「迷Q!?」

"I wanna be a pirate!"

"The Secret of Monkey Island"

And every time the hardest thing about writing a post is coming up with a title that is related to the subject matter and finding a fitting quote. And every time I think about letting go of these silly rules of mine, but hey, they are still around after how many years now?

Tantei Gakuen Q ("Detective Academy Q") is a detective series I absolutely love, but for some reason practically never mention here. Which is mainly because it is a finished series I read a long time ago and I tend to focus on recently read material. But now is as good as any time to rave about this series, right? Tantei Gakuen Q is written and drawn by the same team behind the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo series (Amagi Seimaru and Satou Fumiya), but is actually quite different from that classic. The story revolves around Q Class, a special class at the Dan Detective School (DDS), an academy for future detectives. The five members of Q Class have been selected as possible successors to Dan Morihiko, the legendary detective and head of the school. Besides taking classes on tailing persons, code-cracking and reviewing old cases et cetera, Q Class, like all students at the DDS, often also cooperate with real police investigations and private investigations (because Dan Morihiko also runs the detective agency DDC). Q Class thus differs greatly from the amateur detective Kindaichi Hajime.

Q Class consists of Kyuu and Ryuu, both deductive geniuses (but every different in character), Megu with a photographic memory, Kazuma the wizzkid and Kinta, the brawn of the group. They thus all thave their own role within the team. Detective teams are not particularly rare in fiction. We have for example Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin and the Beresfords. Q Class works kinda like the Beresfords, with everyone working on a case according to their own judgement and making use of their own strong points. It results in a very pleasant read, because the cases are tackled with diverse methods simultaneously, making it much more interesting to look at their investigations. Kinta's way of investigation is totally different from how Ryuu's way for example and it is this diversity that keeps investigatons from getting boring.

The premise of the series might sound a bit childish, with children going to detective school learning to be detectives with detective classes and stuff, but Tantei Gakuen Q is really a fantastic series. Amagi and Satou really took everything they learnt from Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo (Tantei Gakuen Q was produced after Kindaichi Shounen's first season ended) and improved on it immensely. Tantei Gakuen Q mixes the humor and charm of the Kindaichi Shounen short stories with the grand-scale impossible murders of the main series and adds a main storyline that actually develops (Conan, I am looking at you!). With a bit over 20 volumes, this is a really powerful series that is satisfying overall, but also on its individual parts (the murder cases).

Too bad for those who watch the anime though (which is out there completely subtitled in English) is that the anime only goes halfway through the main storyline. The live-action series of Tantei Gakuen Q reimagines the story in a more geek-hip Akihabara setting, but is pretty satisfying and includes stories not done in the anime (including the last case).

I intend to do a complete review of every case of the manga, similar to what I did with Detective Conan. The difference being that Tantei Gakuen Q is not as ridiculously long as Conan. I discuss about four volumes of the bunkobon release a time, meaning this will be a series of three posts. And I'll probably stick the supplemental Tantei Gakuen Q Premium volume at the end of it all. Like with Conan, there is the problem that even if I don't spoil any of the solutions to the individual cases (which I won't), there is a main storyline to this series and I will mention important events that bear upon the development of said storyline.

Detective Academy Q
「迷Ｑ!?」: Volumes 1 ~ 4
「迷宮」: Volumes 5 ~ 8
「MAKE★YOU」: Volumes 9 ~ 12, Premium

Tantei Gakuen Nyuugaku Shiken ("The Detective Academy Entrance Exams") is like the first four or five hours of an RPG. You know, the first couple of hours where you find your companions to accompany you on your quest. And naturally, our heroes all have different stats and characteristics. Funnily enough though, we are introduced to our hero Kyuu in a Monkey Island-esque way. Because Kyuu basically only says he wants to be a detective. He enters the entrance exams for the Dan Detective School (along with masses of other people), which consists of several exams that test an examinee's deductive, tailing and physical skills. Other examinees include Megu, who has a photographic memory and Kinta, a physically impressive young man with an amazing intuition. For people familiar with shounen anime and manga, this is pretty much like any exam part (see for example the exams in Naruto and Hunter X Hunter), only the topics are quite different.

This first story pretty much shows a glimpse of the way the series will progress, even though it is masked by the shounen exam formula.Visual clueing is something often done very well in detective manga (and was often used in Kindaichi Shounen), but Megu's photographic memory is pretty much telling the reader that the illustrations are not just to meant to dress up the story, but that they are an integral part of the way the cases in this series are presented. Having someone like her in the series really reminds you that you have to pay attention to everything. In the Holmes stories, Holmes has that trick where he tells Watson the conclusion of his deductions, before he explains them. The problem there is that Holmes often tells you about visual clues you had no access to. In Tantei Gakuen Q, words and images are working together to bring you a story and it works wonderfully. The most interesting of the exam is probably the first test, where the examinees have to deduce who the murderer is based on two pictures. It is an excellent example of how the visual and the text cooperate.

Kyuu, Megu and Kinta all made it into the last round of the exam in Kirasakijima no Satsuriku ("The Kirisaki Island Massacre"). All the examinees who made it to the last round, including wizzkid Kazuma and the silent Ryuu, are all transported to Kirisaki island for the last exam. The island was famous for a massacre that had happened many years ago, commited by someone calling himself Jack the Ripper. What's more, the murderers happened within a locked room! The exam consists of solving the locked room murder, but when the examinees enter the scene of the crime for their examination, they discover that one of the examinees has murdered there. Ripped into two to be exact. The exam turns into a practical exam, as the examinees have find out who killed their fellow examinee and how.

This story initially feels like a Kindaichi Shounen story, with all the examinees trapped on an island, locked room murders, the fear of Jack the Ripper having come back to life and such and I suspect that Amagi wrote this story to mess around with the readers' expectations. Any reader would instantly recognize it as being written by the person behind the Kindaichi Shounen series, yet Amagi also shows what is possible if he is freed from Kindaichi Shounen's formula, creating a superior story that subverses the expectations one would have.  It is thus a really entertaining story, with a decent locked room mystery and one of the best meta-hints I have ever seen in a story. It is too bad they removed it from the anime version!

