Bear Witness to Murder

Three little Soldier Boys walking in the zoo;

A big bear hugged one and then there were two.

Disclosure: I translated novels by both Arisugawa Alice (The Moai Island Puzzle) and Ayatsuji Yukito (The Decagon House Murders). And in case you're still looking for Christmas presents...

I don't plan to find me some Christmas mystery stories when the season approaches, but coincidences do happen, resulting in today's review. Anraku Isu Tantei ("The Armchair Detective") was a brilliant television drama series created by mystery writers Ayatsuji Yukito and Arisugawa Alice, produced irregularly between 1999-2017. Earlier, I have discussed the episodes ON AIR (2006) and ON STAGE (2017), with the latter later being confirmed by co-creator Ayatsuji as being the last episode of this series, at least in the usual format. If one considers the detective genre to be an intellectual game that challenges the reader (viewer) to solve the mystery themselves, than this show was the ultimate example of how to present a mystery drama as a game. Each story consists of two episodes: the first episode introduces the viewer to all the characters, the events leading up to the murder and the subsequent investigation. All the hints and clues necessary to solve the crime are shown in this first episode, while the solution is revealed in the second episode broadcast the following week. Sounds like common sense of course, but this point was of particular essence for this show, as viewers were encouraged to write in that week with the answers to the following two questions: 1) Who is the murderer? and more importantly: 2) What is the logical process by which you arrived at that conclusion? The winner, drawn from the people who submitted the correct answers, was presented with a sizeable money prize.  The show thus provided the ultimate challenge to the armchair detectives at home and one of the more impressive parts of the show was how it had to walk the line between being difficult enough that not everyone would arrive at the correct conclusion, along the correct route, but not being overly complex so nobody could guess who the murderer was in a logical manner.

Anraku Isu Tantei no Seiya ~ Kieta Teddy Bear no Nazo ~ ("The Holy Night of the Armchair Detective ~ The Mystery of the Vanished Teddy Bear~", 2000) was the third installment of this show, the first episode broadcast on December 21 and the solution episode following soon after on Christmas. We are introduced on Christmas Eve to Kumako, a young woman who recently found a new job, but her boyfriend sadly enough can't see her on Eve, so they plan a date for the twenty-sixth. The twenty-sixth is also the first day of Kumako working at NATO (Nihon Action Team Office), a small scale stunt action series production team, which recently got a small hit with the television tokusatsu series Athlete 4. It's also the last office day for the year, so everyone is present at the office. Kumako is introduced to all the staff and actors, but she soon learns her new workplace is also a den of intrige and hate, with love triangles, post-divorce fights and rumors of embezzlement flying around. In the evening, Kumako waits for her boyfriend in a restaurant, but she's stood up and she only comes home after a lot of drinking. At home, she finds an e-mail waiting for her by Norie, her new colleague who plays Athlete Purple in Athlete 4. To her surprise, Norie says she killed the boss of NATO at the office and that she'll commit suicide too. By the time Kumako had reported this to the police, it's already to late: NATO's owner Inoue was found with his head bashed in with his own golf club at the office, while Norie set fire to herself at her own home. The police however determine that Norie did not commit suicide, but that she was already dead by the time the fire was started. It thus appears someone else must've killed Inoue en Norie, and the main suspect is a suspicious figure spotted by the guards of the building that houses the NATO offices. The two men saw a figure dressed like Santa Claus carrying a large sack on his back leave the building that night, only moments after the Inoue murder must've happened. The Santa Claus costume was stolen from NATO's costume wardrobe, but there's another missing object: the rare, large teddy bear Inoue kept as a memento in his office. But why would the murderer steal a teddy bear or dress up like Santa Claus? Eventually, even Kumako is accused of the murder by the police, which is when she decides to use the magical flute she was gifted a few days ago, of which she was told it would save her from danger. The flute is of course the item that summons the titular Armchair Detective, a mysterious entity who is ratiocination personified and who can prove without any doubt who is in fact the true murderer.

The show was conceived as a puzzle plot mystery drama where the reader could participate, so to start off with some statistics: the television station received 36,731 (!) entries for this particular installment, the highest amount of participants in the history of the series. 21.5 percent of the respondents guessed the identity of the murderer correctly, but only forty respondants, or mere 0.1 percent, actually got the process right of correctly identifying the murderer/eliminating the other suspect. The numbers will thus tell you it was pretty hard to get all of the story right. I have seen most of the episodes of this series now, and I thought this was one of the easier episodes actually (it was), but getting full marks would've been difficult.

