Kaguya-sama: Love is War (2019)

2019 has been a fairly very talked about year when it comes to animated TV series. One of the most influential manga's fifth adaptation, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind (part 5), continues from 2018's winter season, multiple popular shounen manga series are getting their adaptations such as Fire Force (Soul Eater author's current work), Dr. Stone (shounen post-apocalyptic series) and right now we have Ufotable's (known for Fate/ series anime adaptations) Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba airing weekly as well as My Hero Academia season 4 and Seven Deadly Sins: Wrath of the Gods (season 3) anime series of extremely popular shounen manga airing in the fall of 2019. So it's clear without a doubt that this year stands out merely from those weekly shounen series adaptations alone (most popular manga magazines in Japan), but there are other stand-out and much talked about series that have been airing and will air in 2019 such as the second season of One Punch Man (admittedly the hype has died down massively in comparison and the adaptation is not living up to the first season in quality), Attack on Titan season 3 part 2, The Rising of the Shield Hero, Dororo (remake adaptation of one of the legendary Osamu Tezuka's works) as well as an adaptation of a very popular seinen manga series, Vinland Saga, coming up later in 2019 for a whole 24-episode run. I'm interested in how Wit Studio will handle that adaptation for sure.

The reason why this post exists however is because I've wanted to check out the more highly acclaimed romance series for a while now as I don't dislike romance in the series I read i think it's important to get a taste of what people like to see. I've been reading Domestic na Kanojo (taboo romance manga) and 5Toubun no Hanayome (one dude meets five identical sisters) and I'm looking forward to Chihayafuru season 3 and Fruits Basket to air. Just last week I asked for recommendations and people mentioned this romance-based series that aired just earlier this year and that's what we're here to talk about today.


Kaguya-sama: Love is War by A1-Pictures is an adaptation of a romcom manga by a very similar except longer name Kaguya-sama Wa Kokurasetai - Tensai-tachi no renai zunousen, or in English, Kaguya Wants to be Confessed To: The Geniuses' War of Love and Brains, created by Aka Akasaka. A-1 Pictures and I go a long way. They usually adapt series that have great original material such as Ace Attorney, Magic Kaito 1412, Black Butler, Erased, Seven Deadly Sins and many others tend to get filler endings with contrived writing, really bad animation and off-character designs as well as very, very rushed pacing, adapting over 100 chapters a season, for SDS for example. So I've never thought that A-1 is the ideal studio that I'd want to take over any of my favourite series, but sadly, they seem to mass produce a decent amount of anime every year, which I assume is the reason for their low-quality series. They sometimes do have an eye for what is a well written plot to adapt in order to pull in audience though.

However Kaguya-sama is one of A-1 Pictures' best adaptations ever when it comes to what a group of animators can do to enhance the original series.

This narration-heavy story starts off by introducing the watcher to the concept of what this series will be about: when it comes to the ideology of the show, two people who love each other are technically constantly at war with each other as relationships, according to the narrator, consist of a person who reigns supreme and controls, in other words a "winner" and a person who becomes a "loser" and obeys the winner.
Although that type of over-the-top introduction and the hype from the series' fans calling it the "Death Note of romance" might make you feel as if this show will have some supernatural mind games or heavy drama, there is literally none of what you'd expect. The first episode of the anime surely shows some potential to showcase psychological aspects well, but the show dusts that off right away and stays a simple romantic comedy series about a limited cast of characters in a limited setting.

Shuchi'in private academy is known to be one of the more special academies in Japan with a long-lasting history going back to the era of nobles and samurai. Nowadays the academy works to graduate the children from rich families so that those children will grow up to become the new leaders of Japan.
In Shuchi'in academy the school assets and love lives of the students are being handled by the student council, which our main characters are part of. 

Kaguya Shinomiya is the character that the show is based upon so we can assume she's the main character, however there are two equal characters in this show that can be called the main lead and the deuteragonist. Kaguya Shinomiya is the vice-president of Shuchi'in academy's student council as well as the daughter of a man named Gan'an Shinomiya who is a multi-trillionaire. As a person with such heavy family history, Kaguya has trained to be multi-talented, perfecting the art of many different subjects from music to martial arts, and became known as a so-called genius in the academy. 

However there is a person who Kaguya has not yet surpassed when it comes to exams.

Miyuki Shirogane is the show's deuteragonist and a young man known for his exceptional intellect and wisdom as the person who scores the best in mock exams out of anyone in Japan, always getting maximum points and the first spot. Unlike Kaguya, Miyuki is not as well versed in multiple different talents, however since he is the greatest academic, Miyuki Shirogane's exemplary behavior was what earned him the spot as the student council president itself.

Both Miyuki and Kaguya are very prideful people who would never date anyone below them and not under any circumstance be the person who would make the first move if they were to get into a relationship. The story opens up with both of them pridefully assuming that the other would come and ask them out, but that never happens and in the first chapter half a year already passes by without anything happening. That time steel's their resolve so that they only want to focus on forcing the other confess them. That is the war between lovers that the show promises, but is it handled that well? Ehh. Not really.

The show is about the so-called mind games in which Kaguya plans a certain situation out and prepares it in which she will try to trick Miyuki to acknowledge her/ask her out/say he loves her in even the most ridicilous situations, and Miyuki also tries to think ahead on how to counteract and make Kaguya to ask him out instead or say she loves him or such. As the storytelling in this show is mostly episodic, you can instantly tell that this type of writing would get old and fast. And it does. The student council's secretary, the big-breasted Chika Fujiwara, is what usually breaks the mold and turns the planning the two do upside down and sideways, however Chika does that far too often so that gets tiring as well. Aside from Chika there is really only one more notable side character called Yuu Ishigami, a computer-savvy student who fails grades constantly. Yuu Ishigami appears rather late into the show since it's only 12 episodes but the episodes he appears in tend to be the funniest out of them all. The comedy of Kaguya-sama is not that great in general. There is an episode focusing on grade-schooler level wiener jokes and it excuses those jokes by saying that Kaguya's dark humour is grade-schooler level. It's kind of sad and bland to watch and the original mind game aspect of the lovers also seems to quickly lose its oomph just couple episodes in, the story becomes a pretty shallow romcom that doesn't lead anywhere.

