Kindaichi Case Files #1-3 - School's Seven Mysteries Murder Case

Kindaichi Case Files (1997) also known as The File of Young Kindaichi (Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo) is an anime adaptation by Toei Animation of a 1992 detective fiction manga of the same name. The series is illustrated by Saito Fumiya and written by Kanari Yozaburo, and at times written by Amagi Seimaru. Kindaichi Case Files is extremely popular in Japan as the manga sequels still runs these days, and the series has gained the popularity of the second most known drawn new orthodox mystery series in Japan.

The story focuses on Hajime Kindaichi, a young detective high schooler who is said to be the grandson of the great Kosuke Kindaichi by Yokomizo Seishi as Hajime often keeps saying that he'll figure out the truth behind a case in the name of his grandfather. There was a lawsuit in real life about that actually, so it can be assumed that the people that hold Kindaichi Kosuke's copyright ownerships are not happy with what the authors of Kindaichi Case Files did by making Hajime and Kosuke connected.

This post is going start a series of reviews on the cases of Kindaichi Case Files, each # representing a different File of the anime series. The manga actually starts with a different case than the anime but the beginning of the anime series (and the pre-digital era of anime in general) is very atmospheric, so definitely worth the watch just for that.
Since this series is extremely long similar to I need to find out a good ratio to put these out between other series reviews. Regardless, the first case here is a long 10-chapter case adapted in three episodes. While this particular case is the fourth case in the manga series, the anime put it as the first case and also changed some things around. It's understandable for this to be the first case in order to pull the viewers in immediately due to the amount of 'mysteries' the case presents in a school setting.


File 1 - A Neverending Adventure

School's Seven Mysteries Murder Case, the first case of the Kindaichi Case Files anime series, starts abruptly but yet also remarkably when it comes to setting up atmosphere and tension. A boy can be seen walking in darkness in a school with a flashlight as the lights are off. While in a room the boy turns around to see a girl, hanging from a rope, strangled. Then all of a sudden the lights go on and the girl instantly vanishes. That begins the rumours around the school as many other people have also claim to have witnessed the same scenery. The hanged girl began to be known as sort of a supernatural element in the biology room of the school, and the event began to be known as one of the Seven Mysteries of Fudoh High.

Miyuki Nanase, one of the main characters of the show, talks with other students around the campus about the hanged girl and we learn that the case consists of multiple mysteries right off the bat, a whole seven of them that all happen in the old and locked-up building near their school.

The first mystery is the one we already know of, "the forbidden biology room."
The second mystery has to do with a severed hand in the printing room of the old building.
The third mystery is a school fountain filled with blood.
The fourth mystery is unknown to the watcher.
The fifth mystery is unknown to the watcher.
The sixth mystery is unknown to the watcher.
But the seventh mystery is unknown and the student's don't know what it is, and it doesn't help that there is a rumor going around that says that if you find out what the seventh mystery of Fudoh High is, you'll be murdered by a supernatural creature known as the "Afterschool Magician"/"Afterschool Conjurer."

Note: while half of the mysteries are unknown in the anime, they are revealed in the manga. The watcher doesn't really have to wonder about those (I did though) as there's one thing that connects them all together; seven mysteries that can be answered really quickly if you put your head to it. I do feel like they could have been more different from each other and thought they would be more complex than what they were in the end but it's a nice addition to the case and it does make sense. The seventh mystery is the biggest one for certain reasons and basically another mystery in of itself.

Around the school roof Miyuki meets up Hajime Kindaichi, the main character of the series, who often acts in an arrogant and perverted manner; skipping class and peeking on girls' panties. Hajime actually does surprisingly bad in school - such as failing math tests - considering that he has a very high IQ of 180 compared to most people. Miyuki on the other hand is an excellent student who gets excellent grades, something Hajime uses to his advantage as he makes Miyuki do all his homework. Regardless of it all Miyuki and Hajime have been good friends since kindergarten, so they have years of history behind them and it's pretty clear that Miyuki and Kindaichi have some romantic feelings toward each other.

