The Butler Did It

"You rang?"

 "The Addams Family"

Oh, wait, there's a Jonathan Creek special coming this month?! Wow, with a new Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo TV series starting early April, the many great TV drama specials last month and the Creek special this month, this year has a very solid start in terms of mystery shows!

Higashigawa Tokuya's Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de has been a great hit in Japan; the series about a somewhat verbally abusive butler who solves all the cases of his master, a wealthy heiress and rookie police detective, has had great ratings in the bookstores, television and movie theaters. But would a butler really be so rude to his master? Of course not, Maya Yutaka must have thought as he was writing Kizoku Tantei -Der Adelsdetektiv ("The Aristocrat Detective"), a fun, but somewhat limited short story collection. In the course of five stories, we're introduced to a variety of people in different places of Japan, in different circles of society, but with one common element: the moment a murder happens, an unnamed, arrogant young man arrives, calling himself the Aristocrat Detective. And he has friends in high places, as all policemen discover whenever they try to get him out of the crime scene. But it is not he hmself who uses his mental faculties to solve the murders. No, it's his staff, from butlers to maids who do all the thinking, and talking for him. But he is their master, so he considers whatever they accomplish, as his own accomplishment. They are tools, he is the workman who uses the right tools at the right time. Or something like that.

The first story in the collection, Wien no Mori no Monogotari - Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald ("Stories from the Wienerwald"), sets the formula for the rest of the collection. A little family gathering at a snow lodge (coupled with a bit of business) ends in tragedy when the head of the family is found murdered in his locked room. His secretary, who had returned to the city, was also murdered the same night in her apartment. The police thinks it's an easy case, but then the Aristocrat Detective appears... The plot of this opening story is actually quite good. The basic idea behind this story might be relatively easy, as it is clearly written to be a very fair, and solvable puzzle, but Maya manipulates the many elements expertly and invokes the Queen spirit when the story has you thinking about why some actions were taken, which in turns leads you the the murderer. A good example of a solidly written short story, even if the separate elements (snow lodge, locked room etc) aren't really original.

Tritsch-Tratsch Polka follows two policemen who are investigating a murder. But as they are questioning witnesses, they discover that another duo, of a man and his...maid, are also following the same trail. What do they have to do with the case, and why are they asking silly questions like whether the victim was carrying an umbrella that day? I liked this story the best of this collection actually, once again a short, but sweet experience. The double mystery (the murder, and the mysterious duo with their unexpected questions) is interesting enough to keep you hooked, and the trick behind the murder is also quite surprising, but I can't really write more about that lest I enter spoiler-territory. But as a short story with a clear goal (following the witness trail and deducing as you collect more information), and a good plot, Tritsch-Tratsch Polka is definitely my favorite here.

In Koumori - Die Fledermaus ("The Bat"), two girls have some deserved relaxing time at an exclusive hotel. They become acquainted with a group of famous writers, and end up as decisive witnesses when the sister-in-law of one of the writers is murdered during a local festival. The longest story of this collection, but that doesn't mean it's better. It's too long considering the plot to be honest and the trick feels too farfetched to work (at least, in the world of Kizoku Tantei; it might work in a different fictional world, but I'll write more about that in another review), which means a small payback for a relatively (time)-expensive story. Especially compared to the previous two short, but good stories, Koumori feels like a small letdown.

Kasokudo Waltz - Accelerationen Waltzer ("Acceleration Waltz") has the reader follow a particular bad day of a literary editor, which starts with the discovery of her boyfriend cheating on her, continues with a rock falling from a mountain, causing her to crash her car and have her discover the dead body of a writer she once worked for in his mountain lodge. Her one lucky break? A certain aristocrat is determined to solve the case fast (so they can go on a date). A quick examination of the state of the house is the key to the case, and is, in theory, a bit like the opening story, Wien no Mori no Monogotari - Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald, that is, the problem is solved by figuring out why certain, somewhat strange actions were taking, which brings you to the murderer. In practice, the stories are completely different though. I prefer the opening story a bit more, but this is certainly not a bad story.

Haru no Koe - Frühlingstimmen ("Voices of Spring") can best be described as a Yokomizo Seishi-esque story. The story of a rich heiress, three candidates for marriage and murder was a favorite of Yokomizo and can be seen in for example Inugamike no Ichizoku, Jooubachi and short stories like 'Shinigami no Ya. The three suitors all live on separate floors of an annex building (lest they might force themselves on the heiress in the night), but a cry for help over the phone one night leads to the discovery of all three suitors, murdered. Who killed them and why? The mystery is surprisingly easy to solve and I have to admit that this was my least favorite story of the collection. Koumori - Die Fledermaus was too long, but I liked its core mystery plot better than the one presented here.

