The Detective Is Already Dead – Episode 1

What’s this about? Kimizuka Kimihiko is an orphaned middle school student and a self-proclaimed magnet for trouble and mystery. One day he is kidnapped and forced to take a suitcase on a hijacked plane where he “coincidentally” meets a legendary detective named Siesta.  After solving a few cases, Kimihiko agreed to become her sidekick and together they travelled the world until she died.

Thankfully this show isn’t as boring as Gekidol, but it’s so dull when compared to Moriarty the Patriot.  Even though Moriarty isn’t known for its mysteries, it’s at least trying to say something meaningful and it has an entertaining cast of characters.  The Detective Is Already Dead had a double-length premiere to sell itself, but the show couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a mystery-based action series or a romantic comedy.  Depending on the writing, I think it would’ve merged together in a seamless way, but for the most part the anime just wastes so much time focusing on Siesta trying to convince Kimihiko to become her sidekick.  

Aside from the battle between Siesta and the hijacker (the fighting sequences were actually good), the show doesn’t try to walk us through how Siesta solved any of the mysteries.  Siesta either already knows the answer because of preliminary research or she just figures it out on the spot.  This wouldn’t be a problem if the characters in the show were at least interesting, but they are mostly bickering over nothing.  Also, her reasoning as to why Kimihiko should be her sidekick is foolish and not worth mentioning.

While the SPES plotline does offer some intrigue, since the idea of androids of superhuman intelligence causing havoc on the world can raise the stakes for the B-list detective duo, I don’t think the writing is going to deliver anything worthwhile.  It doesn’t help that the tone is all over the place—one minute Siesta is fighting a hijacker on a plane then she’s at a cultural festival solving the case of the missing students.  I understand that adapting light novels can be hard because so much dialogue can now be shown rather than told, but if the majority of the onscreen dialogue is going to be dedicated to Kimihiko complaining about everything then I’m not interested.  

There are also plenty of uncomfortable moments of Kimihiko leering at Siesta’s butt and her not respecting his boundaries, which eventually leads to her seeing him completely naked (remember, he is a middle school student).  It’s no spoiler that she ends up dead, but I honestly don’t care what events lead up to her death.  If Kimihiko is the character we are meant to follow after this premiere, do yourself a favor and check out The Case Study of Vanitas, instead.