Because as always Ayatsuji and Arisugawa came up with a deliciously tricky story. The second episode starts off with every major character in the story being transported to the dimension of the Armchair Detective, who then goes through the long chains of deduction that lead to the identity of the murderer. The tone here is rather comedic, with each character trying to argue why they aren't the murderer. There are a few meta-rules here that help the viewer out: there is always only one culprit (no accomplices), everything shown on screen (including the time stamps) is correct and nobody besides the murderer lies intentionally. Still, you need to pay attention very well to keep up with the Armchair Detective while he eliminates the suspects one by one and crosses off false solutions. I mean, how many detective shows do you know that spend between thirty minutes and an hour purely to the explanation of a crime? In order to solve the crime yourself, you need to reference the time stamps of each scene and sometimes check the backgrounds very carefully for hidden clues. In some episodes, the zoom-and-enhance trope can be rather persnickety (and kinda unfair in pre-HD TV broadcasts), but it's done fairly err, fair here. As mentioned, this show has to be both difficult, and also fair enough for the viewer at home (anyone can come up with an unsolvable mystery), and I think this episode is definitely one of the better efforts. It helps this show isn't about locked room murders etc., as they are harder to present in a truly fair manner. You can show a thread and needle on the screen, but it's not really fair to expect from the viewer to imagine what could've done with that. This show is about eliminating suspects, so you have to determine what the murderer must have done or known, and then see which of the suspects does or does not fit that profile. You'll definitely have to rewatch scenes a few times to get it though, and unless you have photographic memory, it's impossible to solve this in one go. There are a few scenes in the first episode that do stand out as being obviously 'oh, this scene is used to prove that this character couldn't have done this or that' but this doesn't hurt the experience, because you still need the context of the murder to understand how this becomes revelant in the elimination process.

In this case, the mystery revolves around two questions: Why the Santa Claus dress-up, and why steal a gigantic teddy bear after committing a murder? At first, the problem seems so trivial and also meaningless, but when the whole solution is presented, you'll see how neatly everything fits, and how all the odd movements of the culprit actually made perfect sense considering the situation. The problem of the teddy bear in particular is great, with a convincing reason as for why it had been spirited away from the office, one that seems so obvious in hindsight. The misdirection is quite clever, and while I kinda knew which characters I could already eliminate based on some of the scenes, I still couldn't make out exactly how the teddy bear was involved, so I was pleasantly surprised when it was all explained to me.

Anraku Isu Tantei no Seiya ~ Kieta Teddy Bear no Nazo ~ is in general a strong installment in this series, and while I'll be the first to admit that this series can be very fussy about its visual clues, I'd say this was actually one of the entries that didn't expect everyone in 2000 to have HD recorders to be able to solve the mystery. Some of the scenes do telegraph themselves too obviously as being clues, but overall, the mystery of the disappearing teddy bear is an amusing one, resulting in a very well-constructed mystery drama show that also does its job well as a Christmas-themed mystery.

Original Japanese title(s): 『安楽椅子探偵の聖夜 〜消えたテディ・ベアの謎〜』

Puzzle for Players

「私は安楽椅子探偵。それ以上でもそれ以下でもありません」

『安楽椅子探偵ON STAGE』

"I am the Armchair Detective. I am nothing more and nothing less than that."

"The Armchair Detective ON STAGE"

Disclosure: I translated novels by both Arisugawa Alice (The Moai Island Puzzle) and Ayatsuji Yukito (The Decagon House Murders) As far as I know by the way, the only things they really co-created are this show, and one of the stories in the mystery game Trick X Logic.

Do you know about the urban legend of the Armchair Detective? The tales go that there is a mysterious entity (who looks like Dr. Doom) who lives solely for the act of reasoning. He has solved countless of baffling cases through absolute logic, but is always forgotten by everyone involved with the case whenever he leaves save for the person who first summoned him to the scene. A small theater troupe has been making a succesful series of stage plays based on this urban legend titled The Legend of the Armchair Detective. The third installment of the mystery stage play however is met with some resistance: creepy messages are posted on the internet predicting the death of the Armchair Detective on stage. Performance of The Legend of the Armchair Detective III goes as planned though, until the last night of the show, when the Armchair Detective indeed drops dead on stage during his scene. Everyone is shocked to discover it's not actor Nakazaki Rakuta's face behind the mask, but that of his twin brother/assistant director Yasuo. Not long after, Rakuta's body is also discovered in the storage room at the troupe's office. Who killed the Nagazaki twins? That is a question not only the Armchair Detective can answer, but also you, the viewer, in the TV drama/game Anraku Isu Tantei ON STAGE ("The Armchair Detective ON STAGE, 2017).

