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.

Unseen Thorns

"The point is that there are a million ways for you to die that you can't possibly guard against."

- Lincoln Forrestor (William Gray Beyer's Death of a Puppeteer, 1946)

The Rosenkreuz Mansion Murders is a five-part (episode) story-arc in the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo R (The File of Young Kindaichi R) series and arguably has the best all-around story-telling and plot of all the episodes previous reviewed on this blog, which largely rests on a pair of clever locked room murders and the role played by Kindaichi's nemesis – who acts here alongside the high-school detective. And for a very good reason!

Yoichi Takato is talented magician and criminal, known as "The Puppeteer from Hell," who designs perfect crimes for people with a deep-seated grudge and controls the executioners of his schemes like stringed puppets, which he showcased in The Prison Prep School Murder Case. However, this time he has to dance to the tune of another plotter with a talent for murder.

A mysterious person going by the moniker of "Rosenkreuz" is sending out invites to celebrate the completion of the Blue Rose at the Rosenkreuz Mansion, but the letter delivered to the Puppeteer also contained a threat. One of the invitees to the party is his long-lost sister and he has to attend or else she'll leave the mansion in a body bag.

So this places Takato in a precarious position and he dislikes "the thought of unseen thorns," but what he excels at is murder, "not at the inverse," which gives him the idea to slip "a joker" into whatever game Rosenkreuz has planned – namely Hajime Kindaichi. Takato strikes a deal with Kindaichi that if his sister is among the guests, and she makes out of the mansion alive, he will turn himself in to the police to atone for his past crimes. It's an offer that proved to be impossible to ignore or turn down and this gives the story a very different dynamic, because Takato acts a secondary detective.

Someone who's right next to Kindaichi to help him in every step of the investigation, but whose role always appears to have a shadow-side. As you can never be entirely sure how much of a hand he (might) have in the unfolding drama. I found this to be a pleasant divergence from the unusual, often formulaic, narrative of the series.

Takato, Kindaichi and Miyuku arrive at the mansion, which is a European-style, cross-shaped house encircled by thick, impenetrable hedges of rose bushes that could have been pulled from the Queen of Heart's hedge maze. The person known as Rosenkreuz plays the role of absentee host and only communicates with his guest through letters delivered by the butler of the mansion, Mouri Mikado. So there you have the first suspect, however, the remaining guests are also an interesting bunch.

One of the first surprises for Kindaichi and Miyuki is that their biology teacher, Shiraki Benine, is among the guests and she has shown a personal interest in (blue) roses at the opening of the episode – which she shares with the others who received an invitation. There's a CEO of a biotechnology company and a rose garden manager, but also several artistically inclined people such as a photographer, a kimono designer, an artist and a flower poet. So this nicely sets the stage for murder and the first body turns up before the ending of the first episode.

On a brief note of negativity, the first two murders were rather disappointing as the first body turned up, impossibility, on the dinner table, but this piece of cheap trickery was (thankfully) almost immediately explained. The second person died when he tried to escape from the premise by going through the rose bushes, but the thorns had been poisoned and he dropped dead on the spot. Very, very pulpy. Luckily, these two murders did not set the tone or quality for the remaining four episodes.

The third murder is discovered when a note by Rosenkreuz commands everyone to come to the circular reception room on the north side, where he will reveal "the blue rose," but what they discover is a locked room and they make a gruesome discovery when they inspect the outside windows – inside lays the body of man on a cross-shape bed of flower petals. A wooden stake has been driven through his heart!

 

The Rose-Petal Locked Room

What makes this murder an impossible one is the door, which opens inward, but the flower bed, placed all the way up to the threshold, was undisturbed. So how did the murderer closed the door without sweeping the lower part of the petal cross into the hallway outside? The explanation proved to be as a good and novel as the locked room situation, which combined the flower motif of the story with certain aspects of the murder room to great effect.

I believe this is the kind of trick John Dickson Carr or Joseph Commings would have admired and something Yozaburo Kanari would love to pass off as his own.

The second impossible situation is of a different order altogether: a woman is being attacked in a room that can only be reached by taking a large detour around the house (some short cuts were boarded up). When they reach the section of the mansion, where the room is situated, the only person they find there is Takato and he swears nobody had passed while he had been standing there – which makes the murder they discover in the room an impossible one. The trick is yet another variation on the idea Seimaru Amagi played with in The Prison Prep School Murder Case and The Kamikakushi Village Murders from Detective Academy Q, which even uses a similar sun-light clue.

Obviously, Amagi loves the idea of this trick and gets a ton of mileage out of it. Sure, it's an idea with a lot of possibilities and has barely been looked at by Western mystery writers (except for Paul Halter), but, in this case, I believe the first locked room trick is superior to the second one.

