The Slope - Q.E.D. Vol. 47, Chp. 93

Earlier this year I decided to get into the two long-running and still on-going detective fiction and mystery manga series by Katou Motohiro called Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou  (1997-) which tells the story of  a genius boy that excels in many subjects Sou Touma and his athletic slightly tomboyish girlfriend-but-not-really Kana Mizuhara & the other series C.M.B. ~Shinra Hakubutsukan no Jiken Mokuroku~ (C.M.B. Shinra Museum's Case Catalogreated, 2005-) which is instead about the cousin of Q.E.D.'s Sou Touma, the socially deficient young genius boy Shinra Sakaki & his aide and semi-bodyguard, the tomboyish Tatsuki Nanase.

Q.E.D. volume one (left) & C.M.B. volume one (right)

As these manga series are monthly, the chapters in them are quite long. Regardless of how anyone feels about the quality of these stories, it's very impressive how long the author has been able to keep up with two on-going series of about 100 pages a month. While the character art in these two series is quite bland and even at times they look like sketches, the author does bring us beautiful-looking settings as he re-draws over photographs he takes. Motohiro's a real workaholic in a sense. Personally I prefer the art style used for C.M.B. over Q.E.D. so far as the shading lines look smoother.

Over the years I've been hearing many great things about these two series in comparison to the other big detective fiction manga series, so I had to see what the hype was about and I went ahead to read couple chapters here and there of these... only to find out that these are actually not quite comparable to those other mystery series. Q.E.D. and C.M.B. contain basically one story each chapter. In a weekly format this would be a quite decent-sized story rarely seen in say, Detective Conan, however this monthly format makes - rarely with any exception - the stories in these chapters feel very hollow; basic ideas that you'd expect the story to go over couple of pages may take the entire chapter of 100 pages to go through. I decided that on this blog I'm simply going to go over the chapters that people praise the most to see what the best of these series are instead, or if I see themes and core ideas that interest me personally in a chapter I haven't read.

It's interesing how in these series as well the main characters and their aides are very similar, you know? Genius introvert boys with tomboy sidekicks to help them get caught up in cases. I've noticed that in popular series the idea behind the status quo often carries over to the next series as well - in games too. Let's take a look at the Ace Attorney franchise in which Phoenix Wright - the main character - tackles cases with a teenage girl as her assistant. The fourth game in the series has yet another lawyer main character with yet another teenage girl as his assistant, and the spinoff series of the same franchise, Miles Edgeworth Investigations, has yet another lawyer with yet another teenage girl assistant. The status quo sticks like a tire in deep mud when a franchise gets very popular. While Q.E.D. and C.M.B. don't seem to be any kinds of best-sellers, the author still has enough trust in his fanbase to like the Q.E.D. cast similar to make the C.M.B. cast similar to them...

But alas, while these honestly series haven't shown me any truly jaw-droppingly great storytelling so far, I really did like C.M.B.'s Phra Kruang Case due to its breathtaking atmosphere on the slow journey in which Shinra went to solve the horrifying mystery of a deceased oil magnate. Now that I think about it I've never reviewed a case in the Q.E.D. series, so this review about "The Hill" / "The Slope" which takes place in chapter 94, volume 47 of the Q.E.D. series is going to be my starting point.
However before we get to the review I want to bring to your attention where I got the idea to go through this particular case  - it's through YouTube. Did you know that the author, Katou Motohiro himself, promotes his work through edited YouTube videos. I've watched all of them and have found couple of cases I'd review from how well presented they were in these videos. Check out the YouTube videos the author created for them:
1) The Slope / The Hill - Q.E.D. vol. 47, chapter 93.
2) In The Year of Quantum Mechanics - Q.E.D. iff
3) The Disappearance of Soya - C.M.B.
4) And I'm not sure which this is but I love the saxophone soundtrack and would read this story because of this trailer.

Aki Utagawa was a quite tall first year student in middle school when she started to notice that her entire class was badmouthing her behind her back. Everyone always said her face was dumb-looking and gloomy, and that she's a complete dunce for taking cleaning too seriously. Aki spent all her time crying in the corner for being school bullied. However, as the summer holidays came close, a new girl moved in during the second semester of the school and started asking Aki to join the school's basketball team. That was when she knew she was no longer alone.
However, before finishing middle school Aki had to move away, and she left Tokyo. Now, time has passed and she's in her second year of high school. There is a class reunion for their middle school which she actually didn't want to attend, but Aki really wanted to meet that girl from back then once again...

As the gathered past middle school classmates talk with each other during the class reunion, it seems that they've either forgotten that they ever bullied anyone, or perhaps they're simply pretending they ever did anything. Aki herself had become a famous model due to her beautiful distinct face and tall height. As others in the reunion try to hit on Aki who they once bullied, our main character, Kana Mizuhara, makes her appearance and we learn that the person who Aki spent time with in middle school was none other than Kana.

We get an explanation that Aki now lives with her mother by the seaside after her parents divorced. Where she lives there is a lot of fresh fish to catch and the scenery looks great, but she seems to want to move overseas to be a more popular model as she's just appeared in one magazine over in New York.