Anraku Isu Tantei ("The Armchair Detective") is a TV drama originally created by mystery writers Ayatsuji Yukito and Arisugawa Alice for ABC, a local network in the Kansai region of Japan. It is essentially the ultimate Challenge to the Reader Viewer. Each story consists of two episodes. In the first episode, the viewer is introduced to all the characters, the events leading up to, and the events after the murder(s) and most importantly, the viewer is shown all the hints and clues necessary to solve the crime themselves. Viewers are then encouraged to write in with the answers to the following two questions: 1) Who is the murderer? and (more importantly): 2) What is the logical process by which you arrived at that conclusion? The winner, drawn from the people who submitted the correct answers, is presented with a sizeable money prize (500.000 yen in the 2017 edition) and eternal fame. The episode with the solution, detailing the complete process of how you should have deduced the identity of the murderer, is broadcast one week after the first. I have reviewed Anraku Isu Tantei ON AIR in the past, which was broadcast in 2006.

It had been eight years already since the Armchair Detective last appeared on television, so quite a lot of people were surprised by the sudden return of this almost legendary show. Things sure have changed in those eight years though, and while the show was still produced by a local TV station, Anraku Isu Tantei ON STAGE, the eight installment in the series, marks the first time the show was available to viewers throughout Japan through online streaming and on-demand services. The first episode was broadcast on January 5, 2017, the second episode on January 13.

In essence, Anraku Isu Tantei is at the core nothing more than a pure whodunit, with a few basic (written and unwritten) rules, including 1) there is only one murderer, 2) nobody will tell a lie (on purpose), save for the murderer, 3) everybody acts in a logical manner, 4) nothing "outside" what is shown exists (objects etc.), 5) motive is of no consequence and so on. Usually (and also in the case of Anraku Isu Tantei ON STAGE), your main objective is to identify a few characteristics of the murderer based on what you saw in the first episode, and use those characteristics to eliminate suspects. For example, let's say you have found evidence on the screen that prove the murderer was left-handed. Then you check for every suspect whether they are right or left-handed (or ambidextrous) and so on. I wrote a lengthy post on this 'elimination-style of mystery fiction' quite some time back now, but this is a form that is especially well-suited for the game-format of this show, because viewers can very clearly show the logical process of how they deduced the identity of the murderer ("Scene 1 proves the murderer was left-handed. Only X is left-handed. Ergo the murderer is X").

It's been eight years since the last episode aired, but Anraku Isu Tantei ON STAGE was still incredibly difficult. Not as difficult as previous episodes, true, but still, it's gloves off here. The truth behind the double murders on the twins is complex: you can identify the murderer based on basically two characteristics deduced from the crime scenes, but arriving at those two points will require lateral thinking by the viewer, as well as a very keen eye for detail. Still, as you listen to the solution in the second episode, you really can't help but cry out: "Ah! That makes so much sense!". Tthough admittedly, there were a few points where I could see the logic behind it, but did not see it as the one and only possible interpretation possible.

The logical chain that leads to the culprit is definitely not short, but it is so satisfying to get to the end of things. Though I do have the feeling that this episode was in a way 'easier' than previous episodes　(it's less mean), but that it did ask for a lot more 'boring' work from the viewer. Making a time table of where everybody was at what time for yourself is pretty handy for example (that's what all the timestamps are for in the episode!) Also, in a puzzle plot mystery novel, it's easy to flip some pages back to check up on something, to reread that part about some minor detail that might be an important hint (I do so often). This is also required with this show: it is utterly impossible to solve this show with just one viewing (unless you have photographic memory). It's definitely easier now than eight years back, now we have digital recorders and on-demand streaming services, but if you want to solve this crime, you'll need to look really carefully for clues, zooming in on the background and stuff. On one hand, I think it's brilliant. This is a visual format, so of course yeah, come on with visual clues and other clues that make use of the medium. On the other hand: as a viewer, it's also not particularly fun to zoom in on a wall to look for a fly resting there, as an example. Anraku Isu Tantei ON STAGE is a fair mystery story that is solvable, but a challenging one too. It is not as mindwarping shocking as some of the earlier entries in this series though (Ayatsuji commented after the show they tried to be 'gentle' as it was the first episode in almost a decade).

