Every fairy tale needs a good old-fashioned villain.
What They Say:
A rash of abductions of young boys that end up brutally murdered is plaguing London, and police are powerless to stop it. When William Moriarty discovers a clue linking all the victims, he and his brothers take an interest in the case.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Don’t worry; you’re not stuck in a time loop. Well, maybe you are. This would be a pretty awful time to be stuck in one. Has the world recovered by the end of your loop period? That might make it worse for you, but it would be great to know. Anyway, the point is that you haven’t in fact looped back one year; each of these subsequent fall anime seasons has featured a series about James Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes, and John H. Watson, animated by Production I.G, written by Taku Kishimoto, airing on several Japanese networks including MBS, simulcast by Funimation, and even premiering on October 11. If this is all purely coincidental, it’s quite remarkable, but it does drive home a fact that has been increasingly obvious for over a century: Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the most adaptable universe in literary history.
Other than the obvious fact that this series takes place in the classic setting both in terms of time and place rather than Japan’s most iconic red-light district in modern times, the most apparent difference here is that the protagonist is, as the title suggests, the traditional villain Moriarty rather than Sherlock Holmes. In fact, this first episode prominently features a trio of James Moriarty brothers (“James” being the middle name of all three but the first name of none of them) who seem to be the story’s protagonists, while none of the characters from the heroic side of the Sherlock Holmes canon are anywhere to be found. The star of the series, whose first name is apparently William, is implied to be the Moriarty we’re familiar with, the mastermind criminal consultant who directs his brothers and clients in carrying out his ideal of the perfect crime.
The other question that may have been raised by my rundown of the similarities between the two series, though, is the premiere date. How could I be reviewing a series that hasn’t even begun? This first episode got a “pre-screening” that Funimation has labeled as “Episode 0,” though presumably it’s virtually identical to the actual Episode 1 that will air on TV shortly, and a week later, we’ll finally get to continue the story. However, it does feel like an episode 0 in some ways. The lack of Sherlock Holmes, or any of the characters traditionally on the protagonist side – therefore on the antagonist side in this series – makes it feel incomplete; even in a series starring Moriarty, or even three of them, he feels like less of a character than the other way around. Holmes needs Moriarty for his greatest battles, but his dynamic with Watson, conflicts with other antagonists, and general unmatched crime-solving within his world allows him to be a complete character without his archenemy. Perhaps this series will make the case that the same can be true for a Moriarty that’s given the level of focus of a protagonist, but it doesn’t feel like it yet. For an episode focusing exclusively on the Moriarty trio and a couple of one-off characters, we don’t learn much at all about them. The reason for all of this is likely because this is apparently an anime-original episode, taking no material from the manga. It’s a strange but not unprecedented choice for an anime adaptation, but it does cause this premiere to end up feeling a bit more like an “episode 0” than the true beginning.
Even without that antagonistic dynamic that will surely shape the series going forward, though, we start to get an idea of how it will work. Perhaps the biggest question that comes to anyone’s mind upon hearing that there’s a series starring Moriarty is how much of his villainy will remain, and by extension, how positively the story will portray that. What we see here isn’t an unsurprising compromise, though it doesn’t necessarily work out entirely. In Sherlock’s absence, Moriarty (the main one) essentially serves his role for the first half of his plan, proving himself every bit the flawless detective to identify a truly heinous criminal. However, you couldn’t pass this character off as the legendary James Moriarty if he dealt with this criminal in a traditionally ethical manner. His true role can’t be that of the detective – he’s supposed to be the criminal consultant whose plans for crimes match Sherlock’s own deductive abilities. And so, he takes down one criminal to allow someone affected by his crimes to exact vigilante justice with his assistance. It’s somewhat uncomfortable, but I imagine it’s supposed to be; there’s bound to be some moral dilemmas here, a catharsis that turns an innocent man into a murderer and therefore feels off.
The lack of a Sherlock Holmes to match wits against Moriarty results in nobody there to question these disturbing actions, but even without that, the idea that this could be a perfect crime rings a little too false to serve as an effective climax, no matter how thorough the shock value is. It’s not even a particularly careful crime in any sense, much less something that could pass as a perfect crime in a world in which Sherlock Holmes exists. Hopefully, the arrival of the detective will challenge Moriarty in a way we don’t see throughout this episode of reveling in his flawlessness and force him to be more creative with his crimes. Most importantly, we’ll get to see what kind of moral dynamic the series presents with all parties involved. At least I hope so.
In Summary:
Moriarty’s very own series begins, and it’s a strange start in a number of ways. There’s no Sherlock Holmes or John Watson, but there are three James Moriarty’s we’re told very little about who pull off a rather sloppy “perfect crime” comprised largely of Sherlock-style detective work to punish a fellow criminal. This first episode is initially listed as “episode 0” purely because it happens to be a pre-screening, but that designation might fit it more than treating it as the series premiere it actually is, because it doesn’t adapt the manga, which explains its lack of any material of consequence. Instead, it tries to give us a taste of how these Moriarty brothers operate, but without worthy psychological opponents to raise the bar and offer a less brutally cynical view on the brothers’ actions, as well as without much insight into their backgrounds, it doesn’t operate as the effective introduction to the series that perhaps a straight adaptation of the manga’s beginning might’ve. Not having read the manga, I can’t be sure, but I do hope that the series can live up to the pedigree Production I.G and Taku Kishimoto give it. The fact that they already created a Sherlock Holmes series a year prior and it wasn’t very well-received doesn’t inspire the most confidence, but a more straightforward take on one of the most iconic rivalries in fiction with the perspective reversed has an immense amount of potential.
Grade: C+
Streamed By: Funimation
Review Equipment:
LG Electronics OLED65C7P 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart OLED TV, Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K