Murder On-Line (1996) by Seimaru Amagi

I suppose only a tiny fraction of my regular blog readers are aware, or have read, a Japanese "light novel." Light novels are targeted at high-and middle school aged readers (i.e. Young Adults) and have an average length of fifty thousand words with the distinguishing characteristic that the books are illustrated with manga artwork depicting various scenes or characters from the story – naturally our beloved detective story is fairly represented in light novels. Some of these light mystery novels have been translated into English.

Japanese edition

Zaregoto series: kubikiri saikuru (Zaregoto: Book 1: The Kubikiri Cycle, 2002) by the pseudonymous "NisiOisiN" is an extremely odd, but very good locked room novel, with apparently impossible decapitations on a small, isolated island in the Sea of Japan. Kazuki Sakuraba's Gosick: Goshikku (Gosick: The Novel, 2003) and Gosick II: Goshikku: Sono tsumi wa na mo naki (Gosick: The Crime That Has No Name, 2004) is set in antebellum Europe, which is laced with Ruritanian aesthetics and the series has an impossible crime or two. The Crime That Has No Name was actually somewhat reminiscent of a Paul Halter novel (c.f. The Demon of Dartmoor, 1993).

I'm sure these series convey very little to most of my readers, but during the late 1990s, Kodansha published a quadrilogy of light novels part of detective series most of you should be aware of by now.

The Kindaichi Case Files is a long-running manga series that has spawned numerous anime adaptations, live-action TV series, video games and nine light novels, which were penned by Seimaru Amagi – who's responsible for some of the best stories in the manga series (e.g. The Prison Prep School Murder Case and The Rosenkrauz Mansion Murders). These light novels were illustrated by the original artist of The Kindaichi Case Files and Detective Academy Q, Famiya Satō.

The four books that were translated into English are Opera-za kan arata naru satsujin (The New Kindaichi Case Files, 1994), Dennō sansō satsujin jiken (Murder On-Line, 1996), Shanhai gyojin densetsu satsujin jiken (The Shanghai River Demon's Curse, 1997) and Ikazuchi matsuri satsujin jiken (Deadly Thunder, 1998), but copies have become increasingly rare over time. And expensive. So maybe its time someone reprinted them in an omnibus edition, because Murder On-Line proved to be a pure, plot-driven detective story with an ingenious alibi-trick worthy of Christopher Bush and Agatha Christie. A trick that made the story a quasi-impossible crime novel, but not close enough to label it such.

Murder On-Line is a mystery novel reminiscent of Yukito Ayatsuji's Jakkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987) and Peter Lovesey's Bloodhounds (1996), in which "a group of crime and suspense fiction fans" from a chap-group, the On-Line Lodge, meet each other offline at an isolated, practically deserted mountain ski-resort, Silverwood Lodge – they only know each other by their online aliases. The names they picked for themselves are "Agatha," "Watson," "Ranpo," "Patricia," "Sojo," "Spenser" and "Sid," but one of them has a third (secret) identity. An identity simply known as "Trojan Horse" and this person has murder in his or her heart.

Hajime Kindaichi and Nanase Miyuki end up Silverwood Lodge after getting lost in the snowy mountains, but when the group of mystery fans learn Kindaichi is the grandson of the celebrated detective, Kosuke Kindaichi, they insist they stay the night. And a blizzard effectively strands them there.

Kindaichi and Miyuki are the unknown quantity introduced in the murderer's carefully planned scheme, but "Trojan Horse" merely sees them as “a minor bug” in the program that can be handled. Only "two more characters" who showed up to play the game. The first murder is committed that very same day, but everyone has an alibi: "Agatha" was being intimate with "Ranpo." "Patricia," "Sid" and "Watson" were having an online conversation when they were in their private cottages, which can be proved with chat-logs. Kindaichi and Miyuki were together. There's "an alibi for everyone." Kindaichi describes the murder as an impossible crime, because it was committed in "an isolated lodge" with all of the suspects alibied.

