Snow Place Like Home

秋に秋の実りがあり

冬には冬の厳しさがる

「籟・来・也」（Garnet Crow)

Fall brings the harvest of fall

And winter brings the harshness of winter

"Rai Rai Ya" (Garnet Crow)

One of my favorite discoveries of last year was Nemoto Shou's manga Kaiki Tantei Sharaku Homura ("Sharaku Homura: Detective of the Uncanny"). These were originally doujin comics which Nemoto was self-publishing under the doujin circle name Sapporo no Rokujou Hitoma for sale at events etc. In the current age, a lot of doujin material like fanzines, indie videogames etc. is also sold in digital format, but there are still many, many doujin circles that publish their work in physical format. Half of the fun of making a doujin comic is indeed putting the finishing touches on the file you send off to the  professional printer and binder and some time later, you bring your box of freshly created booklets to a convention or some other event to sell the fruits of your labor all by your own hand, meeting and speaking with each and every of the people who swing by your stand. Nemoto had been working on the Kaiki Tantei Sharaku Homura series for about ten years, and readers praised it as an excellent mystery comics, but due to its doujin status, it was also relatively difficult to get your hands on an actual copy until last year, major publisher Bungeishunju helped getting these fantastic stories on digital storefronts in Japan. Fourteen issues were compiled into three volumes, and I loved each and every one of them (reviews of the first, second and third volume here).

At the end of the third review, I mentioned that the series was still on-going as a doujin comic and that it was unclear whether further issues would be made available as ebooks too. Even if this would happen, it was likely this would take several years, as the other volumes collected 4-5 issues each. But luckily, I didn't have to wait too long to have my reunion with our favorite students of of Shimoyama Middle School: the clever girl detective Sharaku Homura and her assistant Yamazaki "Karate Kid" Yousuke. This summer, Nemoto won the first Hokkaido Mystery Cross Match Award with Hagoromo no Kijo ("The Ogress With the Robe of Feathers"), the sixteenth issue in the Kaiki Tantei Sharaku Homura series. The Hokkaido Mystery Cross Match Award is presented to the best unpublished mystery story (unpublished as in not by a professional publisher, for short~novelette-size stories) and while this first time, the authors were all living in or around Sapporo (capital city of Hokkaido), residence in Hokkaido is not a requirement to compete. To celebrate this joyous occassion, Nemoto has made this award-winning comic temporarily available for free download (see this tweet for the link) and having read it, I can definitely recommend people to check it out too.

Homura and Karate Kid are out mushroom hunting in the mountains, but after being chased away by a rival mushroom hunter with a rifle and a rather wild dog, the kids are shocked to find a dead man lying in the middle of a snow-covered clearing in the forest. The man appears to have a stab wound in the temple of his head, but strangely enough, the only footprints left in the surrounding snow are those of the victim himself, besides those of Homura and Karate Kid. Police investigation reveals two interesting facts. One is that the victim was indeed stabbed by a sharp instrument in his head (there was even some metal left in his head). The weapon however was not found near the body, ruling out any possibilities of suicide. The other fact is that the victim used to be a monk at the Buddhist temple further up the same mountain, but that he had been thrown out one year earlier for repeatedly stealing money. The victim was unemployed, but he was carrying a bag of mochi (rice cakes) with him, suggesting he was going to visit someone. The other monks at the temple seemed shocked to learn about the death of the victim. The temple is home to various interesting legends and objects of interest, like a Buddhist mummy, but also a stone seal that is supposed to keep an ogress trapped: like in the west, legends that follow the archetype of the story of the Swan Maiden exist all across Japan (see also my review of the opening story of Professor Munakata), but in this version, the Heavenly Maiden who got her robe of feathers stolen, killed the thief herself and turned into a blood-craving ogress, until she was defeated by the founder of the temple some centuries ago. Her feathered robe, a relic kept hidden in the temple, was stolen the night before the victim was killed by what appeared to be the Ogress herself. Did the Ogress use her magical robe to fly to the victim to stab him in the head, leaving no footprints behind in the snow?

Like I said, this is a great story. It's very densely plotted tale at ninety pages, allowing Nemoto to not only come up with several (fake) solutions to the no-footprints-in-the-snow situation, but also flesh out the whole Buddhist temple background and its backstory. Obviously this is of importance to the core mystery plot, but the storytelling does a great job at actually being a story, and not just dumping info on the reader. And there's really a lot to process here: I could easily imagine this plot being worked out into a full novel. As the story unfolds, we learn the victim had his darker side too, and part of the mystery shifts to the question who he was going to visit with his mochi (rice cakes). This part of the mystery is quite original, and the clewing is really clever. It's almost blatantly telling you what's going on, but hidden so well you are likely to miss what Nemoto is trying to tell you.

Speaking of which, this story features a genuine Challenge to the Reader, and it even gives four major hints that really push you in the right direction, without giving the whole game away. As per custom, this comic is very generous in reminding you about things that had been said or shown earlier in the story: you always find proper page references when for example late in the story someone refers to an earlier testimony or about having seen something. Kaiki Tantei Sharaku Homura is always fair, but especially kind in the way it really shows you where every clue was and when it was mentioned.

The solution to the main problem of the no-footprints-in-the-snow is really original though and this alone makes this issue worth a read. While I know of variants with other impossible crime situations that use a similar idea, it's the way it's contextualized and set-up in this particular story that makes it a memorable story. The means are singularly unique to this particular story and its background story, yet properly clewed and foreshadowed. It is admitted in the comic itself that the probability of success is quite slim and practically, one could argue whether it was even possible for the murderer to actually pull that move off physically, but the sheer originality and also horrifying implications of this particular murder method make this one to remember.

