The focus of this blog is mystery fiction in the broad sense of the word, so I also look at media beyond just books. Most people are of course also familiar with television or film, but of outside of books, the most-often featured media here tend to be manga and video games, because I generally consume a lot of those forms of entertainment, also outside the mystery genre. In the many years since I started this blog, I've written about a lot of mystery fiction, but the musical tag has one that's always been rather rare here: there just aren't that much mystery musicals, and even fewer that don't actually you to go to the theatre yourself, as few of them are actually made available as home video or streaming after the theatrical run.
The two mystery musicals I have discussed in the past were adaptations of the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney game franchise, produced by the famous Takarazuka Revue: the Takarazuka Revue is an all-female musical theatre based in the city of Takarazuka which has been around since 1913 and is a household name in Japan. The Revue's shows are extravagant, fabulous shows that bring its audience to an other world where everyone looks like they stepped out of a classic shojo manga and sings and dances every few minutes. Besides original pieces, the Takarazuka Revue also does adaptations existing IPs like the aforementioned Gyakuten Saiban musicals, but they also have done musicals of famous action manga like City Hunter and Rurouni Kenshin (and in the anime, Kenshin is voiced by a former Takarazuka actress!). For the mystery fan, the Takarazuka Revue also has interesting titles in its repertoire, like a Sherlock Holmes musical.
Yuurei Deka ~ Sayonara suru, sono mae ni ("The Ghost Detective - Before We Say Farewell") is a Takarazuka musical which was originally performed in March 2021 and based on the 2000 novel Yuurei Deka ("The Ghost Detective") by Arisugawa Alice (disclosure: I translated Arisugawa Alice's The Moai Island Puzzle. ). Note that I haven't read the original work, so I can't say how close this adaptation is to the source material, though I am going to guess the elaborate dance and singing scenes are not found in the novel. The story starts at a local police station, where all the detectives are working hard on the case of the murder of a co-worker: a lot of time has passed since the police detective was killed, but they still have no leads. Kanzaki Tatsuya is one of the detectives working on the case, when one night, he's approached by his superior Kyoudou who suddenly apologizes and.... promptly kills him with a pistol. Oddly enough, Tatsuya becomes a ghost, capable of going everywhere but not able to physically interact with other people or objects in the world. He learns from a fellow ghost that he's probably still hanging around as a ghost as he has unfinished business, though in time, he'll move on to the afterlife anyway. Tatsuya tries to warn his fiancee Sumako, who always works at the police station, that his boss is the killer, but she's not able to hear him. Unlike Hayakawa, an old friend who has recently been reposted here. For some reason, probably because he hails from a family with spirit mediums, Hayakawa is able to see and speak with the ghost of Tatsuya, who explains all that has happened to him. Hayakawa agrees to work together to catch Tatsuya's killer, but their investigation has only started when Kyoudou is found shot dead inside an interrogation room at the police station, but no pistol is found at the scene and a witness outside the room states nobody left the interrogation room after she heard the shot, so who shot Kyoudou? A ghost?
You know, this is an interesting impossible murder situation! Here we have a world with actual ghosts, and a mysterious death that appears to be the doing of a ghost at first sight due to the weapon being spirited away and no murderer found at the crime scene, and yet it's still impossible because we know ghosts in this world can't interact with objects like pistols! Add to that the mystery of Tatsuya not knowing why Kyoudou was killed or even why Kyoudou killed him at the start of the story, and you have a fairly entertaining story. Despite the depressing idea of the protagonist being killed at the very start of the story, there's a distinct comedic tone to the whole musical (probably partially because that fits the style of Takarazuka, I surmise based on the few musicals I saw), with a lot of comedy arising from his co-workers constantly Hayakawa talking out loud by himself, because they can't see the ghost of Tatsuya. And then there are of course the songs and dances strung in between which all gives the story a flashy feeling, with characters singing their own character introductions or a witness dancing to her own testimony. It's a fun watch, though a bit long (though that's perhaps I watched the home video release and I'd experience it differently in the actual theatre).
As mentioned above, I haven't read the original novel, so I can't say how much of this musical is actually taken directly from the novel, how much of the plot might be musical-original or whether important elements from the novel were cut, but on the whole, I think Yuurei Deka ~ Sayonara suru, sono mae ni offers a surprisingly robust mystery story, that even without the musical angle, is worth a watch. In essence, Yuurei Deka's plot consists of multiple ideas and concepts that might be simple on their own, but they are interwoven in clever and thoughtful manners, making the mystery seem more complex than the individual parts are. It's a technique often seen in Detective Conan, where multiple relatively simple ideas that might just be "okay" are strung together to construct a story that is more than its seperate parts added together. So in the case of Yuurei Deka, there are definitely some ideas that seem a bit weak on their own: the direct cause for Kyoudou's death in the interrogation room is just silly and the ultimate reason why Tatsuya was murdered by his boss is also a bit weak, though the set-up (clewing) for both concepts is okay.The way the locked room was constructed was also rather underwhelming, but I think that the underlying fundamentals behind that part of the mystery do tie nicely back to the (admittedly silly) reason why Kyoudou died. There are some really clever smaller parts of the mystery though, with one in particular which I really worked well in musical form: while I can imagine how it was done in the original novel and can see how it'd be pretty tricky too there, the presentation in the musical makes it both easier and harder to spot, and that's quite memorable. Add to that that the story does at point make meaningful use of the whole concept of Tatsuya being a ghost (like him eavesdroppping on people) in terms of mystery, and overall, I think that Yuurei Deka is a good mystery story even if not every single part is as strong.
I don't think there are moments where I thought that the musical form (i.e. with song and dance) was essential for this story to work, but that didn't really bother me anyway, and as expected of a Takarazuka Revue story, there was also an emphasis on the romantic subplot (Tatsuya being dead and Sumako grieving for him), but still, this can be enjoyed as a straight mystery story.
I can't make any comparisons with the original novel, perhaps that one is better, or perhaps not, but at the very least, the Takarazuka Revue's Yuurei Deka ~ Sayonara suru, sono mae ni is an entertaining musical that tells an entertaining and well-constructed puzzle plot mystery and unless you're really bothered by the fact the characters suddenly start singing or that everyone's being played by women, I'd say this will probably satisfy the people looking for the rare beast that is a murder mystery musical.