English-language edition

However, as good as the alibi-trick is, it doesn't meet my qualifications to be regarded as either a locked room mystery or impossible crime.

Back in 2017, I posted a comment to a blog-post by Dan, of The Reader is Warned, entitled "But is it a locked room mystery? The case of the impossible alibi," which asked if an alibi-trick can be considered an impossible crime. My answer is that an impossible alibi can't solely relay on eyewitnesses or physical pieces of evidence (i.e. train tickets), but murderer should appear to have been physically incapable of having committed the crime. For example, the murderer was in police custody or appeared to have been wounded/hospitalized (e.g. Mr. Monk and the Sleeping Suspect, 2003). There must be a serious physical limitation placed on the murderer and Christie wrote a rather well-known detective novel that used this kind of impossible alibi to perfection.

This was simply not the case here and the alibis fall apart when you consider two, or more, people working together. The chat-group alibi is not exactly rock solid either, because they all had laptops and the murderer could have been chatting from the victim's cottage. The group could even have suspected the two outsiders, Kindaichi and Miyuki. Something that was not considered or even mentioned in the story. And the clueing was a bit scant. The solution is still hinted at, but not as strong as in the best stories from the anime or manga series. However, you can probably blame the light novel format for that. Amagi didn't had the space to craft an ingenious plot like the one from The Prison Prep School Murder Case. Let alone to throw out too many complications or red herrings.

I should also note here that the last murder is quasi-locked room: a member of the chat-group was barricaded inside a cottage, but the murderer squirted two different liquids underneath the door into the cottage, which formed a deadly cyanide gas – giving the victim just enough time to leave behind a dying message. Technically, you could qualify it as a locked room crime, but it was never treated as such in the story. By the way, this is not a spoiler. The murder is shown to the reader.

So, Murder On-Line is not a locked room novel, but, as a traditionally-structured whodunit, it was brilliantly handled with an ingenious alibi-trick. The prologue gave us a glimpse of a perfect crime that was actually, well, perfect. A crime so perfect, it required private revenge to rectify it. An all too common theme in the Kindaichi series and they have done this motive to death, but the back-story to the murders was very detailed here. Usually, the series uses this motive as nothing more than to create incredibly and ambitious murderers. But this one was very well done. You can almost understand why the murderer planned on leaving six bodies at the mountain lodge.

Naturally, Kindaichi can't allow "Trojan Horse" to take out everyone in the group and not only has to demolish the murderer's carefully staged alibi, but has to separate everyone online identity from who they really are. And has to interpret such clues as the previously mentioned dying message and a body found buried in the snow behind one of the cottages. I particularly liked how the chat-group and early internet (culture) were woven into the scheme of the overall plot. Once again, it's a perfect example of modern technology can be incorporated in a traditionally-styled detective story. More amazingly, the book was published in 1996 and this makes it a far-sighted story as far as internet culture is concerned.

So, all things considered, Murder On-Line is a good and cleverly worked out detective novel with a splendid and original alibi-trick. The setting and cast of suspects consisting of a group of crime fiction readers, who use detective-themed nicknames, makes the book highly recommendable to readers who enjoyed Ayatsuji's The Decagon House Murder and Lovesey's Bloodhounds. A great companion piece to those two mystery novels.

I sincerely hope someone decides to reprint The New Kindaichi Case Files (titled in Japan Opera House – The New Murder), Murder On-Line, The Shanghai River Demon's Curse and Deadly Thunder. And, perhaps, translate the remaining five titles from this series. Do you think Ho-Ling Wong, the Carl Horn of Locked Room International, has any plans for the upcoming holidays? Translating a light novel won't be as much work as a regular novel, right? More importantly, it would make me happy. :D

The Kindaichi Case Files: The Antlion Trench Murder Case

The Antlion Trench Murder Case was originally serialized in Weekly Shônen Magazine and collected in volumes 5-6 of Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo R (The File of Young Kindaichi Returns), which Ho-Ling Wong described as having one of "the most ridiculous designed building" in the entire series – a research facility in the middle of a desert-like field of quicksand. This case is not considered to be a high-note in the series, but wanted to know how this bizarre and ridiculous architectural marvel was put to use in service of the plot. It certainly was odd, I'll tell you that much.