Hagoromo no Kijo, the sixteenth issue of Kaiki Tantei Sharaku Homura, is in short another great entry in the series. I really hope that eventually, all the new issues of this series will also be collected into a standalone volume for sale on digital storefronts. As you may have noticed already, this was issue 16, while the earlier volumes I reviewed collected fourteen issues, meaning I already missed one story in this great series. Self-publishing a series of course has its merits too, but man, it does make it a lot harder reading this series!

Original Japanese title(s): 根本尚（札幌の六畳一間）「怪奇探偵　羽衣の鬼女」

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

空を自由に飛びたいな

「はい、タケコプター」

「ドラえもんのうた」（大山のぶ代）

I'd love to fly freely in the sky

- Here, a Bamboo Copter!

(The Song of Doraemon) (Ooyama Nobuyo)

Huh, I never had expected to be writing about Doraemon here. And I'm even now really weirded out by the notion I even have to explain him. For in essence, it's like having to explain Mickey Mouse. Doraemon is a long-running children's comic and cartoon that has not only found succes in Japan, but in the whole of South-East Asia. It's immensely popular there and several generations have grown up together with the blue robot cat. So it feels weird to have to explain such a cultural icon, a figure everyone knows by sight. I mean, Doraemon is so intertwined with Japanese culture he was appointed a special ambassador for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics (Remember seeing him in the closing ceremony for the 2016 Olympics?). Anyway, for the people who don't know Doraemon: Doraemon is a blue robot cat from the future, who has been sent to the young boy Nobita. Nobita's a failure at everything he tries, who always gives up and cries the moment things go wrong and that's a habit that sticks. His great-great-grandson Sewashi therefore decides to send his robot cat Doraemon to his great-great-grandfather in the hope Doraemon can help Nobita shape up and change his and his family's future. Doraemon has all kinds of fantastic secret gadgets from the future hidden in his pouch, like the Anywhere Door which can open doors between any location. Many episodes are about Nobita (or his friends Shizuka, Gian and Suneo) coming to Doraemon asking for some gadget to help them out (for example, because they forgot to make their homework) and the kids eventually abusing the gadget until it backfires. While the television series is a comedy series, the long-running theatrical releases take on more epic forms with long adventures. One of my favorites is Doraemon: Nobita no Parallel Saiyuuki (Doraemon: Nobita's Parallel Journey to the West, 1988), where monsters from the Chinese classic Journey to the West take over modern-day Japan, and Nobita, Doraemon and their friends must fight the monsters as the Monkey King and his allies.

It would take until the thirty-third movie until Doraemon would try its round hands at a mystery-themed story in the theaters though. 2013's Doraemon: Nobita no Himitsu Dougu Museum, which also has the English title of Doraemon: Nobita's Secret Gadget Museum, starts with the theft of Doraemon's cat bell by Phantom Thief DX. Desperate to find the bell (actually a secret gadget), Doraemon has Nobita wear the Sherlock Holmes Set, a set of detective-related secret gadgets. With the help of the Clue Lens (which can show clues for any mystery you want to solve), the duo learns the bell is somewhere in the Secret Gadget Museum in the twenty-second century, an institution that exhibits all kinds of secret gadgets and their history. Doraemon receives an invitation for the museum from his sister Dorami, and Nobita, Shizuka, Gaian and Suneo all join to help Doraemon find his bell. Arriving at the museum, the gang are given a tour by Kuruto, a young boy and aspiring gadget inventor who works at the museum. They learn that Phantom Thief DX has struck here too earlier, stealing a secret gadget from the museum. When the following day Phantom Thief DX announces they will steal more gadgets from the museum, the gang prepares to catch the thief and retrieve all the stolen gadgets.

A somewhat odd Doraemon movie as it's set in 'just' the Japan of the future and mostly inside a museum too, instead of some parallel or magical/fantasy world like in most of the other (older) movies. While I am reviewing this movie here on the blog, I wouldn't want to disappoint people, so let me emphasize first that this is mostly a comedy-action movie like you'd expect from Doraemon, and not some kind of hidden mystery gem that will go into the annals of modern mystery fiction. That said, the mystery plot is really not that bad considering this is at the core a children's/family comedy film  and overall, I did enjoy the Sherlock Holmes Set-wearing Nobita vs. Phantom Thief DX story, as it's a genuinely fairly played mystery plot.

Speaking of the Sherlock Holmes Set, you'd think it's a total cheat right? It consists of some nifty gadgets that come in handy when working on a case, like the Radar Stick (falls in the direction of the culprit), Clue Lens (shows clues of the mystery you're trying to solve) and the Detective Hat (gives the wearer a spark of inspiration that solves the case by flipping the rim of the hat). It's not nearly as much as a cheat as you'd think though, as like many of Doraemon's gadgets, they are err... somewhat behind on maintenance, so it's not like Nobita would be able to solve the case within the first five minutes of the movie (in fact, the set was featured in the manga in the past, where Doraemon explicitly said the gadgets were all broken). The whole movie is full of wonderful gadgets which don't exist in the real world though. The Anywhere Door, Big Lights (a flashlight that enlarges the thing it enlightens), Gulliver's Tunnel (shrinks the person who walks through the tunnel), they are of course all items don't exist in the real world.

