, as well as a download code for a special 3DS port of the second Famicom game, Yokohamakou Renzoku Satsujin Jiken ("The Yokohama Harbor Serial Murder Case"). While the port is more-or-less the same as the original, the sprite artwork of the characters has been very slightly adjusted.

It was reported Ghost of the Dusk would get an English localization by the way, which would make it the second Jinguuji Saburou game to come overseas. The first game on the Nintendo DS was released in the United States under the localized title Jake Hunter, but it is unclear whether this new release of Ghost of the Dusk will feature the same localized title (or even all the features included in the original Japanese release).

Tantei Jinguuji Saburou: Ghost of the Dusk was overall though a very entertaining entry in the long-running series. Yes, it is a very lineair experience, with little input asked from the player, but these games have always been more about enjoying the human drama stories, the atmosphere and the music and Ghost of the Dusk does a great job at showing why this series has its fans and why it has lasted for so long in a very volatile industry. Ghost of the Dusk's task was to bring the players a good old Jinguuji Saburou experience, and it did precisely that, but the developers have already hinted they might want introduce more engaging game mechanics in the future, and I do hope they eventually come closer to earlier games like Tomoshibi ga Kienu Ma ni, which I consider the pinnacle of the series.

Original Japanese title(s): 『探偵　神宮寺三郎　Ghost of the Dusk』

Double Purpose

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

"Gospel of Matthew 7:1" (King James tr.)

I don't really keep tabs on writers and new releases actually, not even of writers I do like. I just make random searches once in a while. Of course, this means I actually have to remember to make those searches. And that's why I only noticed today's book more than six months after its release (and it's also about six months between me writing this review and it being published online...)

Kamiki Raichi is an attractive senior high school student who practices enjou kousai ("compensated dating") as a part-time job: in theory, compensated dating does not need to mean more than that older men are paying attractive women for their companionship, but in the case of Raichi, she is definitely prostituting herself. That is the reason why Raichi wasn't that surprised when she got a letter from the owner of Sakai Machinery together with a maid costume. While the letter states that Sakai Touzou wants to hire her as a maid for a week, she suspects it's just some man who wants to hire her for her sexual services for a week, with her pretending to be a maid so the people around him won't notice her true identity. But when she arrives at the Sakai mansion in the outskirts of Tokyo, she realizes from the reactions from everyone there that Sakai Touzou did not send that letter at all, and that for some reason, everyone in the house is playing along with the fake letter. Raichi knows something is up, but even she couldn't have guessed that one of the persons in the house would be strangled to death in his room. At the same time, we're also introduced to senior high student Todai Kouhei who lives in Saitama. Having finally found the love of his life in Misaki, he manages to sneak inside the house of his girlfriend and have sex with her for the first time, but is then caught by the father, who has him arrested: Kouhei had mistakenly assumed that Misaki was older than him. And that means he had sex with a minor. Kouhei is taken away by the police in total disbelief to what has happened, but he could never have guessed at the curious link between his crime and the murders at the Sakai mansion in Hayasaka Yabusaka's Dare mo Boku wo Sabakenai ("Nobody Can Pass Judgement On Me", 2016).

Hayasaka Yabusaka made his debut as a mystery writer in 2014 with Marumarumarumarumarumarumarumaru Satsujin Jiken ("The ???????? Murder Case"), which first introduced us to Kamiki Raichi: a high school student prostitute who likes to solve crime as a hobby. That novel, as well as the short story collection about Raichi released afterwards, were quite unique for their focus on sex as a genuine part of the mystery. Sex sells, the saying goes, so often sex is only used in mystery fiction to 'spice things up'. This practice is especially often seen in screen adaptations of mystery fiction. In those stories, sex often has no function in terms of the mystery plot. Sex however is an integral part of the mystery plot in Hayasaka's Kamiki Raichi series. At times, the descriptions of Raichi's sexual adventures might appear surprisingly graphic, but it's always with a cause. From subtle hints to ingenious ways in which they link up with the mystery: the erotic touch to this series is never there just to be erotic, but always a vital part of it as a form of mystery fiction. As puzzle plot mysteries, the books in the Kamiki Raichi series are definitely well-plotted and much, much more than just sex (Sexual descriptions are also a bit toned down in this novel compared to the previous two volumes).