An old acquaintance and freelance journalist, Yosuke Itsuki, invited Hajime Kindaichi and Miyuki Nanase to participate in a three-day psychological experiment as a way to make a little bit of pocket money.

The experiment is conducted by Professor Maeda Junki, of Saitou University, who has a former military base at his disposal. A facility commonly known as Antlion Trench, situated on the outskirts of a small desert, where captured soldiers were imprisoned during the war and escaping is next to impossible, because the base is surrounded by dangerous patches of quicksand – which can only be navigated by following a roped pathway. Antlion Trench is a cluster of pod-like buildings linked together by long, snaking corridors and (locked) doors.

All of the participants are locked inside this facility for three days and have to wear differently colored kimonos, which represent their inner trauma or desire. A wristband with a body sensor-and radio device will record all of their vital signs, which are send to the professor's laptop. So they're under constant observation during those three days. And cell phones aren't allowed!

As to be expected, two of the participants are murdered and here the outlandish, maze-like layout of the structure begins to work against both Kindaichi and the reader. First of all, getting to the first victim proved to be an obstacle course, because they're constantly confronted by locked doors and dead-ends in a place where every room and corridor looks practically the same – making it very confusing to follow everyone's movement. Something that's not entirely unimportant to the solution.

However, this is not a locked room mystery in the traditional sense. The murders appear to be baffling and incredibly hard to have carried out, but they're not, strictly speaking, impossible crimes.

Unfortunately, the explanation to the murders reworked on of my favorite Kindaichi stories by pumping it full of steroids, because The Antlion Trench Murder Case is pumped-up version of that particular story. Just not as good or particularly well executed. Another thing I have began to notice is that The File of Young Kindaichi Return series uses "The Puppeteer of Hell," Yoichi Takato, as a convenient plot-device to justify the more fantastic aspects of the plot by simply pointing at him and saying, "it was all his idea." And if you lean on that too much, you run the danger of creating something completely incomprehensible. Something this story was (at times) dangerously close to becoming. Hell's Puppeteer is a great character and a perfect foil to Kindaichi, but this is not the best way to use him.

Antlion Trench

  

So the mechanics of the crimes were less than perfect and the movement of the various characters through the maze-like building was confusing at times, but it made for an oddly interesting detective story – especially when you add the psychological angle and wristbands to the overall picture. There were one or two good clues hidden in them that pointed to the murderer. One clue particular gives immediately identifies the murderer, if you're able to spot it. As usually, the age-old revenge motive is dragged out, which is used in nearly every volume of this series, but this back-story was an interesting one. And it's baffling that culprits of this crime saw their action as a prank gone wrong. It was as close to (unintended) murder (manslaughter?) as you can possibly get.

Just like my previous read in this series, The Antlion Trench Murder Case had an intriguing premise and bizarre backdrop, but everything else was par of the course for the series. And part of the plot reworked a previous and much better story. So this was not one of Kindaichi's all-time greatest cases, but neither was it his worst. Just a very middling title in the series.

Well, I guess I'll return to Case Closed or Q.E.D. for my next mystery manga.

The Kindaichi Case Files: The Murder in the Phantom School Building

Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo R (The File of Young Kindaichi Returns) series was serialized in Weekly Shônen Magazine from 2012 to 2017 and reviewed a number of stories that were adapted for the animated series, such as The Alchemy Murder Case, The Prison Prep School Murder Case and The Rosenkrauz Mansion Murders, but not all of the cases were used for the anime – some have very alluring premises. I noticed one of these unused stories combined an abandoned island setting with a treasure hunt, urban exploration, bloody murder and a pack of minutely-timed alibis. So I simply had to read it.