Overall though, I have to admit that Kizoku Tantei felt a bit... lacking. Most stories are okay, but there are no real masterpieces or stories that you will definitely remember in a few years. Even the protagonist, the Aristocrat Detective is a bit boring. He does little more than seducing women while his staff is doing the work, but even as an arrogant, rich detective (who doesn't detect himself), he is nothing special. Maya Yutaka's own Mercator Ayu is actually quite similar, as an arrogant, rich detective, but he is much more interesting and fun to follow. The Aristocrat Detective feels like a cheap knock-off, with nothing original to offer.

There is a second collection featuring the Aristocrat Detective, but I think I'll skip that one. I'll probably go back to Mercator...

Original Japanese title(s): 麻耶雄嵩　『貴族探偵』:　「ウィーンの森の物語」 / 「トリッチ・トラッチ・ボルカ」 / 「こうもり」 / 「加速度円舞曲（ワルツ）」 / 「春の声」

Confused Memories

Confused Memories

過去や悲劇さえ

ない箱の中

世界をとじこめたいの

"Confused Memories" (円谷憂子)

Confused Memories

A box

Without any past or tragedy inside

That's where I want to put the world

Confused Memories (Tsuburaya Yuuko)

A new Gyakuten Saiban project led by Takumi Shuu and a new Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo TV anime series to start in April?! Lots of interesting news this morning!

Mitarai Kiyoshi series
Senseijutsu Satsujin Jiken ("The Astrology Murder Case")
Naname Yashiki no Hanzai ("The Crime at the Slanted Mansion")
Mitarai Kiyoshi no Aisatsu ("Mitarai Kiyoshi's Greetings")
Ihou no Kishi ("A Knight in Strange Lands")
Mitarai Kiyoshi no Dance ("Mitarai Kiyoshi's Dance")
Suishou no Pyramid ("The Crystal Pyramid")
Nejishiki Zazetsuki  ("Screw-Type Zazetsuki")

You open your eyes. You're stting on a bench in a park. You've fallen asleep there. It's afternoon. About time to leave. You get up, walk towards the road. You don't see your car here. Did you park it on the other side of the park? You walk back. No car here. Think. What kind of car did you drive? You can't remember. Maybe you didn't drive here? Think. How did you arrive here at the park? You can't remember. Think. Why are you here in the park? You can't remember. Think. What do you remember? Nothing. Nothing? Who are you? You can't remember. The protagonist of Shimada Souji's Ihou no Kishi ("A Knight in Strange Lands") has no memory whatsoever of his life before waking up in a park. He's naturally terribly confused, but a chance encounter with Ryouko saves him: they fall in love and start a simple, but satisfying life together. But our protagonist still wants to know how he lost his memories and what his life was before the incident, but the clues lead him to a horrible truth.

Wait, a Mitarai Kiyoshi novel about amnesia? Hadn't I already written something about that? Or was it a false memory? Actually, I did. About one year ago, I wrote about Nejishiki Zazetsuki, a 2003 novel which also featured astrologist/detective/neuro-specialist Mitarai Kiyoshi involved in a case with someone suffering from severe amnesia. Same writer, same series, same concept. How do the two novels compare?

But first, a small note. Shimada Souji's first published novel is his phenomenal Senseijutsu Satsujin Jiken, but Ihou no Kishi is actually his first written novel: just published later. The title is derived from the album (and song) The Romantic Warrior by Return to Forever (which in Japanese is rendered as Rouman no Kishi, "The Romantic Knight"), because, well, music is a recurring motif in the Mitarai novels.

Senseijutsu Satsujin Jiken and Naname Yashiki no Hanzai rank among my favorite detective novels. They're pretty classic in set-up, featuring familar tropes like locked room murders, decapitated bodies and murders around Christmas. Ihou no Kishi, the third full-length novel in the series, is less classic, featuring a plot less grand in scale. The first part of the story is set solely around the protagonist slowly setting up a life with Ryouko and also getting to know Mitarai Kiyoshi (who is still an astrologist at the time, and not a private detective). It's a set-up necessary for the rest of the story, sure, but compared to the beginning of the previous two novels, it's a bit slow and.... non-criminal. Ihou no Kishi's plot is of course built around the protagonist's search for his identity and finding out how he lost his memory, but it takes quite some time before the plot is actually there. It's only around the halfway point before the protagonist actually starts chasing after the clues, by which the reader might have already given up on the book, because the plot took too long to really start moving.