As Miyuki and Kindaichi are on the roof, a senior student from the Mystery Research Club, the beautiful Ruiko Sakuragi, arrives to talk Miyuki down and praise Hajime, claiming that she understands Hajime's true worth. Ruiko has an offer that she makes to Hajime - she will do the math homework for him while Hajime has a job to do for her; Hajime has to solve all the Seven Mysteries of Fudoh Academy.

Kindaichi takes up Sakuragi's offer and heads to the Mystery Research Club with Miyuki. In the club they meet other "smart" mystery solver students; Makoto Makabe, an arrogant student who had won a mystery novel competition and gained a nice amount of popularity on the best-sellers lists with his "The Dead Body Tells Everything" novel, Takahiro Onou, another club member who did not make it past the preliminaries of the competition who seems aggressive towards Makoto, Tomoyo Takajima, a girl who wears plastic gloves and cleans everything due to being careful against allergies, as well as Ryuuta Saki, a student who loves filming other people.

In the club room Ruiko Sakuragi had left a code to everyone by having placed playing cards on a table. Hajime quickly deduces the meaning behind the playing cards just meaning that a club camp is going to be held during a holiday week, his quick deductions leave the others students astounded.

Ruiko Sakuragi then arrives in the club room along with a teacher and they start the club meeting which is about the Seven Mysteries of Fudoh High. It's revealed that the "Afterschool Conjurer"(I'll be using that as is sounds cooler than Afterschool Magician for this case) had sent a threat letter to the principal of Fudoh High. The threat letter claims that if the old school building where the rumours take place were to be demolished (as that's been in plans), the Seven Mysteries would be repeated once more around the school. Regardless the Mystery Club is going to aim to solve the mysteries and the identity of the Afterschool Conjurer. 
During the club meeting Yuuichirou Matoba, the Physics Teacher of Fudoh Academy, reveals that in the past a student who tried to find out what the Seventh Mystery was went missing.

The club meeting ends and Kindaichi and the others part their ways, but before that Sakuragi gives him information about the contents in floppy discs from the mystery club that might be a hint to solving the mystery of Fudoh High.
As evening falls, Sakuragi is on the computer in the school, about to find out clues to solving the mysteries of Fudoh High, the set-up to the case ahead happens with the "genius high school novelist" getting exposed as a fraud, an earthquake happening and Sakuragi finding out what the Seventh Mystery is. Sakuragi soon calls Hajime to come to the school and the last scene of her is a man with a rope behind her.

When Hajime and Miyuki arrive to the school, the other club members also arrive as a male voice had said on the phone that "come at 10 pm to the club room as there will be death ritual." But the whole group gets caught by the school's Security Guard Ryuouzou Tachibana. 

As Hajime and Ryuouzou patrol around the school in order to find Sakuragi, they see through the school's front window to the biology room of the haunted house; and what they see is candle lights presenting the ritual circle along with the corpse of Sakuragi hanging from the ceiling and the Afterschool Conjurer looking at them. However when the group of them arrive to the biology room, and others also gather around to try and break the door down, they can't find the Afterschool Conjurer, the corpse of Sakuragi or the ritual circle in the room.
The next day as Hajime and Miyuki arrive to school their world turns upside-down as Sakuragi's corpse is found hanging in the biology room along with the ritual circle of candles on the ground.

The first episode ends in an emotional way as Sakuragi's body is found and Kindaichi falls down to his knees, looks up at the hanging body and vows in the name of his grandfather to figure out who the Afterschool Conjurer is. 

After comparing the case to the manga I noticed that they censored the ecchier scenes with Sakuragi - they added Kindaichi lifting his head up but not looking at her panties at the school roof. Also they cut off the comedic scenes with Kindaichi getting a boner and Miyuki and Sakuragi talking about him. I think cutting that off helped to pace the episode better. I think they might have skipped too much at the end of the case though. 