Gunkon Island on the Izu Peninsula is the backdrop of The Murder in the Phantom School Building, but is locally known under another name, Kogane (Gold) Island, which once held rich gold deposits and the small island prospered.

The island used to be crowded and resembled a busy town rather than a mining village. After this brief, prosperous period, the gold suddenly ran out and over two-thousand people left – turning the island into a godforsaken ghost town of abandoned ruins. And these ruins have a story to tell. Legend has it that there's "an estimated amount of 200kg in gold bars" secreted on the island.

A treasure rumordly stowed away by the Vice-Principal of Kogane Junior High School, Yuuki Genshou, who had worked on the island for over thirty years and was the only person who remained behind. This fanned the flames of the rumored treasure of gold bars, but the gold was never found and when two men from the mining company returned to the island, to confront him, all they found was "the shriveled, mummy-like body of the Vice-Principal" sitting in a chair – which promptly disappeared when the police arrived. Since a year, every month a group of people are given access to the island to poke around the abandoned ruins for the gold.

Miyuki had a bit of good luck when she, out of nowhere, secured two slots on the next expedition to the island and this means that Hajime Kindaichi is coming with her!

On the island, they meet the rest of the expedition: Akaguma Takeshi (tour guide), Tomoe Soujuurou (treasure hunter) and Kubiki Tomorou (supernatural researcher). The rest of the group consists of students who are members of a college urban exploration club (Ruins Explorer Club): Yamori Yukio, Kijou Ayuma, Hanaizumi Kyouya, Tsuruno Fuyuka, Tooma Moegi and Muronoi Ran. However, there are two other unexpected visitors. Inspector Kenmoichi and Superintendent Akechi arrive on the island under the guise of civil servants inspecting the place, but Kindaichi is soon informed by them that they received evidence that the "Puppeteer of Hell," Yoichi Takato, is going to be at the bottom of what is about to unfold among the ruins of Kogane Island.

For those who missed my previous reviews, Takato is a magician of crime who designs perfect murder plots for those craving revenge or long for private justice. So the stage is properly set for murder!

Kogane Island

 

The group of treasure hunters uses the Kogane Junior High School building as a base and the place resembles an obstacle course for urban explorers. There are corridors blocked by rubble, stairways that have collapsed and rotting floors with holes in it. A feature that comes an integral part of the alibi-trick when the group hears over the wireless how one of the club members is murdered in the music-room, on the second floor, but the staircase has collapsed and they needed to take the long way round to reach the music-room, which takes a good six minutes – nobody within the group was out of sight for more than three minutes. Not enough time to take the long way round, commit the murder and return without being seen.

I think any astute mystery reader can piece together one part of this alibi-trick, but the second part is a lot trickier and borders on cheating, because it took more prep work than you can reasonable expect even from a fictitious murderer. And this probably why the Puppeteer was inserted into the background. It kind of justified this elaborate part of the trick. Still a good and even a somewhat original alibi-trick.

A letter was found inviting the victim to come to the music-room without telling anyone, signed "The Vice-Principal," which are followed by more letters asking the explorers to come to various locations in the school building – all of the letters came with a tiny piece of gold. But then the radio-transmitter vanishes, their boat is torched and two more names are added to the body-count. The last murder is a diabolical one with almost childish trickery to lure the victim into a deadly trap, but very well done and more believable than the first murder.

The Murder in the Phantom School Building has a solid premise with a great backdrop for a deadly treasure hunt and using urban explorers to pad out the cast of characters was interesting, but, besides the previously mentioned tricks, the plot was standard fare for the series. I easily spotted the murderer and the motive was the same old, same old. So, on a whole, the story is a not standout title in the series, but also a long-way from those at the bottom-rung. It's just very average.

So far this lukewarm review, but probably have something good again for my next post.

