Three Act Tragedy

「私はオペラ座の怪人---思いのほかに醜いだろう？この禍禍しき怪物は地獄の業火に焼かれながらそれでも天国に憧れる！」

『金田一少年の事件簿：オペラ座館殺人事件』

"I am the Phantom of the Opera. Am I not unbelievably hideous? But even while this ill-omened monster is being consumed by the inferno of hell, I still long for heaven!"

"The Case Files of Young Kindaichi: The Opera House Murder Case" 

Happy birthday, Kindaichi Hajime! It's been 20 years since our young high school detective Hajime and love interest Miyuki first made their debut in the story Operazakan Satsujin Jiken ("The Opera House Murder Case") in 1992, but the duo is still going strong, with a new case waiting for them in March (The Man-Eating Laboratory Murder Case). I do hope they'll celebrate his anniversary with more events later this year! What about a new videogame (a good one please this time)? Or a new TV drama based on the second season stories?

It does seem that few people realize that the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo series is pretty much what shaped the whole detective manga genre. Kindaichi Shounen was almost epoch-making as a manga inspired by orthodox detective fiction and series like Detective Conan and Q.E.D. are very much indebted to their grandfather. Kindaichi Shounen popularized the fair-play mystery comic genre and introduced little touches too, like catchphrases that serve as challenges to the reader (the infamous nazo wa subete toketa /  all the mysteries have been solved). It also spawned a gigantic media mix franchise: an anime (including movies), several widely popular live action series and movies, audio dramas, a novel series, videogames and probably more stuff I can't think of right now.

And so, to commemorate Kindaichi Shounen's twentieth anniversary, a review of a special set of stories from the Kindaichi Shounen canon. And we begin with the very first Kindaichi Shounen story, Operazakan Satsujin Jiken ("The Opera House Murder Case"). Kindaichi Hajime and childhood friend/love interest Nanase Miyuki, together with members of the theater club of their high school and their supervising teacher, travel to the Opera House Hotel at Utashima island to rehearse their play of Gaston Leroux' The Phantom of the Opera. It does not take long for Kindaichi, who is not actually a member of the club, to notice that there is some underlying tension between his companions, all tied to the suicide of an ex-member of the club. The whole thing explodes however when a murder is commited by dropping down a stage light on top of one of the actresses. More murders happen, including one under impossible circumstances and they seem to have been commited by someone dressed like the play's Phantom. But little did the murderer know that Kindaichi Hajime is the grandson of the famous masterdetective Kindaichi Kousuke...

The Yokomizo Seishi estate later objected to the use of Kindaichi Kousuke's name actually, so in later volumes Hajime usually just refers to 'his grandpa'. But it was indeed fitting for Hajime to be the grandson of Kindaichi Kousuke, and not only because they both represent the first in a wave of orthodox detective fiction. Kousuke's most famous cases, like Akuma no Temariuta, Inugamike no Ichizoku, Gokumontou are all essentialy mitate-satsujin (a 'resembling' murder), an off-spring to the nursery rhyme murder. These are murders to are made to symbolize something else. Nursery rhymes are an example, but mitate-satsujin are usually more diverse as it has none of the 'storybook' annotations the nursery rhyme murder has. In this first case of Hajime, he also encounters mitate-satsujin, with the actual murders resembling the murders of the play, both commited by the Phantom. And yes, there are no (few?) actual murders in the original Phantom of the Opera, but it is later explained that the school club is performing a stage adaptation that features a lot of murders.

The overall story is entertaining for early Kindaichi Shounen standards, but the use of a well-known trick in the last part of the story pretty much points out who the murderer is. Of course, most Kindaichi Shounen stories follow a formula pretty strict, with the most common tropes actually introduced in this first story. The school club on a trip, a closed circle situation, an avenger of the past, persons playing multiple parts, locked room murders, impossible situations and a dramatic ending. Which makes the series predictable at times. When the series is on a roll however, it does these tropes wonderfully though and then these tropes don't feel as a burden at all. In this first story, it's clear what the major influences are, but it does not feel as a bad thing. The complete story is decent and to me it is clear why the story managed to draw in a large audience.

Regarding the production of the series, it has to be noted that this first story was actually written by Kaneda Youzaburou. Amagi Seimaru, the current script-writer, was the one who came up with the idea of Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo (, but Kaneda was the one who actually wrote a large part of the first season of the Kindaichi Shounen manga. Amagi took over the series about halfway the first season and he has been the story-runner for everything Kindaichi Shounen since 1998.