Last year, I reviewed the 2016 installment of Nazotoki Live, another TV show with an interactive format. There they helped the viewer organize all the information and important clues at set points throughout the show, making an otherwise complex mystery plot understandable by breaking the logical process in steps. In Anraku Isu Tantei, the viewer has to do all of that themselves. There is of course a monetary award involved with this, so that's a logical design choice, but it's interesting comparing the two shows. In terms of complexity, the two don't differ that greatly on the whole, but Nazotoki Live helps you on the way, while Anraku Isu Tantei will make you work very very hard on the problem.

The way the character of the Armchair Detective was incorporated in the story itself was fun too. The Armchair Detective is a really fun character, and the solution episodes are often a blast to watch not in the least because of him. The solution episodes are also very meta-concious: all the involved characters are transported to the world of the Armchair Detective, and together with the suspects, he explains the logical elimination process by showing the corresponding scenes from the first episodes as his proof. This explanation process (which includes false solutions and faulty hypotheses) takes an about an hour on average: the plots are just that complex (and therefore of a scale seldom seen on TV).

After the second episode, it was revealed 6819 people submitted an answer. While 60% did guess the identity of the murderer correctly, only 32(!) submissions out of those nearly 7000 got the logical process of elimination correct. So only 0.47% of all the entries guessed the murderer in the correct way. In the end, Ayatsuji and Arisugawa had to choose the 'most elegant' answer from those 32 correct answers, but they couldn't pick one single winner, so there were two winners for Anraku Isu Tantei ON STAGE.

Anyway, Anraku Isu Tantei ON STAGE was definitely an entertaining addition to the series. As always, it shows how a true fair play mystery plot can work out on the screen, but like previous installments, it can be very tough at times, and sometimes it's asking the viewer to look at rather small details on the screen too much. Still, there is still an air of magic around this show, with the money prize and the meta-approach to presenting the solution to the viewer in the second episode that makes this an unique experience as both a mystery show and a game. I think that's the word I was looking for. Experience. Anraku Isu Tantei is always an experience. Let's hope the Armchair Detective will be summoned again in the future soon.

Original Japanese title(s): 『安楽椅子探偵ON STAGE』

Death TV

「私に言わせれば、すべてのホラー現象はほらに過ぎない。超常現象を恐れてはならない。 Don't be afraid! どんと来い、超常現象！」

『TRICK』

"I say that all the horror phenomena in this world are nothing more than nonsense. Don't fear supernatural phenomena. Don't be afraid! Come on, supernatural phenomena!"

"TRICK"

I usually begin a post with a little paragraph on something not (directly) related to the main topic. Why? Because I think it's too confronting to go to the core of the story right away. Or something like that. I just like it when there's a little buffer between the start of a post and the main story. Aaaaaaaand that was today's introduction.

The Armchair Detective is a mysterious entity dressed like Doctor Doom who lives purely to deduce. Whenever he is summoned, he teleports all important actors involved in a mystery to his realm, and shows with absolute logic who the murderer is in any given crime. Ever since the Armchair Detective helped the clairvoyant Ashida Luna solve a serial murder case that had baffled the police two years ago, Luna is thought to have real supernatural powers. This time, she is asked to do a live psi trailing session in the TV show Friday On Air, to discover the whereabouts of the missing student Sanjou Miyabi. And the production team behind Friday On Air praise the gods for their decision to use Luna in their show, because the dead body of Sanjou Miyabi is discovered only thanks to the psychic's amazing powers. But then Ashida Luna is killed before she gets a chance to use her clairvoyant powers to find out who killed Miyabi. Can the viewer solve the murders on Miyabi and Luna before the Armchair Detective appears to reveal the truth in Anriku Isu Tantei On Air ("The Armchair Detective On Air")?

Anraku Isu Tantei ("The Armchair Detective") was a TV special series which ran irregularly from 1999-2008. The show was written by veteran puzzle plot writers Ayatsuji Yukito and Arisugawa Alice and designed to be the ultimate challenge to the viewer. Each episode consisted of two parts: the 'problem' part, which introduced the murders, all the suspects and most importantly, all the necessary hints to arrive at the solution, was broadcast in the first week. Viewers were then encouraged to send in questionnaires with 1) whom they think was the murderer, and 2) how they arrived at that conclusion. The 'solution' part was then broadcast in the second week, usually baffling the viewer with lenghty deduction chains presented by the supernatural being the Armchair Detective. Anraku Isu Tantei On Air was the sixth production, originally broadcast in 2006.