Tantei Gakuen Hatsu Toukou ("The First Day at the Detective Academy") and Kamikakushimura Satsujin Jiken ("The Kamikakushi Village Murder Case") are linked stories and definitely one of my favorites of this series. The story starts with an introduction of the DDS and the old school building where Dan Morihiko first started out his career (and Q Class's base of operations). Dan then presents Q Class with a puzzle: they have to solve an impossible murder of a person who was killed in the middle of a wet paddy field, with the only footsteps on the field being those of the victim. It does not take long for Q Class to solve it, but they are told that this was an actual murder case that happened at Kamikakushi (Spirited Away) Village, deep in the mountains, that is still under investigation. Many people have been reported missing from that place since a long time ago and people seem to have started to disappear there again recently and Q Class is sent on their first official investigation of an unsolved case.

This case invokes Kindaichi Kousuke more than Kindaichi Shounen, with a rural village that is literally hidden deep within the mountains: one has to enter a mountain through a tunnel to reach Hyoutan Village and one has to enter another tunnel to reach the even deeper Kamikashi Village, which is ruled by a suspicious sect that worships epidemic deceases. Q Class is split into two teams, as only two members are allowed into Kamikakushi Village. As they work on their investigations into the mysterious disappearances and murders from both ends of the mountains however, new murders happen in both villages and it is up to Q Class to solve their first assignment for the DDS.

Like I said, this is one of my favorite stories, because it really does so much right. With the possible exception of Megu, everyone in Q Class makes a valuable contribution to the solving of the case. Which is the whole point of the series. The murder case itself  is also really captivating, with impossible murders and even more hidden behind it all. Seriously, there is one revelation in the story that is so awesome I am almost tempted to spoil it. Almost. But seriously, The Kamikakushi Village Murder Case should persuade any people who are still hesitating about the series.

Oshie wa kakumo Kibishiku ("A Hard Lesson") deals with the aftermath of the  previous case and serves as a brief introduction of Nanami Koutarou, the right-hand detective of Dan Morihiko and master of disguise, but it quickly continues into Hajimete no Shukudai ("The First Homework"), where Q Class is presented with an old case Dan Morihiko solved. The problem is that of a lady who was deceived by her own brother when they split the piece of land they inherited from their father, leaving her with a smaller piece of land. The funny thing though, she herself was the one who measured up the new boundaries and she swears she split it in two equal parts. The problem is a small, but interesting one, but this story is also one that shows that Tantei Gakuen Q is not solely built on long cases like Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, but also mixes in short case studies done at the DDS. It also works a bit on the whole Kyuu - Megu relation thing that does not go anywhere for a long, long time.

Kiken na Houkago is another short story, where Megu finds out that there is a burglar hidden in her apartment as she returns home together with Kyuu and Kinta. The three quickly deduce where the burglar is hidden, but this story also shows hints of a mysterious organisation that is monitoring Q Class. In hindsight, this turns out to be a very important story actually.

Kyuu gets a request for an investigation of one of his 'normal' friends in Koureijutsu Satsujin Jiken ("The Necromancy Murder Case"). Kyuu's friend's mother has died in an airplane accident, but a psychic claims to have been able to come in contact with her. While not all members of the family are convinced, they agree in participating in a seance, with Q Class present to see if nothing funny goes on. But something does happen during the seance session and they find the psychic stabbed to death. But everybody was standing in a circle around her holding each other's hand, making it impossible for anyone to have stabbed the victim!

This story continues the series of impossible murders and the problem of the stabbed psychic is as alluring as the other impossible crimes up until now. The visuals are once again an important part of the story and show the possibilities of visual detective fiction. I guess the trick and the hinting could be done in text, but I do not think it would be presented as naturally as it was done here. One is supposed to hide a leaf in a forest, so where better to hide a visual hint than in a comic? It would really have been too obvious if this was a text and a map had made been made to accompany it, but it works perfectly in comic-format. Koureijutsu Satsujin Jiken also shows Q Class' first encounter with murderers who are the victims of post-hypnotic suggestion by Pluto, a criminal organisation which the teacher at DDS seem to know more about.

Q tai A ("Q Vs A") is set back at the DDS, where the five top students of A Class, the former top class before Q Class was created, challenge the five members of Q Class in a series of deduction battles, in the hopes of getting into the prestigous Q Class themselves. Dan Morihiko (?) agrees to this match and organises a series of 1 against 1 deduction matches, based on his old cases. Three of the battles are pretty minor, but Ryuu is presented with a great problem about a dead man who is found sitting at the dining table with a full course meal set before him! It is a wonderful ridiculous and mysterious situation, which makes the case so much fun. The solution also makes so much sense that you might be inclined to say you would have done that too if you were a murderer. And, most importantly, I love food in my detectives.

The match between Q Class and A Class is stopped just as the final contestants, Kyuu of Q Class and Yukihira of A Class are presented with their problem, an unsolved locked room mystery that happened just a couple of days ago. Though the class matches are over and nothing can be gained from it anymore, both Kyuu and Yukihira decide to go the actual scene of the crime of 'their' problem in Q tai A Enchousen ("Q VS A Extra Inning Game"), as the problem piqued their interest. The victim was a campaign girl and she was found dead in her room, which was locked from the inside and with a small barred window being the only other way out of the room. But the case didn't stop with one murder and more murders happen even under the watchful eye of both Kyuu and Yukihira.

By now it seems that all longer cases are impossible murders, which is not a bad thing. The solution to the puzzle is not very hard once you pick up on a particular hint (that sadly enough is hard to convey in any conventional type of media) and while the detective plot itself is not particularly memorable, this story is interesting as it is the first case where Kyuu works seperate from the other members of Q Class, something that will happen more often as the series continues. We also get to learn a bit more about the mysterious Pluto, as DDS teacher / detective Nanami Koutarou and a member of Pluto finally have a direct confrontation. The actual explanation about Pluto is in Meiousei no Kage ("Pluto's Shadow"), a single chapter story where Dan Morihiko tells Superintendent Touyama (Kinta's father) about Pluto, an organisation that sells murder plans for those interested. They keep their own hands clean, but arrange things that if one of their clients is caught, that they will commit suicide through post-hypnotic suggestion (as seen in several cases earlier). Q Class however knows nothing about Pluto yet.