At the end of the story, Hajime, Miyuki and the other survivors of the tragedy leave Utashima and the Opera House Hotel, but they retutrned 2 years later, in Operazakan - Aratanaru Satsujin ("The Opera House - Murders Once More"), the second novel (and remade as the first anime movie) (penned by Amagi). The owner of the Opera House Hotel, a former playwright and director, decides to reopen his hotel as a proper theater and has invited several old friends, including Hajime, Miyuki and inspector Kenmochi to the first performance in his theater. And yes, it is The Phantom of the Opera. Hajime naturally feels worried about a new performance of The Phantom in the Opera House Hotel and he is right. The first night a gigantic chandelier falls on top of the actress playing Carlotta. More murders happen and once again Hajime finds out there's a secret in the past of the cast.

This is a really strange story to rate. The murders here are also made to resemble the ones that appear in their version of The Phantom of the Opera and as a result, this story really resembles Operazakan Satsujin Jiken. The light-source falling on top of someone (this time in a locked room), a hanged corpse, someone found in a water-vessel, this story feels more like remake of the original story than a proper sequel. They are just too alike. Overall, the first story feels better constructed, even though the impossible chandelier murder in this novel was actually quite good. The other murders just seem less satisfying.

At one hand, the novel feels a bit different because of the heavier themes compared to the manga. Which isn't all nice to begin with. The other Kindaichi Shounen novels also feature this. On the other hand, the quick switches between points of view, between segments and the short dialogue sections really make this book feel like a glorified storyboard for a manga or anime. It's moving fast, too fast for its own good. This is a story that could have improved from a longer page count. I saw the movie a long time ago and in my memories, the movie is a lot better than the novel in regards of pacing.

The final appearance of the Opera House Hotel is in Operazakan - Daisan no Satsujin ("The Opera House - The Third Murder Case"), the second story of the second season of the manga (post-2004). The old owner of the Opera House Hotel has passed away and the island has been in the possession of a friend of his for some time. She decides to tear the place down and has invited a group of old students of the deceased stage director, and Hajime, Miyuki and Kenmochi for one final performance of The Phantom of the Opera in the Opera House Hotel. By now, you would think that performing this play there could be considered attempted murder, but enfin. Hajime feels uneasy about it all and it doesn't take long for the chandelier to fall on top of a poor actress. Again. It's the start of a new series of murders on Utashima and the main suspect is... once again the Phantom.

This time, the murders don't really follow the ones of the play anymore, so the story avoids feeling too similar to the previous two stories set at the Hotel. Also different from the previous two stories is how the first murder (the falling chandelier) is actually the least satisfying murder of them all. Which is not to say that it is a bad trick, but the overall standard of the tricks in this story is pretty good and certainly the best of all three murder cases at the Opera House Hotel. Ignoring The Phantom of the Opera for the murders themselves (it is used for background settings though) was a wise choice by Amagi this time and really made this an enjoyable story. It also allowed him to explore the island of Utashima a bit more (this is actually the first time we get a full shot of the island and we get a glimpse of the other points of interest at the island), which was pretty interesting, considering that despite Hajime and Miyuki having visited the island several times, we never got to see much of the island.

Thematic, this story also forms a nice evolution / reconstruction of the previous two volumes, with several established tropes being reversed in this story. It really strengthens the story if you read it after the first story, as it does feel like a set then. This story has also been made into a TV anime special in 2007, which my memory tells me was a somewhat shortened version of the original story which did not feel as satisfying as the manga.

For all three stories, it is interesting how the presentation of the Opera House Hotel as a yakata-mono (mansion story) never really succeeds. The creepy Western-style mansion on Utashima island is clearly meant to be presented as such, but The Phantom of the Opera completely overshadows the Hotel's presence. In fact, the only real presence of the Hotel is focused within the chandelier of the hotel's theater that has a tendency to fall on people. Which is pretty creepy yes, but the rest of the building just seems like filler. Which seems like a shame, because the setting really had potentional, especially as it was being re-used several times.

For the moment, it does not seem like Hajime, Miyuki and inspector Kenmochi will return to the island for a fourth time because of how the last story ended, but who knows? Utashima and the Opera House Hotel are so much part of the Kindaichi Shounen mythos that I wouldn't be surprised if one day, our trio will come back to their place of birth.

And remember, never ever stand beneath a light source in a theater. It will crash on top of you.

Original Japanese title(s): 　金成陽三郎（原作） &  さとうふみや（画） 『金田一少年の事件簿：オペラ座館殺人事件』 /  天樹征丸（原作） & さとうふみや（画）　『金田一少年の事件簿：オペラ座館　新たなる殺人』　『金田一少年の事件簿：オペラ座館　第三の殺人』

Secret of my Heart

「聞くは一時の恥。聞かないは一生の恥じ」

『428　～封鎖された渋谷で～』

"Asking will make you feel ashamed for a while. Not asking will make feel you ashamed for a lifetime"

"428 ~ In A Sealed Off Shibuya~"

This second entry in the Short Shorts certainly came earlier than I myself had guessed. I guess I pick up small, insignificant things at a faster rate than I thought. Like the previous time, this is just a series of unrelated thoughts that wouldn't have made for interesting seperate posts.