File 2 - The Mysteries of Fudoh High

The gruesome event that has now occurred in Fudoh High was as if the return of the seven mysteries as promised by the Afterschool Conjurer, even though the school was not going to get demolished yet. In the school around the crime scene Hajime meets Inspector Kenmochi Isamu whom Hajime has helped to solve cases in the past. Kenmochi is one of the main cast characters of the series.

Inspector Kenmochi then explains the autopsy report to Kindaichi.

According to the autopsy the victim, Sakuragi Ruiko, died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. the previous night. Meaning that she died before the group gathered around at 10 p.m. due to the phone call. This acts as confirmation to Kindaichi that what he saw through the window with the security guard was really the death ritual that the others were informed of on the phone when they were called to the school. Kindaichi witnessed the death at 9:40 p.m. 

The layouts of the new and old school buildings act as hints to solving this mystery as we get to see the trajectory from which Kindaichi and the Security Guard saw the ritual happen in the Biology room of the old building from the new building. 
I'm pretty sure anyone can at least guess correctly what the problem is, however, as the two of them only had the Biology room out of sight for a few seconds as they were breaking through the door, the only way the crime could have happened is if the culprit had taken Sakuragi down very quickly and threw her and gotten rid of the noose and the ritual candles as well as somehow be able to hide or take Sakuragi's body away while in a locked room setting in that time it took Hajime and the others to break down the door. 

Because of all the superstitions, a large amount of potential suspects and lack of clues towards the culprit, the answer to this locked room case is quite hard to point out, however luckily Saki, the student who loves filming, got all of the exact times that the people arrived in the room on videotape. The entrance through the door to the Biology room happened in such a way that it took five minutes until every single suspect had gathered. So the problem is, how to get rid of all the evidence, the body and the Afterschool Conjurer costume in that time frame? The windows of the biology room, although locked, also contain marks of being opened or closed by a wire, so that also could be used as a way to create an alibi. A very common locked room trick.
However that is not what actually happened and Hajime doesn't believe that this culprit would stoop so low as to use a simple wire trick because of all the other elaborate setup the criminal had done.

Kenmochi explains that ten years prior, in 1987, there was a female student, Aoyama Chihiro, who had disappeared after investigating the Seven Mysteries of Fudoh Academy, which is where the rumours come from. Chihiro, much like Sakuragi, was also part of the Mystery Research Club. Even though police worked the best they could, Chihiro was never found. It appears that Chihiro was investigating the Six Mysteries instead of seven, and that the old school building has some connections to a group called Takahata Pharmaceuticals. It's worth noting that Hajime also thinks that Chihiro reminds him of one of the people, he can't exactly pinpoint which one, though.

This is when another person gets murdered during the night as they try to figure out the Seventh Mystery by deciphering the contents of the floppy disc he had taken from Sakuragi after she was killed. Kindaichi arrives at school the next day to see the police and Inspector Kenmochi around a dead and beaten dead body, of one of the students, Onoue, that has been covered. According to the autopsy the second victim of the Afterschool Conjurer died by bone fracture on the skull. Even though the scene seems bloody, it's actually paint to imitate one of the Seven Mysteries as the crime scene was the Printing room, although Kindaichi theorizes that the body was in fact moved. The autopsy report claims that the lack of blood means that the victim was beaten by a blunt object that had been wrapped in something.

Things take another turn as Miyuki goes to the room where Onoue was truly killed in order to find the handkerchief that Kindaichi gave her but she'd lost as they were in the room. And then the Afterschool Conjurer in his creepy mask and wig appears once more in a horror-like manner to hurt hurt Miyuki, as they usually do to her, and the story heads towards its climax in the final part.


