(L) Ranpo Kitan - Game of Laplace

[Harbinger]

The "mystery" isn't really a strong point of this show. Still, I like it for what it is --- Weird stuff happening on screen.

Poor Sachiko though... She finally found happiness and it came to a gruesome end.

Also, I SWEAR THAT HE'S A GIRL. HE HAS TO BE.

[FateAnomaly]

Is this episode serious? Can the police not solve such a straightforward case by themselves even after 8 girls got kidnapped? Is kobayashi messing with his BFF? Did he really change into girl's panties?

[Iby]

This episode was written by a newbie writer BTW.
(朱白あおい - Akashiro Aoi?)

[Akito Kinomoto]

Episode 3

The characters are more interesting than the mystery, and the mystery just falls apart the moment they get into details. Which is kinda important. I'm still waiting for the inevitable case where Kobayashi is in over his head and Hashiba comes in for the save.

[frubam]

Originally Posted by SeaDoor

I guess I am another who felt this episode did not work. The story felt glossed-over and seemed like it existed just to put Kobayashi in a dress. I do agree though that his character design tends towards a feminine appearance. Also, the friend character, Hashiba, is beginning to really annoy me.

I thought the ep was funny, but not for the intended purposes =01. Honestly, the story itself would have probably had more weight without Kobayashi getting involved at all, and instead had the killed girl, Sachiko and Shadow-Man as center pieces. Instead, having someone as umempathetic as Kobayashi at the focal point for most of the story made everything flat for me.

And I also concur about Hashiba. He was completely left out of the dark(Kobayashi apparently has no qualms about his feelings or tricking him for his own benefit). He really had no purpose other than to stir up doubt and/or to not-so-subtly remind the viewer of Kobayashi's feminine aspects.

[Kaoru Chujo]

So I enjoyed the episode, so sue me. The details of the story are the least interesting thing about all three episodes, for sure. And the fellow-student is a royal pain. But the art and the flow are good, and the cavalier way they quickly sketch the story is enjoyable in its own way.

And Takahashi Rie as Kobayashi is good. I thought it was amusing that people didn't like how feminine Kobayashi was...and then it turned out he was being played by a woman...and now he turns into an actual trap. They were certainly right, although I myself enjoy the ambiguity.

What delicious or disgusting fetish(es) will we meet next week? This screenwriter has always given me a funny feeling: Amenaideyo, School Days, Stigmata no Qwaser. This same writer-director team did Humanity Has Declined, so you know they are comfortable in the outer reaches.

And every time I hear the ED, I like it more. "Sayuri the Suffocated Girl" has a future. She calls herself that as a member of the current teenage generation, which feels itself blocked and suffocated from birth, particularly in Japan, with its 25-year semi-recession. I enjoy the OP, too.

[Iby]

Originally Posted by Kaoru Chujo

This screenwriter has always given me a funny feeling: Amenaideyo, School Days, Stigmata no Qwaser.

Originally Posted by Iby

This episode was written by a newbie writer BTW.
(朱白あおい - Akashiro Aoi?)

Also:

Originally Posted by Kaoru Chujo

This same writer-director team did Humanity Has Declined, so you know they are comfortable in the outer reaches.

It turned out OK despite the writer/director, not thanks to. It's actually quite horrible as an adaptation.

[jeroz]

I don't think there are ones who didn't like Ave Maria

Originally Posted by frubam

having someone as umempathetic as Kobayashi at the focal point for most of the story made everything flat for me.

I thought he's just there as trigger for Shadow Man to take centre stage at the climatic moment, not as the focal point. Takehito Koyasu nailed the role as a sympathetic pervert.


Also, old arts can't draw ambiguous boys anyway

[kuromitsu]

Originally Posted by haguruma

I will still weep for what it could have been.
Both the Human Chair and Shadow-Man plot have been reduced to mere name-drops on rather clichéd writing. Especially Rampo's Shadow-Man was really good social commentary and can work as an updated story even today...Instead we get a "lolis are heavenly and make you feel the sads" story.

Also, if you are basically doing a Fiend with 20 Faces character in a Ranpo anniversary show, why name him after a completely different character?!

Well, this episode was apparently inspired ("loosely inspired"? is there such an expression? ) by the Shadow Man short story so it's correct that the character is called the Shadow Man. Also, IIRC the 20 Faces and the Shadow Man are pretty much the same character, anyway.

