Being a Japanese comic book creator, in other words a mangaka, is known to be an extremely excruciating job that tends to leave many physically and mentally exhausted. Some of the most notorious broken authors include Yoshihiro Togashi (author of Hunter x Hunter and Yu Yu Hakusho) who basically has a chronic back pain problem, and Tite Kubo (Bleach) who was creating manga with broken shoulder ligaments. Sometimes with hard work comes great notoriety, however, as nowadays the eastern manga industry seems to have far surpassed the western comic book superhero industry sales with big hits such as Demon Slayer breaking records in ways that no one could have completely predicted in both the manga and theater box office sales.
However when it comes to creating a popular manga series, majority of the authors who truly manage to make it big in the industry happen to be male. In May of 2004 a female author Akira Amano decided to begin serializing a shonen action manga series by the name of Reborn! (Katekyo Hitman Reborn! in Japan) in Weekly Shonen Jump, the biggest Japanese manga magazine. Reborn! managed to gain a rather large audience of faithful followers as it managed run for 409 chapters and sell over 30 million copies of volumes until its somewhat rushed ending in 2012. The manga also got a 203 episode long running animated TV series that sadly never adapted the entire manga series to the end. To put those sales numbers into perspective, 30 million copies sold is in the same ballpark as what massive series such as My Hero Academia and Death Note are at still at the time this blog post is published.
After Reborn! ended Ms. Amano was a character art creator for Psycho Pass animated series and she also moved onto a new sci-fi space adventure manga series, elDLIVE, which ran for 11 volumes on Shueishas digital apps from 2013 to 2018.
Amano's art style for characters she creates is one of those rather easily recognizable designs that make her craft stand out from the bunch. Her digital coloring has also been quite impactful and impressive. That's probably one of the things I was honestly excited about when in fall of 2020 it was announced that Amano was going to be starting a new manga series, Ron Kamonohashi: Deranged Detective (Kamonohashi Ron no Kindan Suiri, 2020), on the Shounen Jump+ digital magazine. Many detective stories have a duo of sleuths working towards figuring out a case and this is nothing new in that aspect. I must say though that as an artist, Amano is back better than ever when it comes to beautiful presentation. In this post I want to go through all five of the currently available Ron Kamonohashi: Deranged Detective cases as I was planning on waiting for the story to end its longest case before giving my thoughts on the series. What does it excel and falter at, and is it even worth keeping up with?
RON KAMONOHASHI: DERANGED DETECTIVE
"Once he graduates... could he clear up all of the world's unsolved cases!?"
At 'Blue', a prestigious detective training academy, the quotations above are a word of praise from teachers and students alike towards a new student who goes by the name Ron Kamonohashi. Everyone around is shocked to witness this young dark-haired man with a beautiful face and a cocky smirk solve a murder case so complicated that it had been deemed unsolvable by many for all eternity. But this seemingly majestic scene actually happened five years prior to the start of this story...
The Case of Metropolitan Serial Drownings (chapter 1)
Now we move the clock five years to the future to the present timeline as the first case, The Case of the Metropolitan Serial Drownings, begins. We are introduced to the beginning of this story and its cast of characters along with the settings and ideas that the author Akira Amano has cooked up for us. At the Metropolitan PD (police department), officers and higher ranking detectives are gathering intel towards a perpetrator, a serial killer, who has just claimed their fifth victim.
At the department works investigator Isshiki Totomaru (which Ron later on shortens to call him just Toto), who is basically the protagonist of this series. Toto is a hardworking and somewhat naïve young man with a somewhat strong sense of justice which we get to see on full display as he solves cases along with Ron later on throughout the series.
Toto's naïvety leads him to getting tricked by culprits, and he's even let a single culprit trick him thrice before. Because of this he's at constant risk of getting kicked out of the investigative team. With a clear sense of justice and wanting to help people who are afraid of a rampaging serial killer, at the same time as our protagonist is about to get kicked out of the team, he's in a tight spot. So, after a senior officer by the name Kiku-san tells Toto that there actually exists a man, a private detective, who is able to solve this heinous serial killer case, Toto immediately goes to find this person. But Kiku explains that the man Toto is looking for is no ordinary detective...
At a rented apartment Toto comes across our secondary main character, Ron Kamonohashi. Ron is the person with the great mind in this series. But he's cartoonishly... crazy? Since he joined the academy five years prior he's grown a long hair and shut himself in his apartment completely. Toto even notes how Ron's eyes comically reflect less light than a dead fish's eyes... he also has a weird tattoo on his neck area.
