Nothing is impossible - Kubikiri Cycle

 

"Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later."
- Og Mandino


Kubikiri Cycle: Aoiro Savant to Zaregototsukai is an 8-episode OVA adaptation of a light novel series called Zaregoto Series, written by Nisio Isin who happens to be famous for his Monogatari series, and as Kubikiri Cycle is also animated by the same studio, Shaft, which is a known group of people for their consistently high quality frames and fluid animation in their Monogatari series's projects.
This post will be rather long as the series is short, it's one of those series that can be gone in depth into without it feeling like I'm doing too much. Sometimes it's good to take time to analyze .

The story begins with two people, a young boy and a woman, sitting beside each other in some kind of metaworld, pondering questions about what matters really in the world and to a oneself.

The setting of the story takes place in Raven's Feather Island where the Akagami family residence resides in. The mansion along with the entire island is owned by a person named Akagami Iria, a person who reeks of "magical girl" with how she dresses and acts (but not too much for anyone to feel the same as I) who happens to be the granddaughter of the head of a succesful Akagami business company but who was banished from the family for some reason and got the island for herself as a place of exile where she's forbidden to ever leave from.

 "First floor - Storage room (my room)" yes, that's where our nameless main protagonist resides in, in the mansion where a silver-haired maid, the head maid Handa Rei, walks along the spiral staircase of the mansion with white flowers in her hand. In the mansion three maids that work under Handa Rei, a family of three women, the middle sister, darkish green-haired Chiga Hikari, a brown-haired oldest sister Chiga Akari as well as the youngest sister, the dark-haired Chiga Teruko, also work in the residence as maids. Our main protagonist considers himself as an accessory to the mansion owners, and accessories don't have names. He's however always called Li-chan by Kunakisa Tomo. He's quickly shown to be an extremely fast thinker capable of reading ahead to the end-point of Sonoyama Akane's shadowgame of shogi.

The soundtrack for the anime is pretty decent. It's fitting but nothing stand-out. The opening looks nice, with the introductory names for the characters being visible (as is with the name boxes you can see in other manga series; boxes that introduce the names and sometimes the ages and occupation of the character that is shown), but the song itself is mediocre. The ending song is nice. The best part of the series however is the presentation of the frames. The world of the crime scene feels sort of abstract - not realistic at all, characters make serious faces which bend to the back in Shaft's style familiar from Monogatari-series, as they talk about abstract things without much purpose, which seems kind of popular to do in light novels these days - anyways, it's a way of presentation which is off the walls hit-and-miss for me personally not really focusing on anything important at times. Murder mystery series should have good presentation if it makes the watcher feel emotions. Also I'm a firm believer that the genre is more often than not more suited to being about substance over style - as in, that would be necessary for a decent case - a self-contained story with a fitting pacing. Style is more filler for these types of series I feel. I just don't feel more into it even though it has such a different style and way of presenting simplest of things; there's probably not enough punch in how these stylistic changes flow. Music does not change with the frames, frams jump left and right and center along with computer generated effects and plenty of different colors etc without it taking its time to set up a certain mood within that one frame. I can tell the mood that's going on during the events, but I don't think the stylistic effects and effort from the animators enhance the series at all.

The characters of Kubikiri Cycle are very quirky but I feel as if they are lacking in personality.
Genius engineer Kunakisa Tomo, a light blue haired young girl who doesn't like to take showers. She's a long-time "friend" of our main character whom she calls Li-chan. Her real purpose on the island is to find more out about a past case. Capable of quickly upgrading computers two generations ahead. She's a person who claimed to be hard to speak to as she rarely listens. Our main character's known her for about five years.

The Genius cook Sashinori Yayoi who likes to cook in the kitchen, but as she's a Genius visitor, she's not a servant. It's said that she can make any dish taste better than anyone else who's alive is capable of making. Her taste and smell are superior to other people's as she's capable of telling a person's blood type from licking their skin - through the sweat. She claims that she's able to tell between 200 000 different tastes at 12 levels of intensity and her nose most likely tell the smell from half of that.

Sonoyama Akane, presented just as a "Genius - One of the Seven Fools" who likes to shadow play shogi, she's a person who tends to use the wrong words and has to be corrected often. She hates painters in general - and has that against Ibuki Kanami who happens to be a painter.

Himena Maki. A genius diviner with greenish-yellow hair. Her customers are important people. She's called a psychic who knows and sees everything, she's supposedly even capable of reading people's minds - but she's not capable of doing that to "incompatible people." Our main character considers her creepy. She hates our main character for being a person that lets other people's opinions affect how he thinks.