The anime itself feels like it's been done by Shaft. The presentation of this show is very good. Character models look decent but the clever ways of showcasing what's going on are the best aspects of this show. The framers transform and many different styles of wide variety are used in quick succession to make almost everything that happens in the show look and sound much more interesting than they actually are. The soundtracks are fine but nothing special. The voice actors are okay and they handle some comedic scenes well.

The worst aspects of this show that really make watching the mere 12 episodes of it tiring for me is the lack of substance, the cast of characters and the settings in which the story takes place. For an episodic story, it seems to only pull jokes or try to do tricks instead of setting up a real short-story. I did not feel any presence of life from majority of the episodes and they seemed The pacing of the show felt off for me on many occasions.
When I say that the cast of characters is what make the show tiring for me I mean that I personally did not like any other characters than Kaguya, Miyuki and Yuu. And if I did try to find someone else, there was barely any left. This show lacks characters heavily. You'd expect every episode to show one-off and overarching characters but the show only focuses on what's going on around the main cast - and what is going on around, is not much and that brings us to the third point.
I have a problem with the characters being sold to us as geniuses that play mind games when they don't act like ones and act more like the shy teenagers that they are rather than the mind-controlling geniuses that they wish they were.
The settings of this show are bland at best. Majority of it takes place in the student council room, dealing with the exact same characters doing similar types of jokes that have to do with romance. For an episodic series I really do loathe when the setting stays the same with how easy it should be to change it around.

Thus it's clear that basically all the problems of Kaguya-sama come from the original manga series instead of the anime adaptation by A-1.

To wrap this all up, as I mentioned Kaguya-sama reminds me of Shaft's Nisio Isin works in how it spams dialogue and presents itself, making it seem like there's a lot going on in a frame, but those moments are mostly used for gags and there is rarely anything to talk or theorize about, it's essentially mindless fun. It is not a downright bad anime, the animation studio does many favours for the original series to make it more bearable for me, and people who care more about superficial aspects such as presentation rather than anything with substance can understandably love this show quite a lot, as there is a huge fan base for this series. However the show is not something that I'd expect from what sells itself as the "Death Note of romance."

Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit and the Totalitarian One-World Government & Mass Manipulation

Lately news media outlets have been printing out information on different media, books, movies and documentaries on viruses. Amidst this pandemic - a situation where there is a global alert halting the entire world, forcing everyone to stay inside - my mind went back through the numerous series I've consumed until I realized that we're not just talking about viruses here, but global control over human beings even in countries that appreciate freedom over anything else.

This line of thinking brought me back to this one Japanese manga series called Ikigami, written and illustrated by Motoro Mase. The series ran for 10 volumes from 2005 to 2012 in Weekly Young Sunday. The genre of this series is hard to put into words, it deals with drama and emotional weight caused by government control on its populace. It also works as a thriller and a psychological drama. Wikipedia mentions that the series is sci-fi, but I'm not so sure about that.

Ikigami takes place in an unnamed dystopian government (a government where one gets sentenced and rehibilated for committing "thought crimes") that resides near Japan in which all the children who enter primary school at a very young age get injected with syringes that have 1 in 10 000 of a chance of containing a nanocapsule. When these children age to adulthood, at random age between 18 to 24, the children that were injected with the capsule, die as the capsule reaches their heart.

The government of this story explains that the idea of injecting everyone while no one - except the government officials - knows who gets injected with the deadly chip, is that apparently the people of this nation will be able to live their life to the fullest as they will never know if they will be the ones to die. In other words the authorities feed their people propaganda about how great their morally wrong law is.

This is where the plot of this story takes place however. Ikigami themselves are not the name of the injected nanocapsule, but the notification that a government official has to hand over to the young adults who have been injected with the nanocapsule before they die. Our main character, Kengo Fujimoto, is one of these officials. Exactly 24 hours before the death of an injected person Fujimoto brings these "heroes of this national welfare law" their individual Ikigami, explaining how great their death will be for the country. These "heroes of the national welfare law" (i.e. victims of the government) are given a lot of freedom, however they tend to have a different mindset over what is going to happen to them as they tend to try to get revenge on people who did them wrong or commit other sorts of crimes.

While in its core this series's main idea is similar to to a fairly well-known movie called The Purge, which in turn is a live-action movie which takes place in a country where once a year all crime is legal - be it theft, break-in or even murder. Ikigami however throws a larger twist to the idea of this as it shows us the build up of the herd mentality to control people. It explains how we can use the idea of freedom to free us from government control while in reality feeding that to the masses is the control itself.
While the story might be questionable in its writing quality due to dealing with these types of hard-to-swallow propaganda mass manipulation concepts and crazy censorship, the presentation of the individual stories in this series are amazing. They are really emotional and pack a huge amount of impact. They exist to show us just how monstrous these types of Totalitarian One-World government laws are. 

Going into spoilers, the story at the very end brings up a very good point as it explains us that the purpose of the "national welfare law" injections was to control people into wanting to get rid of the nanocapsule, even if they don't know whether or not they have them. To offer this choice to the people, this government gives them a chance: go to war and you can pick any one person to get injected with a liquid that destroys the capsule. This controls the whole population to join the war to save themselves or their loved ones. A very grand-scale psychological control over people.

I believe now is the best time to read this series and think very carefully what is happening in the world. It is a very well crafted comic book series dealing with heavy subjects.

Detective Conan F699 - Tomorrow is There

"The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain." 
- Dolly Parton


This time I'll be going over Volume 67's File 699 of Detective Conan called Tomorrow is There. I've been meaning to reread this as it's one of the rare one-shot cases in the entire manga, and on top of that it's really well written as a meaningful piece of work. It's just one of those chapters that stick with me but I don't really know why; it could be the psychological aspect of the whole thing, but the case does bring a point about how you should never give up on your life for anything. I do believe that analyzing this case top to bottom is going to be very enjoyable and inspirational. I also really love the name choice Gosho Aoyama gave this particular very short case.