Inside Ron's apartment everything is also quite weird. The floor is filled with cushions so Ron doesn't hurt himself when he falls face to the ground. Ron calls it 'The Floor of Sloth' as it's the only thing that understands the level of boredom he's feeling. There is no TV and no internet access, and the blinds to outside are shut. He is truly cut off from outside world. He also owns a cat that likes to sleep on its back and Toto always mistakes it for being dead (all my cats do that too though...).
Ron calls himself a 'piece of junk frozen in time'. Many bright young detectives have come and gone trying to ask him to be their partner to solve cases, but with no success. For some mysterious reason he doesn't want to hear any words about any cases that need solving.
With some twist of fate however Ron starts (without foreshadowing) to explain how he logically understood that Toto had been brough up by his grandparents and how he'd just made an offering at a shrine, and all sorts of crazy detective stuff that are supposed to print him as this extra smart person. Anyway, Toto happens to get a phone call that sends him to the serial killer's sixth victim's place, which happens to be at Shibuya city's Kazahana park. This is the moment where we learn that Ron actually has an extremely powerful urge to solve cases, however he can't. This is why he shut himself out of outside world. You see, Ron Kamonohashi has a 'fatal flaw' as a detective which is why he doesn't allow himself to do any detective work: 'an illness' of sorts.
Toto assumes that Ron's reason for not doing detective work is a weak physique due to an illness (even though in reality Ron's actually an athlete as he exercises four hours a day in his apartments' gym room), and thus he offers to take Ron with him to the crime scene and he even promises to support Ron in his endeavors. Ron agrees to come to the crime scene with Toto, but only on condition: Toto is not allowed to take eyes off of him.
At the Shibuya park the investigative team has already figured out the victim's identity: the deceased is an investor by the name Okamasa. The victim's wearing a suit and he was carrying a ticket for a party that happened the previous night, but apparently he hadn't gone to the party in the first place.
Ron then does a crazy thing as he jumps to his back to lay down with the corpse. He immediately recognizes many things completely off with the victim. For example he notices white foam coming out of the vic's mouth which he assumes has come from the vic being drowned, even though his body is at a park, and also why did the victim hand over all his valuables without resisting? In fact the serial killer's modus operandi in this case is the fact that they kill victims by drowning them without the victims ever fighting back and there also being no alcohol or drugs in their systems. All the victims had nothing in common with each other aside from being somewhat wealthy. Before their demise they had been heading to a date, a class reunion, a wedding, a birthday party and a party for businessmen for this sixth victim as well.
After merely three minutes of analyzing the corpse Ron Kamonohashi had figured out the culprit. This situation is meant to hype up how incredibly smart he is as the Metropolitan PD had been after the serial killer for nine whole months without a lead.
It doesn't take long for our main characters to corner the culprit. Which is where the major problems of this case become too big to not be noticeable and distracting. Spoilers incoming --- the culprit uses oxygen deficient air to make the victim faint... Ron literally just guesses that the culprit uses that type of air by adding hot water to dry ice to make carbon dioxide to force the victims to faint before drowning them. There is no foreshadowing for something like this which in of itself wouldn't be a big deal if you could make a logical case for the explanations, but there's no way you could do that. The motive of the serial killer is also way too cartoony and the way they even pinpoint the literally nameless killer is quite weird, too, however there actually is certain level of logic you can use to excuse them to be able to close in on what kind of person the culprit could be. However there is also no way for the reader to be able to figure anything else out in this case except maybe that general idea about what kind of person the culprit could be. The way how the perp is caught and fully pinpointed does leave much to be desired.
Anyway, after the perp is exposed and cornered up on a rooftop, something weird happens as Ron gets a weird glimmer in his eyes and starts to order the culprit to suicide by jumping down from the roof. But surprisingly enough the culprit does exactly what Ron orders him to do and decides to jump to his death. However as expected, Toto manages to grab the culprit's leg and save him. The way how the culprit just agreed to do it was almost as if they were hypnotized by Ron...
At the end of the first chapter we learn that Ron's case resolution used to be 100% but the arrest rate was 0% because he managed to force every single perp to do a suicide somehow. However he doesn't do it willingly. In fact, he has no recollection of memories of forcing them to kill themselves. This dilemma is the driving problem of the series and the so-called 'illness' that forced Ron to withdraw from being a detective. However now an answer to Ron's problems has finally arrived: Toto. The man who was able to save the serial killer who was supposed to have died. After witnessing Toto's heroic deed of saving the killer, Ron tells Toto that he'll become a famous detective from now on. Toto will be the detective and Ron will be the brains. That way no one'll get manipulated by Ron to their death and he'll still be able to be apart of solving hard cases.