Ibuki Kanami a genius painter girl who likes short-lived things and was born with a defect in her legs and so, has to use a wheelchair to move around, and she was supposedly also blind until couple years before the story begins. She claims that she commits everything to her memory before painting it, and she paints everything when she's alone. So if she paints a person - she will memorize the person and then paint later when she's alone.

As well as Ibuki Kanami's attendant Sakaki Shin'ya and mr. Aikawa, a genius whom gets called to the island in later episodes.

The Seven Fools - geniuses among geniuses that are claimed to be able to "solve the world." (as in mysteries of the world and existence of the universe probably?)

The idea of the series - a rather generic and average murder mystery sortofinnercirclecase etc. (you've surely seen it a million times in golden age detective fiction) with somewhat forced motives for everyone's reasoning to stay at the Raven's Feather Island - is not episodic despite its OVA nature of animation. The pacing of the story is rather slow for the amount of information that we're shared as the animators put their focus on showing different perspectives of the same thing many times. But keep in mind that it is an adaptation, not the source material.

Every episode starts with a random quote from whoever.

The first episode of the eight focuses on setting up the island and it's current inhabitants as well as the people called the Geniuses who have been called there as visitors. They all used to be a part of a project for geniuses called the ER3 System, our "accessory" main character Li-chan included (though he dropped from the project before completing it). It's the third day of "Li-chan's" stay at the island. We get couple of hints about hostility between some of the people and the episode is quickly over. The presentation is very interesting but it does not try to show or flesh out how the mansion and the island look and how they're supposed to work. We just get mentions of "who" and "which floor this person's room resides in" without any sense of direction in the building. There's a lack of foreshadowing that should be set up in the very beginning just having a "suspicious building and setting" is not enough sadly.

The second episode starts off with the rules set to the visitors by the owner of the manor Akagami Iria - People are free to do what they want mostly, but everyone absolutely has to attend the supper together in the first floow's dining hall. We're set up a clockwise showcase for how the every person around the table has gathered. As with clock's hours - 12 people sit on the table. "The twelve on the island." As Kunagisa is about to leave in four more days, Iria tells that she's decided the next genius who will be called to visit named Aikawa. Iria claims that she considers "Aikawa" her hero. There's some conflict between the diviner Maki and our MC "Li" and between the painter Kanami and Akane (the person who likes shogi) but it's mostly fluff dialogue that you'd wonder why they get so agitated about it. As the day turns to night the second half of the episode picks up the interest a bit when an earthquake hits. The entire situation seems pretty generic and a bit cliche however - people talk about their mysterious purpose in being in the island but before they can answer, an earthquake happens. The fourth day begins at the end as the episode ends with a cliffhanger-ish moment that's shown quickly; naturally, the first death of the series.

The third episode. Li's (the MC) and  4th day on the island, and everyone on it has gathered around a crime scene with paint on the ground. Despite the earthquake a day before, the paint is still dry. Despite all these geniuses in the room, our MC (who's supposed to be sort of a genius himself) is the one that goes to the body. Afterwards everyone gathers at the dining hall around the table. There's a mention of a "yet another death" and we check out everyone's alibis before and after the earthquake when the painter Kanami was still supposedly alive. There is no mention of police, only theories of the time of death despite it happening in the modern age. It makes the case feel rather artificial as people don't act naturally - it does feel a bit forced. A set up necessary to make logical and sound theories about what could have happened; there's still the bare minimum but the author Nisio Isin is clearly not that experienced with the genre to write it expertly enough.

The setting of the case is this: Kanami is dead and her head is missing for reasons unknown. The time of death is assumed to have happened either before or after the earthquake that happened in the evening on our MC's 3rd day on Raven's Feather Island; Kanami's attendant Sakaki Shin'ya had called Kanami after the earthquake, telling that she's okay but the paint had fallen which makes our characters theorize the time of death despite it being set in the era of internet, and there's an artificial set up for why they won't call the police which honestly makes no sense, it doesn't matter to the others what kind of history Iria has.  Since there's a pool of paint around between the door and the victim, so much of it that it seems very hard to jump past, as well as the fact that Kanami's room is on the 2nd floor where it is very hard to get to along with its windows being locked, the case becomes a locked room case as no one could have reached her. The characters focus on the fact that the head is beheaded making it so that you'd usually change places with another corpse to make it seem as if the places are changed but it does not seem likely due to there being 11 left of the 12 at the dining table. The lack of realistic portrayal of how things could possibly have been done is not theorized; the way of the beheading is not just something that can be done just like that, despite that, it's simply just excused. The killer is no Dexter there would be should be plenty of clues, flow of blood splatters and such, to investigate.

