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Ranpo Kitan: Game of Laplace (TV).


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Stark700



Joined: 30 Jan 2012
Posts: 11762
Location: Earth
PostPosted: Fri Jun 05, 2015 9:52 pm Reply with quote


Ranpo Kitan: Game of Laplace (TV)

Genres: Horror
Themes:

Plot Summary: The story takes place at a certain middle school where several murder cases take place. Kobayashi, a boy who goes to this school, meets genius detective Akechi, who comes to the school to investigate. Kobayashi takes an interest in Akechi and, in spite of his friend Hashiba's worries, he volunteers to be Akechi's assistant.
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One of several Noitamina projects for this year. I believe this is produced as part of the 50th anniversary after Edogawa Ranpo's (the author) passed away. Nonetheless, I think the plot summary seems interesting with horror elements.

There seems to be a bit of mystery as well. Director Seiji Kishi is a hit or miss for me but I think he can manage this. The CM seems alright.
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Stark700



Joined: 30 Jan 2012
Posts: 11762
Location: Earth
PostPosted: Thu Jul 02, 2015 1:50 pm Reply with quote
Episode 1:

Anyone else find it interesting that they are using shadows for the background and supporting characters? I think the show is really trying to use identity is a gimmick.

I don't like the main guy yet but I do find his personality to be kinda interesting. The first episode also sets up a gruesome murder as the the culprit set it up to look like a piece of art in a way. (with very bizarre positioning of the body).

Curious to see what else they will go with this. Liked the ED theme song. Overall good start.
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RestLessone



Joined: 02 Aug 2009
Posts: 1426
Location: New York
PostPosted: Thu Jul 02, 2015 8:43 pm Reply with quote
Mixed feelings.

Interesting premise at its core, but weighted by using gimmicky anime tropes. Like that teacher... The atmosphere clashes with it.

Don't like Kobayashi much. It seems like the writers are trying wayyyyy to hard with him. He feels like the sort of original character you make where you ARE 13. I really want them to tackle his personality; make it more than something for 'normal' characters to react to.

On the other hand, I like Akechi so far.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15462
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Thu Jul 02, 2015 10:08 pm Reply with quote
Episode 1

Kobayashi seems quite odd, although the kind of not matching expected emotion might be a good thing in something like this. Although his gender, he appears to have an hourglass figure and his shirt has some sort of ribbon on it unlike the other male classmate we can look at. That is not a normal trap.

Seems coincidental with a topic that has come out about cute things clashing with gruesome on the forums, I can kind of take this somehow, but I get a little worried about my tolerance.

So far I like the style, I can be quite interested in artistic uses of greying characters out if there is some purpose to it, and it does build up a feeling of mystery.
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Harleyquin



Joined: 29 May 2014
Posts: 2841
PostPosted: Thu Jul 02, 2015 10:09 pm Reply with quote
First thing the show reminded me of was UN-GO, both of these series are based on much older mystery novels written by authors in the Showa era. Compared to the former, this series is much darker and has characters more broken than the unusual ones found in UN-GO.

Kobayashi is one of those gifted but warped characters one occasionally meets in real life, Akechi just appears to be an older version who uses medication to keep himself closer to the normal end of the spectrum. Hashiba's seems to play the straight man to the madness all around him.

Looking at the title and the animation for the OP, it looks like many of the cases ahead will be on the macabre side of things. Since it's been a while since mystery series were last aired on Noitamina, let's see how the series approaches the cerebral side of things.
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ookamigirl



Joined: 15 Jul 2012
Posts: 2274
Location: Croatia
PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 8:16 am Reply with quote
Kobayashi found himself in the middle of a problem.
Akechi looks interesting.
Inspector Kagami isn't bad either.
Off to a really nice start!
Things got all explain-y after the nice start though..
Will give it a few more episodes before I decide.
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casualfan



Joined: 24 Jul 2012
Posts: 333
PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 9:00 pm Reply with quote
Kobayashi's design is way too feminine to be a boy. I wouldn't be surprised if he turns out to be a 'she'.
I feel Hashiba to be overprotective over Kobayashi. He basically falls in love with Kobayashi already. I wonder if this is supposed to be a yaoi series.
The mystery and atmosphere interests me enough to watch the next episode though.
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Harleyquin



Joined: 29 May 2014
Posts: 2841
PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 9:51 pm Reply with quote
casualfan wrote:
Kobayashi's design is way too feminine to be a boy. I wouldn't be surprised if he turns out to be a 'she'.
I feel Hashiba to be overprotective over Kobayashi. He basically falls in love with Kobayashi already. I wonder if this is supposed to be a yaoi series.