In this third novel in the Kamiki Raichi series however, Hayasaka tries his hands at something new. Traditionally, the puzzle plot mystery has been juxtaposed against shakaiha mysteries, or the social school. The social school of mystery fiction places emphasis on natural realism, and on exposing the problems of actual society. The Stereotypical Shakaiha Mystery would start with the discovery of a woman strangled in her apartment room and a hardworking police detective eventually discovering that she was murdered by her lover, who is also a director of a company, because she figured out he was buying off government officials. This is of course quite different from the romantic image of an excentric detective who solves a series of locked room murders set at a creepy mansion that is isolated from the outside world featuring a Challenge to the Reader. As you may have guessed, I am more a fan of the puzzle plot mystery than shakai-ha mysteries, though I do occasionally enjoy them (Matsumoto Seichou's Points and Lines and Jikan no Shuuzoku are great puzzle plot mysteries with social commentary, and the TV series Aibou does some great takes on the theme too). In essence though, these two schools are at odds with each other, but Hayasaka daringly attempts to fuse the two schools in Dare mo Boku wo Sabakenai.

As mentioned in the summary, Dare mo Boku wo Sabakenai is divided in two narratives, split up in Raichi chapters and Kouhei chapters. The Raichi chapters obviously follow Raichi inside the Sakai mansion as she tries to solve the murder and figure out why she was lured here as a maid in the first place. Her story is obviously a traditional puzzle plot mystery, involving a murder among a rich, but disfunctional family living in an oddly designed mansion. People familiar with Japanese mystery fiction are probably trained to be highly suspicious of oddly designed buildings, as nine out ten times there's a secret hallway, or some moving part, or a deathtrap built inside and the characters in this novel are apparently meta-concious enough to comment on that early on in the story. Indeed, near the end it is revealed there is something interesting going with the house, but this was telegraphed rather obviously, so it is not really a spoiler (basically, the characters first suggest the house might XXX, and then even mention a story by a different author that does the same thing, basically confirming what it is). The fact that the house is XXX is therefore not the main problem or reveal, but the mystery is solved by figuring out how that was used and how this will eventually lead to the identity of the murderer. This is classic puzzle plot territory, and the logical chain here is entertaining, as you suddenly arrive at the one and only murderer if you can follow the implications of each and every clue to their logical conclusion. What I did find a bit disappointing was atmosphere: the narrative here moves at breakneck speed, and more murders follow after the first, with little time to contemplate events.

The chapters starring Kouhei on the other hand are definitely social school material. After being baffled by the fact that it is illegal for him, even as someone who has only just turned 18, to have sex with someone one year younger than him (whom he even thought was much older), he learns more about the oddities of the law concerning having relations with minors during his stay at the detention center. Age of consent is 18, even though people can marry at 16. The will of the persons involved doesn't seem to matter at times, and there are even cases where a married person of 32 had relations with a girl of 17, but was found no guilty because they were "truly in love", while in another similar case, the man of 32 was found guilty of rape. Raichi herself (who is over 18, by the way) too makes use of the seemingly arbitrary laws and regulations as the act of prostitution might illegal, but the prostitute herself can't be punished by law. These examinations of the workings of the law, as well as the procedures after a sex offender is arrested are pure social school, far removed from Raichi's adventures at the strange mansion.

Eventually, the two narratives obviously link up in a...well, not really surprising manner. From the start, it is obvious the two narratives that start out so far apart will eventually come together. I think calling it a fusion of a puzzle plot mystery and the social school mystery might not be the best description of what happens in this novel. In Dare mo Boku wo Sabakenai, the puzzle plot mystery and shakai-ha mystery cross paths. In a good way though. At the point in the story where these two storylines intersect, Dare mo Boku wo Sabakenai does manage to impress a lot, as this crosspoint fullfills a surprising number of plot-related tasks for both the puzzle plot and the social commentary storyline. Plotwise, it is one of the most efficient scenes I've ever seen, I think. But besides that, the two storylines feel detached, and because the novel is particularly long, both storylines barely have the space to settle (as mentioned above when I said the Raichi chapters feel a bit rushed).

The conclusion of the novel feels a bit... talkative though. It is supposed to be like an account of the events from the POV of the murderer, but it reads more like the actual writer explaining things. I remember Yabusaka's first novel had something similar, with some of the narrative feeling too much like the author was directly telling the reader, rather than through an external point (in this case, a neutral third person narrator talking about the murders).

As a character, I still like Raichi a lot. She is an energetic female amateur detective who knows she is sexy and uses it. But she is not just simply a femme fetale, or seducer. Not at all, actually. She simply enjoys her erotic adventures, and uses it to her advantage by making money out of it, but her sexuality is not her main weapon in solving mysteries (she'd never get a confession from the culprit during pillow talk, for example). While erotic escapades are part of the mysteries, it is always clear that she doesn't solve them by using her gender characteristics to gain an advantage: Raichi is simply a highly intelligent woman, who manages to solve the most complex crimes because of her great set of brains. She just also happens to be a prostitute. She is also always shown to be a quick thinker and very much in charge (many foolish men have fallen victim to her taser and other means of self-defense), making her a surprisingly strong female character.