The Story of Tomorrow is There
The Detective Boys; Conan, Mitsuhiko, Ayumi, Genta and Haibara walk down a staircase leading from a bridge that crosses over a road in Beika city. Mitsuhiko reminds the rest of the group that tomorrow at 4:00 P.M. the final soccer match between Tokyo Spirits and Big Osaka happens [Reminder that the character Hideo Akagi - nickname Hide - is a pretty well-known soccer player from the Tokyo Spirits team]. You know, most Conan characters are pretty huge sports fans because the author Gosho Aoyama himself also loves soccer and baseball, etc. sports. Anyway, Haibara tells everyone that Big Osaka won the last match they had so she hopes that Tokyo Spirits takes the win this time. Genta tells them that Hide (Hideo Akagi) who is the Spirits' top scorer is out for the count due to an injury. It's hard to imagine Big losing when Spirits are missing their best scorer.

Haibara smirks and tells Genta that he's right - according to Haibara, most likely Higo will make a hat trick to become this year's top scorer and take Big to the championship [Reminder that Haibara is a huge Higo fangirl, there is a case with Kogoro and Haibara showing their affection towards their biggest idols where we especially see how much she loves Higo from Big Osaka]. Conan looks at Haibara and tells her that Higo's actually out of the game just as well; he got suspended for cumulative yellow cards. Haibara is shocked to hear this and asks Conan if he's completely sure. Conan tells her that he read about it in the morning paper. We see a headline of the morning paper, and it reads as follows: "Hide and Higo Out of Key Game Spirits, Big Face Off Without Top Players." This means that each team's most valuable player is benched.

 Haibara ponders and it's hilarious what she says to Higo being out: Haibara understands now what the commentators were upset about when Higo got a yellow card in his last game, and now Haibara thinks that Higo has been set up. Conan is also wondering if she really thinks he was set up. It's clear that Haibara has only gotten to sports recently as she's not familiar with all of the rules. Conan wonders how Haibara knows about hat tricks in soccer but not yellow cards.

Mitsuhiko is disappointed that they won't see the best of either team battle it out and Genta tells everyone that he has to go to a dentist to get a hurting tooth pulled. Ayumi looks scared as the pain is real from that. Then we get the the first important line in this short case: Genta is disappointed at Hide not being in the match and annoyed at his tooth problem, so he wishes that tomorrow would never come. 

 As Genta finishes saying that, a happy-looking elderly man appears and tells Genta that he should not be saying thing like that, as there's always hope for tomorrow! Especially for children. Genta asks who the man is and he introduces himself as an old retiree who's just out for a walk. We get an information box showcasing that the man is Kyozo Daita (63), a passerby.

Genta asks the old man, Kyozo, what exactly he has to look forward to, to which the man answers that there are so many things that he doesn't even know which to choose. He explains that he's going to Osaka for a soccer game the next day. After the game he'll be going back to Tokyo to meet his old friend whom he hasn't seen in a decade for drinks. After that he'll be watching the finale of his favorite drama. Oh, and there'll also be a huge summer lottery to which he's taking a part in; he bought a bunch of tickets for it, so it should be quite the experience.

Then, all of a sudden a man runs at Kyozo and steals his purse wallet. All of his lottery tickets fly around. Conan decides to give chase to the thief as the man runs into an alley between buildings. Conan tries to order the thief to stop but he keeps running so Conan has to pull off his inflating belt soccer ball and his super charging boots to take the robber out. Conan kicks the robber to the back with the ball and the perp drops the bag he stole but still manages to run away.
Conan gives Kyozo his bag back and the old man checks the insides to make sure everything's still there.

Inside Kyozo's bag are: his wallet, keys, day planner diary, soccer tickets, and Kyozo's glasses case. He then tells the DB's that nothing's been taken. Ayumi asks Kyozo what the sticker on the glasses case is. Kyozo tells her that the sticker is a photograph of her granddaughter who turns seven years old this year. The glasses case and its contents are a birthday gift for Kyozo from her granddaughter. The old man says that the glasses, the case, and the sticker photograph of her granddaughter are his greatest treasure.

The detective boys tell Kyozo that her almost 7 year old granddaughter is the same age as them. Ayumi then asks Kyozo which school his granddaughter goes to, to which he answers after hesitating a bit that he doesn't recall the school's name, which is a bit odd as he looks a bit concerned when saying that. Haibara then arrives to give Kyozo back the lottery tickets that fell off during the robbery as the Detective Boys picked them all up. Kyozo is surprised at hearing that the Detective Boys are friends with real police officers as well and he decides to treat these sleuths to a snack at a nearby cake shop down the street. Most of the Detective Boys are happy about it, but Conan seems suspicious about something.

Everyone is now eating at the cake shop Patisserie Musshy. Mitsuhiko asks Kyozo if the soccer game he's attending is the big match between Tokyo and Osaka. Kyozo says yes and shows the Detective Boys his ticket to the match; he even got a great seat. Kyozo says that he's a big fan of Higo & Hide and can't wait to see them face off in the match. Ayumi tries to tell him that neither of them are participating in the match but Kyozo gets a phone call from his friend Omi. He asks if Omi is ready to pull an all-nighter the next day but Omi says that something's come up and he's gotta leave at 10 P.M., so Kyozo and Omi are only able to meet for an hour. Kyozo then asks Omi if he wants to meet at 7 P.M. instead as they're both retired with time on their hands and his friend agrees to that. Kyozo tells him on the phone to not be shocked about how old he's gotten and Conan looks at him while thinking about something.