Nejishiki Zazetsuki was mostly built around reading a document, which held the clues to finding out about Egon Markut. I wasn't too much a fan of it, because it was based on the interpretation of a fantasy story, which to me seemed a bit too open-ended. Shimada has done more with deducing based on memories, be it memories in a person's mind, or written down in a document, see for example his debut work Senseijutsu Satsujin Jiken. The tropes of a story-inside-a-story and the unreliability of the human memory can thus be considered something of pet peeves of Shimada and they are used again in this novel, but in a different way than the above mentioned novels. It's also a lot shorter, making Ihou no Kishi easier to read, with more events happening in real-time (in the story), rather than happening within documents.

I have to admit that I'm a bit disappointed Ihou no Kishi does not feature a grand trick like the previous two novels. Or does it? In a way, Ihou no Kishi features a plot just as ridiculous (in the good sense of the word) as other Shimada novels, but the way it's written it's hardly as convincing as stories as Senseijutsu Satsuji Jiken (and I can assure you that the things that happen there are actually quite crazy). But comparing Ihou no Kishi to Nejishiki Zazetsuki, which are very much alike, I'd say that Ihou no Kishi is more fun. Which is maybe because the underlying story works better. Both Ihou no Kishi and Neijishiki Zazetsuki can be read as 'simple', tragic love stories, but I prefer the one in Ihou no Kishi.

Not even near my favorite Shimada Souji story, but Ihou no Kishi has its interesting points as Shimada's first novel and also as part of the Mitarai Kiyoshi series. It also forms a bridge between the somewhat 'artificial' first two novels in the series, to the novels with a more fleshed-out story later in the series. Not must-read materal, but maybe when you've a bit more of Shimada's works.

Original Japanese title(s): 島田荘司  『異邦の騎士』

Memories of the Past

「しかし毛利さんに負けず劣らずの死神っぷりね…殺人現場に毎回毎回…」 

『名探偵コナン』第82巻

"But you're as just much a Death God as Mr Mouri, you know... You keep popping up at murder scenes..."

"Detective Conan" Volume 82

Oh wow, I just realized that I haven't written reviews for the Detective Conan manga for over a year now! The last one was for volume 78, and while I definitely have been keeping up with the series, I somehow managed to forget the reviews. Again and again. And again. Let's fix that!

Detective Conan manga & movies:
Part 1: 『平成のホームズ』: The Heisei Holmes (volumes 1 ~ 10)
Part 2: 『奇妙な集まり』: A Strange Gathering (volumes 11~20; The Timebombed Skysraper/The Fourteenth Target)
Part 3: 『心強き名探偵達』: The Brave Detectives (volumes 21~30; The Last Wizard of the Century/Captured in Her Eyes) 
Part 4: 『白い影・・・黒い影・・・』: White Shadow... Black Shadow... (volumes 31~40; Countdown to Heaven/The Phantom of Baker Street)
Part 5: 『満月の夜と黒い宴の罠』: A Full Moon's Night and Trap at a Black Banquet (volumes 41~50; Crossroad in the Ancient Capital/Magician of the Silver Sky/Strategy Above the Depths)
Part 6: 『探偵甲子園』: Detective Koushien (volumes 51~60; Private Eyes' Requiem/Jolly Roger in the Deep Azure)
Part 7: 『よくあるパターン』: A Common Pattern (volumes 61~70; Full Score of Fear/The Raven Chaser/Lost Ship in the Sky)
(You will find the links to the reviews of volume 70, 72~76, 78, and the films Quarter of Silence, The Eleventh Striker, Private Eye in the Distant Sea in the library)

Volume 82 of Detective Conan was released about a month ago, and starts with Kaitou KID VS Kyougoku Makoto: The Outcome of the Dangerous Bet, which is pretty much what the title says it is. Phantom thief KID has announced to steal another jewel from Suzuki Jiroukichi, who should know better by now. Placing jewels on skyscrapers, on the back of turtles, having children guard it, none of his plans to stop the phantom thief have ever succeeded. The single line of defense this time is Kyougoku Makoto, boyfriend of Jiroukichi's niece and world champion karate. Will the famous thief win, or a man can dodge bullets? These KID vs Jiroukichi stories were fun the first few times, but they seem to pop up way too often lately (wasn't the last one in volume 80 or 81?!). This time the theft is kinda easy to solve (despite the trick also depending on obscure facts nobody is ever going to know), which makes it a forgettable story. Mostly. The one thing that will stick, is the fact that lately Conan characters have become too strong (see also Ran's role in the movie Private Eye in the Distant Sea). Sure, Makoto had always been strong, being able to dodge rifle shots at point blank range (or more precisely, he could dodge the shots, because he was so close), but the feats he performs here... Overall, a disappointing story though.