Dare mo Boku wo Sabakenai is thus an entertaining novel which mixes the classic puzzle plot mystery with the social school based on natural realism. Often, it feels like you're simpy reading two seperate stories, but when the two storylines do cross, this novel does manage to make a very good impression. Juxtaposing the two styles within one story does make the murders-in-the-mansion part feel even more detached from real life, and the many laws, regulations and trial cases mentioned in the Kouhei storyline even more strangely real, which makes this a fairly unique reading experience. Overall, I'd say Dare mo Boku wo Sabakenai was a great third entry in a series that has always managed to satisfy.

Original Japanese title(s): 早坂吝　『誰も僕を裁けない』

Grand Deceptions

Life is a game

So take the chance

And play your hand

You might just win

You never know

『相棒 Season 7のテーマ』

 ("Theme of Partners Season 7")

I'm not a big binge-watcher in general, but I'm also very bad at watching the shows I watch each week/whatever schedule the follow. In short: I am just bad at watching TV shows...

Aibou ("Partners") series
Aibou Eleven
Aibou 12
Aibou 13
Aibou 14 
Aibou 15

In the fourteenth season of the long-running police procedural TV drama Aibou ("Partners"), we were introduced to Kaburagi Wataru, a bureaucrat with a golden future in the Ministry of Justice who got temporarily assigned to the Metropolitan Police Department. There he made acquaintance with Sugishita Ukyou and the Special Orders Unit. Sugishita is an eccentric, but brilliant policeman who believes in justice rather than in playing political games. The SOU, which technically can't do anything without a formal order, exists especially to keep Sugishita away from normal police business, but Sugishita will stick his nose in any case that interests him. Kaburagi supported Sugishita as his partner throughout the fourteenth season and made a career change in the season finale, so at the start of Aibou 15 ("Partners 15", 2016-2017), we find Kaburagi trying to adapt to his transformation from high-ranking government official to rookie police sergeant as he and Sugishita take on new cases to solve.

Being timely with an Aibou season review is a first for this blog! Usually I only watch a series once a new season has started (each October), but this season was the first time I actually watched it more-or-less real-time. The fifteenth season ran from October 2016 to March 2017, and was also accompanied by the fourth theatrical release of the series in February 2017 (which I haven't seen, though the two-parter of this season ties in lightly with the movie it appears).

What hasn't changed much however is the formula of the Aibou series. Once again, this 18-episode long season (of which three episodes are feature-length specials) presents a fairly diverse police procedural with a distinct tone of social ommentary. That means that the crimes in this series are almost always a result of some social injustice either happening in the 'normal' society, or in 'high' society, at the level of government organizations and the politics that drive them. As an result, the average Aibou episode is basically built around two 'cores': one is a personal crime, which in turn is then shown to be connected to some bigger social problem at hand. While crimes of the first part are of course always solved (it is a police procedural), often episodes end with a darker tone as we see how underlying social and political problems still go on as always. That said though, the episodes can be quite different in tone per episode: sometimes you get an old-fashioned locked room murder, and other times it's a straight thriller or even something cozy.

As always, I'll not do a write-up of each episode, but pick out the highlights. Aibou seasons don't really feature ongoing storylines (actual planning would've made Aibou 13 a lot better), and that's the same for this season, so that also makes it easier to zoom in on some episodes. Episode 7, Fake, is a tense thriller about the abduction and murder of two children. While the forces fight against the clock to save the kids, Sugishita and Kaburagi also poke around as they feel something is off about this case, especially as the mother of one of the children is behaving in a strange manner. The premise of the double child abductions reminds of Norizuki Rintarou's Ichi no Higeki, but the conclusion is very surprising. It's a bit cheating actually, but as a human drama story, this episode had me hooked from start to finish. Episode 8, The Woman of 100%, is about Kurata Eiko, a former collegue of Kaburagi who is now known and respected as one of the best female prosecutors in Tokyo. That is also the reason why Kaburagi and Sugishita are both very curious as to the reason why she doctored the evidence in the case of a murder on a high-ranking official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Kaburagi and Sugishita know the witness stated something different about witnessing the defendant in her original police statement compared to her testimony in court. The mix of classic courtroom drama mystery with police procedural and even political thriller modes is surprisingly strong for a show of just 45 minutes.