The File of Young Kindaichi: The Hong Kong Kowloon Treasure Murder Case

The Hong Kong Kowloon Treasure Murder Case is a four-part episode that opened the first season of Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo R (The File of Young Kindaichi R) anime series and reviewed a bunch of episodes last year, which included a number of fine examples of the unbreakable alibi (The Prison Prep School Murder Case) and the locked room mystery (The Rosenkrauz Mansion Murders). After reading the surprisingly excellent The Headless Samurai, published in the original manga series, I wanted to return this series.

The Hong Kong Kowloon Treasure Murder Case consists of four, twenty-minute episodes and the plot combines (mild) thriller elements with the usual Kindaichi plot, which involves kidnapping and three murders by a dark figure known as the "Poison Dragon" – whose back-story is deeply rooted within the Walled City of Kowloon. A densely populated, lawless labyrinth where the Kowloon Palace housed a dragon statue with "diamond worth billions" (*) as eyes. The diamonds are known as the Dragon Eyes and people believed them to be cursed. So nobody even dared to touch them, until Wang Long, "the so-called Emperor of Kowloon," pried them from the statue. They eventually went missing and are rumored to be hidden somewhere in Hong Kong.

An addendum to this back-story is that Wang Long was betrayed and murdered, twenty years before this case, but vowed with his dying breath that "all will die" when "the Poison Dragon awakens." I appreciated how the legacy and history of that "dark complex of maze-like buildings" lurked in the background of the story.

Two decades later, Miyuki gets an unexpected opportunity to do modeling work in Hong Kong when she's spotted walking down the street with Kindaichi by Ryuta Takigawa of Tokyo Girly Mode.

So he goes along with her to the Jewel of Asia and there they bump into a friend, Saki, who's an enthusiastic videophile constantly recording everything that goes around and has often assisted Kindaichi on his cases, but their merry reunion is shortly lived when Miyuki vanishes from a watched, curtained fitting room in a clothes store – an impossibility Kindaichi immediately solved. An antiquated, overly convenient solution that begs the question how the kidnapper knew Miyuki would use that specific fitting room. Or do all of the fitting rooms there go with a sliding panel?

Anyway, they go through the sliding panel and, when they come out in a back alley, they see an unconscious Miyuki in the backseat of a black car, which Kindaichi attempts to follow on a bike, but is unable to keep up the chase. And soon thereafter, he receives a text message from Miyuki saying that they will kill her if he goes to the police.

So he has to find her on his own and a another, very convenient coincidence puts him on a possible trail when they bump into a model, Yan Ran, who looks exactly like their missing friend and was reportedly missing – which is how Miyuki got her modeling gig. Yan Ran is directly tied to the past of the Walled Town and has a dragon tattoo with a hidden message, when deciphered, gives the location of the Dragon Eyes. This provides the story with a side-puzzle, as Kindaichi has to break the code in a race against time, because this supposed treasure could destroy the whole of Hong Kong.

Kindaichi in hot pursuit

So there you have the thriller elements, although mostly of a relatively mild variations, but there are also the previously mentioned murders and two of those killings provide the story with a traditional detective problem.

The Hong Kong promoter of the Tokyo Girly Event, Chan Yongu, is poisoned under nearly impossible circumstances during dinner when eating poisoned soup that had been served to everyone else, including Kindaichi, without any ill-effects. However, the poisoning does not hinge on a trick allowing the murderer to unobserved spike the soup and think most viewers can (largely) work out the method. But the second murder has some real ingenuity and originality.

A man by the name of Shin Li, who gave his place at the dinner table to Chan Yongu, is beaten to death in an apartment room across the street, but all of the potential suspects where under lock down and police guard at the hotel – giving them cast-iron alibis. This alibi-trick had been used before in the series, in regards to a locked room murder, but here it's used to craft a perfect alibi and what makes it somewhat original is the tool the murderer used. I don't think it could have been done as fast as the episode suggested, but the idea is a novel one and added a new ripple to the age-old trick of hiding something in plain sight.