A Case Beckoning Cat consists of two cases actually, though the official Conan site treats it as one, larger case. The first part of the story is about a stray cat Azusa (of Cafe Poirot) has been taking care of. After the publication of an article on Cafe Poirot, featuring a picture of Azusa and the cat, no less than three persons appear, each claiming the cat is their own. Can Great Detective Mouri Kogorou determine the true owner of the cat? In the second part, the Detective Boys go visit the new owner of the cat, but they discover a nearly dead body in the apartment. An apartment locked from the inside, to be precise. Who attacked the cat's new owner and how did the assailant escape?

There's this phenomena, that if you learn a new word, you suddenly seem to see it everywhere, right? I am not sure whether it also occurs when applying it to your own mother tongue, but it definitely appears often when studying new languages. Its probably just the fact being able to actually recognize and comprehend the word, which makes it seem like it appears more often, but what about tropes and trivia? The first part of A Case Beckoning Cat features a... fact, a trope maybe, that I first learned about about a half year ago in a detective story. Since then, I've seen the exact same fact used in at least three other detective stories in just these six months. And it's not even that interesting a fact! It's not used in a surprising way here or anything like that at all, so to me, it feels like more of the same. It's also an obscure fact, I guess, which again makes the story less interesting to me personally (like the KID story).

The second half of A Case Beckoning Cat on the other hand does not invoke a trope I've seen in other detectives, but in the Conan series itself. A mish-mash of elements of a very early Conan story, and one that appeared somewhere between volume 20~30. Once again a disappointing story overall. The final complete story in volume 82, A Time-Bending Alibi, has the same problem: it's basically the exact same trick like a story in volume 44.  Sure, it's arranged a bit, and the scale is admittedly bigger, but the base is the same, and too obvious from the start.

Volume 82 ends with the beginning of a new story, which seems more interesting than the rest of the volume, but as I don't want to write about unfinished stories...

All in all a very disappointing volume. Which is quite rare for Conan, actually. As there's usually around three stories per volume, there's almost always at least one story I really like, but volume 82 was a real letdown. The previous volumes were quite strong actually, so maybe artist Aoyama Goushou should have played with the order of the stories a bit for a more balanced experience... But I'll keep on reading anyway. Aoyama once said he wanted to wrap up the story before volume 100, and we're definitely nearing the end!

Original Japanese title(s): 青山剛昌 『名探偵コナン』第82巻

Try Again

I just wanna say 夢かなえる

真実はいつも一つ　それは TRY AGAIN

"Try Again" (倉木麻衣)

I just wanna say You can make your dreams come true

There's always only one truth Which is Try Again

"Try Again" (Kuraki Mai) 

It's been a while since the last post. But I'm still here! Just busy with things. And stuff. And other stuff.

Introducing Lawrence Todhunter, age 51. Retired, well off. He lives a quiet, some might say boring life. And he is going to die soon. A fatal heart disease confronts him with the fact he could have done something more meaningful with his life, and he intends to rectify that before he draws his last breath. He makes up his mind to do one last act for the sake of humanity: to exterminate the most harmful element he can find in society. To kill an evil person whose mere existence means a threat to society. He finds his target in Ms. Norwood, actress, and in general not a very kind person indeed. After the deed is done, Todhunter travels around the world, expecting to die during his trip. That is until he discovers that someone else has been arrested for the murder of Ms. Norwood. Hurriedly returning to the country, Todhunter has the strangely difficult task of proving his own guilt to save an innocent soul in Anthony Berkeley's Trial and Error.

Proving one's own guilt might sound strange as a concept, but it makes sense when you hear it's written by Anthony Berkeley, right?

The Poisoned Chocolates Case was an experiment in deduction: six person using six different methods to arrive at six different solutions for the same case. Jumping Jenny is basically a double inverted mystery: we see the events leading up to a murder, and then we have a second crime-in-progress, with the detective Sheringham trying to make it seem the murder was a suicide. Trial and Error (which though featuring a familiar face, is not part of the Roger Sheringham series) in turn plays with the character roles in detective novels: it's the criminal himself who wants to proof his own guilt (and he has surprisingly much trouble with that, despite having secured what he thought was decisive evidence), it's the criminal himself who wants to get himself hanged and it's the criminal himself who gets a trial running to convict himself.