The format of the Anraku Isu Tantei shows is obviously inspired by so-called guess-the-criminal (hanninate) scripts. These scripts are more like pure logic puzzles than 'proper' literary stories: there are unwritten rules like a Challenge to the Reader, 'there is only one murderer', 'strength of motive is of no real consequence' and 'all the hints necessary to solve the crime are in the story' (therefore, nothing/no person outside the world described in the story exists) and most of these plots are solved through a Queen-esque elimination method: determine an x amount of characteristics the murderer must have (i.e. must have been left handed, must have had access to the room, must have etc.) and see who fits (or does not fit) the profile. Some might think Ellery Queen's novels feel a bit artificial with the challenge to the reader and all, but these guess-the-criminal scripts are really taking this game-element of detective fiction to the extreme (see also the game Trick X Logic, which takes the same format to a videogame).

And slightly off-topic, but writing these kinds of stories is a pretty important activity in the Kyoto University University Club: one member would write a story, while other members would try to solve it. All the stories that have been published within the club are written on the wall of the club room, and when I was there two years ago, there had been around 400 stories done ever since the tradition started. My name and story is also somewhere there on the wall, by the way.

Anriku Isu Tantei On Air is the first time I watched the show. I love it for its experimental format as a detective show that tries to involve the viewer in an active manner, but it also shows why this format might not be the best for a TV show. Normally, you'd go through a guess-the-criminal script once and then go back in the pages to check up on everything. For example, you'd find out the murderer had to be left-handed at the end of the story, so you'd go back and flip through the pages to see who was right-handed and who left. A good guess-the-criminal script will have several characteristics for a murderer (and play with that too), so it's important to go back and forth to check on all the facts.

However, this is hard to do with a TV show. The video format is not really made for a viewer to go back and forth to check up on everything. And I can assure you, it's impossible to solve the complete puzzle in Anraku Isu Tantei On Air in just one session. If you really want to get to all details, you'd have to watch the first episode at least two, three times and that's only if you already have a good idea about who did it. The DVD of Anraku Isu Tantei On Air does a reasonable job at assisting the viewer, as all the chapter stops are set at moments with crucial information ("X's Alibi", "Y's Alibi" etc.). But even then, you'd need to watch the episode several times. For the viewers who watched this live, they had to have taped the episode, or else they'd never been able to solve the case. Oh, and for your information: when this episode was broadcast in 2006, 19566 people had sent in answers: 6,5% of the respondents (1271) had guessed the correct murderer, while only a mere 0,3% (58) also presented the correct logical arguments to support the suspicion. And people complained the Ellery Queen TV show was too difficult!

But I still think this is really worth a viewing though. One of the reasons I love mystery fiction is because of the puzzle element, the game element behind it and I have never seen a detective TV show treat that aspect as interesting as with Anraku Isu Tantei. The solution is fantastic, with a grand deduction chain leading up to the reveal of the murderer. The plot of this particular episode also makes impressive use of its format as a video: while I admit some of the hints are just barely fair (Maybe a second in a ninety minute show is hardly fair!), there is one amazing hint that could only have been pulled off this convincingly because it was a TV show, and not for example a novel. That said, it's also quite complex, maybe even too complex for a TV show. To put things in perspective: whereas a 'normal' detective TV drama might spend ten, maaaybe twenty minutes on explaining the crime, Anraku Isu Tantei On Air's solution episode takes over an hour to go through all the evidence and logic chains to reach the murderer. I loved how they did it, complete with "quoting" specific scenes to build their arguments, but I can imagine that the casual viewer might not appreciate stories this complex.

I really did like Anraku Isu Tantei On Air, but it's also quite easy to see its flaws. It's a great experiment of a game puzzle-esque detective show on TV and the plot itself is great, as expected from big names like Ayatsuji Yukito and Arisugawa Alice. On the other hand, it might be a bit too complex, as you really need to watch the episode several times if you want to even think about solving the murder yourself. The scale of the story and the impressive logic behind the plot are something seldom, if ever seen in a detective drama, but Anraku Isu Tantei On Air also shows why this is probably wouldn't work for most viewers. Definitely one for the more dedicated mystery fans.

Original Japanese title(s): 『安楽椅子探偵 On Air』