However, the most important murder is the third one, which does not provide a puzzle problem, but has a subtle, tell-tale clue that, if spotted, tells you who the "Poison Dragon" really is.

The identity of the murderer, even if you don't spot the tell-tale clue, probably won't come as too big a surprise to the seasoned mystery reader, but the motive was interesting as it gave a twist to the motivation that drives most murderers in this series. It was that motive, but not in the way you imagined. And that was a nice touch.

So The Hong Kong Kowloon Treasure Murder Case is an often fast-moving detective story with thriller elements, code cracking side puzzles, a MacGuffin, the Poison Dragon murders and unbreakable alibis, which made it an entertaining four-parter, but the overall plot and story does not measure up to the best from this series. There was too much of everything and this diluted the stronger aspects of the plot. Still, they were not bad episodes to watch. And, hey, when I'm not overly negative about Kindaichi it says something about those volumes or episodes.

(*) I'm sure those billions are in Japanese yen.

Deadly Reunion

"One should not give a small child a sword under any circumstances."

- Judge Ooka (Bertus Aafjes' Een lampion voor een blinde, 1973; A Lantern for the Blind)

The Foxfire-Floating Murders is the closer of the second and currently last season of Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo R (The File of Young Kindaichi R), which comprises of four episodes and is a surprisingly human detective story drawing on Hajime Kindaichi's past as a boy scout cub – placing him in the conflicting position of having to ferret out a murderer among his childhood friends.

The first of the four episodes opens with Kindaichi receiving a telegram ("that's rare these days") and the slip of paper is the bearer of bad news. One of his childhood friends, Tsukie Marika, has suddenly passed away. Kindaichi and Marika were cub scouts and part of the group that went missing for two days during a camping trip in the woods, but their ordeal turned out to be nothing more than an exciting adventure for the group. Even the snake that bit one of the girl scouts, Akari, proved to be non-poisonous.

Kindaichi remembers them having plenty of fun back in those days, but the group grew apart as they got older and only kept exchanging New Years' cards over the post. So their reunion in the small village of Byakko is a joyous occasion until they learn Marika has been dead for the past two months. And she was murdered.

Two months ago, the body of Marika was found in a storehouse, "naked and wrapped in a white cloth," with "a Byakko white fox mask covering her face," which is an imagery that evoked the Japanese folktale of "the Marriage of the Fox" – something that would play a role in one of the later murders. So the local villagers fear the murder might been the result of the curse of the white fox, Byakko-sama.

Furthermore, nobody knows who sent out the invitations to the funeral or why this person waited several months with sending them out.

There is, however, one peculiarity about this early part of the story that bugged me a little bit: the characters, initially, don't appear to be really bothered by the revelation that Marika had been killed. Or that her killer has not yet been found. Shortly after they learn about the murder, they cheerfully suggest a game of cards and play soccer the following morning. Even Kindaichi, who's a detective and murder-magnet, is out-of-character by appearing less than interested in the case and even reprimands himself when something occurs to him – saying to himself that he's over thinking the matter and that "not everything is a crime." When, in fact, it is a murder case! So that struck a slightly false tone in the narrative.

However, that might just have been the tranquil effect of the village, which, admittedly, is a beautifully drawn place with a scenic tradition called Foxfire-Floating.

Every year, a young girl from the village becomes the bride of the fox and has to sit all night, dressed in a kimono and mask, on the veranda of the Byakko Inari Shrine. You can't approach or talk to the bride while she's sitting in front of the shrine. At the same moment, villagers gather at the riverbank and "float lanterns downstream in memory of the souls of the dead," which makes for a charming image. But this is also the night that Kindaichi loses two more of his old cub scout friends.