The Case of the Locked Room Piggy Bank Theft (chapter 2)
The chapter kicks off with a comfy but beautiful color page. Toto decides to visit Ron who immediately thinks that Toto has a case for him. As Toto tells him that he has no such thing, Ron just falls down to the Floor of Sloth once again as he did in the beginning of the previous case. This part is a more cartoonishly comedic version of something like Conan or Heiji wanting each other to bring them cases to solve in Detective Conan.
On a reread I noticed something that could be a future foreshadowing in at the beginning of this chapter as we get to learn more of Blue, the world's most prestigious detective training academy. Apparently all top-level detectives in the world are graduated of Blue. What's interesting here is that we see shadowed-out character designs here that could or could not be future characters. There are four shadows of legendary detectives named Lupita, I-Thor, R. Gimlet and H. Gray.
During his time in the academy, Ron used to be the cream of the crop by far, however during practical exercises, all the culprits he'd apprehended winded up dead so he was expelled due to being suspected of murdering them, and due to that he's lost his detective license. The detective's licence is an almost-magical item similar to the DDS Badge in Tantei Gakuen Q (Detective Academy Q) manga series. Using it one can gain access to any crime scene, and intel to catch any criminal. In DDS the badge however also contains scientific items and stuff like that which help our main detectives to investigate on-the-scene without help. But the detective license of Ron Kamonohashi and the DDS Badge in Tantei Gakuen Q also contain negative aspects of them: the students in DDS aren't allowed to show the badge around and use it unless it's absolutely necessary or dangerous culprits could go after the students, and in Ron Kamonohashi detectives from Blue academy who have lost their license are not allowed to practice detective work, because if they do, they're going to be punished by death. Though this is also played pretty comedically in this series in comparison to DDS's stakes with the negative effects of using the badge.
Back to the story at hand. In the very beginning there's a small moment that has more clever writing from Amano than the previous case altogether. In this moment Toto shows a photograph of his beautiful supervisor Amamiya. The photo was taken at the Metropolitan Police Department. But what's cool about this scene is that Ron immediately does some very sound logical deductions just from seeing the visual clues that are in it.
In Toto's photograph Amamiya doesn't look at the person who's taking it, and Toto can be seen in the background, so it wasn't taken by him despite the photo being on his phone. From these clues Ron deducts that it was taken secretly and sent to Toto. From this distribution of secretly taken photos of the beautiful supervisor, Ron deducts that she has 'fans' at the police station. Pretty cool. And yeah, apparently the photo was sent to Toto by a colleague who said he wants Amamiya 'to step on him.'
This talk about Amamiya leads Ron and Toto to the next case as, meanwhile Amamiya herself is heading to a crime scene by a river where a corpse with a head injury was discovered, Amamiya gives Toto a bit of 'odd jobs' to do, and by odd jobs the PD likes to call them 'trash can' jobs, but anyway... this time there's a crime scene where coins from a piggy bank happen to disappear without explanation. Meaning it's still basically an impossible crime as it's a state of art piggy bank that's hard to steal from.
In this rather small stakes and silly case, the setting is a small apartment where the victim and her sister live. Both of them were away from home two days prior and had come back the day after (yesterday). Then the vic had noticed that the piggy bank was lighter. But not just that, they've also gotten quite a few of silent phone calls which caused them to be extra wary of locking all the doors and windows in the apartment for safety.
So, this case of a piggy bank gets somehow quite randomly inertwined with the slight mention of a corpse at a river bed and we get to see Toto himself actually expose the culprit instead of Ron (who basically works as the brain in the backgrounds). At the end of the case Toto once again saves the culprit who was being manipulated by Ron to do a suicide after being caught.
However the logic in this case is just so haphazardly done... it's missing all the story beats required to get to this point where they can blame the perp for these crimes. Of course dragging out a piggy bank theft case to a multi-chapter storyline doesn't sound like an entertaining or a good plan that would bring in more fans to this series, so maybe this story should've been skipped altogether.