The mid-season special Return is about a town that is welcoming former convicts, offering them a place to start a new life. Sugishita and Kaburagi are given a special order to man the local police station, as for some reason several police constables have gone missing there. As a mystery story, this is a long, and rather predictable tale, but I have to say: the moment the Big Bad shows their true face, it doesn't really matter. We are seldom treated to an almost cartoon-like villain in this series, like a Joker, and to be honest, they felt a bit out of place, but man, this episode was memorable because of that person. I wonder whether they'll return in the future.

The internet plays a large role in the last two episodes. Episode 17, Last Work, is about a Youtuber who apparently has murdered someone to get more views: he is uploading his videos in parts and each parts shows more of his heinous crime of abducting and torturing a homeless man. At first, people all thought it was just a hoax, but slowly the police starts to suspect something might've really happened and things of course explode once the body of the victim is actually found. This was more a human drama-focused episode than one actually based on solving a mystery, but the use of Youtubers and the social commentary provided is quite interesting.

The final episode is a two-hour long special titled Proof of Evil. Yashiro Miwako, the calculating head of the Public Relations Section of the Metropolitan Police Department, has popped up now and then across the last few seasons, but takes center stage now the media has found out through a leak that she has a half-blood daughter she had kept hidden from the public. While normally this wouldn't be big news, suspicions are the father of the child might be a Russian spy, which would make her position in the MPD very difficult to maintain. Evidence is also found that her notebook was hacked through an e-mail sent from Kaburagi's e-mail, making him the prime suspect in the leaking scandal. The subject matter is without a doubt very timely, but as a season finale, this episode was also quite boring, especially after the bloody terrorist attack on a police academy in the previous season finale. Nobody dies here, we only see police officials trying to trace the leak and investigating the identity of the father of Yashiro's daughter and then stuff happens and it ends. The problem is there is no build in tension, nor story. The climax (which happens only after nintey minutes) is weak and over before you know it, while there are no build-up, nothing to keep your attention in the ninety minutes up to that point. It's just going on and on about the unknown father and the possibility Kaburagi leaked the information without reframing the problem in any way: it's just repeating the same point over and over. As a finale, this was a very disappointing episode, and doesn't really set-up things for the next finale in an alluring way, like previous finales did.

On the whole though, I have to say I thought Aibou 15 was a pretty weak season. Few episodes were truly entertaining, there also seemed to be fewer 'straight' mystery plot stories than previous seasons and even the three two-hour specials were much weaker than usual, either by a considerable scaling down of events, or just plain drawn-out plots. I don't expect masterpieces a whole season long, but in previous seasons, I'd usually come across one really entertaining episode every two, three episodes. This time it was more like once every five, six episodes.

Aibou hasn't really changed its formula in the fifteen seasons it has run, and that makes comparison rather easy. And that makes it painfully clear Aibou 15 is a rather weak season overall. Yes, there are a few good episodes, but way too little considering the ratio in previous episodes. Most of the season is filled with paint-by-numbers episodes, or even worse, boring, dragging two-hour specials that don't even come close to the usual spectacle and sensation we see in those episodes. Let's hope the next season (which will come without a doubt) can make up for this one.

Original Japanese title(s): 『相棒15』

A Journey for Truth

"The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic."

"The Blue Cross"

It's actually amazing how many one-shot adaptations they make of mystery novels in Japan. It's almost like every other weekend there's a two-hour special based on a best-selling novel. You hardly see that outside of Japan, I think, where they usually try to go for a film adaptation. There's the occassional Christie TV special or mini-series adaptation, but that's at best once in a couple of years.

The discovery of a cut-off right arm at Ookawa Park, Tokyo, is the start of a horrible serial murder case. A commuter ticket found together with the arm identifies the victim as Furukawa Mariko, a young, female bank employee who went missing some time ago. But a TV station gets a call by someone using a voice scambler, telling them that the arm discovered in the park is not that of Mariko, but that he'll leave Mariko's arm elsewhere for them to find. The murderer keeps on killing more and more women, plunging the city in fear and he even dares to call the family of the victims to make fun of them. The police investigation have little results, which of course also stirs up social unrest, which is fuled more by the relentless coverage of the case by the media. Freelance writer Maehata Shigeko and teenager Tsukuda Shinichi, who discovered the first arm, start to investigate the case too for a series of articles on the murders, but Shigeko finds it harder and harder to proceed as she sees up close how the family of the victims have to cope with the horrible fate of their loved ones. But Shigeko, the media, the family of the victims and of course the police keep looking for the sadistic killer in the 2016 TV drama Miyabe Miyuki Suspense - Mohouhan ("Miyabe Miyuki Suspense - The Copy Cat Crime").

