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.

Phra Kruang Case - C.M.B. Vol. 29, Chp. 90

So the past few months I've been randomly going through some of the most memorable cases in Detective Conan, Kindaichi Shounen, C.M.B., as well as reading Tantei Gakuen Q from chapter one. I've also been thinking about reading more about Q.E.D., but the artwork and general presentation in that series is pretty low-tier and uninteresting even though it's made by the same author as C.M.B. and starrs the cousin of the protagonist in their respective series.
I'm interested in becoming a mystery writer myself and there are wide variety of different cases in manga available. Although some are worse than others and it's easier to find misses than hits when it comes to memorable and good cases, the effort is still almost always there and if one wants to learn more about the genre, it's possible to find different writing styles for similar cases being used for each of these series.

Katou Motohiro is an artist that's been running the detective fiction business in the shadows as the 3rd biggest on-going detective manga's author in the genre for the past few decades and lately I've come across quite a few fans of both of Motohiro's series. Unlike Kindaichi and Conan that focus on more classical elements of mystery such as locked rooms and complex tricks, C.M.B. and Q.E.D. have heavy focus on math and history. Motohiro is used to creating cases in monthly format so that there is always a new case the next chapter - every chapter contains a standalone story that's, from what I've seen, often not really fair-play mystery but it's more akin to informational writing.

Lately I've heard other reviewers talk about C.M.B. Shinra Hakubutsukan no Jiken Mokuroku The Best Kyouto Daigaku Suiri Shousetsu Kenkyuukai Selection ("C.M.B. The Case Catalog of the Shinra Museum The Best - Kyoto University Mystery Club Selection", 2019) which contains picked-out favourite stories that left an impact to the reader, so I've decided to see if there's anything in this series that could pique my interest.

I've been a detective fiction fan for basically all my life but there hasn't been anything so far in either of Motohiro-sensei's works that have made me want to care about these series in comparison to their rivals Meitantei Conan or Kindaichi Shounen. It's a mix of basically everything from the bit iffy pacing to the character writing and lack of actual fair-play challenge.
I'm not sure how many - if any - cases in teries there are that the reader can actually solve with logical thinking, but there is a flair to the series that makes it stand out and I guess helps it gather fans - fact of the matter is that the series have stood the test of time for the past 15 years. There must be something out there in these series that makes people want to continue reading more stories about our Q.E.D. cast or C.M.B.'s genius protagonist Shinra Sakaki and his tomboyish aide Tatsuki Nanase, right?


The most interesting story I read about in The Case Catalog of the Shinra Museum The Best - Kyoto University Mystery Club Selection is Phra Kruang case which is featured in volume 29's chapter 90 of the series and I thought it'd be best to at least review it a bit.

Phra Kruang begins off with out main characters Shinra and Tatsuki going to the manor of the American oil kingpin Silver Rubin who passed away half a year prior to the start of the story. Shinra has been called to the Silver Residence by Silver's grandchild Priscilla Rubin. The manor is so huge that one needs a car just to move around the building and I must say the setting is pretty beautiful and serene; there are horses, water and just classical constructs to be seen.

Silver Rubin has legacy as one of the greatest oil magnates in the world, but he was also called the Bloody Silver as his attempts to get his hands on riches of the oil caused three wars to happen in the past. Now, due to Silver passing away, the family has started to fight over the inheritance and thus they need help from experts such as Shinra.
Priscilla Rubin and her brothers went over Silver's private bedroom to try to find anything worth turning into money there, but Silver's most precious item was a buddhist pendant that's price is unknown. So, the Rubin family decided to call Shinra, the C.M.B. ring bearer, to appraise it. Shinra makes one conclusion after checking the pendant out: It's known as Phra Kruang, a buddha-shaped talisman used by people that want to protect themselves from evil spirits. Shinra explains that there are some Phra Kruangs worth up to 10 000 dollars, but this one - albeit being over 70 years old talisman - doesn't seem to be worth anything. But that's not enough for Priscilla Rubin as she believes the talisman holds a bigger secret behind it and she asks Shinra to find it out by investigating the mystery further.