Aah, the hours that pass by as I scour websites like YouTube and Nico Nico Douga. Which is probably not nearly as long as the time it took the creators of the following Detective Conan related movies. One is an impressive statistical research of all the deaths in the series. The title says I counted the persons who died in Detective Conan (including the anime and such). Yes, it is as ridiculous as it sounds. The creator even went through the trouble of categorizing the deaths in homicide, suicide, accidental death, illness and unknown causes. It goes up until the first 68 volumes of the manga, episode 574 of the anime and the Lost Ship in the Sky movie. There were actually fewer deaths than I had expected. Even more ridiculous is the movie where someone counted the times the word barō (a Conan-specific swear word based on the longer bakayarō) is said. And I thought reviewing the Conan manga from the beginning was insane. Random fact: it is barō in the manga, but pronounced more like bārō in the anime, which is why most people write it as the latter.

And ooh, a new videogame of Conan! Kako kara no Prelude ("Prelude from the Past") is a sequel (prequel?) to Rondo of the Blue Jewel, which was sorta decent. It's a DS/PSP release, which means I don't have to switch hardware yet. Wondering how they'll differ. I prefer DS games as they are cheaper and I can play a lot longer on my DS than on my PSP, but I'd totally go for the PSP version if they included voice acting.

Because Edogawa Rampo mostly wrote unorthodox mystery stories, I sometimes hesitate writing about them here, but I guess they fit this short shorts segment. Hito De Nashi No Koi ("An Inhuman Love") is a pretty famous horror short story by Rampo, that actually seems to start out as a detective. The narrator, Kyouko, tells the reader about an incident that happened when she had just married, a local heir who was known as being stunningly handsome, but there were also rumors of him being misogynist. Luckily for Kyouko, those rumors seem to be false, but she does discover that her husband sneaks out of bed every night to go to the second floor of the small storage building. Following him, she hears her husband and another woman talking silently there. Kyouko naturally thinks of an affaire and waits outside the building to confront the pair, but only her husband comes out. This is repeated several times, with her husband's lover seemingly disappearing into thin air every night. Up until this point the story seems like an impossible disappearance story, but the ending clearly places this in the horror subgenre. I sadly enough already knew the ending because Hito De Nashi no Koi was mentioned a paper on a certain theme in Edogawa Rampo's works, but it is still a pretty interesting short story.

Rampo's Monogram is even shorter than Hito De Nashi No Koi, but also less interesting. The story starts with two men who just happen to sit next to each other on a couch in the park. The two men start talking with each other and they both can't seem to shake the feeling they have met before, even though they are both sure they never did. This story is really, really happy and sweet and light-hearted and everything nice, which is very surprising for an Edogawa Rampo work. Heck, even his Shounen Tantei Dan series is darker than this. It thus felt surprisingly fresh, even though the story is pretty simple and nothing special an sich. Rampo himself didn't rate this story very high either, but he had an interesting note about how he wrote this story, basically a love story surrounding a 'code' of some sorts. Hiding behind a code was what fitted his own personality, Rampo said, as he himself was pretty shy and didn't dare to show his own feelings himself too. Awww.

Around the same time the TV drama of Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de ("Mystery Solving Is After Dinner") started, NHK produced a radio drama of the series. Or to be more precise, they made a radio drama based on the first story of the first book, Satsujin Genba de wa Kutsu wo O-nugi Kudasai ("Please Take Off Your Shoes At A Murder Scene"). I didn't really like this radio drama, because it featured a narrator who was absolutely unneccessary for the story. The complete story could have been perfectly conveyed with just the two characters of Reiko and butler Kageyama and that would have made for a much more enthralling show. The story itself is still a very entertaining one, that revolves around the simple question: why was the murder victim wearing shoes inside her apartment (which is simply not done in Japan). It seems like a very trivial question, but butler Kageyama manages to solve this case based on this little fact alone. In fact, most stories in Nazotoki seem to revolve around almost Queenian strange murder scenes.Which makes the series the more fun. It's kinda sad NHK didn't do this radio drama within their own NHK Youth Adventure series, as I've been very content with those productions until now.

Original Japanese title(s):　江戸川乱歩　『人でなしの恋』『モノグラム』 / 東川篤哉　「殺人現場では靴をお脱ぎください」

The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter

「パトカーの中で、〇〇〇は同じ言葉を何度も、何度も呟いていたらしい。何で自分は日本人じゃなかったんだ、何で彼女はアメリカ人じゃなかったんだと。まるで壊れたからくり人形のように、何度も、何度も繰り返して・・・」

『名探偵コナン』

"In the patrol car, X kept muttering the same words over and over again. Why wasn't I Japanese? Why wasn't she American? Like a broken puppet, repeating those words over and over again..."

