What They Say:
One day, Inaba Hiroshi’s former partner when he was a police dog, inspector Ogino, shows up at his detective agency.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Based on the manga series of the same name by Mochi, Cuticle Detective Mochi is a twelve episode series animated by studio ZEXCS. I’ve enjoyed a variety of titles from the studio in the past, but like any studio that does a lot of work, there’s some hit or miss to be had there of course. Coming from Monthly GFantasy, it’s a pretty straightforward shonen comedy series but one that will definitely appeal to the female audience a bit more since it plays up the cute guys in a good way, as well as having the whole dog-boy aspect that almost always works well.
The show revolves around a detective agency that’s run by a former police dog that’s now in human form named Hiroshi. The Inaba Detective Agency is how Hiroshi gets to continue doing something he’s good at while not being involved directly with the police, which is something that he didn’t care for as we see early on when his human partner, Ogino, shows up looking to draw him in to help with a new case. There’s a lot of silly and wacky kind of material as they first get together and we see how the agency has a cute crossdresser as a secretary, but it’s also just seeing how it goes for the changed-up animation for the comedy side of it to draw the laughs more. The mixture of more straightforward and serious style designs that then go cute works well.
Of course, the show also knows how to just be outlandish, such as when they all go out to follow up their first lead and it brings them into contact with the big Don of the area, who just happens to be a talking goat. Don is amusing in some ways, depending on how he’s used, but he is an over the top villain who we do see eats money but also can be used to spit out money. The cast in general plays well off of Don, though when we see Inaba get all serious and negative in a way, it ends up letting the character of Kei get explored a bit as we see how depressed he gets having to deal with such a surreal situation. All of this works to set up up the rivalry between Inaba and Don when you get down to it, which definitely has its amusing moments but comes across as something that may be a bit hard to maintain for twelve episodes.
In Summary:
The opening episode of Cuticle Detective Inaba has a surprisingly good bit of fun about it, but it’s also a show that’s very much “on” constantly. There are precious few moments here where things slow down and where no gags our wacky moments happen, which I’ll admit is both a positive and a negative. It keeps going and shifts the gags and jokes quickly enough so that nothing is really dragged through the mud, but it also gets to be a bit much at times. The series has its fun bits when it comes to Inaba and his origins, abilities and personality, but I can easily see Don Valentino becoming the real star of the show, especially the more he gets shot in the forehead. I’m really not sure what to make of the show at this stage since it’s throwing a lot of things out there, but I’m also wondering if it can maintain this for the remainder of its run without collapsing under its own weight. I’m cautiously optimistic as its weekly aspect may be its saving grace.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