Weekly Shounen Jump titles have a bad habit of integrating a very invasive (and more often than not, mediocre) style of comedy in their storytelling. These comedic scenes tend to include scenes of characters yelling something out loud constantly, repetitively and monotonously. While comedy itself can be very subjective, it becomes invasive when these so-called funny scenes are used to excuse plot progression. If you think of this case as a piece of thread that's supposed to be one straight line from point A to point B, this thread is kind of cut in multiple different pieces without trying to connect the pieces together.
In Ron Kamonohashi: Deranged Detective you don't get awful comedic scenes such as females physically abusing males, but Ron himself does act like a clown half the time. This is a decent character trait and a quirk in of itself, but it takes the reader out of the story when Ron doing something funny equals to him having found multiple different clues off-screen without them being shown beforehand or anything hinting at what he's going to be doing in certain moments. The story doesn't drag around but the way how the cases so far have been constructed on the script side of things is very lackluster. The artwork itself is excellent though.
As a side note, I noticed that Ron likes to lay on his back on the floor or the ground with both of his legs going upwards, and he also tends to drink brown sugar syrup while he's at it. And apparently Toto's superior, investigator Amamiya wants to get to know Ron more personally after witnessing that he has guts to pressure culprits to kill themselves... Amamiya even thinks something like that is cool...
The Case of the Benizome Hot Springs Murder (chapter 3 - 4)
Trivia: Ron Kamonohashi was the best-scoring student in the history of 'Blue'. Ron participated in the 87th term of the school's existence and was expelled as a new student five years prior to the beginning of the story as a bright and upcoming detective who had the potential to solve all of the world's unsolved mysteries.
It's autumn in Japan. At the prestigious detective training academy 'Blue', the principal Eme Emmerich along with her group of unnamed autopsy instructor, vice principal, disguise instructor, locked room instructor, timetable instructor, tracking instructor, and closed circle instructor have a little talk about Ron Kamonohashi, as it's being rumored that Ron's started doing detective work again despite being expelled five years prior. The school even took away his detective's license.
The school decides to send one of their higher ranking instructors, the tracking instructor Spitz Feier, to investigate whether or not this legendary killer detective is still hard at work, and if such claims are confirmed, they have to decide what to do with him. What I found interesting in this scene is a panel of Ron without a shirt. He seems to have scars or tattoos all over his body along with the weird tattoo on the left side of his neck (we learn that the 'tattoo' is actually a scar in this case).
Elsewhere, Toto and Ron get lucky at a supermarket and win tickets to a "first-class hot spring trip" at Benizome Hot Spring. It's said that the spring gets its name from a long time ago, when a feudal lord saw the mountain's red leaves reflected in the hot spring's water, and there's also a rumor of the nearby rivers becoming dyed in red after a young girl had been used as a sacrifice.
I believe that 'benizome' means some kind of 'red tinted color', but there is no translator's note in Mangaplus's translations to explain what benizome truly means, which is a shame. This is the second time in the series where a translator's note could've been useful for readers who don't understand Japanese.
Hot springs settings can be great ways to create atmospheric cases. I especially remember the Kamaitachi Inn murder case in Detective Conan. There's something special and comfy in that rural setting that's enhanced by the large steam baths. I'm not really completely feeling the atmosphere in this particular case, but it's still a decent setting to utilize nonetheless.
In this case there are four other customers aside from Toto and Ron at the inn, including Toto's superior Ms. Amamiya who accidentally for some reason decides to waltz into the men's bath. Spitz Feier, the person sent by Blue to investigate Ron, is also at the inn.
It doesn't take long for the first victim to appear. It's a female who had an argument with her husband about divorcing the previous night. The woman is dead in the women's bath while there are red leaves all over her. Furthermore the scene now resembles closely the legend of the girl who dyed the rivers crimson with her blood. Is it the girl's curse that did this?
The time of death of the vic happens to be at 2 A.M. the previous night. What's crazy here is that the only witness to be able to tell who went to the crime scene and back at that time was the person who's investigating Ron, Spitz Feier, and Spitz happened to notice that only Toto's superior Amamiya went to the women's bath at that time of the night.
Oh, and right before the culprit gets caught we learn that the woman had a weak heart condition which caused her to die from quick temperature differences...
This case is in its technicalities is the longest and the best one so far, but sadly still far from impressive. The way how the culprit killed the victim or knew the vic would die or how the clues and overall presentation for the murder method were arranged, is rather weak. This time you can kind of tie the thread together to somehow accept the explanations unlike previously, but it's still kind of too perfect to be true. Here we have around three gimmicks that went 100% as the culprit wanted.