"Detective Conan"

My reading pile of detective fiction is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet his maker. Which means that I'll have to be content for the while being with my reading pile of secondary literature. Which is pretty fun actually. As a student, I have to write papers regularly and I do like it when I am able to use detective fiction for my academic writings. Even if I have to be a bit... creative at times. Imagined communities and early Japanese detective fiction was a bit of a stretch though. Even by my standards.

Hasebe Fumichika's Oubei Suiri Shousetsu Honyakushi ("A History of Western Detective Novel Translations") is precisely what the cover says it is: a history of translations of Western detective novels in Japan. To be more precise, early Western detective novels. The book was originally published in 1992 and won the Japanese Detective Writers Assocation Price (like Shakaibu Kisha, Kao, Honjin Satsujin Jiken and Geneijou). And it is certainly an entertaining and informative read. Hasabe looks at the history of Western detective novels in Japan by focusing on a set of authors he considers influential to Japanese writers. He looks at both the original publication dates in the country of origin as well at as the various publication sources / various translations in Japan and is thus mainly set in the Taisho and early Showa period (1912~36). Which is not always easy, because not only did early Japanese translations of Western fiction often have altered titles, some early translations were also more like free adaptations of the original story.  Which is also where I have to correct myself. I once wrote that R. Austin Freeman's The Eye of Osiris wasn't translated into Japanese until the 1950s, but that's not true. A serialization of the novel had actually started in the very first issue of Shinseinen in 1920 already (the mystery magazine of that time, where Edogawa Rampo also made his debut) under the name Hakkotsu no Nazo ("The Mystery of the White Bones")

Hasabe discusses the following writers in their own chapters: Agatha Christie, S.S. Van Dine, Johnston McCulley, R. Austin Freeman, Gaston Leroux, Freeman Will Crofts, Joseph Smith Fletcher, Alfred Machard, Maurice Leblanc, Edgar Wallace, John Dickson Carr, G.K. Chesterton and several authors he groups together as French writers, German writers and early short story writers. While most names are familiar, a name like McCulley (of the Zorro novels) might seem surprising. Which is what makes this book interesting to read, as it is a Japanese reception history of Western detective novels and occasionally you see how some writers were received differently across the sea. There are sometimes even surprising revelations, like for example when Hasebe writes that Japanese critics had low expectations of American writers in that time and that Edogawa Rampo thought that Van Dine's novels were OK, considering they were written by an American! Hasebe also gives an interesting description of the role of translators, who were actually very active with the material themselves. Translators often identified the materials suitable to translate and some of these men were very good in reading the market, for example finding and translating Agatha Christie's short stories to Japanese at a very early stage of their English publication.

Hasebe's study is pretty detailed on the supply side of the story, with much information on the many translations, publications, adaptations and children's adaptations of the various stories of the authors, but is sadly enough somewhat short on the demand side of the market. There is little to no information about the market itself, with most of Hasebe's story focusing on translators and publishers. He also does not explain why he deemed the authors he chose important. I assume it's because these authors / works had a great influence on early Japanese writers, but it is odd that Hasebe does not try to show this explicitly. He sometimes quotes Edogawa Rampo (mostly from his Forty Years of Detective Fiction memoirs) on how Rampo felt about certain books, but that is pretty much it. It would have made this book so much more interesting if Hasabe had made the connection between Western authors / novels and the Japanese authors / novels more clearly.

The book also misses a clear introduction or contextualization, which is actually quite necessary for the topic. The book is structured by the authors, but is quite unclear how Hasebe decided on this structure. Why Christie as the first author? This book needs more contextualization, especially in the sense of how the period this book describes forms a continuation on the Meiji period translations / adaptations (like by Kuroiwa Ruikou). Yes, I know there are specialist books for that (I have one actually) and I know that this is not a book 'beginners' in the genre would pick up, but I can very well imagine that this would be a somewhat confusing or boring read if you can't place it in the proper context.

Oubei Suiri Shousetsu Honyakushi is certainly a well-researched book, but it lacks a bit in portraying the information Hasaebe gathered as actually being relevant. It is a bit ambiguous now and some readers might find the list of translation publications bit boring to read without proper contextualization within the book. As a standalone book, it is too vague I think and while the topic concerns Western authors, I don't think a translation of this book would work at all, without the larger context of early translation practices and the introduction of detective fiction in Japan.

Original Japanese title(s): 長谷部史親  『欧米推理小説翻訳史』

The Adventure of the Dying Detective

"Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"

"The Hound of the Baskervilles"

The question that dominated my mind while watching Sherlock: why was Sherlock broadcast at a later time every week?

The Sherlockian winter, consisting of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and the second season of Sherlock was a bit short, but certainly entertaining. While A Game of Shadows turned out to be a pleasant surprise because of low expectations, I had been expecting much of Sherlock's continuation. Partly because the final episode of the first season ended with a cliffhanger, but mostly because the show was just insanely fun. It was simply wonderful as a contemporary remake of the classic Holmes canon. The episodes were a fantastic mix between the original stories by Conan Doyle and the scriptwriters, there was witty writing and expert editing and certainly had its own face despite being a Sherlock Holmes remake. There were some minor gripes I had with the show, but it was in general a really great show and I was happy to see that the second season managed to build on the foundation laid in the first season.

