Forum - View topicTrickster: Edogawa Rampo 'Shounen Tantei-dan' Yori (TV).
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Stark700
 Posts: 11762 Location: Earth |
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Trickster: Edogawa Rampo 'Shounen Tantei-dan' Yori Genres: mystery Themes: boy detective, near future Plot Summary: It is the 2030s. The Boy Detectives Club gathers under Kogorō Akechi, the mysterious detective. The group solves cases great and small using their unique skills. One day, a member of the club, Kensuke Hanazaki, meets the boy Yoshio Kobayashi. Kobayashi's body cannot die due to the effects of the "Unidentifiable Mist," but he yearns for death, and shirks from contact with other people. Taking an interest in him, Hanazaki invites him to join the Boy Detectives Club. Their meeting is connected to the fate tying together Kogorō Akechi, and the era's greatest villain, the Fiend With Twenty Faces. ---------------------------------- New original TV mystery anime coming for Fall 2016. |
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Stark700
Posts: 11762 Location: Earth |
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Episode 1
A mystery show with decent technology (I'm actually surprised on that part) and a badass detective protagonist... Well, I'm interested in knowing more about that Hanasaki guy. That Kobayashi guy seems to be dealing with some personal demons. Kinda curious to see how their relationship will develop for rest of the season. The music is pretty good for this. Definitely has potential. |
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2841 |
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Another adaptation of Edogawa Ranpo's mystery novels, but this one has no connection with the last series which aired recently.
Apart from the names, the two series have completely different premises and plots. This series seems more action-focused than on puzzle-solving and viewers get the feeling they're thrown into the deep-end without any sense of direction of which way is up. The only thing I can see this series having in common with Ranpo Kitan is the confrontation between Twenty-faces and the detective Akechi (plus friends). Still too early to see what the tone of this series will be like but will be looking forward to what's coming next. |
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2841 |
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#2
The episode (and possibly the series) is still as chaotic as last week's. I can vaguely see a pattern in that the original novels which inspired this adaptation provide the bedrock for the cases which the club has to solve. The plot hanging over each case is the identity of the silver-haired immortal and his quest for death; he joins the club reluctantly as for some reason Hanasaki has the mysterious ability to wound him even in the smallest of degrees which he had never previously experienced. Speaking of Hanasaki, the type of person that I would try to avoid at all costs in real life. Sure he has talents which make him well-suited to the detective role, but that personality of his is extremely grating. His laid-back boss Akechi is another of those gifted but lazy individuals that the world seems to have an abundance of at times. The student detective who works with the club probably has an interesting past which might be revealed in the coming weeks. A cybernetic leg and an automated wheelchair hints at some kind of run-in with 20 faces in the past. Because of the high-tech far future setting, a lot of the telling clues which are supposed to clue viewers in on something significant aren't picked up because they aren't really obvious (although that might be the point). |
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2841 |
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#3
Another stand-alone episode. There's a bit of social commentary in this episode reflecting Japan in the here and now, but it's not overblown and merely acts as a prop for the main storyline where Kobayashi is given official permission to stay with the detective agency. The more I watch Hanasaki, the more I hate his type of character. Sure he has his good points and talents, but the downsides heavily outweigh the up. It looks like next week sees a return in the main duel between Akechi and 20-faces. Perhaps the latter will be what Kobayashi is really looking for. |
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Gina Szanboti
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I'm enjoying this so far. Although every time that hacker girl talks through the owl it throws me for a second.
It seemed odd that this pristine looking operating theater floor would just dump the bodies in a pile on the floor splattering blood everywhere instead of just tossing them into the auger straightaway. I'm not sure if I'm not grasping the rules of his 30 cm barrier or if they just ignore it when it's convenient. |
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15462 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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They also do the operations right in front of a window, allow any nitwit to fly a drone up spy their operations. And apparently their security is controlled by a tablet that is kept on a wall which none of the other people could get to close fast enough Mr immortal to get to.
