Way back when Tokyopop was a major manga publisher I loved the Kindaichi Case Files series. Following the grandson of a famous fictional detective like if we had a series about the grandson of Sherlock Holmes the mysteries had the potential to be solved by the readermaking for a fun experience There have been several different series released over the years this particular series aired from 20142016 and is just as fun as the manga. Anilist lists the sequel series The File of Young Kindaichi Returns 2 separately but my review is for boththeres no difference between the two. Both adapt stories from the manga feature the same main characters and offer episodes full of murder mysteries and sometimes nonmurder but mostly murder. The Files of Kindaichi Returns centers on Hajime Kindaichi grandson of the famous detective Kosuke Kindaichi. Though he usually appears to be a regular high school student when a difficult case arises Hajime along with his childhood friend Miyuki Nanase police inspector Isamu Kenmochi and rival Kengo Akechi use their sharp deduction skills to solve each mystery. Each episode starts with a handy list of characters shown in a 2x8 grid. All victims and perpetrators will come from this list. Its pretty fun to make guesses immediately based on how they look and adjust those as a case proceeds. Theres not a lot of blood but people get killed off left and right so dont get attached to anyone whos not a recurring character because theres a good chance youll lose them. Despite there being multiple previous anime adaptations of this series you dont need to know anything about the series or characters from those previous series anyone important will be given at least a basic introduction thats sufficient to understand why theyre notable in an episode. While there are definitely fictional liberties taken theyre standard for a murder mystery series. By which I mean somehow no one has noticed that murders follow Kindaichi like hipsters follow food trucks. It should be noted that Kindaichi has that fantastic character quality of being a pervert and joker so when hes not solving mysteries he spends a good amount of time ogling women trying to peep etc. Might be sadly familiar to those with a good amount of animewatching under their belts but it doesnt stop being annoying. Verdict English dub? Sadly no. Visuals: Fine and shiny. Considering the characters were designed in the early 90s though the series takes place modernday hairstyles occasionally made me giggle. Worth watching? Do you like mysteries? Then heck yes. Recurring characters like the police inspectors arent bumblingone Akechi is Kindaichis intellectual equal which is a nice change of pace. Kindaichi himself is pretty lazy hello relatability and needs direction from friend and Watson to his Sherlock Miyuki until someone gets murdered or kidnapped. The solutions are almost always implausibly complicated and therefore fun but there were only a couple times in the entire 47episode series that the characters missed obvioustotheviewer things.