The reason for Priscilla's belief of there being something more to the Phra Kruang is that her grandfather said something to her when he was still alive - something about humans needing mirrors to reflect our souls. Silver believed that by helping other people, one could get something like excitement that is lost from aging back. It was very weird for "Monster Silver" who would destroy anyone and anything for his business to say something like that.

The adventure to get to the truth of the Phra Kruang is entertainingly presented. Shinra and co. travel via airplane and boats through Thailand's Chao Phraya River. The art seems to be sort of rotoscoped from actual photographs. We get to see just the atmosphere of the journey itself as our main characters travel to the place that makes the Phra Kruangs.

At the place which makes the talismans, we get to learn that the leg of the Phra Kruang is so flawed that it must've not been for sale. The father of the current creators says that years ago he gave the Phra Kruang to an orphan named Sida who worked around the fields in the past. Sida was a happy young boy who just lived his life albeit homeless, and one day he asked the Phra Kruang molders to give him one talisman for free as the talismans represented the Goddess of Fortune - if one wants to become rich, he'd of course want to have a talisman like that. Something weird had happened however as five years ago Sida suddenly got a lot of money, became drunk and never worked ever again.

As Shinra, Tatsuki and Priscilla go to the house of Sida, they notice that it's empty. However wait is key and they go to the nearby restaurant to wait for Sida to come back - will he ever, though? In the restaurant the group notices photographs of Silver Rubin the Monster Oil King and the restaurant owner even reveals to the group that Silver actually came to the village every single year. The reason why he did so was to visit the orphan Sida, who according to rumours saved Silver from being drowned. Silver gave Sida a lot of cash while Sida gave Silver the Phra Kruang buddha talisman in exchange. Afterwards Silver kept sending Sida money monthly and visited him once a year to drink with him.

The answer behind the Phra Kruang was thus seemingly quite emotional; that Sida who gave Silver his only treasure, had touched the heart of the person that everyone else called the Monster.   

However, the real truth is only revealed once Priscilla moves on with her life as Shinra goes back to the Silver Residence to talk with the Rubin family attorney about the truth of the Phra Kruang - and this is a hella cool part where Shinra says "Let me escort you to the Wunderkammer" as we see a bird flapping its wings on top of the nearby lake.
The real mystery here is why exactly that Phra Kruang was so valuable to Silver Rubin? Why did Silver keep sending money to Sida? And what was the true meaning behind Silver's seemingly emotional words about a mirror reflecting to one's soul? Why did Sida, the happy-go-lucky boy, stop working once the money started coming in; as if the money ruined his life?
And the answer to those questions is what one must read from the story, in volume 29 of the series. 

So... This was an interesting story. The Phra Kruang case feels very fresh to read in the midst of everything else out there - it's held at a really high standard by many apparently as it made itself into the Best of C.M.B. selection, but it does feel as if not all of that praise is deserved. As a story, Phra Kruang delves into an interesting territory as it's a journey that investigates the human nature of someone called monster by many, but it's not a real mystery story by any stretch of the imagination. The truth behind the Phra Kruang is thought by many readers to be "absolutely horrific", but I don't think so... It's very interesting as it does show how corrupted Silver had become - but I do believe that what Silver did was actually with good intentions with what he himself believed to be for the best. There's this level of disconnect in the story about why they make Silver seem so much of a bad guy, but it's not properly explained how he supposedly destroyed Sida's life. It's just said but not explained.

Furthermore, there's more disconnect in the story as they all go on this grand adventure for basically no real reason - Priscilla Rubin simply thinks there's something behind the Phra Kruang, but there's no logical foundation for her to think so or connect whatever Silver told her about connecting souls to have anything to do with the talisman. The last problem I have with the case is that the answer is completely unbelievable and unrealistic, but the madness behind it does seem real.

Anyway, even though Phra Kruang is not a story for someone looking for a solid mystery plot, it is a very revitalizing experience due to its amazing presentation as well as the adventure aspect of it. C.M.B. tends to feel very draggy sometimes as it takes ages in the long monthly chapters for anything to happen and the pacing can also be very off, but this time the slow pacing worked for the case's advantage and we got sort of this Professor Layton type of adventure to follow.