Miyabe Miyuki is one of the best-known female writers in Japan, specializing in genres like crime and fantasy. I myself haven't read that many of her works (Kasha and R.P.G., off the top of my head), but she's also one of the Japanese writers who is actually fairly well represented in English language translations. Mohouhan ("The Copy Cat Crime") is one of her best-known books, and also one of her longest (or actually, I think it is her longest story). The original seralization, which started in 1995, took about four years, and the currently available pocket paperback version consists of no less than five sizeable volumes. An English translation of the book is available on e-book (also split up in multiple volumes), with the title Puppet Master.

Mohouhan had been adapted for the silver screen in 2002, but Miyabe Miyuki Suspense - Mohouhan was the first time it had been adapted for TV. The drama consists of two, two-hour parts, and was broadcast on September 21-22, 2016. The 2002 film apparently has quite some changes compared to the plot of the original novel, assumably partly because of the runtime, but the 2016 TV drama version has been praised as a very faithful adaptation of the book. Four hours to adapt one book is actually a lot, but considering the size of the original work, I guess this was the best way to do it.

Mohouhan is not a puzzle plot mystery, but a pure crime thriller. In the first part of the drama, the narrative mainly jumps between Shigeko's POV, that of the police investigation, and the POV of the grandfather of Mariko. It is in this part where we see the true horrors of the crime, as the people left behind try to make sense of everything that has happened. Shigeko, as a freelance writer. tries to get close to the families of the victims in the hopes of getting a scoop, but writing about a mysterious serial murderer gets a lot more personal when you actually see the family of the victims break under all the pressure. The narrative jumps cleverly among all the involved parties, showing the crimes from multiple angles. The investigation in this first part of the drama features very little progress though, focusing more on the impact of the crimes. The big reveals and shocks are only revealed in the last thirty minutes or so. The second part of the drama in turn shows the denouement of the story from the POV of both Shigeko and.... the murderer. The murderer cleverly makes use of the media to conjure up a fake story about the murders, which the media, and the people in the country, love to believe. By putting different parties involved with the crimes (family of victims, freelance writer Shigeko, etc.) against each other, the mastermind manages to cause more chaos in the perception of the crimes. But for what cause?

The story is very much rooted in the foundations of shakai-ha (social school of crime fiction). The narrative of Mohouhan shows the interaction between all the parties involved with a horrible serial murder: the (family of the) victim, the murderer, the police, the media writing about the case and the general public. The story especially gives a harsh, but realistic look at the power of the media (in Japan). Do they side with the victims? With the police? Can the media write a narrative where someone else is the victim? Can the narrative in the media actually create new guilty parties? Questions like these are of course nowadays more relevant than ever, with internet and SNS giving everyone a stage to present and spread a narrative to the general public. The TV drama was set in the present day, even though the book was written twenty years ago, but the use of SNS and internet throughout the drama really didn't hurt the story, but only enhanced the role of the media. Another mystery story I discussed here where media played a role is Shirayuki Hime Satsujin Jiken, and to a lesser extent, I guess Detective Conan: Dimensional Sniper also had elements of that.

I didn't really like the murderer in this story though. It's a rare thing for me to be talking about motives on this blog (motives are usually not that big an issue in puzzle plot mysteries), but I had some trouble following the train of thought of the murderer. Like the title of the English publication suggests, there's a puppet master, a sadistic, manipulating psychopath, walking around and that can be fun: fiction like Death Note and Aku no Kyouten work because of that, but I can't help but think that the murderer of Mohouhan did a lot that would eventually always lead to their own destruction. And sometimes that is the plan, but it doesn't seem likely in this case. It appears a more hands-off approach to managing would've been better for this murderer.

Overall though, Miyabe Miyuki Suspense - Mohouhan was an enjoyable crime thriller yarn. It's quite long, four hours for just one story, but I never felt like it was dragging or boring.The narrative keeps a good sense of pacing throughout and the characters are interesting enough to make you want to see where they'll end up.

Original Japanese title(s): 宮部みゆき（原）　『 宮部みゆきサスペンス　模倣犯』

Negative Reaction

混ぜるな。危険。

Danger. Do not mix.

As always, I only started watching the 2015-2016 season of Aibou after the 2016-2017 season started. I really always forget about this series until a new season starts...