Kinta Jishin no Jiken ("Kinta's Own Case") is exactly what the title says it is, a case that Kinta, who is probably the least smart of Q Class, handled completely on his own. Kinta works at a construction site to earn a living and one day he is witness to a suicide jump of his boss from the top of the building they're working on. Kinta does not believe his boss would have commited suicide and swears that he'll solve the case (in the name of his forefather, Touyama no Kin-san). It is not a difficult case, thought the hint that points to the murderer can be missed quite easily, I think. This case was actually adapted as the first episode of the anime, making it the case where Kyuu, Megu and Kinta met for the first time.

Kyuukousha no Himitsu ("The Secret of the Old School Building") differs greatly from the previous stories. Kyuu and Megu discover a secret room in the old school building of the DDS, but  they get locked inside by an unknown person. To make things worse, Megu is bitten by poisonous snake. Half of the story is about how Kyuu and Megu try to communicate with the outside world, but the other half is about the strange discoveries they make inside the room. Their prison is literally a prison and they find an old diary of the person who was locked inside here before them. The old school building was designed by an allround genius artist called Kuzuryuu Takumi and it seems that there is a big secret connected to this prison, the prisoner (who Kyuu deduces has escaped from the prison) and Kuzuryuu Takumi. While at first sight, this seems like a minor story, Kuzuryuu Takumi will actually turn out to be one of the most important characters in the series, as Q Class will encounter more cases that are connected to this mysterious artist.

Satsujin Collector ("The Murder Collector") is one of the better stories of the series, featured heavily in both the anime and live action series. Rumors have been spreading on a high class prep school about the snuff films of someone called the Murder Collector, who is supposed to be one of the students at the school. Most people think it is just a urban legend, but a girl has actually disappeared from the school a month ago and she might have been the victim of the Collector. Ryuu and Megu go undercover at the school to investigate whether the rumors are true. It does not take long for a snuff film to be sent to Ryuu with the actual murder scene of one of his classmates!

Not actually an impossible murder this time and the slip-up the murderer makes is kinda clumsy, but that does not matter, because this is just a really fun story! The best part is the setting at the stressful prep school, with performance-oriented students trying to outsmart each other and an intranet used to harrass each other. No, this is not a nice place, but it sure makes for one exciting locale! It also plays with a theme also addressed by Amagi in his Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo novel Dennou Sansou Satsujin Jiken ("The Computer Lodge Murder Case") and it is nice to see how he develops the themes of earlier works in subsequent works. This is actually one of the few stories in Tantei Gakuen Q I feel that could have been used in Kindaichi Shounen without feeling out of place, due to the rather Kindaichi Shounen-ish setting and conclusion.

This first third of Tantei Gakuen Q offers the reader some great impossible murder stories that should please any fan of orthodox detective fiction. The beginning is very much like a shounen fighting manga and the premise might sound silly, but this is really an outstanding series made by people with a solid background in the genre. As a whole it easily trumps Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo through better storytelling and a wider variety in story types and includes an actual overall storyline (that doesn't take ages to develop, unlike Conan). It had been a while since I last read this series, but this reread really made me realise what a must-read this is for fans of the genre! And hey, I noticed that I don't remember much of the later cases, so I am actually excited about rereading this series now!

Original Japanese title(s): 天樹征丸（原）& さとうふみや（画）『探偵学園Ｑ』　第１巻～４巻　（文庫）

The Trial

「われわれは、あらゆる手段を使って、被告を攻撃する。　しかしそのたびにどんな絶望的な状況でも、決して諦めることなく

食らいついてくる男がいた。 悪夢のような信念を持って。　そして私はいつしか‥‥その男を信頼しはじめていたのだ。　だれかが、どんなにキタナイ手を使っても‥‥真実はかならず、カオを出す。　われわれにできるのは、全存在をかけて戦うことだけだ。‥‥やがて、ナゾは１つずつすがたを消して‥‥　最後にわれわれは、たどりつく‥‥かならず‥‥１つしかない“真相”に」

『逆転裁判２』

"We attack the defendant with everything we got. But there was always someone who, no matter how hopeless the situation, would take it all and never give up. With an amazing power of trust. And in time, I began to trust that person myself too. No matter how dirty our methods, the truth will always come out. The only thing we can do is to fight with all we have. By doing so, the mysteries will disappear one by one and finally, we will definitely arrive there... at the one truth"

"Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice for All"

Kinda bummed out because I wasn't able to get tickets for the worldwide premiere of the Gyakuten Saiban / Ace Attorney film held in the Netherlands. So I did the next best thing, I went back to a classic courtroom story that heavily influenced Takumi Shuu when he wrote the script for the original Gyakuten Saiban videogame.

Shaberisugita Otoko ("The Man Who Said Too Much") is the first episode of the second season of Furuhata Ninzaburou, the famous Columbo-inspired TV drama. It is an inverted detective series starring Tamura Masakazu as the titular Furuhata Ninzaburou, a somewhat eccentric, yet amazingly sharp police lieutenant and considered one of the classic TV detective shows of Japan. Befitting a season opener, Shabesugita Otoko starts things out with a bang. The succesful defense laywer Oshimizu (Akashiya Sanma) feels forced to kill his lover as she was endangering his engagement with the daughter of an influential lawyer and arranges things to make it appear as his lover's admirer was the murderer. And that admirer just happens to be Imaizumi, Oshimizu's friend and Furuhata's (bumbling) sidekick. Who panicks when he discovers the victim, leaving even more incriminating evidence and testimonies than Oshimizu himself did!