Aki asks Kana if she still remember 'the game incident' from their time in middle school. During this incident a boy named Shimazaki had brought the newest limited model of a game console that looks like a 3DS to the school. The console was very pricy and hard to get, but Shimazaki had his grandfather get it for him... too bad that during class recess the console had disappeared from Shimazaki's bag. Then, after teacher arrived to the class and the class was about to start, Shimazaki's game console was on top of Aki's school books in her desk. After everyone saw that, they began to call her a thief, however Kana started to protect her by saying that she can't be the culprit as she doesn't steal. Aki's question to Kana is: "why did you believe in me not being the culprit back then?" Kana simply answers her that she doesn't know nor remember, which makes Aki sort of sad or maybe depressed. It seems she wants to know the answer to that.
(I find if funny how none of the students look anything like middle schoolers here)

In order to get Kana to remember what drove her thoughts forward back during that middle school incident, she and couple of their middle school reunion classmates decide to head to seaside and visit Aki's home. The scenery where Aki lives is actually beautiful; the author Motohiro Katou uses this method of drawing other real life photographs and turning what he doesn't redraw into black and white. It's a simple method of creating beautiful landscapes in manga, rather than drawing everything from zero yourself. As Aki is having a meeting with her photoshoot manager, Kana and the others decide to grab a bite of fresh fish at a restaurant.

The photoshoot manager explains to Aki that she has a bright future ahead of her and that there are numerous people  magazines and overseas agents alike who want to have a photoshoot with Aki. The manager had told them to wait until Aki deals with her academics and family business things, but the quicker she can say yes to the offers the better. However there's still something bothering Aki so that she's having second thoughts about her future career. You see, Aki is able to show off confidence during the shoot, but she's afraid of what happens in the backstage. She explains that there was a person she calls 'friend'. This person would always calm her down and encourage her to pose for better photos. However Aki needs to know that her friend's trust in her is true and earnest, which is why she wants an answer from Kana. Only after Kana is able to answer why she trusts Aki, she'll make her choice of what to do with her career...

After that the rest of the story is about Aki trying to make Kana remember what her motives behind trusting her were as the group stays at the seaside. Aki's house is above a long slope on a seaside town with great views. Her mother pushes her to move forward and get on with the life of modeling as Aki is questioning her choices of whether to leave or not.

On the top of a table in Aki's room is an envelope filled with money that the girls notice. Later, as Aki has been gone shopping for about five minutes after the girls have finished eating, there's a loud crashing sound that comes from outside as a heavy ladder had fallen. Kana jumps down to lift the ladder back up, but after she returns to the room where two other of her past schoolmates are in Aki's room, she notices that Aki's envelope that's full of money (about 50 000 yen according to Kana) has suddenly gone missing. Kana searches for the money but she simply isn't able to find it. Then, she decides to call the other main character of Q.E.D. series, Touma, for help.

Touma tells Kana to think things through more clearly: she must've failed to find the envelope because she was looking for something that was supposed to be missing, but as Touma theorizes that the envelope must still be in the room "for sure", Kana should look for something that's not missing. More like, search with the assumption that someone has hidden it deliberately.
 After Kana finds the money hidden inside the middle school yearbook in Aki's room, Touma arrives on the scene to instantly explain that there must've been various misunderstandings to stray Kana from the truth of who hid the envelope in the yearbook when Kana's other classmates were always with her while Aki was out shopping.

There are three things that Touma is going to explain:
1) What answer does Aki want from Kana out of the game incident?
2) How did the money disappear; who hid it and how?
3) Why didn't Aki answer truthfully about a certain thing?

As the explanation to these mysteries unfolds we learn a bit about the title of this case: the Slope. An obstacle one climbs in order to see the beautiful scenery on the top of the hill unfold.

Now... my thoughts about this case are worse than just mixed. The entire chapter is about girl power as Kana's middle school class reunion is happening and she meets a beautiful girl named Aki, who used to be bullied by everyone except Kana, for the first time since middle school, until a little bit of problems about the missing money arise. That's when Kana decides to immediately call Touma for help... and Touma immediately leads Kana to the right direction in order to find the envelope full of money. Afterwards, when the supposed thief needs to get exposed, the one who arrives to do the talking and explain everything is Touma. This is pretty terrible. I could've overlooked this story if Kana had solved the case as it was Kana's story, but calling in Touma to expose the culprit was not what I wanted to see. First of all I must say that this case is incredibly just way too easy.  Why in the world did they need Touma to explain this? The author could've come up with something better, honestly. The few tricks in this case and the way they're explained are the same as what was done in C.M.B.'s Noisy Killer Case are very similar and in their core these are even identical. By the way, that case was also tad too simple and badly paced but the mystery in this one just felt a bit worse as the concepts here just felt blander, I just wasn't interested and going through the pages just felt like a chore.

I haven't read many of Katou Motohiro's stories in C.M.B. or Q.E.D., but from what I've read each of the cases had a message to give to the reader. This one is no different with its core themes of trust, friendship and moving on, but unlike in, say, the Phra Kruang Case, the presentation and atmosphere that build up the impact from when the story focuses on the core theme of the case, was pretty much nonexistant in this one - the structure of this case's "journey" has similarities in its presentation with the Phra Kruang case, but where that one excelled in its atmosphere, this one completely flops. A chapter called the hill / the slope like this one seriously should've been presented better. Weak case, frankly boring core idea of the story that wasn't done any favours with the weak, badly paced storyboarding. Mystery-wise this is one of the worst I've seen in this series. This story is basically about true friendship and facing your fears and conquering them to move up the metaphorical slope... but it's just not interesting. Frankly, I'm disappointed. 
I'm kind of ranting about this because I heard good things about this story, but it ended up being one of the weaker ones.