Kyozo takes out his diary and writes there that he's changing the meeting time with his friend to 7:00 P.M. After looking at the diary, Ayumi notes that Kyozo really has a busy day the next day. Haibara wonders why the notebook reads "Washing Machine" on the current day's schedule to which Kyozo answers that after eating at the cake shop he's going to Akihabara to buy a washing machine as his broke down a while back. He's used a laundromat for the past few weeks instead. Kyozo says that he'll miss grabbing loose change to visit the laundromat in his T-shirt and sweat pants while hanging out with a newspaper until the laundry's done.
Genta then notes that he's into a new Detective Samonji miniseries called the Laundromat Murders. Kyozo says that the Laundromat Murders is the TV series he mentioned earlier and can't wait to see who the culprit is; Kyozo theorizes that the perpetrator is the most friendly looking guy of the cast of characters.
Conan then says that he already knows who the culprit is - he knows because he's read the original novel that the series is adapting. Kyozo and the Detective Boys are surprised. Ayumi asks Conan not to spoil it and Kyozo asks Conan to whisper the culprit to him. Conan asks him if he's sure as the last episode is going to be on TV the next day to which Kyozo answers that he's going out with his friend and won't get home in time to see it. Conan wonders to him if he's not going to record it, so he's not going to spoil it as it'll be more fun to wait. After that the group leaves the cake shop. Kyozo tells the Junior Detective League thanks for everything and that his name is Kyozo Daita. Mitsuhiko says to the other kids about how likeable Kyozo was as he was so optimistic about everything.

Later one, at the TR Baker Station train station at 7 o'clock in the evening a train is arriving at Platform 2. We see Kyozo at the station, looking at his purse - or more accurately, looking at the photograph sticker of his granddaughter that's on the purse while drunk. His hands start to shake as he thinks to himself: "Yoshimi... hold on... I'll help you..." 

As the train is almost as Platform 2 of the station, Conan appears behind Kyozo and tells him that getting hit by a train isn't his idea of a fun night. Kyozo is surprised at hearing this. Conan tells him that he's planning to commit suicide in order to pay for his daughter's operation. Kyozo turns his face towards Conan while surprised and the train passes by. Conan managed to save the man already. Conan assumes that Kyozo has taken a huge life insurance policy. Kyozo asks how he knows something like that and Conan tells him that he kept talking about looking forward to tomorrow, but in reality he wasn't planning to be around by then.

The rest of the Detective Boys also make their appearance. Ayumi says that Kyozo had tickets to a big soccer game but didn't even know that his two favourite players weren't going to be there. Mitsuhiko explains that it also didn't make sense for him to promise to meet his friend at 7:00 P.M. when the game to the match starts at 4:00 P.M. as a soccer game is two hours long; he'd have to get from Osaka to Tokyo in a hour's time. Impossible. Genta tells Kyozo that when they picked up his lottery tickets, he didn't count them, which was suspicious. Haibara also joins in and tells Kyozo that it's very strange that he'd want Conan to spoil the big finale of his favourite TV show - it was as if Kyozo knew that he wouldn't be here to see tomorrow. That's how the Detective Boys knew that he was planning on committing suicide.

Conan explains that Kyozo went drinking to make it look as if he got drunk and stumbled off the train platform by accident, at least that was the plan had Conan not stopped him from jumping under the train. Haibara explains that life insurance policies generally have clauses against paying for suicide, so that's why Kyozo had to get drunk first.

Kyozo wonders how Conan knew about his granddaughter being sick. Conan tells him that he seems very close to her but still couldn't tell the Detective Boys which school she attends. That's because she doesn't go to school in the first place. Conan theorized that she's in a hospital somewhere. Kyozo tells him that he's right - his granddaughter has been hospitalized for the past six months. She was born with heart problems and Kyozo's family had finally found a skilled doctor overseas who's capable of operating on her, but the operation fee is so massive that there was no other choice but to try to get the life insurance money. Ayumi tells him that his granddaughter would want him to be around when she gets better. Genta also tells him that what he's going to do if one of his lottery tickets was a big winner to which Kyozo says that he couldn't possibly win 100 million yen (~1 million dollars) twice in a row. Kyozo tells them that he'd won 100 million yen at the end of the last month and thanked the gods when that happened, but what happened afterwards broke the camel's back as Kyozo went and lost the winning ticket.

Conan asks Kyozo if he'd read the lottery results in the newspaper while he was at the laundromat. Kyozo answers him that he's corect. The winning ticket was gone when he got home so he must've dropped it on the way. Conan asks him what he'd done with the other tickets and Kyozo answers that he threw them away at the laundromat.
Conan then realizes that Kyozo had put the winning ticket somewhere safe. He wouldn't just stuff it in his pocket, and it can't be his wallet either as he didn't take his wallet to the laundromat. Conan assumes thus that in his excitement, Kyozo put the ticket inside the one and only thing he had on him at the time - the glasses case his granddaughter gave him. As Kyozo opens the glasses case he sees the winning lottery ticket stuffed inside of there and gets very happy.

Haibara asks Conan why he even took his glasses case to the laundromat. Conan answers that he noticed Kyozo squinting when he made notes in his planner notebook. The glasses must be reading glasses. Kyozo explained earlier that he reads the newspaper every time he goes to the laundromat to waste time, it's all pretty logical. Conan tells Kyozo that when he thought he'd lost the ticket, he didn't want to open the glasses case because he felt so guilty towards his granddaughter.

Kyozo gives a sigh of relief and laughs, saying that for a while he thought of robbing a bank to pay for his granddaughters surgery. Then he tells thanks to the Junior Detective League and leaves while very happy. Genta and Mitsuhiko mention how the Detective Boys just were in a scary bank robbery situation so it's not funny to hear the old man joke about robbing a bank.
Ayumi tells Haibara that she remembers that she saw someone she knew in that bank. It was the man on the bus they were on a long time ago, the bus that got hijacked. Mitsuhiko and Genta also remember seeing the man at the bank - a man with narrow eyes and a burn mark on his cheek.

Conan tells the Detective Boys that he doesn't remember anyone like that on the hijacked bus but Ayumi tells him that the guy actually didn't have a burn mark when that happened - it's the guy with the black knit cap. When Conan hears this he gets shocked as he realizes it's Akai Shuiichi or someone like him as the case as well as the chapter ends.