Yet, the mystery plot of Nobita's Secret Gadget Museum is fair: like any good supernatural/fantasy/science-fiction mystery story, it might have an unrealistic setting with items and tools that don't exist (yet), they are properly introduced to the viewer and all explained, so they are used fairly in the mystery plot. In fact, that was the thing that surprised me the most about the movie: it does a great job at introducing all kinds of Chekhov's Guns and other hints in a completely natural manner in the first half of the movie, which all come back in regards to the mystery plot in the denouement. Nobita uses the Detective Hat to solve the case and guess who Phantom Thief DX really is, but the viewer is capable of doing that too without Nobita's handy gadget, as all the essential clues were shown on the screen to the viewer (who only has to remember how the fantastical secret gadgets can be used). So I'd say Nobita's Secret Gadget Museum is an entertaining example of how to do a proper science-fiction mystery story, even if it's clearly meant for children. There's even room to do some misdirection, and the first half does a good job at keeping things just mysterious enough to make sure the viewer won't be able to solve everything too soon.

The movie also has quite a number of Sherlock Holmes references by the way, and even opens with a sequence of Nobita dreaming about the Sherlock Holmes vs. Lupin movie he saw the night before. As a 'possibly-first-movie-for-kids-that-talks-about-Sherlock-Holmes', it's pretty decent, and there are some funny references here and there hidden that only fans will pick up, so you can tell the screenplay was written by someone who likes Holmes. As a Doraemon movie too, this is fun to watch. It focuses more on the friendship between Nobita and Doraemon compared to other movies in the series and even has a flashback scene to when Doraemon was first brought to Nobita by his great-great-grandson Sewashi.

Doraemon: Nobita's Secret Gadget Museum is on the whole an amusing Doraemon movie that features a simple, but properly presented mystery plot and is likely to amuse fans of Doraemon that also like mystery fiction. It's unlikely I'll be discussing Doraemon here on the blog any time soon again, but this one side trip with the robot cat was certainly no disappointment.

Original Japanese title(s): 『ドラえもん　のび太のひみつ道具博物館（ミュージアム）』 

The Adventure of The Silent Partner

I wanna be the very best 

Like no one ever was 

To catch them is my real test

To train them is my cause

Pokémon Theme (Jason Paige)

Sooo, was the biggest detective-themed Hollywood movie of this year for the west?

Tim Goodman is a young insurance agent who one day is informed his father, private detective Harry Goodman, passed away in a traffic incident. Tim had an estranged relationship with his father, but he travels to Ryme City to take care of the necessary formalities. Even in a world where Pokémon live, Ryme City can be called a unique metropolis. There are about 700 different species of Pokémon (Pocket Monsters), each with their own special powers and characteristics. People use them for a variety of activities, from pets to using them for Pokémon fights and having them help with work. In Ryme City however, humans and Pokémon live peacefully side-by-side and Pokémon trainer battles are even forbidden. An enormous surprise awaits Tim in Harry's apartment in Ryme City however: not only does he find his father's partner Pikachu (who was first presumed to have also died in the same accident) roaming around in the room, Tim can actually understand what this Pikachu is saying! The electric yellow mouse-type Pokémon is suffering from amnesia and can't remember much, but he tells Tim that he believes Harry is still alive out there, given that he survived the accident too. He is convinced the incident had to do with a case Harry was investigating, involving a mysterious gas container still left in Harry's office. Tim is the only human who can understand Pikachu, which makes Pikachu believe this is destiny and that they have to work together to find Harry. Tim is at first very reluctant to help Pikachu, but then they start uncovering a large conspiracy involving Pokémon experiments in the 2019 live-action movie Pokémon Detective Pikachu.

Given that Nintendo's famous Pokémon franchise is not 'just' a videogame series, but a worldwide cultural phenomenom that has lasted for some decades, I doubt I have to explain that much about Pokémon, and long-time readers of this blog will also be familiar with the title Detective Pikachu: it was a spin-off mystery adventure game released in 2018 for the Nintendo 3DS which I enjoyed a lot. The game may have been geared towards a younger audience, but it was fun, and actually did interesting things with combining the concept of Pokémon (creatures with unique powers) with puzzles and a mystery plot. The movie Pokémon Detective Pikachu, incidentally also the very first live-action movie based on the franchise, is based on this specific videogame, though you have to note that is not a 1:1 adaptation. The basic story of Tim and a wise-cracking Pikachu teaming up to uncover Harry's fate while investigating his last case is of course the same and there are scenes in the movie that will remind you of specific events/places of the game, but the game is quite a bit longer with far more locales/sub-storylines and in fact, the story of the videogame will continue in an upcoming sequel, while the movie is a standalone story that wraps up everything at the end.

For the mystery fans, I'd definitely recommend the game over the movie though. Pokémon Detective Pikachu is obviously aimed at a younger audience and it's fairly enjoyable as an adventure movie (though I still think photo-realistic CG Pokémon are creepy). Ryan Reynolds seems to have a blast voicing the supercute Pikachu and if anything, the interrogation scene with Mr. Mime (a mime Pokémon) is hilarious and a must-see. But as a mystery movie, it is quite lacking, especially considering the source material had plenty of great moments to offer. There' is barely any problem solving in this movie, no carefully thought-out clewing or meaningful foreshadowing. It's a buddy movie with a very straight path: Tim and Pikachu first find a clue in Harry's office, which leads them to location A, there they get a clue to location B, etc. And there's some really lazy fill-in-the-gaps moments where characters start to explain everything out of nowhere or the heroes stumble upon conveniently significant clues or locations, so the core mystery plot never feels rewarding, as there's never any proper build-up and clewing. One could just say, 'it's a kids movie', but so are the Detective Conan movies and most of them are proper mystery movies. And as I said, the source material (the Detective Pikachu videogame) does work as a mystery adventure game, despite being designed for kids too.

