They say not to judge a book by its cover. This “art house” mystery series embodies that in multiple ways. Welcome to my probably shortest review.
What is the Premise
15 years prior to the start of the series, a gruesome murder took place in a remote island research facility. The victims: a wealthy technology mogul and his wife. The main suspect: Shiki Magata, their 14 year old daughter. Verdict: Not guilty due to a brief lapse in sanity.
Flash forward to present day: Doctor Magata (as she’ll be called from here on) has become a mysterious recluse, spending her days advancing artificial intelligence. A recent chain of events catches the eyes of Associate Professor Souhei Saikawa and his 19 year old “assistant”, Moe Nishinosono, the young daughter of his late mentor. What starts as a quest to personally meet and learn from Magata quickly becomes a classic closed-room murder mystery for the digital age.
What Impressed Me
The moment that “Talking” by Kana Boon (used as the opening track for each episode) began to play, I wasn’t completely sure what to expect from the rest of the series. Hastily scribbled together off model and constantly morphing, stretching and dancing chalk approximations of the three leads is something I don’t see very often. The creativity on display here reminded me of a combination of the opening for The Legend of Black Heaven and the ending for Ranpo Kitan: Game of Laplace.
As someone who has experience with Unix-based operating systems and server technology, the moment I saw the window pop up in the ending, I had to pause HiDive and let my inner fanboy out. Someone at A1-Pictures was one of my people and had culture. Almost everything shown on the screen was based on real world desktop environments, programming languages or concepts in the Unix ecosystem. The ending track was also insanely complex in terms of structure and timing (I didn’t know 7-4 timing was a thing but it was there in the bridge midway through the track). “Nana Hitsuji” by Scenario Art at first didn’t work for me as well as the opening did but by Episode 4, I was sold on it. I never found myself skipping this, so that’s a win in my book.
What started off feeling like the animation and art staffs just not having enough of a budget and combined skill to competently bring the visual presentation of the story parts of each episode to life quickly turned into an aesthetic and vibe that I thoroughly enjoyed. Vehicles were lower poly 3D models and mostly moved “too smoothly” across the screen, giving way to an unrealistic feather flight instead of the much expected weight of their real world counterparts. Many characters felt like they were ripped wholesale from other series with only light adjustments made to keep A1 from being sued for copyright infringement, giving variety and life to the cast where otherwise they would just be filler. Multiple different artistic styles and levels of quality, framerates of animations, and rough edges clashed and collided in the backgrounds, environments and on character models in other places if one were to scrutinize hard enough. It all felt artistically refined with an intent to be roughly unsettling, regardless of the true artistic intent.
What Disappointed Me
Upon reaching the conclusion, I feel that this may not be a series I can rewatch. Its mystery was tightly woven together and a bit too straightforward. I won’t be disclosing here that much more about said mystery due to the genre being best experienced completely blind on the audience’s part. I also wish some of the technology shown had been used a bit more creatively.
The majority of the background audio, voice work and soundtrack were above average but nothing fully memorable for me. Several tracks from other works seemed to have been inserted in scenes where they fit (I swear Moonlight Sonata showed up at least twice). The three leads all had great chemistry and dialogue between them but the rest of the cast felt almost wooden and doll like with their personalities being relegated to what’s needed for the plot or exposition.
Why No Character Rundown
As a mystery, most of what I could say about any of the main characters, I said in the premise given above. They all do get plenty of characterization throughout the runtime, and I would highly recommend this series for them alone. I do have some theories about the story and how they fit that aren’t shown in the series (relative to reveals dropped midway that are not directly a part of the main mystery); I may do a separate more spoiler-focused write up later on, but still not sure yet.
My Closing Thoughts
Go watch this series if you like mysteries. It has some content that may trigger some audiences (and luckily shows most of it within the first three episodes), so I would never recommend showing this to children. I’ve also heard that the novel series it’s based on is phenomenal.
If you’ve seen this, I’d love to read your thoughts below. Vote, follow and reblog if you feel inclined. Thanks again for reading.
Important Info
- Adapted from a 1996 Mystery Novel written by Hiroshi Mori
- Studio: A1-Pictures
- Season / Episodes: Fall 2015 / 11 (with no word on a Season 2)
- Recommended Watches: Ranpo Kitan: Game of Laplace (similar type of mystery vibe); Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (for the presentation)