The interesting problem of this episode is that Oshimizu is hired by Imaizumi (who obviously has no idea that his friend is the murderer) to be his defense lawyer, leaving him in the perfect position to get his scapegoat convicted! He convinces Imaizumi to plead guilty to accidental death, saying it is better than being found guilty of murder. And so Oshimizu manages to trap Imaizumi his web of deceit. Until Furuhata appears on the scene. Imaizumi might be the worst police officer he knows, but he is also sure that he would never kill anyone. And so Furuhata has to save his friend (?) while the trial nears its conclusion.

Mitani Kouki was strongly influenced by the Ellery Queen TV show when he created Furuhata Ninzaburou and he even cited The Adventure of the Wary Witness as one of his favorite episodes, so it was not strange to see Mitani write an episode set at a courtroom. And what a episode! Sanma makes for an impressive villain-of-the-week, who not only commits a murder, but spends most of the episode making sure Imaizumi gets convicted for the crime! It changes the dynamic of the series too. The suspense in most episodes is derived from seeing how the murderer gets cornered by Furuhata, similar to Columbo, but in this episode most of the suspense is actually deriven from seeing how Oshimizu is completing his perfect crime, making sure his scapegoat gets convicted by acting as his defense laywer! It results in a different viewing experience that is certainly nice to have occasionally.
 

The inevitable slip-up of Oshimizu that Furuhata discovers is a pretty ingenious one and can be easily missed. I earlier said that Shaberisugita Otoko was one of the important influences of Takumi Shuu's Gyakuten Saiban videogame series. That was not only because it is set in a courtroom. The way Furuhata manages to prove Oshimizu's guilt is in fact the bread and butter of the Gyakuten Saiban series. Especially the first chapter of the first Gyakuten Saiban game, The First Turnabout, borrows heavily from this story, but it is safe to say that every chapter of every game borrows a bit of Shaberisugita Otoko. It would be spoiler-ish to actually point out what this is, so I will just say that Gyakuten Saiban owes a lot to this episode.

The courtroom during a (murder) trial naturally provides an exciting setting by its nature anyway. A place where someone's future is decided (or if you are playing Gyakuten Saiban, where ideally the truth is brought to light). Both China and Japan have a history in narrative court records being told as a kind of detective stories (see for example Judge Dee and Judge Ooka), but for example the first hit 'translation / adaptation' of famous Meiji period translator Kuroiwa Ruikou was also Houtei no Bijin ("The Beauty at the Trial", adapted from Hugh Conway's Dark Days). More 'recent' novels I know with trial segments are from Carr's The Judas Window, Christie's Sad Cypress and Queen's Halfway House. But the Gyakuten Saiban series is probably the best of all these courtroom based detectives, as it actually places the player himself in the role of detective. And it features awesome music and witty writing that few can match.

Which reminds me: I shouldn't forget my tradition of playing the three Gyakuten Saiban games every year!

Original Japanese title(s): 『古畑任三郎：しゃべりすぎた男』

『心理の密室』

"You people have allowed yourselves to be chased into a psychological locked room. You're stuck in that metaphorical room, making no progress at all, and you haven't been able to set foot outside it since the case began"

The Tattoo Murder Case

Yes, I am still doing my English translations of Japanese detective novels reviews series. At this rate though, it will not take long before I have gone through that pile too though.

Takagi Akimitsu's The Tattoo Murder Case (Original title: Shisei Satsujin Jiken) was published in 1947, a few years after the war. A time when Japan was still occupied by the US army and the economy still had not recovered completely from the shock. Matsushita Kenzou is one of those young students who survived the horrible war and tries his best at returning to a normal life. One day, he comes across an old school friend of his, Mogami Hisashi, at a tattoo contest. Kenzou also meets Kinue at the contest, daughter of the famous tattoo artist Horiyasu and the lover of Hisashi's brother. Kinue is also the owner of a beautiful Orochimaru tattoo on her back, something so impressive that Hisashi's uncle, a well known tattoo maniac who has the nickname Dr. Tattoo, even offered to buy her skin if she happens to die. For preservation.

Kenzou and Kinue start an affair, but their love is still young when one day Kenzou discovers a dead Kinue in her bathroom. Or to be more exact: he finds her arms and legs in a locked bathroom, but no sign of her torso. It seems like somebody murdered here and took off with her tattoo. This seems to be connected with the curse of Horiyasu's three children. Among tattoo artists there are certain taboos: for example you are not supposed to tattoo a complete snake covering someone, or else the snake might suffocate its bearer. Yet Horiyasu seemed to have cursed his own children by giving them tattoos of Jiraiya (Kinue's brother), Orochimaru (Kinue) and Tsunade (Kinue's sister), who are bound to fight each other. And what else but a curse can explain the locked room? The police tries everything, but are helpless in their investigation. That is, until Kenzou comes across his old friend Kamizu Kousuke, a gifted young man who was once called the Boy Genius.

Takagi debuted in 1947 with this novel and it is still considered a classic as it is one of the earliest and best Japanese locked room mysteries. The Tattoo Murder Case was released only a year after Yokomizo Seishi's Honjin Satsujin Jiken and in fact forms an interesting pair with it. While both novels were written after the war, Honjin Satsujin Jiken is actually set in a rural area just a bit before the war, while The Tattoo Murder Case is set in Tokyo a bit after the war. The differences in these settings are pretty big, with themes like the small village under control of an illustrious family, class status and face playing an important role in Honjin, while the distinct metropolitan setting, the effects of the war and the anonymity within urban spaces turn out to be an important theme in Tattoo. These two novels thus form opposite images.

Yet their main attraction point, the locked rooms, are very similar. Not in execution, but in their importance. The locked rooms in both Honjin Satsujin Jiken and The Tattoo Murder Case are set in Japanese-style houses, something pre-war critics thought to be unsuitable for locked room mysteries. Japanese-style houses were open, with connected spaces and made with easily removable and replacable materials. In Rampo's Yaneura no Sanposha ("The Walker in the Attic") for example, a man succeeds in spying on his neighbours in a lodge house by climbing up to a connecting loft. Japanese-style houses just did not seem suitable to portray an imprenable locked room situation.Yokomizo and Takagi were the first authors to challenge the problem succesfully. Honjin has the splendid situation of a double murder in an annex where the murderer seemed to have disappeared into thin air, while Tattoo has a locked room murder in a bathroom, one of the few rooms in a house that has its own lock and cannot be accessed from other rooms through a loft or cellar because of the tiles. These two novels showed the possibilities of a Japanese orthodox locked room mystery and paved the way for future writers in the genre.