One element which made the Detective Pikachu game satisfying as a mystery game, was that it really incorporated the various Pokémon and their powers in the plot. The game was divided in chapters, in which Tim and Pikachu had to solve smaller mysteries/happenings during their investigation, for example 'accidents' that occured in a television studio or how to escape a blocked cave. Solving these smaller puzzle plots always involved the various species of Pokémon and their specific powers: sometimes you had to deduce which Pokémon was the 'culprit' by observing the clues and figuring out what kind of Pokémon would be able to do such a thing, sometimes you had to pick the right Pokémon to help you with a certain task, considering their special powers and characteristics. The game was also really intent on presenting a fair play mystery too, as it was always sure to inform the player in various ways what the characteristics of these Pokémon were beforehand, so even people new to Pokémon could enjoy the game. It resulted in unique situations, where you had 'crimes' committed by invisible characters etc., but which where still absolutely fair because each Pokémon and their powers are documented and well-presented in the game.

This element isn't really present in the movie, sadly to say. While Tim and Pikachu have plenty of screentime together, there's barely any mystery-solving that is truly dependent on Pokémon and their powers. Most Pokémon that appear are either just background characters, or have fallen victim to the experiments and gone berserk, attacking our heroes. There's one minor moment in the finale that actually has some good foreshadowing that involves Pokémon powers, but that is all: you don't get those moments from the game where Tim and Pikachu really sit down, consider all that has happened and manage to deduce how it was done and which Pokémon were used to accomplish certain tasks. Because of that, most Pokémon don't really even feel involved in the story of Pokémon Detective Pikachu: they're just there as props and hardly interact with other characters or the plot. Which is a real shame, for if there's one thing the Detective Pikachu game really did well, is portray a world where Pokémon and humans live together, and build a mystery plot on that.

Pokémon Detective Pikachu has its moments as a live-action Pokémon movie, even if it's never outstanding or going beyond (reserved) expectations. The quips and banter of Pikachu are fun to watch, and the story is not as bad as you'd first fear when hearing the words live-action and Pokémon together. It's just a shame that as a mystery movie, it basically ignores all the potential the original source videogame offered. Had it gone the effort to really integrate the fantastical of the various Pokémon species up to with a mystery plot or even smaller puzzles/problems in the story, I might have been able to recommend Pokémon Detective Pikachu as a mystery movie (for kids), similar to how the Detective Pikachu does work as a standalone mystery game, but as it is now, I can only see Pokémon Detective Pikachu as a Pokémon movie. Disney's Zootopia (2016) is similar in concept, but was more entertaining as a mystery movie too.

The Girl Who Wasn't There

"Virtue has its own reward, but no box office"

- Mae West

When in doubt, read a Crofts.

Inspector French series
Inspector French and the Starvel Tragedy (1927)
Inspector French and the Box Office Murders (1929)
The 12:30 from Croydon (1934)
Mystery on Southampton Water (1934)
The Loss of the Jane Vosper (1936)
Fatal Venture (1939)

Miss Thurza Darke had been advised by a mutual acquaintance to confide her strange tale to the police, but at first, Inspector French had no expectations of whatever the box office girl could tell him. That is of course, until she actually told him why she feared for her life. The young woman had been duped into a debt through a devious con scheme, and by the time she realized that her friend, another box office girl who had died some months earlier in a supposed suicide, had been swindled too by this same person, it was already too late. Her creditors now want Thurza to perform a certain, but yet unspecified action at her film theatre to repay her debt, but she is terribly afraid she'll eventually be killed, just like her friend in a way so the police will think it's a suicide. Inspector French tells Thurza to pretend she'll go along with the scheme, and that the police will stake-out their meeting tomorrow to nab the gang, but Thurza disappears the same day, and her body is found later drowned in, as she had feared, an apparent suicide. Realizing that the gang is far more dangerous than he had first suspected, Inspector French vowes to find the people who kiled Thurza in Freeman Wills Crofts' Inspector French and the Box Office Murders (1929).

If I had to describe Crofts' mystery novels with one single word, it'd be schemes. The criminals in Crofts' work like to plan, schedule, ploy, strategize and arrange. They don't do things haphazardly, they carefully define their goals, make lists of what has to be done, prepare for every single stage in the process and then execute their scheme. These schemes can be (barely) legal or illegal: Fatal Venture was about an ingenious business plan involving a cruise ship turning into a casino whenever it was in international waters, while The Loss of the Jane Vosper was about an insurance swindling scheme, and the inverted mystery novels The 12:30 from Croydon and Mystery on Southampton Water are about murder schemes, told from the viewpoint of a would-be murderer who carefully plans how they're going to kill their target. What these schemes all share, is the sheer attention to detail: every aspect, every single step of the plan has a purpose, whether it is of practical use for the scheme itself, or for protection, for example to delude the eyes of the public and the police. Crofts' novels are about first identifying the weak links in those schemes, which allows French to trace the individual steps in the plan, eventually revealing the complete image of the otherwise obscure plan. 

Inspector French and the Box Office Murders is a novel that does not stray from this focal point in Crofts' writing. Right from the start, this novel is basically only looking at the murky scheme involving the box office girls, with the actual murders of the box office girls playing second fiddle (at best), despite featuring in the title of the book! French's investigation is methodical, and the novel shows every single step in the police investigation. Order and method reigns here, as each action of French is a logical answer to whatever discovery or event preceeded it, which in turn is followed by a rational action. French's method is a mirror of the detailed crime scheme: he takes the time to consider each part of the flowchart, and then follows it to the next (or previous) process, taking care to understand why each action is taken by the schemers.