As we don't come any closer to figuring out the answers to the time of death, Li comes up with a plan with the lightblue haired Tomo where they lock the prime suspect of this case, Akane whom hates painters, into a room that can't be escaped from the inside to avoid more potential murders. But the owner of the island will not allow the inference of the police and the geniuses on the island have to solve the case themselves. The arriving Aikawa, whom is heavily praised by the owner of the island Akagami Iria to have an unparalled mind capable of solving any case in the blink of an eye, arrives in six days on the 10th day and is going to put the case into rest. The characters bury the victim without telling the police, conducting in illegal activity of handling a corpse.

The fourth episode explains that Kunakisa Tomo and our MC, the narrator Li, are conducting in more illegal activity, prying intel on the people who are on the island - whatever connections they have together. As well as talking about the illegal activity of why Iria won't allow the police on the island - she claims that she doesn't believe geniuses are equal to other people -  that they are superior beings that shouldn't be soiled with being in contact with the police. Two of the three maids, Akari and Teruko, have left the island in search to contact the notoriously-hard-to-contact extragenius Aikawa-san. There's a mysterious mistake on the painting of our MC created by the victim Kanami that shouldn't be there for a painter of such high talent. We learn that the current suspect Akane is for reasons unknown ready to get killed at any time at her own free will. The second half of the episode focuses on the MC's conflicting thoughts about Tomo and feels mostly filler that has nothing to do with the case.


The fifth episode. The start of the fifth day on the island for our protagonists. One of the three maids, Chiga Akari comes to our MC and screams that something has happened and to come to the first floor storeroom where Akane was held in. Another locked room case has taken place in the same household. Yet another headless corpse, with the head missing somewhere. There's a locked door with no entry and an opened window that can only be opened from inside of the house with a switch, a window which is too far high up. Everyone's alibis are focused on and they, in the classic way, talk about how being alone was too dangerous and it would be much better to move in teams.

 Team A is the current suspect who had the key to the storage room, maid Hikari, Tsunagisa and our
MC.

Team B forms from the maids Rei, Akari, Teruko and the boss Iria.

Team C is the group of Maki, Shinya and Yayoi.


As the groups have been set up, team A has things to do. As they arrive back in Kunagisa's room, they find her computers all destroyed by the culprit whom most likely wanted to avoid them seeing what was in the photographs that Kunagisa had taken after the first case, photos she had moved to her computer's drive files. I guess she doesn't have an online cloud app on those computers despite their advanced technology. The mystery is: since the computers were fine when team A woke up, and they were the last ones to arrive in the dining room, none of the 10 there could have destroyed the computers. The group check out the window of the storage room from the inside which is open - and despite being so high up in the inside, it's very low on the mountain side outside, however it doesn't seem likely that the culprit could have done anything through the window with the victim Akane on supposedly guard.

The sixth episode begins with showcasing both of the crime scenes without narration. Our MC goes to team B's room alone. One of the maids Teruko whom likes to play around explain that ms.Iria is on the island because she's a criminal supposedly with wounds on her wrist despite not having any when Li saw Iria almost naked before, putting clothes on.  She's a person with an Abusive Behaviour System, D.L.L.R. syndrome. Iria had a twin sister named Odette whom she had supposedly killed. Our MC mentions what was wrong with the paint of himself - his watch was being fixed when he was with the painter Kanami and in that painting it was there. A weird mistake. There's theorising that Iria might be the culprit or the person who ordered the murders. At this point our protagonists claim that they have all the clues and have practically solved the case, and it's time for a counterattack.

The seventh episode starts with narration of some meaningless woo abstract stuff about how people can reach deep ends.. Or something. It's one of those series similar to Subete ga F ni Naru which constantly uses random talk about meaning of existence or such to try to sound deep, but it has no point in this story and case. The genius chef Yayoi acts shocked and calls everyone crazy. The sad part of this is that it's nothing but acting as later confirmed, it's sad because it seemed like the first realistic reaction that should have happened a long time ago.

The plan is set into motion to catch the killer. There's a very nice action sequence in a dark room between one of the maids, Teruko, and the a certain woman, and the maid gets shot but the shot apparently misses.  Narration about how the main character won't care if he dies. There's one cringy moment in the moment with both of the MC's. We get an important moment for the case; the realisation of two culprits. Which makes sense considering that the computers couldn't have been destroyed by one. The logical cluing for why a person is a culprit; has to do with a stretcher and a sleeping bag. In this part you could have added mud as a clue. One of the two reasons why the body was beheaded uses rigor mortis as a way to escape a locked room in a way that was planned from the beginning with the first murder, the proble arises from the fact that there was no reason for the events to reach that point that perfectly, I doubt that "trick" even works that well despite it being simple. It's an unnecessary addition, you could have literally had the accomplice help the killer out the window. Nothing stopped that from happening. The culprit claims that they had no real motives but ofcourse there will be something hidden there. There was not much going on in the second to last episode all things considered.