The locked room mystery, which is good, is certainly not the only mystery in the novel and The Tattoo Murder Case is a actually a surprisingly well-polished debut novel. There is also a sea of information about the tattoo culture in Japan discussed in this novel that is really interesting, but it is also in fact of importance for solving the mystery. There is a distinct difference in how the topic of the 'curse' of Jiraiya, Orochimaru and Tsunadehime is handled by Takagi here and how Yokomizo would have handled though. Yokomizo is a master in creating creepy atmospheres linked with curses, legends and other supernatural beings and his novels are often very close to horror-stories. In The Tattoo Murder Case, Takagi plays a lot with the idea of tattoo curses, but it never becomes really creepy in the story. It is all too pragmatic, down to earth in this story. If you play with the idea of a curse in your detective story, you should present the 'supernatural explanation' (the curse) as a plausible explanation for the events. Usually by making the case look unexplainable unless you accept the supernatural explanation. For example by creating such horrifying settings that a curse seems a plausible cause. That never happens in The Tattoo Murder Case. The same holds for Takagi second novel, Noumen Satsujin Jiken, that's about a curse of a Hannya mask, but it never turns really creepy and the 'supernatural explanation' is never seen by the reader as an acceptable explanation of the events.

The translation of the English version is good, as far as I could judge as I do not actually own the original Japanese text, but the little things did bother me. Like how Tsunadehime was translated as Tsunedahime. And how sometimes the short cultural explanations incorporated into the body of the text felt very unnatural. It is of course a translator's (and editor's) choice how to work out cultural specific customs (expansion of the text to exlain it, footnotes, no explanation, deletion etc.), but here it felt too obtrusive at times. And strangely enough a thing like itadakimasu was left in Japanese without any explanation. As far as I know, that is not considered common knowledge Japanese. The English translation also precedes a Japanese revised edition. I am actually not sure what was revised and who revised the novel though, because I think Takagi was already dead then.

Anyway, this is a classic that anyone should have read and it is actually available in English too!

Original Japanese title(s): 高木彬光　『刺青殺人事件』

Smoke and Mirrors

「放課後の魔術師・・・お前の仕業なのか？　この事件、絶対解決してみせる。名探偵と言われた、ジッチャンの名にかけて！！」

『金田一少年の事件簿：学園七不思議殺人事件』

"After-School Magician, was this your work? I'll definitely solve this case. In the name of my grandfather!"

"The Young Kindaichi Files: The Seven School Mysteries Murder Case"

And as I reread Tantei Gakuen Q ("Detective Academy Q"), I thought, if Tantei Gakuen Q and Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo are set in the same universe, why would Hajime have chosen to go a normal high school? He would have been a great student there. Oh, because of Miyuki of course.That explains everything. That's when I realized that I had been reading too much of both series lately. Oh, and hey, I've almost posted half the amount I posted in 2010 in total within the month.

Gakuen Nanafushigi Satsujin Jiken ("The Seven School Mysteries Murder Case") was originally serialized in 1993 as the fourth story arc in the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo series, but it has been used as the pilot story in both the TV drama starring Doumoto Tsuyoshi (1995) and the anime (199７) and acquired a very prominent place within the Kindaichi Shounen mythos. People might wonder why the story order was changed, but it was actually a very wise choice of the producers of both the TV drama and the anime to choose this story as their opening story, as what is a better way to introduce a high school student detective than in his own natural habitat, the school?

Slacker (and grandson of famous detective Kindaichi Kousuke) Hajime gets recruited into the school's Mystery Study Club (and Miyuki tags along to keep an eye on them) and it is decided that the club is going to investigate the Seven Mysteries of Fudou High School, a set of urban legends surrounding the old school annex building. It is said that if a student gets to know about all seven of the mysteries, he will be killed by the After-School Magician. It also seems that someone calling him the After-School Magician has sent a threatening letter to Fudou High's director, telling him to stop the plans of breaking down the old annex. The club members thus start their investigation into the Seven Mysteries, but it does not take long for the After-School Magician to appear before the eyes of the eager student. With the hanged body of their club's president. What's even more puzzling is that the After-School Magician manages to escape, together with his victim, from a locked and watched classroom in just seconds!

Well, let's start out with saying that it does not take a masterdetective to solve the puzzle of the instant disappearance out of the locked room, because the solution screams at you the moment the investigation starts. The TV drama tries to mix things up a bit by adding an original subplot, but the basic idea is still very basic and will not fool anyone. The way the Seven Mysteries of Fudou High are connected to the murder is done pretty good though and definitely one of the high points of the story.

This story misses the big closed circle serial murder cases-angle of the previous stories, but Gakuen Nanafushigi Satsujin Jiken does work a lot better as the introduction to the series. The manga's pilot story, The Opera House Murder Case, does involve school activities, but the setting of a high school as a high school detective's debut is much more natural. Furthermore, the story has several plot twists that involve Hajime's own friends, making Gakuen Nanafushigi Satsujin Jiken a much more personal story compared to the previous stories.

While the story does not feature a particularly memorable trick, it is still one of my favorite Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo stories and to be honest, I do not really know why. I have an at times irrational weak spot for Kindaichi Shounen, but there is more to this than that. Part of it is probably because Gakuen Nanafushigi Satsujin Jiken was the first detective story that introduced me to the world of Japanese high schools. To be precise, the world of high schools as depicted in horror stories. By now, I've come across many, many stories that reference urban legends surrounding Japanese schools and it is an often used trope in horror stories (Hanako-san is a famous example), but the Seven Mysteries of Fudou High were the first school urban legends I got to know. But the old school annex is also an often seen trope in horror stories and in my totally poluted mind, a Japanese school just needs a ghost and a haunted annex before I can properly call it a school. Actually, Kyushu University's Hakozaki campus has quite some buildings that fit the image.