Anyhow, the combination of a collaboration between two enemies, Kindaichi and Takato, and a pair of excellently imagined impossible crimes is what, largely, made The Rosenkreuz Mansion Murders my favorite story from this series. But the identity of the (somewhat obvious) murderer and the underlying, hidden relationships were also of interest. As to be expected, there was the good old avenger-motif at the heart of the case, but this time there was an extra dimension to the motive as it answered why Takato had to be present and what the murders had to do with his sister. Fascinatingly, this showed the story was written around several characters with parallel relationships, which recalled similar, sometimes mirror-like, relationships found in Gosho Aoyama's Detective Conan (or Case Closed).

All of these parallel relationships, rose-themed clues and two locked room illusions that took full advantage of their surroundings created some beautiful plot-patterns together. The Rosenkreuz Mansion Murders completely exorcised the dispiriting disappointment left behind by The Legendary Snow Demon Murders.

Hopefully, the next story will be able to maintain this level of quality. So I guess it will be a coin toss between The Death March of Young Kindaichi and The Foxfire-Floating Murders. Any and all recommendations are welcome!

Snowy Death

"Crimes 're committed by people. There ain't nothin' impossible about it! What are ya stupid?"

- Harley Hartwell a.k.a. Heiji Hattori (Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, vol. 50)

Last Sunday, I posted a review of my third foray into the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo R (The File of Young Kindaichi R) series, The Alchemy Murder Case, which closely followed the formula established in the original incarnation of the series, but the plot had a grand and original locked room illusion – a two-sided trick that also explained the secret behind the vanishing of a gigantic sword. So it was the third (episodic) story in a row that did not end in disappointment.

But than an old friend of this blog, "Origami," turned up in the comment-section and jinxed my epic rediscovery of the series. Oh, yes. This is going to be a good, old-fashioned bashing of Kindaichi.

The Legendary Snow Demon Murders is stretched across four episodes and takes place against the endless, snow-capped mountain tops of the Snow Goblin Ski Resort, which has recently been developed by an investment group and a handful of people have been selected for a trial run – including the protagonists of the series, Hajime Kindaichi and Nanase Miyuki. However, they're present at the resort as part-time workers to help take care of the testers. And, as to be expected, there's a dark, bloody history attached to the place.

On New Years Eve, 50 years ago, the now long-abandoned mountain village was visited by the legendary Snow Demon, who left behind a trail of blood and empty houses, but the remains of his many victims were never recovered. Everyone in the region believed that the missing villagers had all been "eaten by the Snow Demon." Well, so far, so good. But not for very long.

The legend of the Snow Demon and the miraculous vanishing of his victims enters the picture when one of the guests, Kumosawa Natsuki, disappears from her log cabin without leaving a single footprint in the large, unbroken blanket of virgin snow outside – which had began to fall when she had retired and stopped when she was discovered to be missing. She had been spirited away! An unlikable guest and "creepy otaku," Sabaki Kaito, disappears during the second episode, but his body is found and vanishes again, which is the point where the story begins run out of fuel.

A large swath of the second episode and pretty much the entirety of the third is nothing more than filler material. And not very good filler material at that!

There are two basic, and simplistic, problems at the heart of these two episodes: the (non-impossible) disappearance of Sabaki's body from a casket and who flung a bloodstained meat-cleaver through the window of the main cabin when everyone was alibied. The answer to the first problem is a reworking of a cheap, dime-store magic trick, but with a body and casket replacing the coin and small box, while the meat-cleaver trick is embarrassingly childish and bad – even the Ayatsuri Sakon series would have shied away from using it.

So, I was thoroughly unimpressed with the plot, but hoped that the explanation of the impossible disappearance would save the episode. After all, I had my doubts about the previous episodes I watched and they turned around in the end with some splendid solution. Well, that did not happen in this case, I'm afraid.

Sure, the explanation for the impossibility is, in principle, an excellent one that might also be completely original, but I had two problems with it (you can re-reverse, or decode, the spoilers with copy-paste here):

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The Snow Goblin Ski Resort

As to be expected, the who-and why behind the killings weren't particular ingenious, innovative or very surprising, because the murderer's identity and motive were written around the avenger-motif used in nearly every single story in this series. I suppose the choice of the murderer was the only notable aspect of the plot, since this person was below suspicion, but hardly enough to save this dull, slow-moving episode stuffed with mostly second-and third-rate tricks – which triggered traumatic flashbacks to my first encounter with this series. The original Kindaichi series is like my 'Nam or something.

Surprisingly, this blog-post turned out to be not half as harsh as even I expected it to be. I'm disappointed, more than anything else, because the premise and main trick of The Legendary Snow Demon Murders had potential, but everything ended up being half thought-out or completely wasted. Such as the horrible filler material and the series formula didn't do the story any favors either. However, this will not deter from continuing with the series and you can probably expect a review of The Rosenkreuz Mansion Murders next. That's a good one, right?

On a final, unrelated note: allow me to draw your attention to my previous review of Stacey Bishop's Death in the Dark (1930), which is a very rare detective novel that has recently been reissued and the plot toys around with no less than three impossible crimes! So you might want to take a peek at that review. By the way, the next review will be of a non-impossible crime novel. Yes, I'm still aware of their existence! :)

Heavy Metal

"Sometimes we have to stand on our heads in order to see things the right-side up."

