The mystery genre
is by this point an old and respected one. And it's easy to see why;
the idea of righting wrongs not through strength but through
intellect and logic is an appealing one. Why else would we see so
many incarnations of Sherlock Holmes over the decades, to say nothing
of imitators, tributes, and loving winks? And yet Ranpo Kitan:
Game of Laplace is something I have never yet seen in any
variation of the genre: a mystery show that utterly hates logic.
The story begins
with our audience-insert character Kobayashi waking up in his
classroom only to find that his teacher has been murdered and turned
into a human chair (we'll . . . get into that). Immediately
suspected of the murder, it takes the skills of genius teenage
detective Akechi to prove Kobayashi's innocence, after which
Kobayashi becomes his unwanted apprentice. Together, they solve a
series of crimes that slowly lead to Twenty Faces, a mysterious
figure who horrifically murders in the name of justice and has
spawned countless imitators.
That's the gist of
things; be warned that this review will contain spoilers for some of
said “mysteries”.
The first major
failing of Ranpo Kitan isn't in the mystery department,
though, it's in the character department. Akechi, our hero, is as
sour a fuck as ever brooded outside a Hot Topic. He pops pills,
washes them down with canned coffee, and complains about people
giving him a headache. He actively doesn't care about solving
mysteries unrelated to the Twenty Faces case. Later this obsession
is revealed as the clichéd “correct my greatest mistake”
motivation, quite out of character for him. In short, he doesn't
give a shit, so neither do we, and all attempts to portray him as a
tortured loner don't work. The aforementioned Kobayashi doesn't fare
much better. He likes solving mysteries . . . and that's it. He's
kind of an airhead . . . I guess? Honestly there's so little to this
character that it feels like they were only included so some
cast member would actually go out of their way to solve mysteries.
He finds the ideas of mutilated corpses and being framed for their
murder fun, so there's that. Oh, and he looks even more girly than
Nagisa from Assassination Classroom. Which brings us to his
best friend, Hashiba, heir to a corrupt corporation, who is
constantly striving to do the right thing despite his dark future.
That bit of character depth barely comes up, however, so he instead
comes off as a constant stick-in-the-mud. “Oh, you shouldn't do
that!” “Let's let the police handle this!” “No way am I
letting you get involved, it's too dangerous!” Practically all his
lines are as such, and thus ignored, making him another irritating
waste of space. Except that he's also clearly a closet homosexual,
who goes into a blushing, stammering fit whenever Kobayashi exposes
so much as a half-inch of stomach skin, a fairly common occurrence.
Because it's funny, right?
Now, to give you
an idea of the plot's insanity, let's review the first mystery. As
outlined above, Kobayashi stays after school to meet with his teacher
at the teacher's request, only to find him dead at the appointed
time. Kobayashi blacks out, wakes up the next morning, and finds the
teacher's corpse made into a chair, with the murder weapon in
Kobayashi's own hand. After establishing the important characters,
Kobayashi is taken into custody; a search of the teacher's house
revealed a room full of similarly-murdered furniture-people, and
Kobayashi is suspected of being the now-dead killer's accomplice.
Kobayashi asks Hashiba to plant a cell phone on their new teacher's
desk, and upon its discovery, Hashiba claims it must have belonged to
their old teacher. The new teacher promises to take it to police
afterwards. From this exchange, Kobayashi is able to confirm that
the real killer is in their classroom. How? I have no idea, but
then I'm not an eccentric genius. Kobayashi also assumes that:
- All the teacher's victims were his lovers and willingly accepted their fate, based on the careful detail of their preservation.
- The teacher had begun to favor Kobayashi over his current lover, and called the after-school meeting to confess his feelings.
- The new killer was in fact the lover, killing the teacher out of love and framing Kobayashi for revenge.
Can you see the
problem here? All these so-called facts are wild
fucking assumptions at the time they're stated. Sure, the real
killer (a pretty young student) eventually falls into the trap by
attempting to retrieve the cell phone and confesses all this, but
beforehand there was no evidence to justify these crazy
guesses! We never even hear from the teacher that, yes, he did
suddenly go gay for Kobayashi. And to cap off those two episodes of
weirdness, the killer is treated strangely sympathetically, breaking
down in sobs and monologuing about how she wanted so badly to be a
chair, while Kobayashi assures her with his typical cheerful smile
that it's okay. Uh . . . true love?