Aibou ("Partners") series
Aibou Eleven
Aibou 12
Aibou 13
Aibou 14 

The long-running series Aibou ("Partners") has been the police procedural on Japanese television for over a decade now. The series started in 2000 and details the adventures of Sugishita Ukyou, an eccentric, but brilliant police inspector in charge of the Special Order Unit within the Metropolitan Police Department. This might sound like an important function within the police organization, but Sugishita has in fact been put there because the higher-ups deem him too troublesome: while everyone knows Sugishita is in possession of an amazing mind, they also know his sense of justice is unbendable, and that he will never play along with the political games going on within the police organization. The SOU exists solely to keep Sugishita close by in case they do need him. Management also sends troublesome officers to the SOU: the combination of the peculiar Sugishita, and the fact that the unit has no investigative authority whatsover and is very seldom given an assignment (usually in the spirit of 'Return evidence to next of kin'), is usually enough to make those unwanted officers quit the force on themselves. But once in a while, Sugishita finds an understanding partner (hence the title Partners). The official purpose of the Special Order Unit is to undertake special tasks, but Sugishita interprets the meaning of his two-man unit as 'Unless there is a special order not to, they're free to do whatever they want', and so Sugishita often invites himself, together with his partner, to investigations of interesting cases.

In the finale of the thirteenth season of Aibou, Sugishita's third partner Kaito had to leave the SOU, and Sugishita was forced to take extended time off. Aibou 14, which ran from October 2015 until March 2016, starts off with Sugishita's return to Japan. He's surprised to find a guest has been using the SOU office during his long absence: Kaburagi Wataru is a young bureaucrat in the Ministry of Justice, and protégé of the Administrative Vice-Minister of Justice. Kaburagi has chosen to pass some time at the Metropolitan Police Department as a step in his career. Police management sees Kaburagi as simply a guest from the Ministry of Justice (or even a spy), and as Kaburagi does not participate with police investigations in general, he usually spends his free time in the SOU office. While the two realize they have very little in common in terms of personality and habits, Sugishita and Kaburagi do work together to solve a murder case that happened within a prison, and as expected from this series, the reaction of the mix between these two men leads to surprising results.

This is the fourth time I've written an Aibou review, and I have to admit, it's getting more difficult. At the core, the series seldom really surprises in term of structure. As always, the series is a fairly diverse police procedural with a distinct social school background. Crimes in this series are almost always a result of some social injustice either happening in the 'normal' society, or in the society at the level of government organzations and the politics that drive them. Often, an Aibou episode has two 'levels': one is a personal crime, which is a result of some bigger social problem. While crimes of the first part are of course always solved (it is a police procedural), often episodes end with a darker tone as we see how underlying social and political problems still go on as always. That said though, Aibou can definitely do a lot with this formula. Some episodes will focus more on the human drama, while others are pure puzzle plot mysteries. Episodes with old-fashioned locked room murders are followed by episodes providing sharp commentary on the status of the foreign labor force. Every week is basically a surprise, as you never really know what's coming.

I am not going to discuss each of the twenty episodes in this season (of which three are feature-length specials), so like with the previous season reviews, I'll just briefly address some of the highlights. What stood out was that this season had quite a number of episodes with a supernatural hook. The first episode, Frankenstein's Confession, is about an urban legend going in a prison: a guard is killed by a prisoner, who claims he was told to do so by the voice of an infamous, but deceased previous inhabitant of the facility. Episode 7, A Strange Tale of a Kimono, is about a spooky message found written inside a second-hand kimono. While the mystery is rather easy, it's a good example of the type of mystery Aibou can also do, as it's not really a story about a crime (even though this is a police procedural). Episode 8, The Miracle of the Last Installment, starts with the murder on a publisher. However, at the same time the murder happened, a comic artist working for the publisher was working on the last installment of her series, and the panels she drew were exactly like the crime scene. Sugishita and Kaburagi investigation in this premonition comic is one of the more entertaining episodes. Other episodes with supernatural touch include the two-parter The Mountain That Spirits People Away. Episode 5, 2045, strangely enough deals with the opposite of the supernatural, as it's about a complex AI which can analyze crime scene data to arrive at a conclusion on its own.

The social school background of the series can be found in its portrayal of the theme of a current topic like terrorism in both the mid-season special (Heroes ~ Those With Sins) and the final episode (Last Case). The mid-season special focuses on a bomb terrorist who made a deal with the Ministry of Justice in the past, but has now started activities again, while the finale starts off with a class of cops-in-training being brutally shot by a fellow student during their shooting range at the academy, revealing himself to be part of a terrorist group targeting not the common people, but the authorities, specifically the ministers. The plot mixes up grand scale terrorism with a pretty neat puzzle plot.

The standout episode of this season is episode 17: A Physicist and his Cat. The episode starts simple enough, when Sugishita and Kaburagi visit a university to return the personal belongings of a professor who died during an experiment gone wrong, but the way the story develops is really a fantastic surprise.I'd say that the use of Schrödinger's cat in this episode was brilliant, resulting in a unique story that might not be overly complex in terms of a mystery plot, but incredibly memorable nonetheless.