One gimmick is a visual trick for the victim to fall into (badly foreshadowed), another gimmick was the murder weapon (the river + a pipe that actually was foreshadowed kindasorta at the very start of the case + the river + a mention of mist at the river), and the last gimmick was actually a pretty decent but basic alibi trick that the reader can actually logically think of.
At the end of the case we learn that Spitz Feier who was investigating Ron might actually be after Ron for personal reasons as he explains that he needs Ron's help for finding out what happened to his missing family. Ron decided to decline helping the guy for now. Problem is if Spitz decides to betray Ron later on and snitch to the superiors at Blue that he's actually still doing detective work.
The Case of the Hand Collector Killer (chapter 5 - 6)
There's a serial killer on the loose at Aichi prefecture and a victim who meets the MO of the killer has been found at Tokyo. A legendary detective, 'Eagle Eye Kawasemi Omito', decides to come after the killer and visit Metropolitan Police Dep.
Kawasemi is the current leading detective in Japan. He's merely in his twenties but already has the most solved crimes by any one person, and he's also considered to be the next police superintendent general. His personality is pretty perfectionist and he kind of resembles Ron in serious mood. Along with him Kawasemi brings Yamane-san, a detective who seems too happy. Yamane works as Kawasemi's right-hand man.
The victim this time got a pretty gruesome death. A truck driver had been bringing sculptures to Tokyo from Aichi prefecture, and noticed that one of the sculptures felt different from others. That weird 'sculpture' was the body of a man inside the truck. However both of his hands had been cut off and there's a piercing wound through his chest to his heart. Who could do something like that, and why? The vic also has a small tattoo of a bird in one of his arms. But where are his hands? Also it doesn't take long for Ron to appear to the crime scene to help Toto, though he does appear out of nowhere in silly robes...
Anyway, the victim here is part of a serial killing spree where the victims get killed by a stab to the heart and their hands get cut off. Because of this the detectives have dubbed the killer 'The Hand Collector'. There's also a mystery about why the most recent victim had dressed up with just a t-shirt during cold weather.
The previous night detective Kawasemi had stopped to question a man near the previous crime scenes and found out that he had weapons in his bag. After being apprehended, the man had dropped his bag and ran to an abandoned factory. Kawasemi and his right hand man Yamane had covered each of the factory's two entrances. Yamane managed to handcuff the culprit, but he'd still managed to run away and even get past Kawasemi somehow.
So, Kawasemi should be able to catch the culprit now since he knows the perp's face, right? Here's the problem though: the 'Hand Collector' who managed to give them the slip is this latest victim right there in the truck. The man who's missing both his hands and who has a piercing wound to his heart.
Okay, when I first read this particular case I was honestly kind of disappointed in it. Now after rereading, I think this is the case that best represents this series so far. The answer to this mystery is sort of psychological in an overblown way, but it didn't have absurd gaps in logic. If we were to look at the potential of this case we could have had a crazy manhunt for a gruesome serial killer, but this went complete opposite direction. It's not a marvel of writing or anything but I think there are hints of proper storytelling finally coming to surface in this series.
Of course there are still some of the same problems as before. The way how one of the main clues towards the culprit are exposed in this case is again very lackluster (using comedy to excuse doing something so that the culprit exposes themselves). Spoilers: there was no foreshadowing for the missing button that revealed the personality trait hint of the culprit, Ron just knew it and played it as jokes when he brought it up along with many other things. And at the start of this case Ron appears to the crime scene out of nowhere, and says that 'you'll soon realize how I knew to come here'... there is no explanation, Amano seemingly completely forgot about that plot point.
As a character I think detective Kawasemi has some potential to be more impressive in the future as his presence is pretty menacing. He's presented as smart, but got quickly out-done by Ron and Toto this time.
One thing I really like in this series is the scene which takes place after Toto and Ron catch the culprits after finishing their deductions. And by scene I mean the epicly drawn pages that ooze atmosphere. The closing pages feel very impactful, and fitting for the end of the story (the feeling you get once you take a deep breath and let go of something after a long time). These epic panels are meant to give off a similar feeling as the comic book scenes at the end of Danganronpa game series's trials.
The Case of the Live Broadcast Murder (chapter 7 - 8)
This time we start off with a stunning color page of a new character, a pink-haired girl with bandages all over her face.
Toto decides to visit Ron's apartment in which there's now a TV (remember, Ron cut himself off of the outside world for five years so he had no TV or internet connection). Ron has also found a favorite TV show to spend time watching: Lie or Truth? ESP!!, an episode of a show about psychic Dankichi Torage who faces off against neurosurgeon Mofu Usaki to prove that he's able to uses psychic abilities.