And I love Trial and Error for that. Berkeley clearly loves playing on a meta-level with the detective fiction genre, turning and twisting familar tropes and character types around to mess with the reader. And it's never just a gimmick, because Berkeley can also write and plot like the best, and his novels are always a treat to read. Trial and Error is funny as a concept, but it is also a good detective novel. It's fun seeing Todhunter retracing his own steps on the night of the murder, looking for evidence he might have left, just like a detective. Heck, Todhunter is a detective, and a criminal at the same time i this novel. But the reader might be surprised when it's revealed in the end how many hints were hidden in the story. Berkeley makes use of a lot of gimmicks in his novels, but he's always more than just gimmicks.

In general though, I'm not a big fan of Berkeley's characters though. Of course, I have just read a couple of his novels, so I might have been just unlucky, but Roger Sheringham for example has a knack for behaving too much as the arrogant masterdetective (which he isn't exactly). Jumping Jenny had him messing around with the crime scene for example because he felt he had the right to judge something fair or not. Todhunter playing judge, jury and executioner is not unlike Sheringham actually, but the moral implications of his role aren't really explored. Partly because the victim is depicted as a fairly evil woman, which is something Berkeley excelled in: depicting bad women. There's always a distinct misogynistic tone to be found in his novels, I was told in a presentation on him and his works once, and now I have read more of his works, I have to admit that one can indeed feel it.

Like the other Berkeley novels I've read, Trial and Error is a great novel, which can be read perfectly on its own, but works even better as a piece of meta-fiction. It's also a lot less 'theoretical' than the other two, making it much more suitable for readers who find The Poisoned Chocolates Case a bit hard to get into.

Trick & Magic

「理由」をもっと喋り続けて

私が眠れるまで

「月光」 （鬼束ちひろ）

Tell me about your reasons

Until I'm able to sleep

"Moonlight" (Onitsuka Chihiro)

To put this review in context immediately, I absolutely worship the TV drama Trick. It is the most awesome series to have graced Japanese TV screens, as well as the silver screen and as such, this review might be slanted a bit towards the very positive.

Trick started as a late-night mystery series in 2000, about a(n incompetent) physics professor Ueda Jirou and an unsuccesful magician Yamada Naoko teaming up debunking supernatural phenomena and solving murders. It drew heavily from the Kindaichi Kousuke series, with many episodes set in remote mountain villages with closed communities, with a bit of Higashino Keigo (scientific mysteries), a bit of Awasaka Tsumao (magic tricks) and John Dickson Carr (the supernatural). But, most importantly, it was conceived as a cartoonish comedy-mystery.

Trick soon grew as a series, as well as a phenomenom, and it soon become a series that certainly took up the appearance of a dark, horror mystery, but was essentially a playground for everyone involved in its production. Actors are encouraged to overact, to overplay their role as characters in a mystery series. You're not the focus of the scene and just standing in the background? Don't worry, you're allowed to do whatever you want there. Heck, even the camerawork is in on it, with enigmatic, yet hypnotic movements during scenes that would normally be taken motionless, and shots purposedly taken off center. Every single scene of every episode, special and film is full with little gags and stuff, but miraculously, it never feels (too) chaotic.

But Trick isn't just a comedy. Because despite all the chaos, despite all the things done for laughs, it's actually a good mystery show! There's always an interesting plot, it's always structured properly and there are the essential hints for the viewer to solve the mystery. One could easily take the same plot and make a super-serious, dark mystery out of it. But, that wouldn't be Trick. Trick is a parody of mystery, of itself and other TV dramas, a playground for the production team, but also a great mystery drama. It is very cartoonish though, so those who prefer serious detective fiction, stay away from Trick, but I myself consider it a masterpiece.

And this year marks the end of Trick. Four years ago, I was lucky enough to be in Japan when they celebrated the series' 10th anniversary with a new movie and other productions, but no such luck this time. The series is to end with the fourth movie, which is running now, but last week a TV special was broadcast set just before the movie, marking Trick's last outing on the TV screen. The head of the Mizugami clan has died, and his three daughters (and their family) all expect a gigantic inheritance. Unbeknownst to them, the Mizugami fortune has shrunk dramatically of late unfortunately and the family is left with very little.