But Gakuen Nanafushigi Satsujin Jiken also made quite an impression on me because I first saw the anime version of this story. I usually prefer the original manga to anime adaptations, but the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo anime is really a well-made production. One of the biggest characteristics is how creepy the anime is in comparison to the manga. The whole atmosphere of the TV series is a lot darker than the manga and the production team really nailed the whole horror-tone the series in general tries to invoke (but it does not always succeed in the manga because of the way scenes are cut). I also have to praise Wada Kaoru for an awesome soundtrack. Shissou / The Wild Run (the main theme) and Jicchan no Na ni Kakete / In the Name of My Grandfather are memorable tracks that really set the more epic tone of the anime series.

And this is slightly offtopic, but am I the only one who prefers traditional cel-animation to digital animation? It might be my age, but I really feel there is something special to cel animation. I know that there are some simply amazing things out there animated digitally, but watching some of the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo anime really made me realize how awesome traditional cel-animation was and how much of an impact it had on the overall ambience of a production. Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo ran from 1997 to 2000 and started out as a traditionally animated series. Those episodes are really the best part of the series, as they really convey the feeling of terror and fear of the stories. It is the way the colors are displayed on the screen, the movements, the whole way a cel animated show turns out be. The later episodes are animated digitally and suddenly everybody looks all shiny with saturated colors and gone is the whole creepy atmosphere! The jump to digital animation really took away an important aspect of the anime I think. Compare the Hajime above to this Hajime! You can just tell that cel-animated!Hajime is much more awesome!

OK, I admit that digital animation was the best thing that could have happened to the Conan anime. But even you have to admit that the cel-animated episodes feel less... almost sickenly clinically clean compared to the digitally animated episodes.

While not a perfect story by a long shot, Gakuen Nanafushigi Satsujin Jiken really works well as an introducing story of the series and I think the school urban legends angle makes this a story worth watching. And as I write this conclusion, I remember that I should praise the English translation of the manga a little here, for a simply brilliant adaptation of a particular message that was originally very dependant on a cultural specific thing (not going into details here): the adaptation actually makes it possible for English readers to solve it themselves. It's pretty ingenous in the original story too, by the way.

And no, I am not going to review every episode of the anime. I might do one on the two original stories of the anime though.

Original Japanese title(s): 『金田一少年の事件簿： 学園七不思議殺人事件』

The Lost Special

なんなんだなんなんだ

この毎日はいったいなんだ

窓に映る僕は誰だ

ここはどこで　どこまで行くんだ

「ファイティングポーズの詩」 (馬場俊英)

What is this? What is this?

What kind of life is this?

Who is the me reflected in the window?

Where am I and where am I going?

'Fighting Pose Song' (Baba Toshihide)

It would have been so much more logical if I had started out reviewing English-translated Japanese novels and then moved on the non-translated novels. No offense meant to anyone, but moving back to English does feel like taking a step back.

One of the most prolific writers in Japan is Nishimura Kyoutarou. He is famous for his travel/train mysteries, that seem like a mix between detective stories, the railway schedule and a tourist guide. Keenfully constructed alibis that make use of the detailed and complex railway system in Japan and cops who have to travel across Japan by train to investigate their cases, it's the formula Nishimura has used for many, many years now and what made him popular. He is also strongly connected with TV productions and if you're watching an afternoon rerun of a two-hour mystery drama in Japan, there is a one in a three chance it's based on a plot by Nishimura (the other candidates are Uchida Yasuo and Yamamura Misa). Wikipedia tells me he has written 469 novels as of today, at the rate of almost a book a month. Sometimes two. And yes, that does has effects on the quality of his novels. I've seen a couple of the TV dramas and read one or two of his train mystery novels, but they are usually not really that interesting (I liked the first DS game though!). But no, I am not a big fan.

In fact, the only Nishimura Kyoutarou novels I've discussed here until now were the four novels of his Great Detectives series. Not Afraid of Great Detectives, Too Many Great Detectives, Even Great Detectives Don't Have It Easy and Cheers To The Great Detectives feature the four detectives Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, Maigret and Akechi Kogorou in a grand murder investigation crossover. These are some early works by Nishimura and the books are out of print (also because Nishimura never bothered clearing the rights for the use of the characters), but they are 'normal' orthodox detectives and not train-mysteries at all. The series started out pretty fun but ends in a mess, but the idea is fun. Anyway, it is pretty strange to have discussed four novels of Nishimura without any of them featuring a train...

The first Nishimura Kyoutarou novel I read was The Mystery Train Disappears (original title: Misuteri Ressha ga Kieta), which is as far as I know the only novel available of him in English. The novel was originally published in 1982, with the translation dating eight years later and is part of Nishimura Kyoutarou's Inspector Totsugawa series, his most famous creation. I have to admit that I know very little about Totsugawa, but there is actually little to tell about him except for the fact that he is a homicide inspector at the Metropolitan Police Department, who with his partner Kamei has been solving crimes since the 1970s. And he's also the hero in Nishimura's most recent work (to be released this Wednesday),  Totsugawa Keibu Seibu Shinjukusen no Shikaku ("Inspector Totsugawa - The Dead Angle of the Seibu-Shinjuku Line"). So Totsugawa's been around for some time.

The title of The Mystery Train Disappears tells the reader everything, actually. The Mystery Train is a special train run by the Japan National Railways with an unknown destination and schedule. All people know is that they are promised an entertaining ride on a train that is to leave Tokyo on a Saturday and return the following Monday. And this sense of mystery of course attracts people. Over 8000 people applied for a seat, but only 400 passengers were lucky enough to receive tickets for this exclusive train. A day after the Mystery Train's departure, the JNR's director receives a phone call: someone claims to have taken all 400 passengers hostage and demands ransom money. At first, nobody believes this story, but a couple of a phone calls makes it clear: the Mystery Train has indeed disappeared! The train definitely left Tokyo on Saturday, but it never arrived at Tottori, one of the secret destinations of the Mystery Train's schedule. The trains that were scheduled after the Mystery Train were all running on time, so there couldn't have been an accident on the track midway. How did the kidnappers manage to get hold of a complete train and all 400 passengers?