Dr. Mofu is the pink-haired girl on the colored cover page of the chapter with all those bandages over her. She's a genius super-doctor who does surgeries on a microscopic level but otherwise she's very clumsy at everything else, which is why she'd cut herself on the face while cutting an apple and thus she has those bandages over her. Even her eye seems to have been hurt. The reason why she's part of the TV show is because of an old patient who refused a brain surgery because they believed in ESP. That person's death caused her to want to correct society's misunderstandings about ESP.
The psychic Dankichi Torage is the 'antagonist' in this particular story as he immediately announces that he's going to pick a random person from the crowd of watchers and control their mind directly by writing words down.
So, Torage picks a blonde male from the crowd and gives him noise-cancelling headphones. Then, he writes "jump" on a small handheld board with a black marker. After showing the word to the blonde male participant, the man starts to jump. Then Torage does the exact same thing as he writes "run", and shows it to the man and the guy starts to run.
Dr. Mofu then makes an observation and claims that the participant wasn't randomly selected. Dr. Mofu works with a high technology application for biological motion where one can compare and match people's basic movements (basic movements are almost like a fingerprint, everyone moves a bit differently), and the app gives off a 99.98% match compared to the subject that the psychic used before the doctor's turn on the show arrived. Due to this the doctor announces that the subject is just a plant who works with the psychic.
Torage then tells Dr. Mofu that he'll write down something else and asks if the doctor would believe him being a psychic if the word's meaning happens for real, and that word is "death". Meaning that he's going to ask the subject to die. The crazy thing is, that exactly happens after the word gets shown to the victim.
After witnessing the power of ESP supposedly killing the victim through TV, Toto and Ron decide to run to the Donut Television building where the crime happened. The psychic, Torage, doesn't even deny that he'd killed the victim - however, since it was supposedly done by ESP, there are apparently no laws that allow him to be sentenced. Well, the ESP claims quickly crumble as Dr. Mofu deducts that the victim had died to a powerful poison to the back of his neck, but there is no way for Torage to have poisoned the man with anything during the whole show.
This is most likely the best case in the series so far. The setting isn't that atmospheric but it is pretty decent, it's similar to, for example, The Treasure Casket Filled With Fruits Case in Detective Conan series. The tricks and foreshadowing in this case are much more logical than what we've seen in the series so far. The way how the murder weapon was pinpointed was very jerky (Ron seemingly knew it from get-go despite us never seeing it in the killer's hands) but it makes sense from what was presented to us. The trick itself is also pretty neat as it uses the 'time lag' concept for the murder. An example of a really great time lag case can be found in the occultism case of volume 5 of Tantei Gakuen Q manga series. The trick used here is a worse variation of what's used over there.
After Torage's murder tricks get exposed, Ron's killer killer instincts kick in and he manipulates Torage to aim to kill himself with the murder weapon that he used to take his victim's life with but Toto stops that too, albeit he could've lost his own life while he was at it, but things end up pretty well luckily enough.
The end of the case is a direct link to the next one as Toto gets an invitation from Comet Appreciation Society. There's going to be a party at an island observatory to watch a meteor shower in the constellation of Leo.
The Case of the Island Observatory Murder (chapter 9 - 13)
At the end of the previous case our protagonist, officer Totomaru Isshiki, got an invitation letter to come join a meteor shower viewing party at an isolated Nandan island observatory. This case certainly has the makings of a classic murder mystery case right off the bat. An isolated island in the middle of nowhere...and it's also by far the longer case so far, by more than twice the page count. I wonder how it'll differ from, like, the classic Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo variations?
Three days later, Ron and Toto head to the observatory through the sea. The person who picks them up on his boat is the observatory's director Takumi Jumonji, also the person who'd invited Toto as a safety measure on the island. A friend of his works for the Aichi prefectural police who talked with the perfectionist detective Kawasemi from couple of cases ago. Apparently Kawasemi had opened up towards Toto and he'd really praised Toto at the Aichi prefecture.
At the moment there are only the observatory staff and six other guests staying on the island. The observatory itself is surrounded by sugarcane and many visitors visit the island during sugar cane's harvest season as the island's sugarcane is used to create the legendary Nandan Brown Sugar.