I was thinking that they must have been ignoring it specifically on the park scene where the two of them clearly seem to be closer than 30cm, but the scene was just done for the swing cutting bit. |
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2841 |
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Note that Inoue calls out Kobayashi for his inability to control his sphere of doom. Perhaps it would be fair to say he has a "comfort zone" of 30cm when he's full aware of his surroundings allowing the sphere to manifest itself consistently when there's something within 30cm of him. In other cases when he's surprised or unaware of approaching objects (e.g. tripping into a car or not able to see spurts of water behind him) the sphere will trigger autonomously before he makes physical contact with the object in question. That might rationally explain the swing and car incident (although it's probably more likely that it's a plot device which can be circumvented when circumstances dictate). |
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2841 |
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#4
The case itself isn't that interesting even with the twist at the end. It appears to be another elaborate scheme by the twenty faces villain to screw with Akechi and his cohorts and walk away unscathed. What's more interesting is what the episode reveals about the past of its members. Inoue wasn't born paralysed, he lost the use of his legs when he disobeyed instructions not to intervene. His compatriot Katsuda appears to have felt enough guilty about the situation to quit the club and engage in more ordinary extra-curricular activities. Kobayashi's sphere of doom actually has limitations, thick reinforced gates of steel and concrete seem beyond his ability to instantly destroy. Since he joined the club in the hopes of finding a way to kill himself, it's no surprise he's not willing to push himself to save both himself and Inoue whom he doesn't really care much about anyway. Next week will probably reveal why the two officers were in on the scheme, but it seems rather trivial compared to the main storyline. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15462 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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"I thought your code stopped you from killing people?"
"If he just happens to have an accident in front of me that is not my fault." Okay, he is clearly saying that he will kill the guy and only use technicalities of "kill". I am pretty sure that is not how a code a works, it sounds more like someone took a common antihero trait or code and tried to say that he is indeed evil. Like the only way I can see it making sense in this universe is if someone else is using his name, otherwise I am calling it out on poor writing. The main character has classes on that one day from presumably morning until 8 at night? From what I understand 8 hours is a pretty universal school day, but the one day a month or so he has 12 hours. They went through the trouble saying he was home schooled or something earlier, so why does he need to do that 12 hour school day? Some people do actually study outside of a school, and with the tech of this setting it does not seem odd that it could be quite accessible. Maybe if he did tests or something, but that does not seem to be the case. It really just feels like they wrote this up to fit into the 8pm deadline. How did wheelchair get down into the sewage system? Did the city decide to make them all wheelchair accessible? He was walking pretty fine at the start of the series before his robot leg got broken, right? Why has he not had his leg fixed? Or does the show just want to nail it into us that he is disabled so that it can make him for most purposes able when they decide to give him his leg back? Where did the police woman get the message that she had to watch the message with the detective? There was only a note on it saying that it was for the detective, not some arbitrary rule that she could not watch the message herself. How did she go from knowing that the detective wanted the kid to join the investigation to it being okay to blackmail the kid? If it was not blackmail she was still agreeing to overlook the wrongful residence if the kid did something for the detective, who we keep getting the message that she does not inform provides the assistance of. But this still means that she is getting random kids involved in police kidnappings. And how did no one else notice that the officer in the car was strangely unhurt for the accident, and that it is weird the message was in his mouth. Are we really meant to believe that this random police officer not only knew Morse code, but could perform it by blinking? Why does immortal boy happen to go through these tunnels? What is the point of some section of the sewer network having a function that closes two strong doors that then floods the area? How did this get built? Don't tell me this is some sort of Bane plan where the whole point was to lure all of the police officers into the sewer and then close it up, the comment about being understaffed being foreshadowing. That would be stupid. |
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2841 |
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1. Not sure if I would be one to argue semantics with a master criminal who has evaded police apprehension for an extended period and successfully pulled off serious crimes on multiple occasions to worry about little verbal technicalities. No one's going to care he's broken some kind of "code" if it means human casualties.