Little secret: the only thing I like about A Scandal in Bohemia is the very first line of the story. 'To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman'. It is a simple, yet powerful sentence that manages to describe Holmes' impression of Irene Adler perfectly. I however never thought Adler to have acted so impressively in the original story  though. Anyway, so I don't really like Bohemia, but I quite liked A Scandal in Belgravia. The first half is indeed mostly based on the original story, but the second half expands on that and makes more plausible for someone like Holmes to consider her THE woman. The episode also features some seed planting for later episodes, most prominently the growing popularity of Sherlock Holmes and the deerstalker hat, which in hindsight is pretty interesting. I do have to say that the way the cliffhanger of the previous episode was 'resolved' was very cheap. This really felt like 'OK, we made an awesome cliffhanger the last time so we could sell another season.... but we have no idea how to get us out of this mess'.

The Hounds of Baskerville featured a very welcome change of scenery for the show. The cramped, urban setting is fun, but you really need Dartmoor if you're gonna to remake the creepiest Sherlock Holmes story, right? This was actually a fairly faithful modern update of the original story, with a rather predictable explanation for the gigantic hound, but it was also very entertaining. Like the original book, this episode was leaning very, very hard to the horror-side of things and that was a good thing. What was fun though, was how the scriptwriter intregrated the villain and modus operandi of the original novel into a small subplot that was hilarious if you had read the original. Of course, that is pretty much what they have been doing all the time, from little references like a sack of thumbs in the refrigerator and cases like 'The Geek Interpreter' (in A Scandal in Belgravia), but this was more fun because it was a clear poke at the original novel.

The Reichenbach Fall has a fairly farfetched title (yes, I know they explain it at the end. But it is farfetched) that is naturally sorta based on The Final Problem. Which makes it tempting to compare it to A Game of Shadows, but the two have a very different take on the original story. A Game of Shadows, like The Final Problem, is about Moriarty taking rather conventional means to stop Holmes (attempts at his life), while Sherlock's Moriarty seems to take a very different approach. It plays with a lot of theories and interpretations Holmesians have come up with in all these years, so it is not particularly original, but fun all the same. The show also takes a 'Batman - Joker' dualistic approach to the two characters, which felt a bit strange. The ending... well, it is based on The Final Problem and there is the Fall in the title of the episode, so you can expecting some falling... but because of the original approach of this Moriarty, there is still a surprise to be found in the confrontation between Sherlock and Moriarty even for veteran Homesians.

The season was overall quite good, with actually the last episode being the... dullest(?) of them all. Belgravia was a pleasant surprise because I didn't like the original story. Baskerville was fun as a modern take on the original story and because of the change in tone of the show. For some reason Reichenbach just felt a lot more predictable than the other episodes (even though it actually differs the most from the original story).

And I still love the game-like presentation to the show! I already mentioned it in my post on the very first episode and Kotaku also ran an article on a bit ago, but the show is full of videogame-language, from text that hovers above the screen to mini-maps that show in Sherlock's head and other HUD-like information. Or for example the simulation of the impossible death in Belgravia during Irene and Sherlock's discussion about the case! The 'memory palace' of Sherlock in Baskerville (which was really like Heavy Rain)! I don't know how these things feel to a non-gamer, but for me, this all felt very natural. I like having information on my screen. I like context-sensitive information. Videogame literacy is something I have and take for granted, but I do sometimes wonder how non-gamers view these things. Anyway, I thought that the HUDs were a pretty cool way to convey information (most importantly, Sherlock's observations) to the viewer without feeling to obtrusive as when done through dialogue or close ups. Yes, I think that gigantic floating text is more natural than close ups or dialogue.

Oh, and Freeman (Watson) is certainly the one who stole the show! It also seems that the actors themselves are interested in a third season, so....

Arsène Lupin contre Herlock Sholmès

「そのころ、東京中の町という町、家という家では、ふたり以上の人が顔をあわせさえすれば、まるでお天気のあいさつでもするように、怪人「二十面相」のうわさをしていました」

『怪人二十面相』

"In every neighborhood and in every home, whenever people came together, they would, as if talking about the simply weather, start swapping out rumors about the Fiend with Twenty Faces"

"The Fiend with Twenty Faces"

The amount I read and wrote about Edogawa Rampo's Shounen Tantei Dan ("Boys Detective Club") series this week this week is a bit more than should be considered healthy, but I still love it. It made me realise that we need more stories about master-detectives versus master-criminals. Yes, we have the crossover stories between Arsène Lupin and a thinly disguised Sherlock Holmes, but as those stories are written by Lupin's Leblanc, Holmes' depiction is never completely fair. And on the topic of Holmes, he and Moriarty are indeed an example, but Moriarty's appearance in the original canon is so brief and sudden that his impact is less than you'd expect it to be. No, we need more of the rivalries like Conan vs KID! Kindaichi vs Hell's Puppeteer! Q Class vs Pluto! Ranko vs Devil's Labyrinth!