File 3 - The Conclusion

Miyuki is in the hospital. Her life is in a critical condition and we even see some back side shots of Miyuki's father and mother, but we never learn their names or really get to see their faces.
The attack on Miyuki Nanase hit Hajime Kindaichi really hard so he falls into a slight depression. As Kindaichi sits in the hospital, Kenmochi makes his appearance to bring Hajime information on Takahata Pharmaceuticals that were mentioned in the second episode. Kenmochi learned that Takahata Pharmaceuticals actually owned the old school building 30 years prior. Kenmochi found that the company has a rather shady history as all the people - coincidentally six of them - who were tested on new drugs in there happened to vanish, declared missing.

After telling this new information to Kindaichi, Hajime decides to speak and say that he's going to stop investigating the case because he feels regret about letting Miyuki get attacked and injured critically. This scene is pretty great because it takes a break from all the information in the case and focuses on an important character moment; it's sad that Kindaichi's characters always return to how they were after cases because this could have been a great character development moment in the show! One problem I have with this hospital ordeal however is that we don't know anything about Kenmochi's and Hajime's history; it feels a bit unrealistic to have a higher ranking inspector go tell a teenager important information on a case. It's far too convenient in a sense. I also don't see how the police forgot to investigate certain scenes.

Hajime wakes up from a dream the next morning and goes to Miyuki thinking she'd died; of course not, but this moment is probably one of the more iconic scenes of the show; as Hajime tells Miyuki that he's giving up on the case, Miyuki gives Hajime a pep speech while emotional music is playing: "Don't lose, Hajime. Before there's another victim, capture the culprit as soon as possible. You're the only one who can do it, Hajime-chan." Now that I think about it, it sounds almost like a dying speech, ironic.

Hajime returns back to the computer room to figure out what the code left by Sakuragi on the disc was, but he still doesn't understand all of the case - until he remember Miyuki telling him in the hospital that it was when she tried to take off the poster in the computer room that she was attacked by the Afterschool Conjurer. Kindaichi goes to the poster, takes it off and finally realizes the truth behind the case. But how many watchers do exactly I wonder? Surely not all the clue have been laid out even if you can definitely know who the culprit is, there is definitely something left.

At this point the watcher should be able to pinpoint who the culprit by thinking of the timeline; what can be possible? Think about why exactly the Afterschool Conjurer threatened the principal.

The classic scene seen in many different detective fiction series begins next as Kindaichi gathers all the remaining suspects in the old school building. Although everyone else has gathered, Kindaichi is nowhere to be seen. Until they see a scene through the window about him hanging from a rope while surrounded by candles much like Sakuragi did, in that very same room. The group runs to the Biology room of the old school building, but the room is empty. Kindaichi decides to surprise the others by dressing up in the mask that he had picked up from somewhere and revealing that the Afterschool Conjurer used this same trick to show them the ritual murder when they made Sakuragi disappear. And with that Hajime claims that "The culprit is among us!"

The revelation of the trick used by the Afterschool Conjurer is not that special. In fact I don't think it was foreshadowed at all but it's not hard to think about either. I personally did not think about it but I knew that something like this had to be the case since the view to the window is in a straight line. I think that the original assumed "culprit's scenario" window opening wire trick was not that much different from this honestly, but yes that would have been absolutely impossible to guess. The rest of the episode goes through the reveals one after another up to the inevitable conclusion of the case.


And that concludes this journey with the School's Seven Mysteries Murder Case that consists of the first three episodes of the Kindaichi Case Files anime series. The pacing was frankly surprisingly pretty great as it adapted an entire volume length of 10 chapters in three episodes; while I believe that the manga chapters of Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo lack substance to them and feel kind of short, and the art is not as good as it could be, this kind of condensed adaptation of a bunch of chapters in three episodes feels great, it fixes the content problems of the manga when they do this.


So, what are my thoughts on the first adapted case of Kindaichi Case Files? The opening theme Confused Memories by Yuko Tsuburaya is alright, it's nothing special when it comes to visuals or the song and there are some problems with the editing of the opening, however it does fit this series very well. The first ending theme song Futari by Tomosaka Rie is pretty decent. The ending visuals are mediocre but I do like the song as it calms down the tensity from the episodes but not too much.