2. Hanasaki boasted about being home-schooled to deflect undesired questions from clients and others querying why he's not in school like most boys his age. If he has to attend school once a month as a minimum legal requirement, he is under no obligation to divulge this to complete strangers. Since this is set in the far future, there is probably some vestige of the legal requirement to attend high school which modern-day Japan has. 3. About the leg, he is only seen standing very briefly (and not very straight) when confronting Kobayashi at the end of episode 1. Other than that he spends his time seated in the car. Standing up is probably a strain for Inoue, so he spends most of his time seated on the wheelchair. I don't see why getting into the sewer system should be a problem if he's on a wheelchair, there's a lot one can explain away with a far-future setting. 4. As I see it, she doesn't interfere with how Akechi runs his organisation which is the rule between them with regards to commissions. The message itself was on the medium of an old-fashioned film reel, which presumably Akechi had but the police HQ didn't since it's such an antiquated medium. If she's there, might as well watch it. Akechi said himself that he needed Kobayashi's help with the investigation hence her strong-arm tactics to get him to tag along or lose his help. If you look closely at the officer who was pulled out from the wreckage, there WAS blood on him but the rescuing officers are too concerned with pulling him out (and the tape) to notice. 5. Morse code as a stock tool for communication is a common trope even in western dramas and films, so why is it so surprising being applied here? These cases after all are drawn from Edogawa Ranpo's detective stories so there has to be some way to link them together no matter how contrived the setting. Kobayashi being an immortal vagrant with an uncontrollable sphere of doom made it clear last week that he won't go through crowds for fear of accidentally harming or killing someone if the self-defence mechanism goes off, so it makes sense for him to use the deserted sewers to roam the city for food. As for the sewers, I'm not sure about the flooding system. Maybe something similar to how a submarine has discrete sections which can be locked up to prevent the whole vessel from sinking in the event of a hull breach. Alternatively it's a different way of flood-water dissipation from the streets above. I'm not watching this story for the mysteries themselves since the show made it quite clear from the beginning it wasn't going to be in the same vein as Ranpo Kitan and is more focused on the characters rather than coherent mystery solving. Not being able to maintain suspension of disbelief when watching it allows one to easily attribute many of the perceived inconsistencies to poor writing which is easy enough. It would beg the question to why said viewers continue watching it anyway despite its flaws in writing. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11348 |
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Outer Underground Discharge Channel, aka G-Cans, is a real place, and it's huge, like in the world's biggest! So he could easily get in to use it as a crowd-free route, though he'd have to be careful about running into tours. And if a Land Rover can get in there, I think a wheelchair could. 
Note the 4th picture in the slideshow on its website - the diversion gates are part of the system. 20-Faces only had to hijack the control room to do this (and he was already seen doing exactly that in a different location). What I want to know is how he mucked up the owl's camera so that there was no usable recording of the film. |
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2841 |
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Cool. Learnt something new today. Didn't know the sewers exhibited were based on an already existing network of flood tunnels. Didn't they say in this episode that reception underground was horrible? That or 20 faces figured out how to jam electronic signals on a selective basis. |
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2841 |
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#5
Some questions from last week answered in this episode. It also explains the full circumstances behind Inoue's disability and why he needs a wheelchair to get around. Kobayashi's wrecking of his prosthetic leg in the first episode also makes more sense now that viewers know he's not completely paralysed. Akechi and co. just about squeezed through this challenge, but in doing so they lost the element of surprise with the wildcard that is Kobayashi. Now that 20 faces knows he exists and what he's capable of, the rest of the series will probably shift to a duel between the two sides with Kobayashi as the stake/prize. I wonder what that final graffiti message was about. Akechi might have a few skeletons in his closet as well. |
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2841 |
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#6
This week more or less conforms to the definition of a "filler episode". Hanazaki is his usual annoying self with the one redeeming quality of his making him to be less of a nuisance this week. If there is a point to this episode, it's showing Kobayashi very slowly opening up to his new companions and hopefully finding a way to kill himself through their acquaintance. Although going by the last scene and the brief trailer, Hanazaki's back-story looks next up for viewing. |
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