The story follows a boy named Kyu Renjo. Kyu and certain other wannabe detective students aim to join the Dan Detective School which was founded by a man named Dan Morihiko, a legendary detective who in his active days was the only detective in Japan that was allowed to carry a gun and is now aiming to retire and find a successor to himself. All the graduate detectives from the Dan Detective School become elite detectives that actively work globally and even the students who by chance manage to join the school are respected by the police. The students of DDS are sometimes even called to solve major murder cases!
But of course there's a problem to joining this type of school: every single year more than a thousand people attempt to take the entrance exam and only handful are chosen. But there's more, the DDS has a "Special Class" which is going to be nigh impossible to get to as Dan Morihiko himself personally is going to choose the members for this year's DDS's Special Class.
The exam to get into the Dan Detective School is quite interesting. In a hall with countless people we get to see a crime scene on the big screen. The scene that is showed for the exam was taken from an actual homicide case, but the photo taken was the only clue that was left behind as the victim took the photo with his last remaining strengths right after the culprit left. In the photo we see tissues and a cigar jar on the floor, an open door to the woods, and there's also a backpack on the ready.
The explanation for the DDS exam case on the photo is as follows:
The crime took place near K Lake in the S District, in a one-room cottage on a resort.
There is another photograph showing the scene when the police arrive. Everything else seems normal except the cigar jar and tissues are on the table this time.
The victim was a cameraman named Fushimi Kenzoushi (28). Mr. Kenzoushi held a first degree judo belt, was 170 cm tall and weighed 72 kilos.
In the clear weather following heavy rains, he came to the plateau resort to take pictures in -10 celsius and below temperatures.
On January nineteenth at 2:30 PM he was reported to have checked in. His body was found on the bed the next day, the 20th, at about 11:15 AM.
The cause of dead was being stabbed with a sharp weapon at around 1:00 AM. It was predicted that after the attack Mr. Kenzoushi lived for 10-20 minutes and then the picture was taken.
Six people (staff of DDS) arrive on the stage while emulating the six suspects in the case. All 6 of them were staying at a hotel by the lake, two kilometers away from the crime scene. All suspects had a motive at the time, and none had an alibi.
The hotel at where the six were staying had a public phone, and the police found evidence that there was a call to the victim's cottage.
After questioning, the suspects were taken into custody for further investigation.
All six of the suspects had injuries on their eye, arm or ankle. They all claimed that the injuries occurred in accidents before the murder.
Suspect one is left handed with a cigar.
Suspect two has an injured right arm.
Suspect three's left ankle is hurt.
Suspect four looks like he's in high school and has an injured eye.
Suspect five doesn't really stand out; he's short and fat.
Suspect six is an old man with a walking stick so he couldn't possibly kill a man who knows judo?
Just from that information on the case our main character knows who the culprit is.
The rules for clearing the exam are interesting as the participants have to follow the suspect they think did it. The place where the suspect is is where the 2nd part of the exam takes place. The answer to the mystery does make sense but there are other possibilities you'd come up with.
The Cast of Characters
Right off the bat we learn that the main character, the third-year middle school student Kyu was saved and taught by a skilled "detective" in his like elementary school days which was when he started to get this superhuman perception. The writing style of Tantei Gakuen Q is the most shounen out of any other true soft boiled detective fiction manga and anime series out there, mostly the reason for that is the magazine in which the series was printed in. It was a rather long-running series on WSJ which is known to mostly publish manga that strictly follow certain writing styles. There are a lot of shounen tropes in this series that are still somehow made to fit a realistic setting. The series wouldn't be as rich as it is if the cast of characters weren't written the way they are.
One other thing I gotta mention is that in series like Detective Conan and Kindaichi Case Files, there are no characters with pink/green/blue/red etc. unnatural colored hair. In Tantei Gakuen Q there however are so you can immediately tell that it has aspects to it that aren't meant to be completely realistic. Furthermore the characters have quirks to them that are amplified from how other series present certain talents.
The other cast of characters also have different quirks to them to fit the squad of detectives but still stand out. For example at the beginning of the story Kyu gets help from a pink-haired girl named Minami Megumi who has a photographic memory; an ability to remember anything she hears or sees even if it is just for an instant.