This was an extremely rare one-shot case in the Detective Conan manga. But I wouldn't be writing about this case if I didn't think it was pretty incredible in its own right. I really like short stories and the fact that Gosho is able to compact this mystery about the optimistic old man with ill intentions in one mere chapter and use it to connect to the overarching plot at the end, is actually pretty impressive. In the past I didn't care for the case as it seemed to be basic but it is one of the more important cases when it comes to understanding how human psychology is used to build a case and explain certain actions. The lottery ticket part is also part of the whole and it does make sense when you actually think about it. My favourite part is when the train passes by the old man. That signals that Conan already managed to save his life then and there.

Tantei Gakuen Q / Detective School Q Volume 3 (F14-21) Review

Kamikakushi Village Murder Case

The second volume of Tantei Gakuen Q ended with Kyu and co. figuring out the case that happened on Kirisaki Island. The perpetrator there was actually Dan Morihiko himself and the case itself was simply the final part of the entrance exam. Figuring out the case allowed our main characters Kyu, Ryu, Megumi, Kazuma and Kinta to join the legendary retiring detective Dan Morihiko's Dan Detective School, and what's more, all five of them get to join the Q-Class (Qualified Class) which is directly taught by Dan Morihiko himself as he plans to find himself a worthy successor out of one of the five members of the Q-Class.

The first chapter of the third volume focuses on introducing us to the school's structure of DDS and the beginning of the volume also happens to build up to the next big case that lasts up to the 2nd to last chapter of the 4th volume. I like how well the overarching story has flown so far from case to case.
The Dan Detective School is actually a massive apartment with different classes, however the Qualified Class is in the woods, in the middle of nowhere nearby. The classroom for Q-Class is in an old apartment that's almost like a haunted house, but there's more to the story as the old worn-out apartment was the office of Dan Morihiko 40 years prior when he left the police force to become a private eye.
The Qualifies Class's classroom has a lot of sentimental value with Dan Morihiko himself as he remembers the times a skilled detective used to assist him as a partner and they solved many dangerous cases. Dan says that during a criminal investigation this skilled detective died, and if he were alive this day there would be no Q-Class as that detective would be his successor instead.

The second real case in the series is then referred from the police to Dan Morihiko, who then asks the Q-Class to solve it. The case is another intriguing one as it happened in a small, isolated village where several students went to, but suddenly one of them disappeared. The scene left was baffling as this student vanished into thin air on the spot. To solve this case is the first job of the Q-Class, and if they're not able to do it, the A-Class would get the case. Dan himself had already figured it out but he uses it as an exam in the school.

In DDS there's a Simulation Room with a slide project and models that are used to recreate the crime scene in the room. Sometimes the school uses a moving background to create the scene a more realistic feel. What's more, there is also a dojo where students train to defend themselves with martial arts like karate and judo. There's also a Computer Room with the latest models (like Windows 95 computers or something.. lol), and a Makeup Studio where the students practice disguising with rubber masks and wigs, a forensics lab with a fake corpse that is used to estimate the time of death.

The Kamikakushi Village Disappearance case

Some people may be aware of Kamikakushi from series like Higurashi no naku koro Ni. It means to be spirited away or disappear without a trace all of a sudden. It's part of Japanese folk tales. The authors are making the name of the village symbolize the case itself in which the student disappeared.

Anyway, in Kyu and co. get to become more familiar with the disappearance case in the Simulation Room. According to the police files, the friend of the missing student took pictures in Kamikakushi Village and sent them to the police. The DDS will use those photos with a projector to simulate the case.
The village has paddy fields that haven't been planted and it's very isolated place. The photographs show footprints that go to the middle of the muddy fields only to disappear in the middle of the field without a trace of going further.

The footprints started from underneath the window of the missing student's room. It's as though someone lured him out to the middle of the field and then snatched him from the heavens. When the footprints were discovered, the student's disappearance was not yet confirmed so no reports to the police were made yet. However the villagers started saying that "another person was spirited away because he violated the Taboo."

The footprints to the paddy field were first discovered at 7 A.M., before breakfast. Last time the student was seen was at 10 o'clock the previous night. The farmers went to the field by dawn at around 5 A.M. and didn't notice a thing.
Could it be that the student was murdered and the culprit intentionally created this disappearing footprint setup in order to make it seem as if the student was 'Spirited Away' if the villagers are so superstitious folk that they believe old legends? 

More hints to the case are the disappeared student's luggages which contained the following: a compass, thermos, cell phone, swiss army knife, a flashlight, a book of treasure hunting & guide, rrope, a camera, a shovel, a safety jacket, a folded rubber raft with plastic oar and a pump and a sleeping bag.


After figuring out how the footprints were created the Q-Class are given the DDS Detective Notebook. The notebook gives the students authorization to enter any crime scene. The notebooks have the D.D.S. logo and symbol on it and it would be bad if it got stolen or if it disappeared. What's more the notebook has more to it: it contains an area for notes as well as seven tools: a fingerprint kit, a multipurpose knife, a database for deciphering simple passwords, lock picks, etc.
The reason why the students are given the notebook is because their first task as students of DDS is now to leave for Kamikakushi Village and its neighbor, the Hyotan Village in which 7 people have disappeared in the past 10 years. To get to Kamikakushi Village, one has to walk from Hyotan Village for 30 minutes through a tunnel.
So, along with the disappearing student case the Q-Class has to figure out what happened to six other disappeared people- who and why did they get "Spirited Away."

People of Kamikakushi & Hyotan Village

This is not a normal rural area. Rumours say that because of a strange cult that believes in the God of Disease of epidemics as well as a legend about an old treasure from the Japanese Army, the Kamikakushi Village has become a popular topic to be talked about online.
Hyotan Village on the other hand is filled with TV program personnel who are included as the case cast. To enter Kamikakushi village everyone is forced to wear white masks with holes in them or they're risking themselves of being spirited away.