However, the Mizugami inheritance doesn't exist out of just direct financial means. A little box is also left to the family, which is supposed to hold a hint pointing to the whereabouts of a buried treasure. The box is cursed though, so the family decides to ask the famous physics professor Ueda Jirou (and his assistant Yamada Naoko) to help them, knowing that he is an authority on debunking the supernatural (and not knowing that he's actually a fairly incompetent detective and quite scared of the supernatural). But the presence of Ueda isn't enough to prevent a series of murders among the Mizugami clan...

Trick has always borrowed a lot from Yokomizo Seishi's Kindaichi Kousuke series (like in the second season pilot), but this special was the most blatant example, probably, as it parodies his masterpiece Inugamike no Ichizoku. The fight for the inheritance, the three daughters, a masked grandson, murders... heck, there are even (multiple pairs of) legs sticking out of a lake (....you'll have to read the book or watch the movies to get that). And just to make it completely clear, the whole story is set in the village of Okomizo.

And I almost died of laughter as I was watching this.

As a mystery story, this special was actually quite good. Sure, the rough outline is based on Inugamike no Ichizoku (and it has some good, original takes on the tropes from the book too!), but the treasure hunt plot is completely original (and also makes the story even more Trick-like) and actually quite good; the hints are laid done very well. There's also a simple locked room murder which on its own might not be very impressive, but as is often with Trick, it's the sum of the parts, the synergy between the seperate parts that really brings out the magic of its plot. Trick stories often consists of multiple murders / seemingly supernatural crimes, usually with fairly simple magic tricks behind them, but it is the way they are sewn together, i.e. how the story is written, that really matters here. And it usually works really well in Trick.

The third TV special is essentially not very different from any other Trick production though. But is that  a bad thing? It's the first Trick production in four years, and we all expect a certain atmosphere from the series and this special delivers precisely that. Like I said, Trick is a playground, and it doesn't really matter if the rough outlines might seem familiar, because it is the way the playground is used that is important. And it never bores me.

In a way, Trick, as a comedy mystery, is something director Tsutsumi Yukihiko had been working towards for a long time. Some characteristics of Trick can be found in his TV drama adaptation of Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo (musical cues, enigmatic dynamic camera work, light-hearted tone followed by horror/drama) and Keizoku added in rapid-fire dialogues and non-sequitor humor, but it really came together in Trick and you can just see everyone having a great time here. I have been planning to write something on Tsutsumi's detective drama series here for years now, but maybe I'll actually get around to it this year...

Oh, and this was the first time I actually saw the actress Asakura Aki. I know her voice quite well as Kirigamine Ryou from the Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni radio drama, so I was quite surprised when I heard a familar voice in the special (and yes, I had trouble getting the mental image of Kirigamine Ryou out of my head).

All in all, a great special, and I look forward to the last movie!

Original Japanese title(s): 『トリック　新作スペシャル３』

The Return of Sherlock Holmes

"Holmes!" I cried. "Is it really you? Can it indeed be that you are alive? Is it possible that you succeeded in climbing out of that awful abyss?"  

"The Adventure of the Empty House"

A bit later than I had planned at first, but I finally finished this review! But with the new Trick TV special and all, I'm still not sure whether I'll be able to review a novel this month...

When Sherlock first aired in 2010, I was really pleasantly surprised. I had only heard about the series just before the show started, but I was absolutely overwhelmed by what a great series it was. The show oozed atmosphere and while it might not have been a very conventional Sherlock Holmes adaptation, or maybe because it was not a very conventional Sherlock Holmes adaptation, managed to make a lasting impresssion on me. The second season was as least as impressive, and I had eagerly been awaiting the third season. And I wasn't the only one. Many, many people had been waiting these two years to see the continuation of Sherlock and there was much rejoicing when it finally aired this year. In fact, the whole world was eager to see more of the series it seems. I was quite surprised when a friend told me that the third season would air in South Korea just one week after the BBC's broadcast. We have all waited a long time, and we were not going to wait any longer.

The first episode, The Empty Hearse, deals with the direct aftermath of the second season's finale; Sherlock has been thought dead for two years now, but circumstances force him to return to London, to good old Baker Street 221B. And Sherlock wouldn't be complete without his trusty partner Watson, so after not really tactfully informing his friend of the fact that he had been faking his death for several years, and the not really tactful reaction of Watson on the news, the crime-fighting duo is back to stop a grand conspiracy against the British parliament.