The problem with the disappearance of a train has traditionally been that there are not many ways to make a complete train disappear. I think I've read Conan Doyle's The Lost Special and Queen's Snowball in July, and I like the latter's solution more, but let's admit, there are only so many things you can do with a gigantic heavy metal tube that usually needs some kind of rails under it to move. Nishimura's solution to the problem is interesting, but though I am no railway fanatic, even I see several problems with the way Nishimura explained how the Mystery Train disappeared. Indeed, the Japanese wiki-page for this novel even makes an explicit statement that the disappearance trick used here is not possible now and not even when the book was originally published. Which kinda kills the magic. A big problem also lies with the scale: Nishimura's trick might have worked on a smaller scale, but certainly not with a 12-wagon train with 400 passengers.

There are actually two investigations going on at the same time: one is the search for the disappeared train and another is related to the transfer of the ransom money and the latter one is actually more interesting. The criminals manage to get away with the ransom money from a running train, even though the windows were locked and every passenger searched by the police. This disappearance trick overshadows the trick of the Mystery Train as it is more believable, which could not have been Nishimura's original intent.

I am also not exactly sure whether a series detective like Totsugawa was needed in this book at all. The police and the JNR are being played with by the hostage takers throughout most of the book and in fact, the story reaches its conclusion pretty much on its own, without any real interference of the police. I am not a Totsugawa fan at all, but I can imagine that some readers might have felt unsatisfied with his portrayal, because literally any police inspector could have filled in the role of Totsugawa here.

In the end, I do wonder why this novel was selected to be translated. As far as I know, it's considered pretty average even among Japanese fans of Nishimura, so why not one of his better books? Most of the Japanese mysteries translated to English are pretty good / considered classics, but The Mystery Train Disappears does not really feel worthwile. If in need for an awesome Japanese train mystery, see Matsumoto's Points and Lines.

Original Japanese title(s): 西村京太郎　『ミステリー列車が消えた』

Two Stations in Kashii

「ずいぶん寂しい所ね」

『点と線』

"What a lonely place!"

"Points and Lines"

I'll just start this post with admitting right away that I am not a big fan of Matsumoto Seichou. And that's actually not completely his fault. It is more because of how (mostly English) reviewers and scholars can't seem to stop raving about the realism in his novels and how Matsumoto manages to capture the social problems of postwar Japanese society, like class-struggles and the unfair justice system, perfectly within his stories. English reviews of Matsumoto's Ten to Sen ("Points and Lines") and Suna no Utsuwa ("The Sand Vessel", published as Inspector Imanishi Investigates) therefore often have the tendency to turn out almost the same, even though technically the stories are quite different. Historicizing when discussing fiction is something I do too, even though at times it seems a bit as an excuse to 'justify' reviewing genre fiction, but I have the feeling the (English) Matsumoto Seichou reviewers have a tendency to exeggarate this.

Matsumoto has written some interesting stories though. While Matsumoto's more orthodox detective stories sometimes suffer from being rather bland, several of his short stories like Kimyou na Hikoku ("The Strange Defendant") and Hansha ("Reflection") are pretty fun to read. But the one novel by him I really, really like is Ten to Sen ("Points and Lines").

Matsumoto Seichou debuted in 1957 the short story Kao, but the Matsumoto-boom in Japan started one year later, with his first novel Points and Lines (also available in English). The discovery of the dead bodies of Otaki, a waitress and Sayama, a senior offical in a ministry, on the beach of Kashiihama, Fukuoka is what sets the story in motion. The case is initially handled as a love suicide, but one of the local detectives suspects that it was actually murder, also because Sayama was wanted by the Metropolitan Police Department in relation with the investigation of bribery case at his ministry. This man's death is rather convenient for his superiors. A important suspect comes up during the investigation, but there is one problem: the suspect has an ironclad alibi. The suspect had to be in Fukuoka on the southern island of Kyuushuu on the night of the murder, but that would have made it impossible for him to be in Sapporo on the northern island of Hokkaidou the next morning. How did the man manage to teleport from one side of Japan to another?

And to admit another thing: one of the reasons I love this novel is because I lived in Kashiihama, Fukuoka for a year. I was only a minute away from the crime scene of Points and Lines. I have stood there at the beach dozens of time. Kashiihama was a wonderful place to live. So rereading the novel really brought up some great memories of this little neighbourhood in the eastern ward of Fukuoka. More than fifty years have past since Matsumoto first wrote this story and things might have changed a bit in those years (nowadays the road from the station to the beach of Kashiihama is not really lonely, for example), but Matsumoto's description of Kashii and Kashiihama is not as outdated as one would think and conveys the ambience of the quaint little block wonderfully. Matsumoto's writing might seem dry at times, but he actually has a wonderful knack for describing ordinary day scenery and customs expertly in just a few words. His short story Harikomi ("Stakeout") for example also features some great descriptions of Kyuushuu, the problem with it is just that it is not a mystery story at all. Matsumoto himself was from Kokura, so he must have have been familiar with Kashii. Interesting is that the two stations at Kashii (a JR station and the private Nishitetsu line), that play an important role in the story, are still in use today. Points and Lines actually made Kashii famous and even now there is a Seichou Sakura to commemorate Points and Lines planted at the Nishitetsu Kashii station.

But nostalgia is a dangerous thing, Tezuka Osamu's impressive series Phoenix taught me, so what about the story itself? Is Points and Lines worth reading if you have not lived in Kashii? As can be guessed from the summary, this is a story that revolves around the deconstruction of the main suspect's alibi and it is actually pretty ingenous. Matsumoto (the murderer) really did his best in coming up with a seemingly ironclad alibi with several safety nets for himself. It's a bit of a shame the English paperback version does not feature a map of the whole of Japan (it has a couple of maps of the Fukuoka area though), because for readers not familiar with Japan's topography, it might be hard to imagine how the distance between Kashii and Sapporo. It is really, really far away. Which makes the alibi trick all the more awesome. I actually want to write a bit more about the trick, but I guess that be nearing that ever-dangerous spoiler area, which is something I want to avoid.