One of them, Koutarou, is found floating in an inflatable boat between the lanterns on the river with his face covered by a white fox mask. He also has been stabbed to death. The second person to die that night is Rin, who plays the role of fox bride, but the murderer propped up her body against the shrine and made it look as if she had been sitting there all the time.

The traditional foxfire-floating lanterns of Byakko Village

The setup of the story and the discovery of the two additional murders covers the first two episodes, which also involve a pair of alibi-tricks, but these tricks are relatively simple to figure out. If you paid any attention to the lay of the land, you can (roughly) work out how the boat-trick was accomplished. Particularly in combination with the clue of the soccer ball. The alibi-trick at the shrine was as plain as day and you should be able to work out the solution based solely on the tear in the rice paper of the shrine's sliding door.

Normally, these easy tricks, in combination with a very transparent murderer, would be slightly unusual for a detective-series that has always heavily relied on complicated locked room illusions, tricky alibis and melodramatic murderers, but the gimmicks were appropriately toned down here – as not to reduce the impact of the human and personal elements of the story. And it worked!

The solution, as to be expected, played on the well-worn motif of the series, "the-avenger-from-the-past," but what keeps the viewer guessing is what, or who, had to be avenged. Obviously, the murders are linked to the camping trip of the cub scouts, but that was over seven years ago and everyone involved was an elementary school student. Several flashbacks of the trip showed nothing really happened that would warrant the death of three people years later. Or so it appeared.

Granted, not every single detail about the murderer's motive is fairly shared, but, eventually, you can make an educated guess and the truth is genuinely tragic. A string of unfortunate events that began with the maliciousness of a bunch of innocent children who had no conception of long-term consequences. The episode ends, strongly, with a teary-eyed Kindaichi wondering about the many "what-ifs" of the case that could have prevented the destruction of half a dozen lives, which includes some of his own actions.

Plot-wise, The Foxfire-Floating Murders is perhaps not the strongest, or cleverest, story in the series, but the personal and emotional ties Kindaichi has to the victims and suspects more than made up for this, but some praise should also be bestowed upon the beautifully evoked backdrop of the village with its folkloric traditions – which proved to be perfect stage for this very personal case.

So, yeah, there you have it. Once again, I fully enjoyed a story from the Kindaichi case files. I guess the age of miracles has not yet passed into the history books!

I previously reviewed the following episodes in this series:

The Alchemy Murder Case

The Prison Prep School Murder Case

The Death March of Young Kindaichi

The Blood Pool Hall Murder

The Rosenkrauz Mansion Murders

The Legendary Snow Demon Murders

Killer Kindaichi

"Moral wounds have this peculiarity—they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart."

- Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo, 1845-46)

The Death March of Young Kindaichi is a four-part (episode) story-arc in the recent Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo R (The File of Young Kindaichi R) anime series, but the story originally appeared as a series finale for the original comic-book run in the early 2000s – only to be resurrected in 2004. Obviously, the plot betrays that the story was initially intended to be a curtain closer.

The first episode opens with arrival in Hong Kong of Yoichi Takato, "The Puppeteer from Hell," who designs perfect crimes for people with an insatiable hunger for revenge. Takato learned of the existence of someone who's absolutely famished!

Upon his arrival, Takato travels to the remnants of an abandoned hotel and blasts a hole in a wall leading to a warren of underground passages stocked with long-forgotten, World War II-era supplies of the Imperial Japanese Army, but someone had been sealed inside those dark tunnels – surviving on canned food and rodents. Hell's Puppeteer christens this person "The Count of Monte Cristo" and promises to help extract revenge on the people who locked him inside, robbing him of sunlight for the past 18 years, by writing "the scenario for the perfect crime." A perfectly diabolical scenario casting his nemesis and high-school detective, Hajime Kindaichi, in a very special and precarious role.