With the members of the gang already identified in the first chapter by Thurza's story, and the deaths of the box office girls basically confirmed as murder, the whole mystery of the book revolves around how the gang's plans involve the theatre box offices. To be honest, this part was rather easy to guess. Perhaps it was harder to guess back when this book was first published, but as soon as you hear the gang tries to involve box office girls, I'd guess that this would be one of the options to first cross your mind. Sure, Inspector French's investigation itself is fairly entertaining to follow, and the gang has laid a few traps here and there to trip French up, but ultimately, the scheme is far less... impressive than you'd hope it'd be. The road to the truth (French's investigation) is alright, but it's not something we haven't seen before in Crofts' work. Indeed, that's what makes this novel a bit underwhelming: Inspector French and the Box Office Murders does little that other Inspector French novels don't do, and what it does, is not bad per se, but certainly not remarakable compared to the other novels.

Inspector French and the Box Office Murders is thus a very typical Inspector French novel. It does everything you'd expect from such a novel, but does little beyond that and if you've read a few other Crofts before, you're sure to feel déjà vu. It does nothing really wrong, but Inspector French and the Box Office Murders is certainly not a work that stands out if compared to other novels in the series.

To Survive

"Space: The final frontier."

"Star Trek"

There are always many, many interesting-looking titles that I want to get to eventually, but which in the end never actually make it out of the wish list. Sometimes though, my interest in a title on the want-to-read list is reignited when I learn an adaptation is on the way, which prompts me to read the original work before the adaptation is released. This happened with Lord of the Rings for example, which I finally decided to read when the live-action films were almost released, even though I had been interested in them before. The same holds for today's title.

For I have been hearing for years about Shinohara Kenta's science-fiction manga Kanata no Astra, which also has the English title of Astra Lost In Space. This series by the creator of Sket Dance was originally serialized online on the Shonen Jump + (Plus) website/app between 2016-2017 and while initially it was touted as a science-fiction adventure series, I heard more and more mystery aficionados recommend Astra Lost In Space to other mystery fans as story developments unfolded, with people praising it as a rewarding mystery series too. Last year's excellent study into mystery manga, Honkaku Mystery Comics Seminar, too mentioned the title, so it had been on my radar for some time now. And by the time the anime adaptation started this summer, I figured it was really time for me to get started on this five-volume series. In the year 2063, space travel to other planets has become a viable means of transport, opening up the exploration of the universe. A group of students from Caird High School is sent to a nearby planet for Planet Camp: they are to live and work together on the planet McPa for a few days without the help of the adults. Almost immediately after the group arrives on the planet though, a mysterious sphere of light appears in front of them, swallowing the children. The next moment, they find themselves floating in the orbit of an unknown planet. The small boosters in their spacesuits turn out to be true life-savers, as they barely make it to an abandoned spaceship floating nearby.  When they check the ship's computers, they have the greatest shock of their life: they have been transported over 5000 light years from home! While the situation seems hopeless at first as the spaceship's communication systems are down, making it impossible to call back home for help, the group realizes there's still hope at returning home safely on their own. The students have to work and life together on board of the old vessel, now dubbed The Astra, as they depart on a three month journey back to their own home while visiting the few habitable planets with life and water on the route to replenish their own supplies. But small incidents on the dangerous trip also makes the Astra's new captain, Kanata, aware that their current predicament was no mere accident and that one of them may very well be a betrayer.

I didn't manage to finish reading the manga before the anime broadcast ended by the way, I only read the last volume a couple of hours after the last episode was broadcast in Japan...

Like Hogan's Inherit The Stars, this is a series that most would initially look at, and discuss as a science-fiction series (in Astra Lost in Space's case, an action-comedy science-fiction adventure), but which in hindsight can also be examined as a mystery story. Of course, I had the 'advantage' of knowing this in advance, as opposed to people who read this series with no prior knowledge, but once the series passes the halfway point, it becomes clear very quickly that this is also a mystery story. The first half however might make you think the focus is more on the space adventure. After the crew realizes they have a harsh three-month trip ahead of them, we slowly learn about the colorful characters together with the characters themselves, as most of them don't know each other either. The nine students have to learn to work together and trust each other, as they arrive at unknown planets to replenish their supplies (the ship can't store enough water/supplies to last for three months). Some are more willing to open up to their fellow students than others, but they all have interesting background stories, each posessing a specific set of skills which become useful as they explore the universe (Captain Kanata is for example extremely athletic, while Aries has photographic memory). The set-up reminds of titles like Hagio Moto's They Were Eleven! (about space cadets stuck on a broken spaceship which for some unknown reason, has one more crew member than should be) and the Danganronpa games, where students with extreme proficiency in specific fields are locked up together with other students they don't know in a closed environment, where they are forced to participate in a sadistic killing game and where they have to learn who they can trust and who not. This might make Astra Lost in Space sound like a dark story where everybody is suspicious of each other while cooped in claustrophobic circumstances, but the atmosphere of this series is actually quite lighthearted, as the crew members slowly become friends. There's plenty of room for comedy with the students fooling around and having fun with each other, and overall, the tone is really positive.