And thaqt's not
the end of the show's Olympic-worthy leaps in logic. We soon meet
minor character Shadow Man, a master of disguise who wears a bag on
his head to conceal his true face. Just take the bag off, though,
and he'll look exactly like any other character from the series, no
makeup, chothes, or prep time needed to change his identity right
down to the voice, a stretch even by Lupin III standards. He
briefly enlists Kobayashi to act as bait for a kidnapper targeting
young girls; Shadow Man can't disguise himself as those, you see.
Except at one point we're shown a female nurse who is explicitly
mentioned later to be Shadow Man. Guess consistency isn't as
important as seeing Hashiba get hot and bothered by Kobayashi in a
skirt, right? Later, it's revealed that the network of Twenty Faces
killers are the result of a mathematical formula that predicts
everything. No, really. Like, everything from who and how a Twenty
Faces imitator will kill next to when a phone call will come in to
what the Queen of England will have for lunch tomorrow. There are
other examples, but you can see by now how the show's core just
doesn't work; it cares nothing for the logic that defines any
mystery.
Another unnerving
aspect is the show's overall mood, particularly the comedy that comes
flying at you out of nowhere. About once per episode, the characters
will be talking seriously about a murder, and the conversation will
shift to the autopsy. At this point, Minami and Corpsey, the medical
examiner and her talking dummy, burst into the scene. They
cheerfully recreate the murder accompanied by music and a manic
energy more befitting to Excel Saga on crack, then make a
hasty exit, whereupon the previous grim conversation resumes as if
nothing had happened. Does it work? Well, better than the rest of
the show's comedy.
The Black Lizard,
although ostensibly an important underworld boss with crucial
information and connections, is essentially another joke character.
She's a sadistic bondage queen who lives behing bars with her
man-slaves, but is crazy in love with Akechi. The painfully long
meetings consist of Black Lizard begging Akechi to punish her, Akechi
telling her he hates her and she should go die, and Black Lizard
getting more aroused from this exchange until she pisses herself or
something, only then surrendering information. It's as funny as
you'd expect. Shadow Man, established as very “protective” of
the little girls a kidnapper was turning into walls (yeah, that
happens) is later played for laughs as a “funny” pedophile. The
class's replacement teacher from the first arc is a completely
out-of-place moe girl, cat-ears and all, whose existence is a
mystery; so far her greatest accomplishment is getting freaked out by
a human chair in episode 2 and jumping out a window. Counting this
sequence, she has at most three minutes of screen time in the entire
show. What are we supposed to make of her?
Simply put, the
show's comedy thrives on the bizarre, and that's exactly why it
doesn't work. There's one episode that's explicitly a comedy from
beginning to end; it involves both the Black Lizard and Shadow Man,
as well as an abandoned kitten, a time bomb, an abandoned baby, and a
terrorist takeover. And, like the rest of the show, it isn't
particularly funny. Because, as you can hopefully tell from my
description of the serious plots, there's so much weird,
logic-leaping what-the-fuckery always going on, intentionally
throwing random craziness at us doesn't produce laughs.
This could have
been a much better show with more consistent, coherent writing.
Visually it's certainly interesting. There's a neat “theatre”
motif going on, a language to how the lighting works and background
characters are presented, that recalls Ikuhara's shows. Some of the
music cues I wish I could listen to without remembering the scenes
they're in. And the source material has endured over the decades, so
clearly there are seeds of good ideas sprinkled around. I recommend
this article: (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2015-08-21/ranpo-kitan-a-twisted-metamorphosis-from-page-to-screen/.91934) that explains the creative
ways the original stories were adapted into modern times. The same
columnist happens to genuinely like the show, according to her
episode reviews; I tend to think she misses the forest for the trees
when reviewing this and other series, but her, there's respectable
company for fans of the show.
But for me, Ranpo
Kitan: Game of Laplace is a show so weird, so confused that it's
not even easy to hate. Like with Gundam: Reconguista in G, I
found myself just watching in fascination as it obviously makes wrong
move after wrong move. Apart from the crappy, unlikeable characters
and bipolar mood, you simply.
Do.
Not make a mystery
show that has zero regard for logic. This is basic stuff, people.
It's . . .
elementary.
