What They Say:
The true leader of wolf terrorist group is revealed and he has an important message for Hiroshi.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As the series rolls along, I continue to be surprised to see that it’s growing on me. The characters certainly aren’t getting explored, but the group dynamic is working better and better and the gags and situations are proving to be more amusing than they were at the start. Sometimes a series can’t showcase its strengths during the setup and foundation phase of its run and first episodes can be difficult, especially for a comedy series where so many things have to be introduced.
Some of what’s helped is the introduction of Haruka’s group and all of its quirks, especially with the way we see how the wolf comes out of the little doll-like figure and causes plenty of problems while going through everything. Amusingly, Yataro has decided that it’s time to deal with Hiroshi and his group and goes for the direct approach of just crashing on their couch until they all show up. It is, in essence, the wolf side just wanting to go for a walk as Soumei is inside of him. That leads to an explanation of how this whole situation works, showing how Soumei was a police dog from some years ago and has come up with some creative survival routines since then. There’s some decent info dump stuff done here and it’s fun seeing the two groups interact with each other in this way and the amusing reveal about who Soumei may really be.
The second half shifts gears a fair bit as we get two separate stories within it, with the first one being a story with Ogino who has just turned thirty years old. It brings in the recent arrival of Yuzu as the other primary character and he just messes with him a lot since he’s a year younger. The two have some cute fun to it as Yuzu just messes with him, though a lot of it blows up in his own face as well. The second half does a really cute story about a Wolf School where all the characters get reduced to kids and Soumei is their teacher, a really cool looking teacher. They play with classic stories here in a fun way, such as the three little pigs but using goats, where it turns silly-violent as the kids go after them in their house. It doesn’t have much to it, but it’s a fun little story that just oozes adorable character bits.
In Summary:
Cuticle Detective Inaba changes its nature a bit here for an episode by giving us three stories within one. The first half is pretty much standard style as we get a look at how Soumei exists and what he wants out of Hiroshi by having him find his body from years ago. That all works really well, especially with how Soumei suffers through so many body moments. The other two stories are shorter and play different angles, with the Ogino birthday being more fun than one might think while the fable story with the wolf school being just utterly adorable, even if it feels like it’s not fleshed out enough to really come across as complete. There’s plenty to like overall and fans of the show will really enjoy the twists and gags here.
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.