While the first half of the series is focused on introducing this cast to us and showing how they learn to work together as they try to survive, their early adventures on the various alien planets are actually already a good example of how Astra Lost in Space works as a mystery story. While some planets are almost like a paradise, other pitstop planets prove to be far more dangerous, with both 'obvious' treats as gigantic man-eating plants, but also other threats which only manifest when it's almost too late. Astra Lost in Space really shines in these moments, as these 'creeping' dangers on the various planets are always well-hinted and foreshadowed before they actually manifest themselves. On the second planet they encounter for example, the assumption that everything is as back home almost leads to fatal conclusions, but both the team, and the reader, could've foreseen the reveal, as Shinohara hinted at this threat in various ways from the moment the Astra landed on the planet. Shinohara does a great job at placing these Chekhov's Guns throughout the whole narrative, and then picking them up again as the storyline reaches its climax, showing you that that we all should've been prepared for that threat. We might not be reading about murders or impossible disappearances or any 'familiar' mystery tropes in Astra Lost in Space, but the execution is the same: proper hinting and foreshadowing that all make perfect sense when all is revealed to the reader.

From the fourth volume on, the story starts to focus more on the matter of why and how these students were thrown into space in the first place as the series works towards the conclusion. This is definitely a science-fiction story, involving a core mystery plot of a scale you will seldom see in any 'conventional' detective story (think Hogan's Inherit The Stars scale), but Shinohara makes it work, again, because his foreshadowing and clewing is really good. This is obviously a well-planned story, as Shinohara makes sure to prepare for the grand reveal through various little scenes he has cleverly spread across the whole narrative, and scenes that seem liked innocent filler turn to be extremely important. Whereas the Chekhov's Guns for the various planets are restricted to the chapters on the respective planet, the clues to the grand mystery of how and why these students were suddenly flung into the orbit of an unknown planet 5000 light years far from home are spread across the whole series, making it a cohesive and rewarding read. It's a mystery story that only works because it's a science-fiction story, but it's also a science-fiction story that really manages to impress because it's written as a tightly plotted mystery story. The motive for example could only work in a science-fiction story, but it's presented convincingly here, and the clewing is impeccable. Astra Lost in Space is a unique mystery tale in that sense, one that really manages to leave an impression.

I haven't seen the anime adaptation of Astra Lost in Space myself as I opted to read the original comic, but critical reception of that series seems to be quite favorable, so I guess one could also try that one out instead of the comic. But whatever the medium, I can definitely recommend Astra Lost in Space. Despite the relative short length for a Jump-branded title, it's  undoubtedly a genuine Shonen Jump story, with an emphasis on the universal Jump themes Friendship, Determination and Victory, but it's also an entertaining and excellently written science-fiction mystery story, with fun characters and a pleasant vibe. It's not your conventional murder mystery, or even anything you'd usually expect from a mystery story, but Astra Lost in Space goes a long way in showing how much fun the mystery genre can be in unconventional setting and a great example of how proper clewing and set-up can make a mystery story so much more satisfying.

Original Japanese title(s):  篠原健太 『彼方のアストラ』

Where There's a Will

That's one small step for [a] man

Neil Armstrong

Last year, I reviewed the not very memorable Moord in de Ridderzaal by Theo Joekes, a novel I had picked up in the town's free library, where you can exchange novels and books for free: you can simply leave a book you'd like someone else to read behind, and readers can take a book with them for free. Moord in de Ridderzaal by the way, was swiftly returned.

A loooooong while back (this review was pushed back a lot), I was scanning titles again in the free library, when my eyes fell on a familiar name. At least, the name of the author was familiar to me: the Dutch title of the book didn't immediately ring a bell. For I have read a couple of Christianna Brand novels already, and most of them were excellent mystery stories, though the Dutch title Het geheim van de voetstappen ("The Secret of the Footsteps") didn't sound familiar to me. A look inside however told me this was the Dutch translation of Suddenly At His Residence (1947), a book I had heard about, but hadn't read yet, so the book was promptly pulled out from the shelf. Sir Richard Marsh, an eccentric elderly man, has a family gathering at his stately manor Swanswater every year in memory of his late first wife Serafita, despite being his second wife still being alive and well. Due to the unfortunate deaths of his own children during the war, only his four grandchildren attend to this gathering (three grandchildren of Serafita, one of his second wife Bella). Peta (daughter of the oldest son) is the favorite of Richard, but he doesn't really understand her modern ways. Philip (son of second son) is married with Ellen and they have a child, but he has fallen in love with Claire (daughter of third son), and wishes to divorce Ellen. Edward (grandson of Bella) is neurotic and spoiled, and is prone to 'space out', though even he himself doesn't quite know whether he's playing the role, or actually neurotic. Richard has always felt a generational gap between him and his grandchildren, but when he learns of the affair of Philip and Claire, and how everyone thinks so lightly of everything, he decides to disown the grandchildren, leaving everything to his second wife Bella (and Edward). As always on Serafita's day, he retreats to her beloved garden house to spend the night there, and this year, he decides to use his time there to alter his will. The following morning however, the old man is discovered dead in the garden house, and not only has his new will disappeared, it also seems his death was foul play. Inspector Cockrill, as an old acquaintance of the family is asked to investigate the matter, and Cockrill, and the family members soon realize that the crux of the case revolves around the one path leading to the garden house (rose bushes block any other way): fresh sand had been laid on the path after Sir Richard had retreated in the garden house, but the only footprints left on the path were of the people who discovered the body, so when had the murderer visited the man?

I kinda like this cover art by the way, it's in a style you don't often see.