The Case Cast of the Kamikakushi Village Murders case

A group of people with white masks with holes in them play a prank on Kyu and co. to scare them. Ryu explains to us that the masks are supposed to showcase Smallpox disease. Smallpox is a plague that's been around since ancient times and it causes the victim's body to be riddled with pus-filled lesions. Most people inflicted by Smallpox die. Even though the disease was beaten in 1980's with the Smallpox vaccine apparently many large countries have still used the virus as a biochemical weapon. We also get to learn more about Ryu's character as he explains that researching diseases and poisons is his hobby. In this case we get properly introduced to the cast of characters to get to know them. The cast has personnel from the 'Adventure' program and goes as follows:

Azegami Rio (25), TV Reporter
Iwashimizu Hiroki (42), TV Producer
Anzai Kunihiko (29), TV Director
Oowada Susumu (32), TV Cameraman
Kagami Rei (25), Assistant Director

Each of the TV personnel are there to hunt for the legendary treasure and tension riles up between each of them as they consider each other rivals in the hunt.
But there are also more case characters of course:

Kuruzumi Kogoro (58), the Owner of Ryozanbaku Inn who explains that not even the villagers of Hyotan are allowed to enter Kamikakushi Village if they don't wear those creepy white masks the TV personnel used to scare our main characters.
Fuma Mio (17), Ryozanbaku Inn Hostess
Kirihara Masae (60), Ryozanbaku Inn Hostess
Kuruzumi Ryou (25), Branch Manager of Ryozanbaku Inn

What I like is that now three volumes in the story we finally get reminder name plates for the same case-only characters in multiple chapters.

So, the Q-Class this time has to figure out the mysteries including a small villages with a disease cult that wears a strange mask, a japanese army treasure, and the mysterious disappearances in Kamikakushi Village. The latest victim disappeared from the Ryozanbaku Inn annex in Kamikakushi Village, and that village itself is isolated from outside world and only accessible through a tunnel connecting from Hyotan Village.
Things of course aren't going to be that simple as the actual murders of the case begin, but before the first victim falls to the killer attacking her with a sickle, we get to learn of a clue showing the Infinity sign, or the Moebius Strip sign, that is supposed to be a hint towards the treasure or the missing student. Later on, the group manages to find the first victim hidden, buried in a grave with a skeleton, and then it doesn't take longer for another person to vanish - to get Spirited Away. The common line between all these disappearances and murders is the fact that they know the truth behind the mystery of the villages and the treasure before meeting their fate.

The third volume to the Kamikakushi Murder Case ends with the second murder being shown. It's a really intriguing one: one of the TV personnel is filming himself trying to find the legendary war treasure but as he was passing the fields, all of a sudden the camera shows the ground getting further and further away as if he started flying.'

Is the second murder a person being spirited away or just a person being lured into a deadly trap so that his body would never be found?

The third volume is a decent collection of numerous classic mysteries although we only got an answer to the first missing footprints mystery in the build-up case to the Kamikakushi Village Murders Case, and this case is a reeeally long one. In total it takes up almost two volumes. I'm not really the biggest fan of cases that are this long as the novelty does wear off but I hope the next volume brings something interesting to the table.
The most notable mysteries in the Kamikakushi Murders Case include the mystery of the ancient army war treasure, the mystery of people being spirited away, the mystery of the disease cult and the mystery of how the 2nd victim was made to fly.
I actually immediatelly see through the trick that's being done with the Hyotan and Kamikakushi villages, the foreshadowing makes it too obvious, but I hope the rest of the mysteries and how it all connects together will impress me. The mystery of the villages is actually something that would impress people who don't think of it as it's a cool trick in of itself. A similar type of trick was done in Zero Time Dilemma which is the final game of the Zero Escape trilogy.

One funny thing I noticed is that after the first corpse is found in the grave, we got police to arrive to the crime scene to investigate but they just disappear without doing anything in this volume.

Detective Conan M22: Zero the Enforcer

"The blades of both good and evil that I have brandished soon turn around and slash me."
- Zero by Masaharu Fukuyama

Meitantei Conan: Zero no Shikkonin (2018) is one of the newer additions to the massively popular Detective Conan franchise, telling the tale of the dark side of law enforcement. Series I've really liked such as Phoenix Wright 5: Dual Destinies as well as Miles Edgeworth Investigations 2: Prosecutor's path for example have tackled this type of subject matter, and this time it's one of my all time favourites, the Detective Conan series, to do the same. Considering how the Justice system has been presented so far in the franchise, I honestly never thought we'd get a movie like this one.

The plot of the movie is multilayered and even somewhat complex due to characters reading ahead of others one after another; this is definitely one that requires either intense attention or another rewatch, which is something I appreciate from cinematic films, these Conan movies are always packed in content. The second half of the movie deals mostly with action and reveals.

The Story

The Sandwich man

Edge of the Ocean is a soon-to-be-opened seaside city near Tokyo Bay that is practically a small island. With a variety of facilities on the island ranging from a Casino Tower, that works as a
lighthouse, to an international convention center and shopping mall with classic japanese aura as its design concept, this seaside city is hyped by the news as both the next big tourist attraction that can even easily be entered with a two-sided monorail as well as hyped as the place for the next big summit meeting of Japan's elite that will put active 22 000 Japanese police officers on the Meropolitan area (who knew Megure had that many colleagues in the PD?).

The movie kicks right into high gear as the convention center, in which the summit was planned to have been held in, completely explodes, destroying the surrounding city blocks. In the midst of the flames Amuro Tooru, also known by his real name Furuya Rei, one of my favourite characters and one of the main attractions of this particular movie, can be seen looking at the blazing structure as the movie's opening scene starts playing.

Fly!

Kazami Yuya is a new character introduced as a cast for this movie. As the police make their assumptions about how the explosion could have been an accident as the core area of ignition, in other words the kitchen area of the convention centre, was detected to have filled with gas, meaning it was an accidental gas explosion, and if it was a terrorist attack, it would make no sense to do the explosion one week before the summit meeting, due to the heightening of security.

Kazami Yuya of the MPD's Public Security Bureau arrives to the Police Department in the middle of a meeting, as he's all tattered up from unexplained damage, and explains that a high-voltage cable might have caused the ignition of the gas, because the PSB had found fingerprints burned onto the voltage cable's storage unit. The fingerprints were confirmed to have belonged to an ex-police officer, the now famous sleeping Kogoro. The story quickly heads to a direction where Kogoro gets handcuffed and taken to jail for questioning as more evidence against him is found; he then becomes accused of murder and of causing a terrorist attack, and the one prosecuting Kogoro is a famous prosecutor known for never losing a case (his fame is equal to Eri's), named Kusakabe Makoto.