Like in each season, regular and semi-regular characters also get a couple of character-focused episodes. Jinkawa, a police officer who has the habit of falling really easily in love with persons who usually turns out to be the murderer, for example usually shows up once every season. His episode was a very human-drama based episode and can be quite surprising. The forensic investigator Yonezawa on the other hand, a regular who was popular enough to get his own spin-off film, says goodbye in the final episode of this season, as he leaves the crime scene to educate a new generation at the police academy.

Overall though, I have to admit this season on the whole did not feel as strong as previous series. It fet like there were fewer traditional puzzle plot episodes this season, and the couple episodes that were featured, were not especially strong.

I did like the new partner Kaburagi though. Unlike the previous three partners, Kaburagi is not a policeman, so he falls outside the usual line of command. In fact, he is often very critical of how the police, and as a high-ranking beaurocrat, he actually has a fair amount of pull here and there through his many acquaintances. He might be the partner with the most authority until now. He is also portrayed as the opposite of Sugishita in many ways (Sugishita is a tea-drinker, while Kaburagi is a coffee expert. Both hate being passengers in the other's car, etc.) What makes Kaburagi especially interesting as a partner is that he visibly enjoys seeing Sugishita solving crimes in his own unique way, and even obstructs police investigation in order to clear the way for Sugishita.

But in short, Aibou 14 is basically same old, same old. The new partner does bring a new dynamic to the series (this season also featured more dealings with the Ministry of Justice than previous seasons), but at the core, Aibou remains an amusing police procedural that can surprise the reader each time by taking on a different form. This particular season does feel a bit weak in terms of really impressive episodes, but taken on the whole, I thought it was an entertaining series. Season 15 started last week by the way, which has Kaburagi joining the police force officially, so that could shake things up again. And it's very likely I'll be reviewing that series in about a year, when Aibou 16 starts.

Original Japanese title(s): 『相棒14』

Dark Detective II

「あっ、最後にもう一つだけ。チョコレートの箱を・・・」

「行っちゃいましたね」

「最後ではく、最初に聞きたい事を聞くべきでした」

『苦い水』

"One more last thing. A box of chocolate..."

'And there she went."

"I should ask the things I want to ask first, not last"

"Bitter Water"

One of the biggest surprises I came across while playing Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer (Nintendo 3DS) was an office that was decorated as the set of the TV-series Aibou. It was a brilliant reproduction of the Special Order Unit office and the office of forensics, complete with room for the cameras to actually shoot a scene. Happy Home Designer is great fun, by the way.  

Aibou ("Partners") series
Aibou Eleven
Aibou 12
Aibou 13

Tucked away in the corner of the Organized Crime Department of the Metropolitan Police Department, is the tiny office of the Special Order Unit, with room for two. The head of the Special Order Unit is Sugishita Ukyou, a gifted police inspector with a great sense of justice, but deemed dangerous by the people in the upper ranks because he doesn't play the political game along. Yet, they recognize his brain and talent to turn poltical bureaucracy to his own advantage, which is why they decided to put him close by in the SOU, but still faraway from the everyday goings of the MPO. The Special Order Unit has no investigative authority and it is rare for special orders to come, so Sugishita has now defined his unit as follows: if there is a special order, they will follow it. And unless there is a special order, the unit is free to do whatever it wants. The adventures of Sugishita and his subordinate have been a favorite on Japanese television ever since the TV series Aibou ("Partners") started in 2000, and by now it has become a big franchise that consists of 13 seasons (the 14th is being broadcast right now), three theatrical films and a lot of spin-off material like mini-series, novels and games.

I started watching the series with Aibou Eleven, the eleventh season which introduced Sugishita's third partner in the history of the series: Kai Tooru, estranged son of the current Assistant Director-General of the National Police Agency. Like with Doctor Who, I figured it'd be best to jump in with a change in the main cast and I enjoyed the series a lot. Today's review is about Aibou 13, the 13th season of the series and also the last season to feature Kai Tooru (the currently running Aibou 14 features a new partner). And yes, I know I'm about a half year late with this review. The same thing happened with Aibou 12 actually: I forget to watch the series and just when a new season starts, I remember I have to watch the previous season. Anyway, Aibou 13 ran from October 2014 until March 2015 and consists of 19 episodes, three of them being film-length TV specials.