Like the second season pilot A Scandal in Belgravia, The Empty Hearse had a big job of cleaning up after a crucial cliffhanger of the previous episode. And let's be honest, A Scandal in Belgravia did that in the very cheap way. People had to wait quite a while for the second season, and they used that time to think about how Sherlock and John were going to get out of that mess. A Scandal in Belgravia might have disappointed in that respect and apparently the showrunners realized that, because The Empty Hearse is first of all almost a parody or a meta-critique on that. The writers realized that people would think of all kinds of theories of how Sherlock faked his death, that people would pick on every detail available to figure out the trick behind Sherlock's fall. So they decided to put all of those theories in the episode.

There is a small plot about stopping terrorists in The Empty Hearse somewhere, but the best parts of the episode is when it shows you one of the many theories people have about how Sherlock faked his death. The episode starts with a James Bond-like explanation, but we are also presented with a fangirl's dream and other strange ideas, theories you would expect to find, and will probably find on the many, many Sherlock fansites. The episode works out like an Anthony Berkeley story, with theory upon theory being thrown at the viewer, and it's fun! It definitely wasn't what I had expected of it, and I have to admit that I am a bit disappointed the main plot of the episode suffered because of it (this Sebastian Moran character was definitely not nearly as interesting as the one in A Game of Shadows), but a fun start of the season.

The second episode, The Sign of Three, is all about John H. Watson and Mary Morstan's wedding. Most of the episode consists of Sherlock, as John's best man, telling the guests about some of the adventures he has shared with the groom. We are shown a very human Sherlock here and there is actually quite a gap between the Sherlock in the previous and this episode, in my opinion, and that fact, together with a plot that seems a bit chaotic at first, were reason for me to kinda complain about it during the broadcast. But it worked all out really well actually, and I consider The Sign of Three the best of the third season. Sure, the locked room murder might not be very original and the end-game uses a overly familiar trope that the show has used already in an earlier episode, but the sum of its parts, the way hints are placed throughout the episode, the storytelling, the way Sherlock has grown as a person, as an episode that places Watson in the center, I really liked it. The middle part might a bit boring, but I think that as a 'different' kind of Sherlock episode it worked really, just like The Hounds of Baskerville before it.

His Last Vow is based on The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton and similarly deals with a master blackmailer (Charles Augustus Magnussen). Sherlock is asked to deal with him on behalf of a high-ranking government official, but gaining access to Magnussen and retrieving the crucial documents isn't as easy as it seems. Well, of course, not considering that this is the final episode of the season, so like Moriarty in the previous season finales, we are now presented with a very visible, yet hard to reach antagonist for Sherlock and John (Magnussen starts out as a magnificent bastard, but kinda overdoes it as a despicable person after a visit to Baker Street, in my opinion though). The first half of the episode is pretty close to the original story, but the story takes another turn in the second half, with little bits and pieces of plot from previous episodes resurfacing, resulting in a well, finale-esque finale. It was a fun episode, but I liked the previous two episodes better, I think. One thing I have to say though, the 'cliffhanger ending' of this episode is not nearly as frustrating as that of the previous two season finales!

And just a little bit about the visual aspect of the series. I have mentioned earlier that for me, Sherlock, made an impression on me because it makes so much use of videogame linguistics to convey information to the viewer. I have always had an interest in the (visual) depiction of the deduction processes of other to a third party (see this post on Game Center CX for example), and have always found Sherlock to be a great example of how to do it right. The "Sherlock Scan" is depicted as literally descriptive markers floating around the object. Text and mail messages are shown as floating textboxes, instead of shots of a monitor or a phone. This season was visually quite more elaborate though, and felt quite different. The Empty Hearse showed (visually) all the theories people proposed to Sherlock's faked death and did that quite well (though it's a pretty normal practice in visual detective fiction), but the rest of the season also used much more 'grand' visual depictions of ideas. The Sign of Three visualizes an interview with a large number of women through the internet, as a gathering of all people in a grand hall, with Sherlock in the center picking the people that fit his profile. His Last Vow has a very lengthy visual depiction of Sherlock looking for useful information in his mind to deal with a rather life-threatening situation. They look great, I admit, but I miss a little of the simple elegance of the visual depictions in the previous seasons (though they are not gone completely, luckily).

I liked season three overall a lot though and I think it's the most consistent season until now. Well, the team has quite some experience now, so maybe not very surprising. And now, to wait for season four...

Turnabout Corner

華やかな夢なんて　持ちたくはない

 断ち切った過去になど　縛られたくない 

飾らない人生を生きて行く　明日がある限り 

「明日を解く鍵」　(樋口琴路)

I don't want to hold on brilliant dreams

I don't want to be tied up by the severed past

I want to live a careless life, as long as there's a tomorrow

"The Key to Solve Tomorrow" (Higuchi Kotoji)

At this rate, this month might end without any reviews on books, only on other media!

