Episode 2 and I am still digging the show. There were a few little silly jokes that actually made me laugh out loud this week. I think the character designs are throwing me off and I keep subconsciously expecting a serious and dramatic show. As such it’s always a happy little half surprise when Ron Kamonohashi’s Forbidden Deductions goes for lighthearted absurd humour. I’m here for it.
I know that this is true in real life but I have to say, I’m always impressed by how much hair changes a character. I shouldn’t be. There are shows which are basically the same character model with a few colour adjustments and a different hairstyle to differentiate the whole cast. Still, it’s almost hard to believe clean-cut Ron and the shaggy rogue we see in the show are the same person. I like shaggy better. I have a soft spot for dorks after all.
As I mentioned in my intro, I have a bit of dissonance whenever I watch this show. Not in a bad way. For instance, with the introduction of BLUE, I remember thinking to myself, how is it possible that Totomaru has never heard of the place? Sure, he’s not the greatest detective out there but he still IS a detective. If this is the most prestigious detective school in the world, surely even laymen have heard of it. Is it a secret school or something, cause Ron isn’t saying that it’s a secret… And then Ron and Toto had a completely ridiculous conversation and I remembered what type of show I was watching.
And that’s sort of nice. It has the trappings of one of those more self-serious shows that takes itself seriously but avoids becoming trite by, in fact, not taking itself seriously at all. Something that could have helped a lot of series of the type that I have watched in the past.
For instance, Ron’s impossible quick change into his costume uniform with the only follow-up being Toto saying I have so many questions was a perfect two-man gag. I loved it. I loved that they ended the scene on it. Great timing. I also loved that Ron didn’t sulk or even seem to mind that they got assigned to what a lot of people might consider a much less important or prestigious case. Of course, it did end up being connected to the homicide but I don’t think Ron knew that from the start and the show didn’t hint at it either.
You know what else is kind of cool, Ron is completely indiscriminate about his intolerance towards criminals. OK Spoilers up ahead! If you haven’t watched this week’s episode you have been warned! So far, we’ve only seen Ron deal with murderers, so his…quirk… may only apply to them and not, for example, underage shoplifters. Still in this situation, we have a perp that clearly acted in self-defense and it was an accident, in the sense that she didn’t mean/know it would kill anyone. But Ron reacted the exact same way as he did for the premeditated serial killer motivated by personal greed. I like that. It makes Ron much more of an ambiguous character and once again, models him after Sherlock who was also morally grey.
Amamiya is turning out to be an early favourite character in the show. I do like the thought-as-nails and efficient boss lady archetype, to begin with. Her complete lack of sympathy for the main character was already a considerable source of amusement for me. But her now comically girlish infatuation with Ron is such a great contrast that I have a feeling she’s going to be what I look forward to most in episodes. And that’s saying something cause I’m having a great time with the show in general!
Finally, we got a peak at BLUE as it is today… It sure does seem like some type of shadowy underground organization with its own interests. Now we have some wide-ranging conspiracy going on and let me tell you, this is exactly the type of ridiculous I have been craving from my anime. It’s BSD or Vanitas type of happy-go-lucky nonsense that translates into pure fun. Honestly, what more can you ask of anime than to be fun?
Yeah, this was a fun episode! The introduction of Blue, a shadowy underground university for detectives was really surprising. I definitely wasn’t expecting that. I also liked that the missing change and the murder cases were actually connected. But what surprised me the most was the idea that you can’t steal money from a piggy bank that only has a coin slot. I remember when I was about 6 years old, my older sister taught me how to get money out of our older brother’s piggy bank that only had a coin slot and was supposed to be broken to get the money out. It’s done with a wire with a hook at the end. If you hold the piggy bank with the coin slot downward and then use the hooked wire in the slot, you can coax the money back out of the slot. Ah, the wonderful things big sisters choose to teach litter sisters! I’m sure at the very wise age of 8 years old, my sister thought she was teaching me important life lessons.
I don’t recall Holmes being morally grey at all, and certainly not like this.
While the rule of law is critically important, I wouldn’t necessarily feel bad about the death of a serial killer who murdered his victims just because they had something good to look forward to in their lives. I would still support arresting him rather than hypnotizing him to commit suicide, but the latter would not be a cause for remorse in my book.
Hypnotizing a woman to kill herself for the crime of panicking after defending herself – and it is a travesty that her panic is somewhat warranted by how our society has become one which punishes even those who only defend themselves and others – is an entirely different matter. In the face of that, Ron is clearly a danger to those around him, especially since he apparently has no control over this whatsoever. What even triggers this side of him?
BLUE actually has some validity to their case against Ron, since his power is completely out of his control and no one would be safe from him whether or not they were justified in his actions. But then again, without his involvement, the serial killer from the previous episode would still be active and the bodies would keep piling up. How can we possibly balance the risk of him killing someone innocent against all the innocents who would be killed by serial killers if he didn’t catch them?
The obvious solution is to keep a very close eye on him and restrain him somehow when he starts acting up. But that ought to have been what the did this time, and Ron’s new partner failed a bit, which nearly cost an innocent woman her life. If this is going to work at all, they need to address that.
I liked how in the previous episode, Ron was too reluctant on solving cases due to potential addiction.
In this episode, he’s addicted to cases like he’s on drugs and Toto is the unwilling drug dealer.