Despite Eri - who is lawyer herself but her close connection to Kogoro doesn't allow her to defend the man - trying to find a defense attorney for Kogoro, no one seems to agree to take the case. At that moment a new character, Tachibana Kyoko, a 29-year-old attorney who hasn't won a single case appears and says that she wants to defend the Sleeping Kogoro. However, something about her is weird as she almost seems as if she wants Kogoro to get prosecuted.

Brainstorming

The main plot of the movie revolves around the explosion of the international convention center that
took the lives of some of the Public Security Bureau's officers, and Mouri Kogoro is getting the blame for it. The story handles heavy new subjects to the series such as cyber crimes and the dark side of the Public Security and the court in which they just try to put the blaim on others; these illegal acts from the 'Justice's'/law enforcement's side actually do seriously happen in reality, and Amuro is in the center of it all.

This movie is substance over all else, mostly. It's filled with intense amounts of information and foreshadowing; a suicide in a past case, showcasing Agasa's drone that can be controlled in a 30 kilometer radius, to the news mentioning about a re-entering space shuttle with a GPS unit in it, to making the watcher question why exactly Amuro was there at the scene of the explosion? and why was Conan's second phone (his 'Conan' instead of 'Shinichi' self's) phone on the ground? and so on.

Regarding the target audience of the movie - think of all of these characters that they just don't even try to introduce - Kogoro, Eri, Kuroda, and so on, and think of the plotlines, why Haibara acts ominous when she sees Amuro and what the whole complex deal behind Amuro is in the first place, why does he seem both the hero and an antagonist? these are things that new audience will be completely left out off, not even counting the complex plot of the movie itself.

 

Zero the Enforcer is clearly made for Conan fans and not anyone else - it's intended for the ones who can instantly recognize who a character is and what their affiliations and relationships with the other cast are. I honestly feel that it is impossible for non-fans to just drop into this movie and enjoy it fully as it is, even if you enjoy and can keep up with high-paced stories that constantly introduce something new to weave the story with.

I am an Amuro fan right after I am a Heiji fan (M21 was my favourite movie in the series so far). But even leaving that bias out, in a sense the film itself is an impressive piece of work that I definitely enjoyed watching due to the amount of friendly complexity it can offer to the watcher - on a rewatch when I paid attention to the smallest of details in the writing, that's when it really shined to me. I can enjoy it when things can contain more than one layer to them - an explosion cannot have been a terrorist attack because the security of the summit will be tightened. That's what the police assumed, but there are more than one side to that conclusion.

Conclusion

The True Madman

So, there is a surprisingly intense amount of information in the film to be gathered in the film but it tones down about an hour and fifteen minutes in as it gets right into the action and conclusion parts. All these different organization groups and individual characters in the backgrounds that move the story forward make the entire thing surprisingly grand in scale. The hints towards the culprit were pretty clever in this one because it directly connects with what kind of person they are, and the order of events. I did not guess the hint, but I did guess the culprit from another scene, but was not 100% sure until the reveal.

The action scenes in the movie are quite amazing if you are a fan of Amuro and him driving like a nutjob. I really liked this movie, not because it had crazy hand-to-hand combat or anything, but how fitting and badass the action was to the characters themselves. Amazing. Ahh, also, despite the serious tone of the movie, there was also slight comedy - right in the beginning I got a chuckle from Conan thinking that Dr. Agasa's new drone invention, that can be controlled with satellite signals, is breaking countless different laws" as well as the moment when Tachibana Kyoko says she's lost all her defense attorney cases was pretty funny. The use of soundtracks was above average and fitting as well and I really love how much meaning the lyrics of the ending credit song, Zero by Masaharu Fukuyama, has with Amuro's character and this movie.  

Overall, Zero the Enforcer was a great, great film for the hardcore fans, with a lot backing it up when you start to pull it apart. It had content for hours despite being a little less than a two-hour film. Ah, also it's nice to see a lot of Amuro content, as our favourite triple-face also now has an official spin-off series supervised by Aoyama himself. 

Amuro is the most loyal lover

Furinkazan Murder Case - Detective Conan Vol. 59, F613-618

"An' where's Robin Hood right now?"

- Heiji Hattori (Detco f.613, p.8)

Detective Conan is quite the anomaly when it comes to detective fiction as it has stood the test of time for over 25 years but not only that, it's also gotten yearly movies since 1997 and the author Gosho Aoyama has always drawn numerous high quality frames for each of the movies (Aoyama's scenes are noticeable in the movies if you pay attention as there's a lot of focus and thick lines over the characters in his drawings). However this year has been quite bad for cinema industry due to the virus outbreak all around the world so I'm sadly expecting Detective Conan's 24th movie: The Scarlet Bullet, to sell far less than its box office breaking records of the past years, which is a shame as I know many people, me included, are quite big fans of the characters it's starring. 

Aside from the yearly films, Conan also stands out from rest in the genre for its much more main character-focused narrative and compact short cases. Most episodic detective fiction series tend to focus on locked rooms in uninhabited islands and mansions, but that's merely just a part of how Detective Conan is structured. Sometimes it focuses on old school tricks, sometimes on modern "current day" mechanics for its crimes which is pretty cool when it's pulled off well.

There are numerous other series that also do the short-case format but none of them manage to be as condensed yet fantastically crafted as Detective Conan - condensed storytelling is very hard to pull off as it more often than not feels boring and as if the author is simply info-dumping his ideas, which is why series like Q.E.D. and C.M.B., and often even Kindaichi tend to take their time until they start to focus on the case and its characters; taking your time to get to the point works well when you try to create atmospheric stories, but as I said, it can take a long time to get to the point and you end up flipping through the pages as they don't offer information to take in. Because other authors focus on atmospheric storytelling that needs to take its time, their short-cases tend to feel really lacking in comparison and waste of time.