It's been a really long time since I read anything Edogawa Ranpo, so my memory is pretty spotty, but this show seems to be mostly trying to emulate the Shounen tantei-dan stories which are basically kids' lit, and trying to infuse them with more "adult" aspects from the more serious stories. The question of whether it works or not aside, I think that at this point it's clear what the show is trying to do and adjust one's expectations accordingly...

Personally I think the show is so far OK for what it is. Sure, I also would've much preferred another Mouryou no hako or Aoi bungaku (which also had its duds, mind, even if the brilliance of Hashire Melos makes up for everything), but clearly this show is not trying to be that, but it's mostly entertaining enough in its own way to continue watching for a while (stupid mysteries aside).

[haguruma]

Originally Posted by kuromitsu

Well, this episode was apparently inspired ("loosely inspired"? is there such an expression? ) by the Shadow Man short story so it's correct that the character is called the Shadow Man. Also, IIRC the 20 Faces and the Shadow Man are pretty much the same character, anyway.

I've also read my fair share of Rampo stories, and no, Shadow Man and 20 Faces are not the same character. Shadow Man btw was a full length novel and not a short story, I think you remembered that wrong - not surprising by the amount of stuff Ranpo wrote though.

Shadow Man was basically a pastiche of all of Ranpo's trickster characters, which include Akechi, 20 Faces, the guy from Walker in the Attic, and others.

The novel was about a 'social adventurer' who liked to partake in illegal activities for the thrills, but abhores murder. One day though he is approached to help devise a plan for a company that deals in contract murders.
The Shadow Man there had no problem disguising himself as a woman, he had several lovers AND one of them was a 17 year old boy. The one character so far that's actually established as bisexual and it doesn't feature into the anime...kinda weird.

The question of whether it works or not aside, I think that at this point it's clear what the show is trying to do and adjust one's expectations accordingly...

That's like saying, that people have to disregard whether it is a good anime or not, and forget everything aout it that doesn't work.
Yes, I agree that it's also important to consider what an anime is attempting to do and judge it accordingly, but we should also be allowed to judge whether that is a good idea in the first place. So far the anime, as you said, tries to be a hybrid of the Detective Boys stories and his adult-oriented works, and it is stuck being neither.

Personally I think the show is so far OK for what it is. Sure, I also would've much preferred another Mouryou no hako or Aoi bungaku

I will just continue to sit through this show and cast all my hopes on Subete ga F ni naru in autumn.

[vaden]

Originally Posted by Iby

Also:

It turned out OK despite the writer/director, not thanks to. It's actually quite horrible as an adaptation.

This reminds me of that sports aphorism: When the team is doing well, the players get the credit. When the team is doing poorly, they fire the coach. I know Seiji Kishi doesn't have the best track record, but he clearly has a penchant for absurd dark comedy. It happened to work well in Humanity Has Declined's case because the entire tone of the series was set around the juxtaposition of the saccharine and the cynical, and so I'm perfectly fine with giving him credit for that. Ranpo Kitan's biggest problem is that it doesn't know whether it wants its grotesque elements to be disturbing or just weird. The Minami autopsy scene was jarring because it fell right in the middle of exposition about how the teacher was clearly off his rocker for chopping up bodies to turn into chairs, while trying to play basically the same thing with the fake corpse for humor.

Watching this show actually reminds me of UN-GO, which also got billed as a mystery but had some issues with weak cases. I still really like UN-GO, because it makes up for that with interesting characters and a surprisingly detailed semi-dystopic world. When Rinroku Kaishou set media controls in that series, for instance, it was an effective reminder for how much control his private enterprise had over what people could learn from the news. Contrast that to here in Ranpo Kitan: when Akechi does it, it's... well, completely superfluous. You could have rewritten his lines to not mention a media blackout and you'd be missing virtually nothing.

[Iby]

Here's a quite from one of the readers of the original Jintai novels.

Spoiler for quote:

Honestly I think the Jintai anime is a low budget disaster adapted by staff who had no real idea what they were doing with the source material. According to the series comp guy at some live event he decided to adapt the series out of chronological order because it "needed more of a hook," which is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. Obviously his decision didn't do the series any good in the end, so....
There's also the way they handled volume 3, giving it the same episode count as individual chapters and thus having to omit a huge amount of information and generally fucking the whole thing up. And the generally dull production values don't do anything any favors, especially by the time they reach volume 5 chapter 1, the last thing they adapted in the anime. The series was never really popular enough to warrant an adaptation to begin with so I'm not surprised it looks like crap but still.
Can't complain about casting Nakahara as Watashi though, that was perfect.