Anyway, inside the observatory there are rooms for every visitor. On the first floor of the observatory there are the lobby and the dining hall. The lobby has a real-looking replica pistol in a glass box, supposedly for repelling evil spirits from ruining the sugarcane that grows all over the island. On the second floor there's the observatory dome.
In the observatory we have a rather angry chef, Minami Unno, who always goes into the observatory dome to scream her lungs out every time she's angry as the dome is completely soundproof. There's also the astronomy chairman Eisaku Donzawa who sports a rather insane haircut, astronomical photographer Kayoko Onodera who seems to love astronomy over anything, even John Grizzly, the locked room instructo from Blue is at the observatory. He's one of the ex-teachers of Ron. Rest of the people in the observatory include an "orien constellation idol" Princess Ori
The island has a... grizzly history to it which is why the observatory staff had hired Toto and Grizzly to keep the place safe. Ten years ago, during a similar viewing that was held for the meteor shower in the constellation of Leo, a similar viewing party was also held at the Nandan island's observatory, hoowever the director and six guests were all killed with a gun in the observatory's dome. Despite a large-scale investigation that was held, the gun that had been used along with the killer who pulled off the deed, were both never found out. The observatory during those dark times was ran by current director's father, and now his son wants to hold a similar viewing experience in similar settings to overcome the dark past.
Now, the observatory has a powerful telescope, but the place where the meteor shower will be with a naked eye on the roof, where the chef has prepared a great feast. Meanwhile we get some plot progression as Toto asks teacher Grizzly about Ron's past.
Five years ago there was a case now called the 'Bloody Field Trip Case' that was directly connected to Ron. There was a class held at Blue in which students of the academy worked with police officers to catch real criminals. Thanks to Ron's deductions he managed to discover the hideout of seven murderers... however, when the police arrived at the hideout, what they witnessed was Ron holding knife while covered in blood. All the seven killers were dead around him. Investigators came to a conclusion that Ron had lost his memories and gone insane. Otherwise he'd been given the death penalty instead of just his license being revoked.
The first case begins in present time as the observatory dome moves and opens up while Toto is watching the stars. After opening up, a gunshot comes from inside the dome. The door to the observatory is locked so the director aims to get the key, but can't find it from his office. So the group decides to break in instead.
After getting through the door, the power inside the dome doesn't work. After getting flashlights the group goes in to se the star constellation photographer Onodera on the floor with a gun shot to her back, and none other than Ron Kamonohashi laying on his back on the floor with a gun next to him.
Most long-running detective fiction series have a case where the main characters are being framed for a murder, and this seems to be one of those. Like, Kudo Shinichi the Murderer case in Detective Conan is a pretty good example of these.
[While writing this, this is my first time reading the first chapter of this case, so I just wanted to share my theory for this case: I assume the gun that was used to shoot the photographer has to do with the gun that went missing 10 years prior. You can shoot the victim at any point in time because the room was soundproof. There has to be a gimmick for the gunshot sound and opening of the observatory dome. I find it interesting that there was no power / electricity in the observatory dome, yet the dome opened at all. Does it take no energy to open the dome now, or did the power go off for some special reason? the perp is probably going to plant the key in the room as well. If the door locks without the key even there's no need to do that especially now, though.]
So, apparently all the lights in the dome had been destroyed. There's broken glass everywhere and Ron's laying on the floor without his shoes or socks. Since there's no ladder, one can't escape through the dome's ceiling, and there's also a motion detector that prevents anything from going in or out through the ceiling. There's a small exhaust port in the dome, but it's too small for a human to go through. And there also don't appear to be any secret passages for anyone to go through. It's not looking bright for Ron Kamonohashi, who happens to be the prime suspect in this murder case. As expected, the master key to the dome is in Ron's pockets, so the situation is a true locked room murder case. In this case Toto's work is to figure out the killer while Ron isn't allowed to move anywhere due to being murder suspect.
Unsurprisingly enough also the police can't arrive on the isolated Nandan island until the next morning due to being held back by a typhoon. Thus there's nothing much to do but to investigate alone. According to testimonies the victim disappeared at 11 PM in her room to get her photography equipment. The gunshot and the dome opening while watching the meteor shower happened at 1 AM, and the victim had never come back, so the murder must've happened between 11 PM and 1 AM.
Going through alibis, the director Jumonji had left by 11.30 PM, but was back at the roof by midnight.
Donzawa-san had only gone to the restroom around midnight. Chef Unno had been in the kitchen from 11 PM to 1 AM making stew. Princess Ori had been broadcasting a performance from within the observatory building since midnight and at 12.40 AM, she went to the kitchen where she was with chef Unno until the gunshot was heard.