Writing this also makes me realize that these are all Japanese examples. There are probably non-Japanese examples, but I can't think of one right now. Anyway, for the Japanese examples, it's pretty easy to point to the Shounen Tantei Dan series as the grandfather of the trope. Edogawa Rampo's legendary series about master-detective Akechi Kogorou, asssisted by young Kobayashi and the Boys Detective Club and the confrontations they have with the master-thief the Fiend with Twenty Faces pretty much shaped the model for both children's mystery fiction and for stories about master-detectives and master-criminals and it is tempting to think that without this series, we'd never have something like the rivalries mentioned above.

Edogawa Rampo's works never age, so they keep getting remade for all kinds of media. Akechi Kogorou tai Kaijin Nijuu Mensou ("Akechi Kogorou VS The Fiend with Twenty Faces") is a 2002 TV special produced by TBS. The story is a mix of several stories of the Shounen Tantei Dan series (and some non-Shounen Tantei Dan novels featuring Akechi), but also features an original take on the characters. Set in postwar Japan, the bulk of the story is naturally about the Triforce of Akechi, Boy Detective Club (represented by Kobayashi) and Twenty Faces, but the scriptwriter also added a subplot that links Akechi Kogorou and Twenty Faces personally. Because that's more fun, right? When Things Get Personal?

No, wrong. The Personal Subplot That Is Supposed To Make The Rivalry Significant is one of the many problems with this special. The subplot renders the Fiend with Twenty Faces to a poor victim of the war. But that's not the real Twenty Faces! He is supposed to be a genius criminal with the air of Arsène Lupin, he should be grand, he should be invincible! Twenty Faces is a criminal in a children's series, he is supposed to be nothing more than a (pleasant) evil! Making Twenty Faces a poor misunderstood war-victim is just an amateuristic way of trying to make the story more suitable for adults, but that is totally missing the point of Edogawa Rampo when he created the character!

Part of the problem is created by Edogawa himself though. He used the character of Akechi in all kinds of stories, from the Shounen Tantei Dan series aimed children to his work for adults. As a result, Akechi appears in both light-hearted and darker stories, which makes him an ambiguous character at times. Twenty Faces however is different, he was always meant as a children's character. The special mixes up several scenes from different Shounen Tantei Dan novels and it is clear that those spectacular scenes are in fact aimed at children, with a certain boyish naiveness to them. The "dark" subplot with Twenty Faces and Akechi really feels out of place.

Another problem is the casting. I love Tamura Masakazu. Really. Yes, he pretty much acts the same way in most of his roles, but in a good way. But if you put him in the role of a dandy gentleman detective dressed in black, I will think he is Furuhata Ninzaburou. Not Akechi Kogorou. Yes, I admit there are some differences (as Akechi, Tamura at least seems more sincere than Furuhata), but the two characters are just too similar. The other problem is Beat Takeshi, who plays the Fiend with Twenty Faces. There are just too many things wrong with this. Age is one thing (like I said, Twenty Faces should be more like youthful Lupin). The second problem is... is that he is called Twenty Faces. Because he is a master of disguise who is forgotten his own face. Why would he run around the whole time looking like Beat Takeshi then?!! There is a reason that the masked Twenty Faces is the most 'accepted' visual image of him! In fact, the movie K-20, based on an original novel by Kitamura Sou, had a really kick-ass suit for Twenty Faces. Actually, K-20 had a much better Akechi Kogorou vs Fiend with Twenty Faces story than this special, especially the more light-hearted approach is a lot more enjoyable.

The fact that the only enjoyable parts of this special were the parts that were lifted directly from the original novels says something about the strength of Edogawa's writing, but this was really an example of how not to do a TV adaptation of Edogawa Rampo's work.

Original Japanese title(s): 『明智小五郎対怪人二十面相』

「心に並べても未完成なパズル 」

「事件に大きいも小さいも無い」

『踊る大捜査線』

"You don't judge cases by their size"

"Bayside Shakedown"

Welcome to another entry in Short Shorts. Or wait, this is actually the first Short Shorts. Am I really going to call this Short Shorts? Hmm. Anyway, this is where I post things that aren't nearly interesting enough to justify a whole post on their own, but are somewhat acceptable if thrown in with some other bits and pieces. The bits and pieces are unrelated, but who cares?