Also Un-Go wasn't that good only for the first 4 episodes maybe? It has improved dramatically afterwards. And Ranpo Kitan definately doesn't look as smart as Un-Go was.

[vaden]

Originally Posted by Iby

Here's a quite from one of the readers of the original Jintai novels.

Spoiler for quote:

Honestly I think the Jintai anime is a low budget disaster adapted by staff who had no real idea what they were doing with the source material. According to the series comp guy at some live event he decided to adapt the series out of chronological order because it "needed more of a hook," which is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. Obviously his decision didn't do the series any good in the end, so....
There's also the way they handled volume 3, giving it the same episode count as individual chapters and thus having to omit a huge amount of information and generally fucking the whole thing up. And the generally dull production values don't do anything any favors, especially by the time they reach volume 5 chapter 1, the last thing they adapted in the anime. The series was never really popular enough to warrant an adaptation to begin with so I'm not surprised it looks like crap but still.
Can't complain about casting Nakahara as Watashi though, that was perfect.

That is a lot of words for "not what I expected, didn't like." Given how episodic the series was, I find the complaint about chronological order hilarious, and this is the first I've heard about the show having "dull production values." This isn't a thread about Jintai, though, so I'm going to let this drop.

Also Un-Go wasn't that good only for the first 4 episodes maybe? It has improved dramatically afterwards. And Ranpo Kitan definately doesn't look as smart as Un-Go was.

Yes, that was my point.

[Kaoru Chujo]

Originally Posted by Iby

It (Humanity Has Declined) turned out OK despite the writer/director, not thanks to. It's actually quite horrible as an adaptation.

I personally didn't like Humanity Has Declined. Although I've always felt guilty about that, since "enlightened opinion" loved it. I was just saying it was weird and the staff seemed comfortable with that.

[Stark700]

Episode 4:
Well this is a rather bizarre case.

Interesting to see Kuro Tokage this episode though. Is she a sadist or what?! And it seems like she has a thing for Akechi in a rather lustful way.The episode also shows that she is in a prison of sorts; well maybe not exactly but more like behind bars.

The plot twist about Kagami is an interesting addition to this week's story though.

[Akito Kinomoto]

Episode 4

No. The comedy bit with Kobayashi and Hashiba does jack all for the story and adds zilch to their character, the interrogation with Mrs. Masochist provides nothing relevant to the case, Autopsy-chan is more mood whiplash, and the mystery itself is pure, unadulterated shit from busty top to trap bottom. Before, the aesthetics were just emphasizing the important players, but now it's highlighting whatever it damn well pleases or whatever fits the budget; the TV channels and random slaves have figures, but one lone guy guarding Mrs. Masochist doesn't? No. Seriously. How the Hell does this show keep getting worse?

[Izumo]

Ok, this is going from something barely watchable into garbage of the season. The story is good (at least the original novels) but here the studio just destroyed the complexity of the plot with bad taste jokes, nonsensical stuff like the autopsy and the MC being a trap instead of the master of disguise described in the novels.

How people can even like this or try to avoid the truth of this adaptation?

[kuromitsu]

And yet again, not a soul was surprised at the revelation... Seriously, it was so obvious.

Anyway, I'm probably approaching this show from the wrong perspective, but I'm actually having fun watching this. Then again, this is pretty much what kept going though my mind during most of this episode:

Images

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(It's kind of hilarious how much of this episode could have been an Azazel-san episode, with Akechi playing Akutabe. Not to mention, now that I think about it there's also the Edogawa onsen arc which is one long riff on, well, the obvious... )

Anyway, I'm not sure what was the creator's intention, but so far I'm having fun. Sure, the show is nowhere near as "deep" or clever as it seems to think itself to be, and I'm not entirely sure who the intended audience is (given that in one moment it's all ~weird~ and ~edgy~ and in another it might as well be a children's show), but I guess it helped that I stopped having any reasonable expectations.

[ChampDream]

The episode felt so silly
So does Akechi attract weird people? first Kobayashi and now we learn about Mrs masochist.

I realize Twenty Faces was Kagami a minute before he reveal it.

[HandofFate]

Originally Posted by Izumo

Ok, this is going from something barely watchable into garbage of the season. The story is good (at least the original novels) but here the studio just destroyed the complexity of the plot with bad taste jokes, nonsensical stuff like the autopsy and the MC being a trap instead of the master of disguise described in the novels.

How people can even like this or try to avoid the truth of this adaptation?

I like it, but I never read or heard of the original works. And I think most haven't.

I did go "oh come on now"
when the homo-ey friend caught himself staring at the MC's butt and looked away.