880https://magicplanetanimedesign.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/ciwjznk.jpg All of my reviews contain spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning. And thus did my dizzying tale of adventure with Siesta begin. Until death did us part. It may be difficult now but try to think back to the opening week of this anime season. Alongside a number of rightlyhyped premiers by anime everyone kinda expected to be good there was the comparatively obscure The Detective is Already Dead. Tantei wa mou Shindeiru as its known in its native Japanese had alongside heavyweights like Sonny Boy and the second season of Magia Record one of the most promising premieres of the season. Said premiere Attention Passengers: Is There a Detective On Board? combined witty dialogue a gonzo very capitalA Anime set of central conceits a truly impressive fight sequencehttps://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/158854 and one of the seasons best and lets be honest simply coolest characters the titular detective into an entertaining stew that had a lot of potential. Full disclosure I may have a soft spot for basically Sherlock Holmes but an anime girl as a character idea. The episode ran through the needtoknows with the lightning speed and selfconfidence of a pulp novel. The secret organization SPES and their army of cyborgs are threatening the world Its up to our hero the legendary detective Siesta and her straightlaced assistant Kimihiko Kimi Kimizuka to stop them It opens a mile in the air during a plane hijacking and ends in a high school our leads pulling a drug bust on a dealer in a bunny costume. Capping it all off was a wildly romantic sequence at the episodes tail end followed by the header quote in the closing narration to hit us with the emotional coup de grace. Our heros been dead the entire time How will her heartbroken assistant carry on without her? It remains one of the years single best episodes and nothing else I am about to say can or is trying to change that. Episode directors Shinichi Fukumoto and Marina Maki should be proud. 880https://i.ur.com/yplDdic.png I bring all this up not to belabor a point but to make it clear that yes there was a period of timehowever briefwhen people thought this might be at the very least one of the seasons better anime. Twelve weeks on where its reputation is somewhere between trainwreck and widelydropped laughingstock that can seem hard to believe but its true. On one level the answer to the question what went wrong? is extremely simple none of those strengths remained present for the remainder of the series and some dropped off earlier than others. But on another Detective is a downright fascinating case of a show almost systematically undercutting itself at every turn. Detective started falling apart as early as its second episode and despite some intermittent highlights throughout it never really recovered either. We can start by making one thing very clear. Detectives problems do not stem from its premise. Theyre certainly not helped by it but it is very possible to tell the story of a life in the past tense. To focus on what the bygone has left behind to examine how the people around them move on or how they fail to move on. Detective doesnt entirely fumble this but it misses more often than it hits. In fact its handling of this premise reminds me of nothing less than the largelyforgotten Blast of Tempest which had many of the same issues for some of the same reasons. The core problem is simple if the central character of your show is dead or otherwise MIA in the present day she needs a very strong supporting cast. And Siesta like that shows Fuwa Aika simply does not have one. She is a compelling character in search of a compelling anime. It is largely her who renders the show watchable at all as all the other characters are so underdeveloped that she appears deep as the ocean by contrast. Instead she gets Kimi who to his limited credit does work out an entertaining straight man / weird girl dynamic with Siesta. They form a fun duo much like their archetypal ancestors say Kyon and Haruhi did. 880https://i.ur.com/2CgRTjs.jpg 880https://i.ur.com/6T9uFNT.jpg Yes thats still Siesta in the top image. Listen just roll with it. There is also Nagisa Siestas replacement who is in almost every sense a much less engaging character but who has the benefit of being the recipient of a heart transplant from none other than the late detective herself to at least arouse some mystery. The remaining characters are so thin that they are barely worth mentioning. Theres a chuuniish idol complete with an eyepatch Yui Saikawa an ambiguous foreigner with some illdefined relationship to Siesta Charlotte Anderson and a mysterious child Alicia who turns out to secretly be the evil mastermind Hel in disguise / assuming another personality / something it doesnt really matter. 880https://i.ur.com/SVLV5N0.jpg The fact that the episode where an idol pulls a revolver on the main character is one of the less interesting ones is not a great sign. This lopsidedness of the cast ends up directly informing the episodes. As a general rule of thumb those that center on Siesta and Kimi tend to be either genuinely good even if only in a cheesy sort of way or at least bad in a funny way. Those that focus on other characters are much less interesting. Sometimes theyre flatout boring which is a far worse crime than being ridiculous. Beyond that on a narrative level the show makes very little sense. The actual story is very simple cataloging Siesta and Kimis attempts to take down SPES. And later Kimis retirement from detective work and eventual resumption of that same goal again this time with Nagisa. But the shows structure is so bizarre that it can be difficult to follow any of this. Why for example if the shows central conceit is that Siesta is dead does a huge chunk of it take place as flashback to when she was alive? These stories being told in this fashion adds nothing to the show. It makes it marginally more confusing to follow but deliberate obfuscation is not the same as actually being interesting. 