I bought Speak of The Devil over a year ago and decided yesterday to finally read it. Speak of the Devil was a radio drama (this being the script) written by John Dickson Carr and is basically an enhanced version of She Slept Lightly (which is collected in 13 to the Gallows). A historic mystery where a man is haunted by his desire to meet a girl who is supposed to have been hanged some years earlier, but the mystery is rather light and the sappy love story really asked a lot of tolerance of my part. Speak of the Devil and She Slept Lightly are also extremely similar, so there is actually no need to read both stories. Are there actually scripts available for Suspense? Carr had some interesting stories there, which would have been much more enjoyable to read than Speak of the Devil.

Reverse Thieves has a pretty interesting segment where they discuss homages / parodies to detectives in non-related anime/manga series. To name some of my own favorites: The Serizawa Family Murder Case, a chapter in the classic Golgo 13. In fact, Golgo 13 is a name that might be mentioned more often from now on. The titular Golgo 13 is the world's number one professional assassin. And that's pretty all to the story. The stories often involve international politics in the background, but most of the interesting stories are when Golgo is forced to make an impossible snipe. Thieves like Lupin might be experts on how to make a seemingly impossible theft, but Golgo 13 is an expert in overcoming the odds and assassinate people in seemingly impossible situations. You know, the more I think about it, the more I think I really should write something more extensive about Golgo 13 sometime.

But anyway, The Serizawa Family Murder Case is might be an origin story for the perfect assassin. The story has a slow start, but presents the reader with a very interesting impossible disappearance halfway through the story. A woman is seen entering a hotel room, shortly after followed by a man. Police officers have all exits under surveillance. After some time however, the man exits the room, complaining that the woman still has not come! The police has no idea what's going on: they swear they saw the woman enter first, but the man says she was never there and simply thought that she was late. A search of the room shows that she has really disappeared from under the police's nose. The solution is a pretty suprising one if you weren't expecting a locked room mystery in your Golgo 13.

Another locked room mystery I had totally forgotten about is in King Ottokar's Sceptre, the eight album in the Adventures of Tintin series. I will refer to Tintin as Kuifje (his Dutch name) from now on by the way, because Tintin just feels strange. I haven't seen the new movie (and I seem to be the only one who genuinely enjoyed the videogame), but rewatching the 90's TV series reminded me of the locked room mystery in King Ottokar's Sceptre. In it, the titular sceptre disappears from a guarded room, with the only person inside being knocked out. While the solution is pretty simple and arguably maybe a bit childish, it's still a pretty entertaining story.

For me, reading/watching detective fiction is something I usually do on my own, so I naturally keep all my thoughts I have to myself. Occasionally I cry out some incoherent stuff, but it's usually a silent process. As I watched some episodes of (the awesome) Game Center CX however, I realized how strange it is to hear someone else think out loud while confronting a piece of detective fiction. In episodes 105 and 113, section chief Arino challenges the two detective games Hokkaidou Serial Murder Case - Disppear to Ohotsk (sequel to Portopia Serial Murder Case) and Kamaitachi no Yoru. While in episodes with action-based games, most of the fun of the show is derived from seeing how Arino struggles to progress in the game, these two episodes show a surprisingly sharp Arino trying to solve the murder cases in those games. Most Game Center CX episodes are filled with expressions like "Aaah, game over!", "Jump!!", "Need more lives!!", but as these kind of tensions are usually not present in detective games, Arino is forced to think out loud, to voice his deductions in order to fill out the 60 minutes of the show.

 And it's actually really fun, hearing how someone tackles a detective story. When you watch a detective show with someone else, you'll occasionally voice your deductions, but in these two episodes, Arino has to talk constantly because he is the only person in front of the camera and he has to pull the viewers in. It is really strange to follow a person's complete train of thought while playing a detective game, or engaging in any kind of detective fiction, but it's really interesting to see how people's way of thinking and deducing differ, even if the input (the story/clues) are the same. It's more fun that simply comparing solutions, because here we see the complete picture of how Arino progresses through the story and changes his ideas as he encounters new evidence. And sometimes bumbles around. Greatest moment of the Kamaitachi no Yoru episode? When the protagonist in the game exclaims he know who the murderer is, while Arino exclaims in return that he has no friggin' idea who the murderer is.

Thus ends this short short. I'll probably forget about the existence this type of post.... by the end of next month and will probably invoke it again in six months or so. That increasing pain in my head is also probably trying to tell me I should sleep now.

「分かってんだよ、自分でだって。本物のヒーローになんかなれないってことぐらい」

「花園絵里香です」

「おー、いい名前だね。うん。花園・・・　ちょっと待った。花園って・・・その、花園一家の花園？」

「え、まぁ」

「整理すると、君はその花園一家の親分のお嬢さんで・・・」

「次女です」

「で、さっきの２人は学校の送り迎えをしてくれる、その子分の人・・・」

「あり得ないですよね。２０歳を越えた大学生に、送り迎えなんて」

「うん。で振り切って、こう逃げてきたと。で、途中で俺をこう巻き込んだと」

「巻き込んだっていうか、一緒に逃げてくれたから」

「あぁ。分かった。よし。車降りよう」

"My name is Hanazono Erika"

"That's a nice name. Yeah. Hanazono.... wait. Hanazono... Hanazono of the Hanazono Clan?"

