What They Say:
Hajime uncovers the Alchemist’s final trick, and then exposes the killer’s identity! But what is the person’s motive for brutally murdering four people in a mansion on a remote island? The answer lies within a tale of tragedy and revenge!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Kindaichi spent a lot of its time the last time around unraveling a lot of the aspects of the mystery but not all of them. Exploring how the locked room mystery worked was certainly interesting, though it went above and beyond what felt was needed in order to pull it off because it just felt overly complex. And that’s usually a problem with some mysteries in that they get so complex that it feels like the people involved wouldn’t have the smarts to pull them off. The show also did some nice stuff on exploring the mysteries of the actual residence itself and its quirkiness, explaining away the odd structure of the place and the whole room numbering sequence that definitely was amusing to see revealed.
With Kindaichi having figured out what’s going on, he launches into his bigger explanation of events to the folks there, including starting off by showing how Kamioka could be proven to be the killer through an amusing way you can get people to write and admit things that they wouldn’t otherwise. As it goes through that and explaining the room assignment aspect itself, it again comes across as so overwhelmingly complex and requiring certain things to go in a way that you can’t always determine that it does stretch credibility in a big way. And naturally, as it goes on we get to learn more of some of the characters pasts as one of them has a younger sister Haruka that he was separated from years ago that he ended up trying to reconnect with. Though separated, we get to see some good things that exist between them when they were younger as we see a few flashbacks, but it all just feels kind of weird to have this inserted into it even as it explains things.
The show delves heavily into Kamioka’s past with this and what happened with his sister and it is admittedly interesting enough on its own level. But how it spiraled out of control on the island with the killing of others and what happened is what just strains the episode as a whole. There’s some fun as it does progress and we see the pieces falling into place, but the level of complexity simply doesn’t work for me for someone that just doesn’t seem smart enough to pull it off. The saving grace of the episode is the final scene with the results of the gold from the show itself and how it ends up going into some surprising hands with a quick getaway that certainly made me laugh more than I have the entire arc.
In Summary:
The end of the arc does what you’d expect and it does it well enough. The show knows the ins and outs of murder mystery shows and how to wrap them up and there’s certainly a formula and style for it that the Kindaichi material works with since it spends an entire episode going through all of it. Unfortunately, the one responsible for all of this really didn’t connect well, come across as convincing and just felt kind of flat overall. We’re given some flashback material to try and add a connection and sympathy but that only goes so far and just feels even more overt than usual. It’s not bad, but it’s just very middle of the road at best.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