880https://i.ur.com/yYVBqda.png Something like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya or Princess Principal is aired nonchronologically because in those cases the approach helps develop the sort of story theyre trying to tell. In the former case Kyon and Haruhis emotional arc takes precedence over the literal events of the series. In the latter case it is to build up mystery and selectively feed the audience information. No such thing is true of Detectives clumsy halfway flashback deepdive. And the fact that they are some of the shows better episodes feels more like a happy accident than anything deliberate. Itd feel like course correction given the widespread but misguided criticism of the premise if that were how anime production worked. But it isnt so what gives? And what to make of the shows utterly baffling organ transplant motif? Organs namely hearts transferring ownership comes up some three times over the course of the series which is too often in a show this short to simply be happenstance. And let me make an aside here folks Im not professionally trained as a critic so Im certainly guilty of occasionally missing things more properly literate sorts would pick up on. But I am a thinking human being and its rare that I just come up completely empty when rattling a metaphor around in my brain. I have no idea what it could possibly mean. None of the possibilities Ive come up withthe perseverance of love? Specifically the strength of Siesta and Kimis relationship? Some hamfisted people close to each other should help each other thing? A religious symbol?hold up to scrutiny. I am left to conclude that it is either a very malformed metaphor or it simply isnt one at all. In the latter case why is it in the show at all? 880https://i.ur.com/8Pxl9xn.jpg That may seem like a minor point but the same lack of purpose applies to many decisions made throughout the series. Elements like Yuis job as an idol the very fact that the antagonists are shapeshifting cyborgs a weird microplot about priceless jewelry and another about a serial killer the entire character of Hel the fact that Siesta has a mecha? at one point even the series gratuitous Spanish subtitle and the anticipatedandthenquicklyforgotten cameo by Hololive virtual talents Matsuri Natsuiro and Fubuki Shirakami seem like they were made less for any real reason and more simply because well theyre Cool. Or theyre the sorts of things that are supposed to be in light novels. 880https://i.ur.com/wC87vgK.jpg Englishlanguage info is sparse but the case appears to be that Detective is the firstever published novel by its author Nigojuu which may explain some of the amateurishness here. Or maybe its the other way around Studio ENGI are not exactly a powerhouse perhaps they butchered the material. Maybe the light novels defenders are right and all this somehow does make more sense in book form. Hell maybe its somehow both at once. All this said even with its frankly many flaws in mind I cant really hate or even actively dislike Detective. It has too many actuallysolid moments and too many badinafunny way moments to have burned its goodwill from that first episode away entirely. A harsher viewer may write such things off but I cant pretend I didnt enjoy a decent chunk of the show even in spite of all its problems. That and there is that Detective does get one thing right. Especially towards its end. Sometimes people weve known all our lives can disappear like a dream at sunrise. Sometimes too we do not even get the chance to say goodbye. This is the sole emotional string the anime manages to play correctly and even then its oddly stingy about it. But aside from Siestas strength as a character it is this that saves the show from being a total loss. 880https://i.ur.com/4ov0o5h.jpg As an even mildly adventurous anime watcher you expect to take a gamble on some amount of shows that end up not exactly being amazing. Detective is by any reasonable metric middling rather than outright awful. But that doesnt make it good. Which puts it in a strange nowherezone both in terms of relevance and in terms of simple quality. This is another of this years anime that will absolutely not survive the march of history mentioned as it will be only as a curio or a hey do you remember that show with.? answer. At best perhaps some of the staff will go on to bigger and better things. In which case it will be an amusing trivial footnote. Call it a victim of the production bubble call it just poorlyconceived. It is impossible to imagine Detective outside of this present time and place midtolate 2021 specifically. Its a born relic. Yet strangely from a certain and Ill admit uncommon point of view that gives it its own kind of hopeless underdog charm. The show itself only just barely manages to scrap together something out of its primary theme of transience and all else it attempts falls resoundingly flat make no mistake but in a meta sort of way Detective is an ode to its own transience. Here for twelve weeks and then forgotten as though it simply scattered into light the moment it ended. Like it was never there at all. Its one of the great mysteries of popular art. Sometimes something that is utterly mediocre will just for a moment capture the public imagination or make visible an inner light only for that light to be snuffed out almost immediately. Such is the case with Detectives few true highlights. It is one of the great enigmas of our species collective creativity. As such one would be tempted to ask a great problemsolver perhaps one like Siesta herself what to make of it. 880https://i.ur.com/oRek4FA.jpg But of course such a thing is impossible. After all the detective is already dead.https://www..com/watch?v=SDzOrjFpceM Notes Disclaimers Usage of Anilists review feature does not constitute endorsement for Anilist as a platform the Anilist community or any individual member thereof or any of Anilists policies or rules. All views expressed are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons groups or organizations. All text is owned by me. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.