Shinjuku. One of the most crowded districts in Tokyo. Famous for the gigantic underground maze that is Shinjuku Station. The big TV screen mounted on the Studio Alta building in front of the west exit of the station is one of the more recognizable meeting locations in the whole of Japan. And walk a bit deeper into the district from that exit and you'll get to Kabukichou, center of night-time entertainment and yakuza territory. Shinjuku is full of dreams and despair, of life and death and also the home of the private detective Jinguuji Saburou and his assistent Youko. Three cases manage to find their way to the Jinguuji Detective Agency in Tantei Jinguuji Saburou: Mikan no Rupo ("Detective Jinguuji Saburou: The Unfinished Report"). Jinguuji is sent a key by a journalist friend, asking him to hang on to it for a while, but Jinguuji has no time to find out more about it, because the police has (unofficially) asked his help in a serial murder case with foreigner victims. Youko is meanwhile busy with a case of a disappeared husband who had been working in Shinjuku. But it seems like that these three cases aren't completely unrelated after all...

Tantei Jinguuji Saburou is a long-running hardboiled detective adventure game series and basically the only thing I'm still using the hardboiled tag for. The series started out on the Famicom (NES) and did quite well, as it saw no less than four different games on that system. But the series never appeared on the Super Famicom (SNES) for some sinister reason, so when the fifth game in the series, Mikan no Rupo, finally appeared on the Saturn and PlaySation, it had skipped a whole generation of gaming. But it was still our beloved Jinguuji. Mostly. The art design has made a weird jump to City Hunter-esque designs (thankfully revised in Yume no Owari ni), but the jazz music (now in actual CD quality, instead of the Famicom synthesizer!) is fantastic.

And yes, Tantei Jinguuji Saburou music will appear in Music to be Murdered by.

As for the story of Mikan no Rupo, it's pretty good, though quite short. The Tantei Jinguuji Saburou games are often shakai-ha type stories, detective stories with some social commentary. It fits the hardboiled detective theme, with Jinguuji moving around in both the 'open world' and the underworld and witnessing quite a lot of social problems. Mikan no Rupo in particular deals with the social circumstances of immigrant workers and discrimination, themes that would reappear in later games (for example in one of the titles included in Tantei Jinguuji Saburou: Akai Chou). There is no puzzle-solving (neither mentally nor in a gameplay-sense) in the game, so as a player you're more along for the ride. It's an entertaining story, presented in a (mostly) attractive way.

Mostly, I say, because it does has a bit of problems. The flags you have to activate in progress in a story are sometimes really strange (oh, so I have to smoke three times instead of twice? I have to talk to those people in a particular order?). It's not as bad as in the first game (where smoking too much can result in a game over), but still, it's something they should smoothed out a bit (though I have to admit, the fantastic sequel Yume no Owari ni had the same problems). There are also strange sections where you control Jinguuji directly (something that was only done in the first game), but you're dropped in these action scenes with little explanation, and they are more frustrating then fun (like the section where you just have to check every bookcase...).

Something interesting pops up in the final part of the game though. Here we have a fairly straightforward hardboiled detective story, dealing with immigrants and yakuza gangs and such... and then we're suddenly confronted with what appears to be a kind of locked room murder. Sure, the murder is solved quite quickly, and the trick behind needs a bit of work, because it's a bit silly as it is now, but still, we're given a classic problem! The Tantei Jinguuji Saburou series has always been a bit strange like that, actually. Audiovisually, the series breathes hardboiled, from the art by Terada Katsuya to the jazzy tunes of the soundtrack. But even the first game, Shinjuku Chuuou Kouen Satsujin Jiken basically consisted of an impossible crime in the park, and while later games usually feature less incredible crimes, there's often enough space in their plots to present a proper, interesting orthodox whodunnit or howdunnit with very little rewriting. For some reason the plots are always presented a lot easier than they need to be though. Tantei Jinguuji Saburou always moves between several modes of storytelling and it never seems to settle on one final choice. Not a problem per se, but it does mean that the atmosphere of the games can differ quite a bit depending on the title.

I would say that Yume no Owari ni is a much better Tantei Jinguuji Saburou game, if we compare it to another title of the same console generation, but it's not bad. You can get it for practically nothing second hand (the games have been removed from the PlayStation archives, sadly enough) and you won't be disappointed if you liked other titles in the series.

Original Japanese title(s): 『探偵神宮寺三郎　未完のルポ』