Noisy Killer Case - C.M.B. Vol. 40, Chp. 131

Momoya Tamajirou is a normal artist who according to at least himself works in the movie and manga industry, but there is something odd about his acting as he likes to flail around with knives and call himself the best assassin ever. Tamajirou has a young daughter, Momoya Ichigo, who brings this odd contrast of comedic and ever so slight sorrowful elements to this story as we see her father act very stupidly. The author never presents the daughter to be in a psychologically bad state, but she likes to say things like because of her father's acting, her mom left the house. It's not easy for her.

The story of Noisy Killer is very simple but it has its own type of twist to it. A well-known company does a background check on Tamajirou and learns that he's an assassin who never manages to assassinate anyone, the zero kill assassin. Regardless of this, the company decides to hire him to kill another company's poaching businessman Kakinuma Ryuusaki in hopes of at least bothering his businesses. They offer Tamajirou two million yen ($18 800) if he manages to successfully assassinate Ryuusaki, and 30 000 yen ($280) as a failure reward if he doesn't manage to take Ryuusaki's life.

Tamajirou takes up this offer and starts to go ahead on the assassination. The problem here is that the Kakinuma office where the businessman resides in is a nigh-complete locked room space where the door in front of the office requires two card keys to use on two different locks, and what's more the door is guarded with multiple guards 24/7. One could always sneak around through the secretary's room through the veranda, but the office is surrounded with bulletproof glass that has ventilation windows (usually open) at three meters height. It should be impossible to get in.

But regardless of everything, we see for most of the chapter different situations where Tamajirou goes to the office and try to run past the surveillance, break open doors and fight off guards, he even runs around the place with four legs, and one time he tries to stab the broker with a knife but the knife drops to the floor and he makes his way out. Another time he decides to try to pour gas everywhere to set a fire, but he forgot matchsticks and just poured oil all over himself. He then just slimed his way out of the building, only to come back strapped all over with fireworks for some weird reason.

However, then things take a weird turn. As the fireworks are going off and Tamajirou fights off the guards in his attempt to assassinate the businessman, they see that the broker is actually in his room, on the floor with a bloody knife next to him, and then Tamajirou gets arrested as the blame is seemingly put on to him for attempting to kill the broker.

The situations surrounding the incident are that Kakinuma was stabbed in the shoulder and that caused him to fall backwards and hit his head on the desk, but he's not dead. He was suddenly stabbed in his office by an unknown assailant with the knife Tamajirou had bought (it seems the police have cleaned the weapon for some reason or maybe the author forgot to draw blood on the knife). The police then try to get a confession out of Tamajirou, but he tells them that he didn't do it, yet wonders if he should confess as that might get him the full two million yen reward. This situation forces Inspector Kujirazaki to go get help from our protagonist Shinra to solve the case. How did the killer do it?


Now, the case has some good ideas to it. The fact how it reminds us that in some cases you just have to flip your thinking around - the problem with the case to the police was that without any type of key card or a ladder to use, there is no way to get in the office- but of course that also means that conversely, if you were to get your hands on those, then the culprit would have been able to accomplish their deed. Also, the idea behind the events basically being a sleight of hand type of trick to fool the reader into thinking something else was going on than what we were assuming, was somewhat neat, as it gave importance to the pretty much filler-feeling material in the chapter.

But other than those core ideas, the execution was pretty terrible, the comedy unfunny and the pacing just felt off - very little happened during the case. Maybe I'm too used to Detective Conan's condensed pacing but this was just empty. I can't believe this took 100 pages to tell, 4 times longer than it should've been. It's a story you'd maybe enjoy more in Lupin the III than in C.M.B. Whether or not one can actually logically pinpoint who the culprit is and how they did it, I don't know... doesn't seem possible. Guessing is of course a freeway to victory in this case but whatever, I guess. It's a simple read that doesn't really do much.

The reason why I even read or talk about this case now is because I was just flipping through the C.M.B. chapters and saw this intriguing character connection between a young girl and her pitiful father.