It's always difficult to think of what to write with reviews for a whole Aibou season. It's not really practical, nor interesting if I write something short on all 19 episodes, but there's also little I can say about the series in general I haven't done already. Looking at the series broadly, one should classify it as a police procedural in the social school of mystery fiction. Many of the episodes are socially conscious and focus on problems in both 'the normal' society as well in large (government) organizations and the underlying politics. Season 13 is definitely a bit tamer than the previous two seasons, which featured stories on the international implications of a hostage situation in an embassy, protocol in hostage situations in general, and a story asking why Japan has no real witness protection program. But despite being a bit 'lighter' than the previous two seasons, the series is still firmly based on the social school. Side Story (episode 9) for example looks at the influence of mass media in portraying people: a nurse has been killed and the mass media basically attack her for working in the "entertainment" sector to pay for her studies and imply she had it coming. The Last Confession (episode 5) in turn looks at the deals police/prosecution are allowed to make with suspects.

Yet, Aibou also has enough room for other types of mystery. The 'beauty' of the concept of the Special Order Unit is that Sugishita and Tooru can appear in different kinds of story each episode. Those Who Can't Be Forgiven (episode 3) definitely has a social school angle, but is also a kind of a locked room mystery, as no camera managed to capture the murderer entering the victim's apartment building.  Best Day of My Life (episode 13) has Sugishita meet with a suspicious woman completely coincidentally and the episode brings a heartwarming, and often hilarious story in the spirit of an everyday life mystery, something a real, serious police drama could never present. There are also episodes that focus on the extended main cast, like Yonezawa Mamoru's Final Farewell (episode 11), that focuses on the forensic investigator who appears in pretty much every episode.

A lot of Aibou episodes consist of two interrelated 'levels' in crime. Usually there is a big, social problem that lies at the heart of the mystery which involves 'big' organizations or other groups. And this is usually tied to a smaller story: partly to make the 'large' problem more accessible, partly because at the end of the story, Sugishita needs to arrest somebody to end the episode and while he is a gifted policeman, he can't solve a large scale social problem in one episode, only a smaller-scale crime that is born from the bigger problem.

It's a bit of a shame Aibou seasons aren't conceived with some sort of running storyline or theme, because often a season feels like a random collection of stories. I have a feeling that season 13 does feature a lot of stories about the parent-child bond: I already mentioned The Last Confession (episode 5), Side Story (episode 9) and  Yonezawa Mamoru's Final Farewell (episode 11), but Learning Class (episode 12, about a murder on a professor), Thistle (episode 14, on a murder in the past and present) and Professor Ayukawa's Final Lesson (episodes 15-16, on an old professor of Sugishita's who wants to know why it's wrong to murder) all also focus a lot on parent-child relations. I don't remember the specifics of the episodes in earlier episodes, but I wonder if it's been like that ever since Kai Tooru became Sugishita's partner, as the series also looks a lot at Toorus' relation with his father.

Aibou 13 ends with Dark Knight, which is also the end of the cooperation between Sugishita and Kai Tooru as the titular partners, which lasted for three years / seasons. I have to say I was kinda surprised when I heard the news that the character would leave the series, but I gather that even the production team was surprised by the news. I'm pretty sure that it was only decided at a very late stage of filming the season that the character of Kai Tooru would be written out of the series, because this episode came out of nowhere. I won't go into details, but it basically portrays Kai Tooru quite differently from how he's acted in all the episodes before, all to justify his character leaving Sugishita's side. The concept of the episode might've worked if they had at least used the entire season to build to this conclusion, but now I could do was wondering why nobody noticed how out of character Tooru was compared to everything up to this point.

The series ends with Sugishita leaving Japan for a forced vacation, and it's kinda weird to see him alone. The series isn't titled "partners" for nothing. As a character, Sugishita is basically the great detective merged with the perfect policeman. Like Sherlock Holmes, Sugishita has a great mind that can uncover the most vile of machinations, but unlike Holmes, Sugishita will always work within the law and while he knows the law, and the bureaucracy needed to uphold the law, isn't perfect, he will do everything to keep justice in a lawful manner. But like many great detectives, he does need a 'normal' partner with him to really shine. As a character on his own, he's just too far away for the 'normal' viewer.

Overall, I think Aibou 13 was a fairly okay season, though it lacks the politically heavy stories that were (surprisingly) the highlights in the previous two seasons I watched. And as I usually prefer 'simple' puzzle plots, that says a lot about the quality of that sort of stories in Aibou. I do have the feeling that the latter half of the series was a bit weaker (Professor Ayukawa's Final Lesson and especially Dark Knight) and it results in a bad aftertaste of the series. Of the three seasons starring Kai Tooru as the partner, this may be the least impressive overall. And I have no idea when/if I'll review Aibou 14. I'll probably forget about watching the series and now binge-watch it next year, when Aibou 15 has started

Original Japanese title(s): 『相棒１３』