Anyway, Suddenly At His Residence is most definitely A Mystery Story By Brand. Well, I haven't read that much Christianna Brand to be completely honest, but if there's one thing that all the novels I have read have in common, it's that everyone in her novels is very eager to offer false solutions, reasonable hypotheses and well-considered suspicions on everyone else. Seriously, everyone in her novels will at one point or another accuse another character of having committed the deed, and it's never just an accusation, no, it's always an accusation that's quite plausible! Suddenly At His Residence basically has two seemingly impossible situations. The murder of Sir Richard is the main problem of course, and the numerous false solutions can be roughly split in two variations:  either the murderer went to the garden house before the fresh sand was laid on the path, or after. The latter variation is of course a familiar trope in mystery fiction, often recognized as the 'footsteps in the snow' trope. If the murderer did go after the sand had been laid, how did they enter and leave without leaving footsteps? On the other hand, it can also be assumed the murderer went before the sand was laid, but here we are still confronted with several impossibilities, as the people known to have gone to the garden house at that time were for example in company of other witnesses, or seen not to carry anything with them with which they could've commited the murder.

This split in two kinds of impossibilities is quite interesting, as it really keeps the reader on their toes, as they are being "forced" to choose between one of these paths (before or after), and even then, they still have to figure out how it was exactly done. And Brand makes sure to toy around with the reader, as she'll name quite a few possibilities the reader will also consider, but yeah, it's very likely you're on the wrong track if one of the characters already voices your ideas with the same reasoning with still more than seventy pages left. There is a second death later in the book, and while that is an impossible situation though, with no footsteps left in the dust, this one is easier to guess and not directly connected to the first murder in terms of method (they are two distinctly different situations).

When I finally arrived at the part where the solution to Sir Richard's death is explained however, I realized I had already heard of this solution before. Mind you, I didn't realize this until after it had been revealed, and I hadn't even thought of this solution myself while I was reading the novel, so it didn't really influence my reading experience, but I believe it's one that's reasonably famous for this type of problem. The solution works well here, even if the clewing is a bit sparse, though I did have the feeling it felt a bit arbitrary due to all the false solutions preceding the final solution. That is to say, the previous false solutions were all discarded for several reasons, but never did you really feel a connection between those false solutions. They were just treated as false, but crossing them off your list didn't mean it'd get you closer to the final solution. Earlier this year, I read Mitsuda Shinzou's Mizuchi no Gotoki Shizumu Mono, which had a lot of false solutions too, but there the false solutions were all actually necessary steps, as elements from each false solution would prove to be important to mark the road to the true solution. In comparison, all the false solutions in Suddenly At His Residence felt as discrete instances, with no real consequences to the final solution. It's a completely different approach to the false solutions device, but at the end of Suddenly At His Residence, you feel like the novel could also have ended in the first few pages had Cockrill simply stumbled upon that solution first, as the other hypotheses had nothing to do with the real solution anyway.

Not that I think Suddenly At His Residence is a bad mystery novel though. Quite the contrary, it's a very amusing, and deep mystery novel that isn't afraid to be a real detective story, focusing on logical reasoning by offering so many plausible solutions to the problem, but still whipping up a surprise at the end, and a good example of how a Brand-brand mystery novel overall. And I am grateful that someone actually left a copy of the book in the free library. But the book did get me thinking about what I like about false solutions in mystery novels and what their function should be, and in that sense, I do have to say Suddenly At His Residence is, well, not disappointing perhaps, but I did make me long for a Brand where the false solution device is used in a more constructive way for her mystery plots. And to end this story: this book was returned to the free library, so someone else may also enjoy Brand!

A Murder of Ravens

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.

"The Raven" (Edgar Allan Poe)

In Japan, the term funiki gee (lit: "atmospheric game") is used to describe games that may not be impressive from a gameplay point of view per se, but which present the player with a unique, enjoyable atmosphere that manages to pull in the player. Usually, it's a mixture of the art, the music and the underlying world that helps create this ambiance, providing a whole package that is at least enjoyable due to how the game feels despite minor or more major flaws regarding how the game actually plays.

Funiki gee is the word I had in my mind as I played the mystery point & click adventure game The Raven Remastered (2019, PC, Switch, PS4, Xbox One), a remastered version of 2013's The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief. I played the original release back in 2013 (when it was released in three distinct episodes instead of one package), but had forgotten most of the details of the story, I realized as I revisited the remastered version. I did remember that this was truly a funiki game: it had an excellent atmosphere and feel, even if as a game, and even as a mystery story, it had it share of flaws. What most people will think of when they first start playing this game is one name: Agatha Christie. Christie was undeniably an enormous influence on this game, and everything feels like it could've been featured in a Christie novel. Even the opening setting is familiar: the Orient Express. This game is set in 1964, five years after Inspector Legrand shot and caught the legendary thief The Raven. But now five years later, a new thief rears its beak: the "Heir of the Raven", as people are wont to call the newcomer, has succeeded in stealing one of the two "Eyes of the Sphinx" jewels from a museum in London, though with much more violence than the old Raven ever used. The remaining Eye is now being transported to Cairo for an exhibition. The great Inspector Legrand is to accompany the Eye to its destination to protect it from further attempts of theft and he even suspects that he's not dealing with the "Heir", but the real Raven, and that the man he caught five years ago was not the real Raven. The Eye is to travel by the Orient Express to Venice, where it will be shipped further to Cairo. In Switzerland, the elderly police constable Anton Zellner is put on the Express to assist Legrand, despite the inspector's reservations about what help the old man could possibly offer. Zellner, seeing this as his last opportunity to show off what he's capable off, however proves himself to be a very capable police detective when the Raven sets off a bomb on the train, which convinces Zellner to stick around to protect the jewel until it's safely exhibited in Cairo.