And now for my third confession, I don't think I've ever read anything written by Freeman Crofts. But the focus on alibis and trains in Points and Lines is similar to many of Freeman Crofts' stories, I've been told. Trains play a big, big part within the world of Points and Lines and that's not strange. Trains have been a very large part of the Japanese culture ever since their introduction in the early Meiji period (post-1868) and was crucial for nation-building. Many people have heard about the bullet-trains developed in Japan. Trains are still an important means of transportation for longer domestic trips and there is even a whole culture around the so-called eki-ben, boxed meals sold at stations with local specialties. Heck, the whole subgenre of travel mysteries and train mysteries (mostly by Nishimura Kyoutarou, but I haven't reviewed any of his travel mysteries yet) in Japan is pretty much built upon the whole train culture, linking domestic tourism and the detailed railway schedules of trains that magically never seem to be late. I assume that countries like the United States don't have such a tradition in train mysteries. In the Netherlands, I guess most train mysteries are doomed to fail because the time in the railway schedule seldom seems to correspond with the actual times, you usually have to count in a five minute lag. Or maybe ten minutes.

Points and Lines also occasionally relies on what some people like to call 'typical Japanese customs / way of thinking', which are actually not really such unique indigenous customs as those people seem to make them out be. Matsumoto's stories do often seem to feature some cultural customs as crucial plot-points. In fact, one of the more important insight the detective in the story has, is pretty much copied from Matsumoto's own debut story Kao ("Face"), which also revolved around a certain way of thinking. Point and Lines however makes much better use of the same 'trick', almost like Matsumoto himself thought the trick in Kao could and should have been used for something better.

Like I admitted, I love Points and Lines partly because it is so strongly related to a place dear to me, but it is also a good alibi deconstruction mystery that is satisfying not only to those reviewers who praise Matsumoto for describing how a chair looks like in Japan in his novels, but also for people interested in a good old mystery that happens to be set in Japan.

Original Japanese title(s): 松本清張　『点と線』

Detective Movie

「僕も映画界の巨匠蔵沢 明の孫なんだよ。お互い偉大な祖父を持つと苦労するね・・・」

「別に？そんなことないっスよ！ジッチャンのことは誇りに思うけど、俺は俺だからさ！！」

『金田一少年の事件簿：銀幕の殺人鬼』

"I am the grandson of Kurasawa Akira, the grand master of the film industry. We both suffer quite a bit by having such illustrious grandfathers, right..."

"Not really! ... I am proud of my grandpa, but I am myself!"

"The Case Files of Young Kindaichi: The Murderer of the Silver Screen"

A sharp mind is of course essential to a fictional detective, but what is also important is.... a distinctive silhouette. Sherlock Holmes. Edogawa Conan. Kindaichi Hajime. Kindaichi Kousuke. One glance and you instantly know who the character is and what kind of story you can expect. I've written several times how important Ishikawa Kon's movies, and especially Ishizaka Kouji's acting, have been for the visual image of Kindaichi Kousuke. The shoddy hakama, the long hair, it was all in the original novels, but it was Ishizaka who first succesfully depicted Yokomizo's creation on the screen in 1976's Inugamike no Ichizoku. It's that image that people nowadays recognize as Kindaichi Kousuke.

One year before Ishizaka debuted as Kindaichi, Nakao Akira starred in a movie version of the first Kindaichi Kousuke novel, Honjin Satsujin Jiken ("The Daimyou's Inn Murder Case"). The novel itself is generally seen as one of the best, if not the best Japanese locked room mystery ever, but this 1975 movie is also widely regarded as one of the best, if not the best locked room mystery movie ever. The movie tells the story of the locked room murder of a couple on their wedding night, accompanied by the horrifyingly creepy sound of someone playing madly on a koto. For more details on my thoughts on the story and the importance of Honjin Satsujin Jiken within the literary history of Japanese detective fiction, I refer to the review of the novel, but it has to be said that it is almost surprising how loyal the movie generally is to the original story.

Generally I say, because there is one big change from the original story. The original story was set just before the Second World War, but the 1975 movie is set in contemporary times and even more surprising, has a Kindaichi Kousuke dressed in jeans. This was a radical (visual) change from the original character, who always walks around in an old hakama. Just compare Nakao's Kindaichi (left) to Ishizaka's Kindaichi (right)!

I thought I would totally hate this movie because of this, but I couldn't be more wrong. Nakao's choice of dress was a bit distracing at first, but he plays a wonderful Kindaichi Kousuke, who's a bit sharper and older than Ishizaka's one. In fact, most of the acting is good and the set, a gigantic old Japanese mansion (complete with annex) is simply gorgeous. Most of the story is set around this mansion and they really went out all out with it.

This movie is also widely praised because it managed to portray the trick behind the locked room murder in an understandable, yet impressive way. And yes, it does precisely that. The trick is so much more impressive when visualized and truly deserves the praise it gets not only as the first true Japanese orthodox locked room mystery, but also as a great trick an sich. The way it is reproduced on film is wonderful and I understand well why people consider this the best locked room mystery movie ever.

My only gripe with the movie is the way Kindaichi's explanation is portrayed in the movie: it is edited as a multi-part explanation with accompanying footage (if you see it, you'll know what I mean), but it drags on for quite some time and could have been at least ten minutes shorter without any real sacrifices, I feel. I vaguely remember the explanation being split in two parts in the original novel too, but it kinda kills the suspense you build up during a denouement scene if you cut it off halfway through only to continue it later. A smooth running explanation scene feels so much better.

Ishikawa Kon and Ishizaka Kouji never did a version of Honjin Satsujin Jiken. This might have also be because of the movie-rights, but they might have also felt that it was not really needed. It might have featured a visually different Kindaichi Kousuke, but Honjin Satsujin Jiken is really an excellent adaptation of the oriignal story.

 Original Japanese title(s): 『本陣殺人事件』