- Hadji Singh (The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, Episode 12: The Alchemist)

The Alchemy Murder Case is the third, four-part episode from Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo R (The File of Young Kindaichi R) I watched and has a by-the-numbers plot, written according to the well-worn formula of the series, but with a completely original locked room trick and a clever method for hiding the murder weapon – a gigantic long-sword. A minor piece of the overall puzzle that can be viewed as a well done, quasi-impossible problem. But first things first.

Hajime Kindaichi takes a shot at winning a 400 million yen prize by participating in a reality game show about a hidden treasure, which consists of a stack of gold bullion secreted somewhere on a lonely island.

Renkin Island is completely isolated from the outside world and used to belong to a physicist, Ezaki Kuroudo, who became an alchemist and constructed a bizarre, intricate building on the cliff-side of the island. Alchemist Mansion was built for "the sake of the ultimate scientific research," alchemy, but disappeared when he had reputedly reached "the peak of that alchemical research." What he left behind was the mystery of what happened to the ton of gold he had brought to the island with him. After all, it had to be somewhere.

A television special is being filmed around the hidden treasure and several people are brought together by the production team to hunt for it, which includes a number of celebrities such as Akashiba Taiki (comedian), Fukamori Hotaru (idol) and Hayami Reika (actress) – who's a recurring character in the series and debuted in Death TV. However, they also netted several regular contestants "who won a puzzle-solving battle" in order to secure their spot on the show. They are Isshiki Rikako (science student), Kamioka Fuuma (dental student) and Hajime Kindaichi.

So the cast, alongside the crew, are left on the island, but, before the day draws to a close, the problems begin.

The only motor-launch is torched and footage from the overnight camera shows a cloaked figure, with an iron mask, dragging "a huge sword" across the hallway! A situation culminating with the discovery that the body of the Assistent Director, Mayumura Takuya, is peering down at them from atop of the rooftop skylight, but the sword-wielding Alchemist has only just began and ramps up the bloodshed in the subsequent episode – proving he has both the look and work ethic of a deranged killer from a 1980s slasher film.

Hell, one of the victims sat on the toilet when the Alchemist removed a panel in the ceiling and struck her down from above! If that doesn't qualify as slasher-type of murder, I don't know what does.

Anyway, the most interesting of the murder is the one the Alchemist committed inside a sealed bedroom. All of the bedrooms in the Alchemy Mansion have impassable, grated windows and doors of solid steel that can be latched on the inside with a heavy bar, but, as the legend goes, "an alchemist can walk through any kind of metal," which is what the viewer is shown. Admittedly, I was annoyed that they showed too much of the murderer's handiwork, because it appeared to give the whole game away.

A fear that seemed to be confirmed when, what I saw, suddenly reminded me that The Alchemy Murder Case had previously been brought up on this blog. Back in 2015, I reviewed a horrendously bad locked room novel and imagined an alternative explanation for the impossible crimes, which earned a comparison in the comment-section with this Kindaichi story.

So my attention began to wane and, once again, feared I had to write a lukewarm review of the story, but the truly original explanation reeled me back in. The solution added a new method to the long list of tricks of how a murderer could enter, and exit, a room that appears to be completely impenetrable and fitted the theme of the plot like a glove. And no. The metallic bar, securing the door from the inside, was not lifted and lowered with the help of a magnet. It's a bit more involved than that.

What's really remarkable about the locked room trick is how the same principle applied to the disappearance of the sword. A sword that had been looked for all over the place, but could not be found. One of the later murders provides a solid clue as to what happened to the weapon and this, in turn, should provide you with a clue to the problem of the latched door.

"He sees when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake..."

So, the impossible aspect of the plot really makes this four-part episode recommendable to other locked room afficianodes and in particular to those who have a special fondness for Paul Halter's Le cercle invisible (The Invisible Circle, 1996) – which shares a couple of similarities with The Alchemy Murder Case. Such as a sword murder inside a sealed room with grated windows and the additional problem of a vanishing sword.

The remaining parts of the episode were decent enough, but also pretty standard fare for this series. Once again, we get one of the myriad of variations on the same motive that (for some reason) this series recycles endlessly. I can only remember one of the earliest volumes in the manga series, namely Smoke and Mirrors, in which the murderer had a novel motive. Otherwise, it's always some kind of reworking of the age-old avenger-motif.

However, that will always be an annoyance with me, but a minor one and to most readers motive is only of secondary importance. It's just weird that nobody in the Kindaichi universe ever commits murder simply for financial gain, love, jealousy, shame or fear.

As a whole, The Alchemy Murder Case was a pretty decent, if formulaic, entry in the series, but one with an outstanding and original locked room mystery. So I suppose this episode can also be used as an introduction to the series for some of my readers. You can watch them (legally, don't worry) on Crunchyroll.

I previously reviewed The Blood Pool Hall Murder and The Prison Prep School Murder Case. No idea which episode will be next on my watch list, but The Death March of Young Kindaichi and The Rosenkreuz Mansion Murders look promising. So stay tuned!