Review
by Kennedy,Dinner Table Detective
Anime Series Review
Synopsis: | ![]() |
||
There's more to plain and frumpy detective Reiko Hosho than meets the eye. Unbeknownst to many of her peers, she's also the fabulously wealthy heiress to the Hosho Group. And she has a mysterious new butler, Kageyama, who has a tongue with a sharpness matched only by his observational skills. Still, he's excellent at helping Reiko, as well as the overzealous Inspector Kazamatsuri, solve the cases that come their way. |
|||
Review: |
First impressions are important. Titles are often a key part of an anime's first impression; ipso facto, an anime needs to have a good title that captures the essence of the show. But I'm not sure about “The Dinner Table Detective” as a title. It captures anything but my curiosity about what that even means and why. It's clunky, doesn't sound natural in English, and thus, isn't quite right as a localization choice. It prompts the question: What's a “Dinner Table Detective?” I've watched this entire show, and I'm still no closer to figuring that out. Meanwhile, the Japanese title is 謎解きはディナーのあとで; “Mysteries will be solved after dinner,” which is the mantra of one of the characters in this anime. As a title, it's a perfect fit! While I certainly have some theories, I can only speculate about why the admittedly-fun-to-say-aloud “Dinner Table Detectives” made it across the finish line instead of that more baseline translation, or similarly shorter and stylized variations of it. It's a pretty mysterious choice, and I'd be curious to hear the reason behind it. I wish I could sit here and tell you that sometimes, first impressions are wrong and that I loved this anime, even if I wasn't enthusiastic about its title. But alas, sometimes first impressions are exactly right—worse, sometimes they downplay just how bad things are. I say that not to insinuate that the localization in the rest of the series as a whole is awful—it errs stiff and bland, and there's a lot of obvious room for improvement, but it's serviceable overall. Unfortunately, my gripes with the title are just the appetizer. Every single mystery in this series is completely stale and unoriginal in a way that's neither charming nor nostalgic if you've consumed any detective media. There's no zest, rarely any substantial stakes, and a prevailing sense of apathy toward the mysteries that makes them exhausting to watch, as though this anime is trying to get you to think, “The show itself and its characters don't seem to care, so why should I?” And of course it feels that way—our central character, Reiko, doesn't even bother to solve the mysteries herself. Instead, she asks her butler for all the answers, which he only sometimes deduces. Lazy and half-baked don't even begin to describe it. To put it more simply, there's no love for actually solving mysteries in this show. Our main trio—who are, without a doubt, one of the all-time worst groups of protagonists and least effective detectives that I've seen in a mystery anime—consists of Reiko, Kageyama, and Inspector Kazamatsuri; a wealthy heiress who leads a double life as a detective, her butler who's way better at her job than she is, and Reiko's boss, who also comes from extreme wealth, respectively. Theoretically, the series revolves around them solving mysteries. In the first episode, we learn that Reiko goes stealth wealth while she's in detective mode to avoid any special treatment, and that only “the higher-ups” know the truth about her. Yet throughout the entire series, we never see her solve any crimes solely—or even mostly—via her intellectual prowess. Instead, she relies heavily on her smarter and more capable butler, Kageyama. Regularly, Reiko fails to consider even the most obvious of possibilities, such as the potential of someone throwing away an incriminating accessory or that different shoes might change one's height. Kageyama frequently makes fun of her lack of talent as a detective. It is played off as him just being playful or sassy, but frankly, he's correct when he points out that she's just not worth her salt. Despite what all this may lead you to think, Kageyama isn't exactly a smart cookie either. Sure, sometimes he does genuinely solve some of the mysteries, or at least key elements within them. But other times—a lot of times—his deductions are based on evidence so flimsy it's comparable to him saying that he just gets a weird vibe from someone or something, and then he just coincidentally ends up being right. Several times, it feels like he's already decided, for arbitrary reasons, who he thinks the culprit is, and then he works backwards, whether it makes sense or not. He's not so much clever as he is lucky that Reiko isn't bright enough to realize that a lot of his so-called deductions are just lucky guesses. Rounding out the trio of detectives is Inspector Kazamatsuri—Reiko's boss when she's a detective, and the heir to a car company. He's a classic bumbling buffoon who's super full of himself and meant to be the comedic relief. To his credit, he does this well—the bar is low, but his delightfully over-the-top mannerisms and attitude are often the highlights of each episode. Like Reiko, he's a detective with no self-awareness of just how terrible he is at his job. Unlike Reiko, since it's played for laughs in Kazamatsuri, it feels like the series wants us to think that. Contrast this with Reiko, whose lack of aptitude is something the series seems aware of on some level, but never willing to grapple with—almost as though series creator Tokuya Higashigawa wanted her to be reliant on her butler, but couldn't reconcile how he could do that without making her come off, at best, like an ungrateful nepo baby, and at worst, as unbearably annoying. So, rather than thread this needle, he chose to do nothing and leave it hanging like an albatross around the whole series' neck. Reiko and Kazamatsuri are a testament to how, if Higashigawa was trying to create a biting commentary about how disastrous it is that unskilled rich people often get jobs they don't deserve at the expense of members of the working class who have the right knowledge and skill sets, he succeeded. While that subtext is drizzled over the entire series, there's never any commitment to it. Plus, there's the matter of how Reiko doesn't want special treatment, in contrast to how her and Kazamatsuri's precinct hires rich kids without proper qualifications, which is a detail that never even gets acknowledged, let alone meaningfully explored. And that makes me skeptical that this "eat the rich" angle was intentional, as opposed to something that happened accidentally. Which is a shame, because putting more stock into this theme could've given this anime some desperately needed spice. Still, this anime isn't completely without merit. In particular, it's hard to beat the legendary Mamoru Miyano as the overzealous Kazamatsuri. However, Miyano's gravitational pull isn't the only reason I'd recommend the sub over the dub of this show any day at any time. Even taking the always-fun Miyano out of the equation, we're treated to a stacked sub, loaded with great performances by the always-great Kana Hanazawa (Reiko) and Yūki Kaji (Kageyama). Furthermore, in stark contrast to how lively and star-studded the subbed version is, the dub feels like an incredibly phoned-in afterthought, and this is the first time any members of its main cast have been cast in any voice role whatsoever—let alone have any experience voice acting in an anime (although Celeste Loots, who plays Reiko, played Kaya in the live action One Piece). I'm always hesitant to be overly critical of dub casts with a limited amount of voice acting experience. In the case of The Dinner Table Detective, they all lack voice acting experience, but Loots and Conradie van Heerden (Kazamatsuri) have a decent number of live-action acting credits on their IMDb pages. The visuals, meanwhile, while not terrible, aren't exactly a feast for the eyes. The animation itself is fine, but the style itself heavily favors bright, often saturated colors, and sharply shaped shading and highlights. This makes the backgrounds, in particular, often look weirdly blocky, as though someone took a picture, half-heartedly rotoscoped it, upped the saturation, added some outlines, and called it a day. I didn't mind it, but I can easily imagine how this won't be everyone's cup of tea. There's just no sugarcoating it: if it's a worthwhile mystery anime you're hungry for and The Dinner Table Detective is what's on the menu, you're going to starve.What's the unpalatable meal in question? Incapable detectives to start, with a side of a terrible dub, and a heaping helping of flavorless characters and mysteries. |
Grade: | |||
Overall : D
Story : D
Animation : B-
Art : B-
Music : C
+ Excellent voice performances in the subbed version. |
|||
discuss this in the forum (8 posts) | |
Production Info: | ||
Full encyclopedia details about |