School's Seven Mysteries Murder Case itself was honestly a really good case, even if you could pretty much pinpoint the culprit with accuracy, it still leaves you doubting due to not giving away too much. The build up to the surprise-inside-the-xxx was neat. Even if I expected it, it's just that some of the theories coming to fruitition is a nice feeling. The plot winds back to the victim 10 years ago and the time of the research laboratory of Takahata Pharmaceuticals 30 years ago during which tests were being done in the old school building. The culprit's motivations were different from what you'd expect; there was lack of personal bias towards the victims. The fact that the case has some history to it also makes the case feel kind of important rather than just being about revenge. The ending of the case was solid although the room trick could have been presented better, even if it was kept the same. There are a some unrealistic aspects about the show for sure, like Kenmochi working with Kindaichi and the ending with the bubble gum feels ironically sort of like the ending event was actually Hajime's fault; there was no need to gather the people, he could have just showed the truth of the old school building to Kenmochi and headed home. Kindaichi's actions there are clearly way too ridicilous but the authors did not focus on it at all so it must have been done unintentionally, to wrap the long case up. Also one complaint I could say is that for one volume, there's very little we know and understand about our main characters Hajime, Miyuki or Kenmochi. They had some cool moments but I feel like they are empty slates at the moment and the case itself could do just as well without two of the three. Kindaichi's importance to the case is there in the first episode however as he's built up to be the person who the victim, Sakuragi, trusts to solve the mysteries of the Academy.

Anyways, for being the first case in the series this definitely has a really nice and tense air to it, which is by far its biggest strength along with the pacing since as I mentioned it adapts a whopping 10 chapters in 3 episodes so there is almost always something important to think about and gather your thoughts on, at least whenever it doesn't take a breather from the case. There are intense amount of mysteries to solve from the identity of the Afterschool Conjurer to the culprit's motivations; why did the culprit try to force the school to stop the demolition of the old school building? Why follow the events of the Seven Mysteries so badly? And The Seven Mysteries themselves that connect to the past of the school, and who does Kindaichi think the victim 10 years ago resembles out of the group?

The atmosphere of this case is on point and it's a really great start to the series with its old cell-shaded style that could send the creeps down most people's spine. I think this 1997 adaptation might be my favourite anime from Toei Animation, even if I really like some episodes from DBZ. The beginning of the first part of this case is tense albeit just a short scene, the end of the first part of this case as Sakuragi's corpse is found the next day, is sort of emotional with the music and build up. The death of Onoue is done pretty quickly but in a tense way as well and the moment when Hajime finds Miyuki's blood in the room where Onoue was killed is pretty atmospheric as well as the soundtrack used for that scene is the sound of heart beat and nothing else, then Kindaichi immediately trying to think where the culprit could have taken Miyuki, and when he does that it's done in a nice way as well, it has some 'oomph' to it. Then there's the scene with Hajime claiming he's giving up on the case and Miyuki giving him motivation to keep going. All of these things manage to enhance the story bring this case to life.
The ending of the case was also really well handled; it hit all the right marks. Now that I think about it, the motive of the culprit in this case is somewhat of similar sort as the motive of the Kamikakushi Village Murder Case in Tantei Gakuen Q from the same authors. This type of motive is very interesting as it deals with the culprit guarding a long-standing secret.

The only major problem with this case was how they threw away rest of the characters such as the girl who was afraid of germs that worked as a ghostwriter to the jerk student was completely forgotten in the adaptation. The manga does give them couple of panels of screen time at the end however. Also you could critisize the lack of foreshadowing for the 'mirror' and the police work - there's no way they would do that little work and be unable to find the blood on a keyboard if they spent any time searching the area, in that sense the way the author hid the "real murder scene" where also almost all the other mysteries of this case were, was somewhat forced I'd say.