Thus, the condensed pacing is what sets it apart most of the time along with Gosho Aoyama's style, and even when some of the tricks can be familiar, the series also tends to have cases where they subvert expectations from how the case would have gone in other series. Detective Conan is very professionally crafted and never feels draggy or fillerish in its cases the way practically any other series does, and one of the best more classic cases in the series to present this compact aspect of the series is the Furinkazan Case which takes place in volume 59 of the series - in the manga Furinkazan case happens right after the infamous Clash of Red and Black overarching story arc of volume 58, which is the longest story in Detective Conan. It's nothing but back-to-back greatness in these volumes.

Furinkazan Murder Case - Feud between Torada family and Tatsuo family
 
The first page of this story immediately kicks into high gear as Kogoro, Ran and Conan have a meet-up with Naonobu Torada (61), the head of the Torada family. Naonobu and his wife Tatsue (58) had requested the famous Sleeping Kogoro to come and solve a very perplexing case in which he assumes there's a killer out there who hates the Torada family. According to Naonobu this killer already took the life of his son Yoshiro, who died after hitting the ground hard, smashed his head, and lost too much blood from the impact.

Yoshiro's death is however quite perplexing one as he wasn't pushed off a cliff or anything normal like that, instead a tornado yanked him high into the sky and dropped him on the rocky ground while eyewitnesses saw him being taken by the whirlwind. A day later Yoshiro's body was found. However the reason why the Torada family doesn't believe Yoshiro died of a natural cause (which the tornado obviously would be), is because next to Yoshiro's corpse, in his own pool of blood, a centipede had been placed while the blood was still fresh and wet. In other words the person to leave this centipede to the scene of Yoshiro's death was a person who didn't even try to help him by calling for help or anything like that.

The person to find Yoshiro's body was Shigetsugu, who is also of the Torada family and the younger brother of the victim, but due to Shigetsugu's lazy attitude which causes him to spend his time "searching for a treasure that doesn't exist", the all too serious Torada family head (Shigetsugu's and Yoshiro's father Naonobu Torada) doesn't acknowledge him as a successor to the family.

Now, the Torada family most suspicious group of people to leave Yoshiro to his demise are the Tatsuo family. The Tatsuo family also had a tragedy just the other day as they lost their own son a day prior. Tatsuo family had already taken steps to figuring out their son's killer, and their suspects were the Torada family, which is the current client of Kogoro. The Torada family had called Kogoro to not just investigate Yoshiro's death but also as a countermeasure against the Tatsuo family's antics - as apparently since the police have been slow on the uptake, the Tatsuo family had hired a skilled detective to solve the case for them.

What makes this case more curious is the duality between two families blaming each other and two different but very familiar detectives and new Nagano -region police that are introduced to work on the case in a way that's not really seen in Detective Conan as overarching characters have personal business with this murder case itself.

The detective hired by the Tatsuo family head, Tamefumi Tatsuo (56) to figure out who of the Torada family could have killed their son is none other than the duo of Hattori Heiji and his childhood friend Kazuha Toyama. The murder case on the Tatsuo family side is pretty cold-blooded in comparison to the one on the Torada family side.
Koji Tatsuo was found dead the other day: he had been tied up, buried so that only his head was visible, and bludgeoned to death with a blunt object. Before Koji's blood had dried up, someone had put a centipede on his head. So the case shares similarities with the Torada family case. Tamefumi's mother, Shigeyo Tatsuo (78) believes whole-heartedly that the monster to kill her grandchild was one of the Torada family members, and the motive for the murder would have to be revenge as they believe the Tatsuo family left their son to the wolves so to speak.

This second case also shares similarities with the other case as Tamefumi's other son Akira Tatsuo was the one to find the dead body of his brother Koji while Akira was on his way home from Yabusame practice, which is the art of horseback arrowshooting that is practiced around the town for a local yearly festival that's also happening very soon in the story. Akira himself is extremely good at shooting whatever target he's given, but there's still someone else hiding in the story that used to be, according to Akira himself, a much better ranger.

The case gets even crazier as Akira's wife Ayaka disappears and winds up dead in the forest - except the reader gets to see her death go down as she gets stranged on a rope tied to a tree branch. With a dead centipede found on this third crime scene as well, along with the fact that the crime is actually an impossible crime due to the fact that there are no footprint marks on the muddy ground, this case ends up being pretty chilly. There is also a fourth death in the case when the last son of Torada family winds up dead from burning alive next to a train rail track. These four cases follow an old classic japanese war slogan known as Furinkazan.

The village festival is the core thing that connects the two cases and the symbolism of the centipede together as there are people in samurai suits shooting arrows during the festival. However the case does go deeper as six years prior the previous master Yabusame archer of the village, Kuroto Kai, fell off a cliff and died during practice. The one to find the body of Kai six years ago was none other than Yui Torada, the wife of the victim of Torada family and with surprising connections to certain characters.

When it comes to the overarching story, this case introduces us to a new hardboiled detective, the one-eyed cane-using Yamamoto Kansuke from the Nagano Prefectural Police. The policemen in Detective Conan are usually overarching in a way that they make their appearance every time our cast goes to their region. But unlike other cops in the series, Kansuke is very serious, dangerous-feeling, semi-aggressive and down-to-business. What makes this case more interesting is that our hard-boiled detective is included in the list of suspects in a pretty convincing manner. I'm impressed at how the everything in this case flows so naturally and without feeling forced.


Okay so, this case is feaking amazing! I spent hours upon hours just immersed in the story of these two families and the numerous mysteries that were presented with our great, great cast of characters solving them individually very professionally. This is one of the harder Detective Conan cases for sure - I've read the case about decade ago but I can't believe that I didn't get who the killer was on this reread! It feels amazing to be wrong when it comes to these long cases, as this case was double the length of the usual Detective Conan case.

The motive of Furinkazan - a classic samurai slogan, two families at war, murder scenes with centipedes, a village festival, mysterious deadly history, a samurai armor, a hard-boiled detective, a missing treasure... the Furinkazan case is fantastic example of peak Detective Conan storytelling in so many ways. I could easily spend hours just theorizing and talking about a single chapter of a case of this caliber.

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.