A story set on the Orient Express, aboard a steamer making a voyage across the Mediterranean Sea and inside a museum for Egyptian art, with an international, always somewhat suspicious cast including a Jewish baroness, a jetsetting American heir, a travelling German medical doctor and famous British writer and her companion: yep, this feels a lot like a Christie story. In fact, one of the characters in the game, Lady Clarissa Westmacott, is a famous writer of mystery stories starring a certain Partout and has a personal interest in Archaeology: the name and background of this character sound rather familiar to people who know Agatha Christie. The primary protagonist Anton Zellner too reminds of old Poirot, with his constable roots and a moustache. The Raven Remastered oozes atmosphere, and is sure to entertain people who like British Golden Age detective fiction. 

Like I said, when one uses the term 'atmospheric game', it's usually meant as a word to praise the game despite minor or major flaws and while I did have fun with my second playthrough, The Raven Remastered also reminded me that as a mystery game, it has little in common with Christie's writing. It's not horrible, mind you, but it's definitely not a cleverly, but fairly-clewed mystery tale, and there is a distinct gap between the mystery story and the tasks you have to perform as a player. It's this disjoint that makes The Raven Remastered a game that is not nearly as clever as the atmosphere is good. Gameplay consists mostly of inventory puzzles, and going through key dialogues by talking with all the characters. For example, very early on in the game a traveler in the Orient Express is locked outside his compartment and asks Zellner for some help. You then control Zellner, speaking with people on the train and looking for tools to use and eventually you find a way to pry open the door. Classic point & click adventure formula. However, all these inventory puzzles and the like are not integrally related to the story itself. The core mystery of who the Raven is and what they are going to do are not addressed directly in these puzzles, they just stand in the way of actually investigating what is going on. And that's often the case with mystery point & click adventure games: the puzzles themselves do not ask of you to think of the main mystery, in fact they distract from what should be the main mystery. You're constantly doing small menial tasks (collecting inventory items so you fix a door or something like that) just to be able to finally proceed with the mystery story. 

And that's very dissatisfying: what you want is that each puzzle you solve, does bring you closer to the truth, like in the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney games, where you solve mini-puzzles (finding a contradiction in a testimony) one after another, and each solved contradiction will lead you closer to unraveling the whole mystery. The disjoint between what you want to do in The Raven Remastered (investigate who the Raven is) and what you are mostly doing (collecting items here and there to solve an artificial block in the way in solving the mystery) is somewhat frustrating. It's only part in the middle section where you truly feel like you're working on an investigation, as you actually collect pieces of evidence in a murder case that occurs on a boat and have to analyze them. Which incidentally is a locked room murder, but not a particularly original, or inspiring one. But this is just a small part, and most of the time you feel like you're busy solving puzzles that aren't related to the main story directly.

As for the mystery plot itself... it's not Christie by any means. The story was originally released back in 2013 in three installments, with one or two months between each release. When I first played it, I figured some of the problems I had with the story simply derived from the fact there were a few months between each episode and I had probably forgotten the details in the gap between the releases, but now I have played it in one go, I see The Raven Remastered is simply somewhat flawed in terms of the overall story. Some minor plotlines seem to be forgotten or ignored as you move from one episode to another, some characters that serve as red herrings barely have something to say and then suddenly disappear. I think the worst part is when at a certain point, you are suddenly threatened by the Raven and you have to guess who the person with the gun behind you is: when I first played this game, I really don't know, but even this second playthrough, knowing fully well who The Raven was, I'd still say the game showed next to no hints that set-up this reveal. You just have to guess who the Raven is, not based on any hints or clues shown in the narrative up to that point (and no, "he or she acted suspicious" is not a clue). It's here where that disjoint in solving minor inventory puzzles, and solving the mystery really feels largest: all the time you're busy finding ways to open doors or distracting someone or things like that, but when the game actually needs you to think and solve a plot-related mystery, it decides to forget about proper set-up. Opening doors and finding tools and other objects brought you not one step closer in the deductive process of solving the underlying mystery.

What is interesting to the game is that The Raven Remastered changes its protagonist half-way through: after going through the adventure with old Zellner, the narrative jumps back to tell the story from the beginning again, but from the point of view of another character. Some parts that seemed vague or unsolved in Zellner's part of the story are explained here, and that's pretty funny and interesting. In theory, showing the same events from two distinct POV can lead to an interesting mystery story, but there are still parts that feel somewhat undeveloped in general, even if this mult-layered style of storytelling is fun. But again, it'd have been more fun if you could already actually deduce what had happened in Zellner's part based on actual hinting and clewing, and that the game would then show you you were right as you played through the second half from the other point of view. This sadly is not really done well here.

So my second playthrough of The Raven Remastered doesn't differ much from how I experienced the original The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief back in 2013. In terms of atmosphere, it's quite enjoyable: the setting, the characters and the music all invoke a distinct ambiance that reminds of Christie's work. It actually feels more Christie than a lot of other games that are actually officially licensed Agatha Christie game adaptations. But most of the tasks you as the player have to perform, are not directly related to the main mystery plot, and in fact, the game gives you very little space to truly think over the (fairly disappointing) clues yourself. If you really want to feel like a detective yourself, this might not be the game for you, but as a game to enjoy a mystery tale, and allows you to focus on smaller tasks at hand as you go through the story, The Raven Remastered is an okay game.