There's this pretty cool montage where Ron explains the times of when the culprit shot the lights in the dome. Anyway, there's a second murder in this case that's pretty surprising I guess. It has a much more personal connection with our main characters and is actually built up quite well. The killer does a weird plunder in this moment and more and more evidence stack up against and they eventually get caught...
The final chapter, chapter 13, of this case is an extra length chapter of nearly 50 pages and wraps up the case really well. There are finally hints of a serious overarching storyline (other than teachers at Blue going after Ron). This is easily also the best case in the series up to this point as it's crafted with proper care. One thing leads to another and it doesn't feel ridiculous when the twists and deductions are presented to the reader. There are classic ideas in this case that happens in a neat setting. It's too bad there's not really actual astrology used to pinpoint the culprit, but in general, the case does a very good albeit familiar job of introducing us to the problem at hand. There'.
Well! I must say that while The Case of the Island Observatory Murder did not reinvent the wheel again or anything, it surpassed my expectations of what kind of murder mysteries Amano is able to craft. The pacing was pretty on-point, and in general any Amano fan can say with a proud smile that this was truly a proper murder mystery story that clearly had some effort put into crafting an original story in a somewhat classic setting with some modern ideas thrown in there. Figuring out the culprit isn't that hard if one goes by the usual tropes of how these case characters are written (there were only truly two suspects and one of them was less relevant than the real culprit), but in of itself Amano did do a great job at not making the true culprit obvious as even if you managed to figure out the alibi trick in the first murder, everyone could've still done it. You mostly had to wait until the end of the case to get the culprit to stumble. There was one hint that was used about the culprit when the first corpse was found that I think was kind of lackluster and too obvious in a sense, but it might be easy to miss. I like how they didn't use the soundproof room as some ultimate evidence of guilt here, unlike what they did in one of the longer Danganronpa cases.
Unlike the other cases in this series, I actually can't remember all the clues and hints in one go and have to go back to the explanation to catch all of them. There's definitely sufficient amount of evidence to say for certain that 'this is our guy!' when cornering the culprit.
The murder method of the first crime has a lot of positives but also negatives since the gun should have left a mark, a hole, whatever, to where it shot from, and the entire situation and expectations for everything to go the way it did, are much too optimistic from the killer's side, but this is fiction and it was pretty clever in many ways regardless. The second murder was pretty neat and I could see where Amano was going with it. The stakes were quite personal for Ron, and especially due to that, the immersion to reading this quite lengthy story just kept going. Longer stories can be very draggy if they're not made more interesting in some ways, after all, as ideas dry very fast.
And last but not least, the final portion of this part of the story introduced us to a new criminal organization, some kind of family connected to Ron and apparently even Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty. This new organization is seemingly equal to Pluto from Tantei Gakuen Q. In TGQ Pluto has a power to hypnotize people, just like Ron and probably these main villains we just got introduced to, but there's also another similarity: apparently both of these series' evil organisations pay to create some kind of perfect criminal mastermind plan. They're very threatening foes. I think looking back now at Blue's teachers who were threatening in the beginning of this story, they seem very cartoony in comparison to this new villain organisation. Amano might throw away some old plot elements as well to create a more interesting story (as WSJ series get axed if they don't meet a certain quota for people willing to purchase the series).
I don't know if Ron Kamonohashi: Deranged Detective is going to last beyond 30 chapters total before ending, but I for sure want to see how far Amano can go with this story once she's able to put things together to create something original and truly impressive storytelling fitting for this series. The potential is there and she's shown to be able to create a pretty good murder story in the Observatory case, but not yet anything series-defining. The artwork is amazing and paneling and story framing really stand out at times, so it'd be sad to see the series leave before giving us a case that this series itself would be remembered for.
If I were to give criticism about the problems in this series so far, aside from the fact that comedy is too often used as an excuse to not having to give proper foreshadowing to story elements, it's the characters. The overarching characters are very quirky, even to annoying degrees, but not memorable at all. They're too cartoony and just hard to remember as they're presented with a lack of intrigue and importance. If the Observatory case was a cue from Kindaichi, next I want Amano to pay attention to how Gosho Aoyama creates memorable side characters that the reader wants to know more about. As far as this Tantei Gakuen Q -type overarching story is going to pan out, I now see a lot of potential of Amano giving us something special. As long as the hypnotization superpowers don't get out of hand.