"Yeah"

"So let me get things straight. You are the daughter of the head of the Hanazono Clan..."

"Second daughter"

"And those two gangsters were the ones protecting you on the way from school..."

"Can't believe it, right? A student over 20 years old being protected on the way to school..."

"Well... so you shook them off and fled. And then got me involved..."

"It's more like you fled together with me..."

"OK. Got it. Get out of the car"

It's a bit worrying that three of the six posts until now this week have the tag Higashigawa Tokuya. It's getting really skewed now....

I've been writing this often about Higashigawa Tokuya's work lately, because it's fun of course, but also because his popularity in Japan really grew last year with the Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de novels and the TV drama based on that series. Last year, short movies and audio dramas were also made based on his popular novels. Having all these adaptations and such, makes it really tempting to try something by Higashigawa. And it does help that his work is usually really fun. Earlier this week, a TV-special was broadcast based on Higashigawa Tokuya's Mou Yuukai Nante Shinai ("I Won't Kidnap Again"). The original work is one of the few non-series stories Higashigawa wrote, but Mou Yuukai Nante Shinai is of course a comedy-mystery like all of Higashigawa's other works. The TV-special follows the original story reasonably accurate as far as I know, with some minor changes in for example the ages of the protagonists. Because Arashi's Ohno does not look like 20. Just no. Aragaki Yui might have passed for a high school student, but her character also had her age bumped a bit.

Anyway, the story starts when Hanazono Erika (played by Aragaki) bumps into the lost-in-life Shoutarou (Ohno) as she is fleeing from two gangsters. Shoutarou helps her in her flight, but discovers that Erika is in fact the second daughter of the head of the Hanazono Clan, the main tekiya in town. Erika wants to raise money for a hospital operation for her half-sister (by her mother who left Erika's father / the clan), but because she does not think that her father will give her the money, Erika plans to pretend like she has been kidnapped to get the ransom money. She convinces Shoutarou and his senior Koumoto to help her and the three of them actually manage to pull off the heist. Which is all good and well, until they find out the next day after receiving the ransom money that someone has gone off with the money, that someone has left a dead body (of someone of the Hanazono clan) on their boat and that the police was tipped off.

I have to admit, I was once again fooled by Higashigawa. Like always, he manages to lure you into a false sense of security, in a false sense of 'ha, your story is simple and consists of nothing more than humor, so no way you are going to surprise me'. I should really learn to be more suspicous whenever I feel like this when reading Higashigawa, because it always comes back to bite me. You'd think I'd have learned by now, but no. The story starts out very predictable and it takes quite a bit of time before the actual ransom-handover scene starts, but the great stuff only starts after our protagonists have retrieved the ransom money. And after the dead body has been discovered.

The first half of Mou Yuukai Nante Shinai is about how the three protagonists plan to retrieve the ransom money, which is pretty interesting on its own, but in the second half the heroes have to solve a crime they didn't commit and escape from the police and the Hanazono Clan, making things a lot more exciting. And even at this point, most viewers will just think that this is 'just' a standard mystery special, but then Higashigawa reveals something big that will definitely surprise most people. I have to admit that the main trick of this story is very much like the main trick in Higashigawa's debut work, Misshitsu no Kagi Kashimasu, but that doesn't make it less fun. It did caught me by surprise, maybe because it was so similar (even though I did solve it when I read Misshitsu no Kagi Kashimasu.... which is weird).

As a stand-alone work, the characters in Mou Yuukai Nante Shinai were surprisingly different from other Higashigawa characters. The protagonists in his series are usually simultaneously both incredibly genre-savvy and ignorant, which results in very interesting (and funny!) narration and conversation. This was not the case with Mou Yuukai Nante Shinai and I have to admit I didn't nearly laugh as much as with other Higashigawa stories. Maybe the fun conversations were cut from the story for the running time, maybe it was like this in the original story too. The TV-special had a certain pleasant light-heartedness to it and was definitely made to leave a typical drama-esque good feeling with the viewers, but does make me wonder how the atmosphere of the original book differs from this special. On the other hand, I doubt I'll ever read the book now I've seen the special... The main surprise is fun enough, but the rest of the story is not as interesting as Higashigawa's other stories.

Oh, and there was of course a small Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de guest appearance, seeing both TV shows are based on books by Higashigawa and feature Arashi members as the main roles...

And totally digging Gakki's short hair look. Yep. Liked it better in the Ranma 1/2 special, but still.

Original Japanese title(s): （原作：東川篤哉）　『もう誘拐なんてしない』