Sanitary Napkin Equals Monkey Wrench, Umbrella Equals Doorknob

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:

1. All the teacher's victims were his lovers and willingly accepted their fate, based on the careful detail of their preservation.
2. The teacher had begun to favor Kobayashi over his current lover, and called the after-school meeting to confess his feelings.
3. 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.