Androgynous people do exist both in fact and fiction, so why should the character design necessarily imply traps? At any rate, the series has gone out of its way from the beginning to place Kobayashi as a "he".
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casualfan



Joined: 24 Jul 2012
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 10:32 pm Reply with quote
Harleyquin wrote:
casualfan wrote:
Kobayashi's design is way too feminine to be a boy. I wouldn't be surprised if he turns out to be a 'she'.
I feel Hashiba to be overprotective over Kobayashi. He basically falls in love with Kobayashi already. I wonder if this is supposed to be a yaoi series.


Androgynous people do exist both in fact and fiction, so why should the character design necessarily imply traps? At any rate, the series has gone out of its way from the beginning to place Kobayashi as a "he".


His design resembles a girl hence people think he might be a trap. It's a very logical concept. If he's just androgynous, that's fine too.
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Sobe



Joined: 04 Jun 2011
Posts: 881
PostPosted: Sun Jul 05, 2015 1:03 am Reply with quote
Potential yaoi scenes and scenarios I hope. I'm looking forward to the arrogant tantei-kun getting tortured either mentally or physically. Mean tough guys are always asking for it in works of mystery. Twisted Evil
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Beobachter



Joined: 14 Apr 2015
Posts: 18
PostPosted: Mon Jul 06, 2015 9:07 am Reply with quote
The original Kobayashi (as in Edogawa's works) is a teenage boy adept at disguising himself as a girl for investigation purpose. Unless they wanted to take further step at creative liberty, I believe that Kobayashi's especially effeminate design this time around is simply a set-up for similar kind of fun disguise times.
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Spotlesseden



Joined: 09 Sep 2004
Posts: 3514
Location: earth
PostPosted: Mon Jul 06, 2015 11:42 pm Reply with quote
I think Hashiba is the killer of the teacher if they don't establish more characters in the next ep.

Note: this is an educated guess, i do not read any manga, LN, novel, or wiki, so it's not a spoiler.
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justsomeaccount



Joined: 24 Oct 2014
Posts: 471
PostPosted: Thu Jul 09, 2015 2:00 pm Reply with quote
Episode 2.

I'll be honest... this episode kind of killed my mood for this show Confused . It's not because of the tone, which treats every situation exactly as these screwed-up characters would like it to be treated (spoiler[the lunatic jealous because she wasn't killed and turned into a chair? Pure sad moment. The crazy main character with machine-attitude who only reacts to really disgusting things with hapiness? Those situations framed with total hapiness. etc.]), that I don't mind that much because they are self-aware (although those scenes could be a little faster and they would be funnier).

My problem is, now that we know the mistery and development, we can surely assure this is a really really dumb show treating its misteries, in the same way Dangan Ronpa or many cases of Case Closed are. Which by itself it's not a problem, mind you. However, Dangan Ronpa [for example] still had an understanding of mistery norms to give to the audience so they can participate (because it was adapted from a videogame, in fact the resolutions were too obvious), here it's the opposite, they give you nothing and when the main character starts guessing he suddenly tells all those necessary details to think something. And even that, they jump from convenient conclusion to convenient conclusion that doesn't seem understandable or realistic and they just go with it thinking it's the right hypotesis. That is totally unsatisfactory, and it's not even fun to see developing. Even by dumb mistery standards, like many Case Closed cases, this is done in a very bad way. And it doesn't compensate it with other elements, like for example invested characters into the situation or something.

Also, the autopsy part was so videogamey that even for this show it's completely out of place, that was too distracting.

So I don't know, with this episode it was commited to me I'm not going to enjoy this. But because they are brief silly cases I don't know whether to watch more or not, I'll see if I'm motivated next week.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15462
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Thu Jul 09, 2015 10:57 pm Reply with quote
Episode 2

I think that the logic was not bad. It was fairly obvious looking at the chairs that they were all women, and all made in a sensual way. You are still looking at crimes of targeting likely vulnerable girls, in which he made them part of his sick mindset. You could say the killer was a victim of it, but also from jealousy.

The show is filled with eccentric characters, and I am not really bothered by it such as with the medical examiner, they are different from most people.
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dtm42



Joined: 05 Feb 2008
Posts: 14084
Location: currently stalking my waifu
PostPosted: Thu Jul 09, 2015 11:14 pm Reply with quote
Not only do I dislike every character shown thus far, but I'm also disappointed and underwhelmed in how the mystery was resolved.

I'll watch the third episode, but I need to see some big improvements if I'm going to continue any further beyond it.
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