Kindaichi, Miyuki and Inspector Kenmochi are en route to Hong Kong in order to attend a magic show by an illusionist known as Maskman, which is stage-name once used by Takato. The show is hosted by the King Dragon Hotel, a replica of the ruined one, but, when they arrive, there's already a police presence, because the person who rebuild the hotel has been kidnapped. However, this is only a minor plot-thread that mainly serves the story by making sure the police is on hand when the body starts hitting the floor.

On a brief side note, Police-Detective Li of the Hong Kong police previously appeared in The Hong Kong Kowloon Treasure Murder Case, which now might be the next set of episodes on my watch-list.

Anyway, Kindaichi attends the magic show and Maskman asks him to climb on the stage to be hypnotized, but the hypnotic spell only appears to take effect when he returns to his hotel room. One that threw him in a foggy trance.

Later that night, Kindaichi is found staggering across the second-floor hallway of an unoccupied part of the hotel, groggy-eyed and confused, without any recollection of how he got there, which becomes a problem when he learns a woman has been murdered on that floor and all of the exits sealed – which means that nobody but him could have murdered the woman. Luckily, Detective Li holds him in high regard and gives him the benefit of the doubt, but this changes when there are several eyewitnesses to an attempted murder and everyone (including the viewer) saw it was Kindaichi who wielded the knife. Even more shocking is that the victim is Kindaichi's friend and rival, Superintendent Akechi.

Maskman claims his hypnotic spells "awakens desires deep within the human heart" and murder must have been in the heart of Kindaichi, because it has always been on his mind. Takato even taunts him over the phone by saying that, somewhere in his heart, he "longed to be rid" of his rival. So Kindaichi decides to break out of the hotel and find the real murderer, which he does with a surprising alley at his side: a 10-year-old boy, Chao Longtao, who works at the hotel as a bell-boy.  

Hajime Kindaichi, Fugitive from Justice

However, the part about proving his innocence is harder than expected, because they keep stumbling across bodies and Kindaichi is always the last person to have handled the murder weapon – whether it's a blood-stained knife or a smoking gun.

So, as you can gather from my plot-overview, the episodes is very much what you'd expect from a story (originally) meant as a series finale. You have the protagonist in serious trouble and a number of familiar faces turning up again to take their curtain call, but how does the plot measure up. Was it a worthy closer to the original series? Well, yes and no.

First of all, there's are the (quasi) impossible situations, which are basically stage illusions ("murder magic"), but appreciated their clever intricacy. However, it should be pointed out that their execution required impeccable timing, steely nerves and a good portion of luck, because everything had to go exactly as envisioned in an uncontrolled environment. Something could have easily gone wrong under such circumstances. For example, if one of the policeman was quicker than anticipated and reached the elevator, before the door closed, the sealed floor murder would not have worked. Similarly, Kindaichi staggered in the wrong direction nobody would have seen him planting a knife in Akechi.

So using the props and principles of a stage illusion to create a seemingly impossible murder, or two, can be a tricky business.

However, the impossible situations, despite the risk, were better handled than the identity of the Count of Monte Cristo. I fully appreciate the Agatha Christie-like attempt at playing an unusual card from the least-likely-suspect deck, but the problem is that this person was obviously involved in the Puppeteer's scheme. I even guessed (sinful, I know) how the apparent impossibility of this person being the actual killer could be explained, which was confirmed when the photographic clue was introduced in the third episode. That clinched it for me.

There is, however, the question how believable the murderer is. I know you can get away with more in comic-books and animation, but even with that in mind it felt like they were taking some liberties with their artistic license.

In closing, The Death March of Young Kindaichi is not one of the best sets of episodes in this series, but not particulary bad either and should primarily be watched as a detective-in-peril story, like Patrick Quentin's Black Widow (1952), while the impossibilities and the unusual murderer should be seen as plot-extras – which should help making some of those weaknesses more forgivable.

I previously reviewed the following episodes: The Alchemy Murder Case, The Prison Prep School Murder Case, The Blood Pool Hall Murder, The Rosenkreuz Mansion Murders and The Legendary Snow Demon Murders.