There's also Kinta, full name Tooyama Kintarou, a tall boy with luck on his side. He's basically like Nagito from Danganronpa 2 in that he trusts in his luck. But what's more Kinta also has insanely good eyesight; he can see far away clearly, and he's insanely strong (I guess) as he's able to throw Megumi like nothing several meters to the air.
The DDS Special Class also has Narusawa Kazuma, a fifth grade elementary school student who's put out bunch of hit games. He's also known as the Genius Programmer, as well as Amakusa Ryu who is the character that most of the story revolves around.
The idea behind Detective Academy Q is that a group of students join the Q-Class (Qualified Class) which is taught by Dan Morihiko himself. Morihiko is a ripple ex-detective now full-time on wheelchair. He aims to pick the Q-Class and teach them everything they need to know as perfect detectives.
The First Case
Chapter 4 begins the first real case of the series. It's a story where participants go to an old government-own manor in Kirisaki Island to solve a cold case. In 1888 the serial killer Jack the Ripper appeared in a town called East End in England to wreak havoc. Jack the Ripper wore a bowler hat and a long coat and he gave his nickname to himself. His method of killing was tearing his victims to pieces with a large knife. What's more he became known for sending letters to police detailing his crimes in order to ridicule them. The case of Jack the Ripper was left unsolved.
However the story continues as 50 years ago right on Kirisaki Island a similar case happened in which the victim was cut in half. That case happened during World War, and the killer also called himself Jack the Ripper. After killing three victims this second Jack the Ripper disappeared without a trace from behind two locked doors.
The final exam of the Dan Detective School Q-Class entrance exams is to solve the Jack the Ripper case that occurred on the island 50 years prior. No one has solved the case so the teachers don't even know the answer themselves. The investigation into the puzzle of the dual locked room case shall now commence!
The JtR case has intriguing background to it. During the war, Japan's military held British prisoners of war in the prison on the Kirisaki Island. However, as the end of the war drew near, the fights grew worse. The guards abandoned their duty and fled the island with the prisoners.
All that was left were ten people who were left behind because there weren't enough boats. The ten prisoners waited for a ship to come back for them as they shared what little food they had and tried to keep their spirits up. But as the days passed, the remaining people soon lost hope and started fighting with each other in fear of starving to death.
However, then one of them found a boat. It was a wreck, but it was possible to repair it. They regained hope, however, as soon as they fixed the boats they realized a horrible truth; there were ten prisoners but only seven could fit the boat. Three had to be left behind.
As a cold tension ran between the prisoners, a certain event happened. When one of the prisoners went to wake another missing prisoner up for breakfast, they found the corpse of a mutilated prisoner cut in half from waist. Next to the corpse, written in blood, was the name "Jack the Ripper" on the wall. But the case did not end there; the next day one more person was killed the same way, brutally. The prisoners were terrified of the phantom killer, but one of them said... "If one more person dies, we can all ride on the boat..."
As the boat repairs were finished a third mutilation happened inside a locked room of a storage room. The storage room is a wooden shed on the roof of the mansion. However as soon as the group goes inside the shed, they find a corpse cut completely in half inside of it and the bloody words of Jack the Ripper printed on the wall.
The structure of the first Tantei Gakuen Q case is similar to the cases everyone is familiar with from Kindaichi. The main characters and the case characters gather to an island with a mansion. There's no way to leave the island even if something happens.
Megumi notices with her photographic memory that three hanging knives have gone missing and someone vandalizes paintings of famous detectives with one of them for some reason. Two of the knives stay missing and the storm over Kirisaki Island gets worse. What's more, a key to the shed where the double locked room murder 50 years ago happened disappears and a corpse is found inside the shed while cut in half, emulating the mystery of 50 years ago.
There are thirteen people on the island and one of them must be the culprit.
The last 3 chapters of the first volume consist of the last exam that also deals with this first real case of the series. The first volume in of itself is pretty entertaining. There's nothing stand-outish in it but it has that proper mystery flare to it with shounen elements in the mix.
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