Episode eight, the final episode, in which the presentation is very well done atleast, gives me a comfy feel, anyway; a glimpse of a cruiser. Our protagonists travel there as they are leaving the island. The reason why Ilia doesn't have those supposed scars in her arms was revealed. Spoilers Ilia was a fake and the head maid was the real Ilia. She didn't allow them to call police to the crime scenes because it would be no fun at all. Afterwards our MC walks around a library narrating about what's happening with the others. The culprit and the accomplice never got caught because they never called the cops, letting the murders stay as unknown mystery. The long talked about Aikawa Jun makes an appearance with his/her weird car, driving off a cliff onto a boat etc. A weird red-haired person. Aikawa tells that there are a number of things that may not fit. Why would the culprits kill off a person close to them? Motives unknown need explanations that were not given earlier. We go back to the painting - why does it have a watch when he wasn't wearing one at that point? Aikawa claims that he has solved it all. That Kanami did not paint that painting. A fake painter. There's nothing mysterious about this, I had also figured it out in the first episodes. When you don't see someone do what they claim to be able to do, it's likely a trick. Aikawa goes to explain that Kanami became Akane just for kicks before they even arrived on the island and then one had to die for the other to completely become the other.

Aikawa's "truth" behind the case - the motive of murder being only about taking one's identity seems pretty impossible in this current day and age, in which this series has been written to take place in. No one will come look for the murdered person for sure and know this other one is not her? The victim, supposedly Akane and not the real painter Kanami, was said to have born with defects in her legs... The "fake" supposedly used a wheelchair just because, with no real meaning behind it. Not to mention she was said to have been blind before as well. Apparently these don't actually mean anything. If anything I would call these clear plot holes...


The series picks up with the a addition of a few more mysteries to deal with at the same time for atleast something tangible to focus on unlike in Subete ga F ni Naru, and the mysteries definitely are better and more clever than in the first 4 episodes, because that's really hard not to do, but I feel like the tying ups of the loose ends are less than ideal. I can say I did not want there to be two culprits before the second murder happened - thought the author would come up with something more clever for some reason. The 'truth' explained by Aikawa as an infodump instead of it flowing naturally in the story clearly tries to excuse all the foreshadowing and contradictions just to arrive at a set conclusion. There's no sound logic there. The idea of the culprits having a True motive beyond killing is neat, but this one, in reality, is stupid. They knew they just would not call the cops, get investigated and ever caught... Swapping identities without any actual motive... Just an idea the author threw there and didn't bother with making it any more coherent than that, clearly, similar to the unrealistic actions of the characters. Also we got nothing expanded on the reason our protagonists arrived on the island, which is a past case; the murder of Ilia's twin sister. It was never explained in depth by them really despite it being a motive for going there... Hmph.

 A last side rant:
Different styles of presentation alone can make a series readable and watchable - naturally because they would be "fresh" - something "new" to the follower, which is what I hoped this to be like to me, but the funny part here was that it did not enhance the downright mediocre and cliche plotting of story in the slightest. And make no mistake there are many series where I really do like these sort of inner circle cases in an area where the police can't reach due to the world and situations sealing the "world" off - but those series are well written with strong motivations, meaning behind every action - great synergy of the events, atleast a decent cast of characters, decent plotting with an expansive story and so on. The moment they did not allow to call the cops and did shit like hide the corpse - and touch it, destroying the crime scene along with bunch of different problems surrounding the situation from the murder weapon - the possibility of this even happening, the lack of obvious evidence like blood splatters, etc.

We have characters without much of a personality, alot of unnatural/unrealistic acting - a lack of realism considering the genre it's tackling, a pretty damn bad pacing of half of an episode of absolutely irrelevant-to-the-case narration, and the obvious lack of experience this author has with the genre - a true recipe for disaster and a most mediocre case so shallow and badly paced that shouldn't even fit the criteria to be counted as murder mystery. Now I'll head back to finishing some Chandler that I intentionally left unfinished to complete right after this one. Too bad out of those 200 000 tastes the chef can differentiate from, none of them seemed to have been of good taste. Haha. Ha... I'm tired. This series was tiring because I just did not manage to get enjoyment from it. I got more tired the less brains I had to use for this. This took longer than I thought it would I guess... They should have expanded on those backstories, that one case from the past, with all that free time this series had.