Reviews for Yuukoku no Moriarty (4.16)

To be honest, I wasn’t planning to watch this series for I am kinda biased against it. Anime based on western products? The ones I watched were bad. London as a setting? The one I watched was bad. Also, based on Holmes’ stories? The previous anime version was a family oriented episodic comedy with talking animals. Also, I’m not very familiar with the books nor other adaptations, I watched the movies starring Robert Downey Jr. and I didn’t like them. Also the poster has this combination of brown and red that instantly made me think that it was going to be edgy garbage.

Yet wherever I go this series has a rather good if not high rating, and it’s also very different from the works I talked about so far. The shows based on western properties I watched weren’t based on classic literature and the World Masterpieces Theater is highly regarded so why not giving this one a chance? The series set on London that I watched was a reverse harem with an amnesiac protagonist and silly supernatural elements thrown in just because while this one is a crime mystery with sociopolitical overtones. I didn’t watch Sherlock Hound but this one has humans and it is not focused and the action as the movies from the last decade.

So I watched the first two episodes and my suspicions were confirmed. To begin with something positive, the artwork is pretty well done and it practically has no quality drops, is very consistent in this regard. The backgrounds are beautiful to look at and resemble the time and place it takes place in pretty well.

The rest, however, is not as polished, the character designs are very generic and everyone is a bishounen which gave me serious fujoshi bait vibes. And boy does the series attempt to make everyone look young and attractive, just look at Holmes’ companions for Pete’s sake. Motions are serviceable for this type of story, nothing really wrong nor bad there. The effects are not bad but when a crime happens, the series uses a filter with this same combination of brown and red ever present in edgy anime nowadays when it tries to be thriller or horror and it fails miserably at it because there’s nothing scary nor much tension in it.

I don’t have much to say about the sound department, the music and sound effects do their work just fine and fit the setting, the voice acting is ok but nothing special.

Now, despite being promoted as a crime mystery, the series is not that, for there is no culprit to find and murder to resolve, you are explicitly shown who the responsibles are and how they kill their victims. It’s closer to a psychological thriller, where we see Moriarty taking advantage of people’s hatred towards evil nobles that constantly mess with their lives if they didn’t ruin them yet, and leads them to killing those bastards, that’s it. Moriarty is basically like Johan from Monster but since I didn’t watch that show, what reminded me of was the antagonist from Babylon and that made me want to drop the show before I even began the second episode.

Also, for a series attempting to tap into discrimination based on social status, the handling of such topic is completely ridiculous. Every noble we see on screen is the worst scum of the Earth, we’re talking about Akame ga Kill! level of characterization here, if one whole side out of two in a conflict is presented as complete garbage then the theme exploration is reduced to a simple good vs. bad type of story with clear sides because one of them is completely demonized while the other is always victimized, which is the most simplistic and silliest way of dealing with sociopolitical topics.

The only exception as of now is the oldest brother and only because he killed his whole family. It’s very hard to accept this killing for a greater good excuse of the protagonists when they sadistically plan ahead how to drive both the nobles and their killers mad and anticípate the deaths of the formers.

And don’t get me started on their backgrounds, completely ridiculous, victimizing and preachy. Aside from that, Moriarty is a Gary Stu, for he’s good at eveything, outsmarts everyone and plays with them however he wants, does absolutely everything he wants, and the police somehow don’t notice how many nobles are being killed or disappear so close to each other, nor do they search for clues and weapons used in the murders. If the protagonist has no competition whatsoever then there’s no tension at all.

I dropped the show on its second episode but picked it up again later on and I can summarize the first half of the series like this, simple exploration of a serious topic with a huge scale, horrible characterization, and tensionless episodic cases. Holmes appears in the sixth episode to make things a little more interesting, but the case on the cruise was easily the worst and most ridiculous of the bunch and even he couldn’t save it. The culprit wasn’t even doing anything until Moriarty started to drive him mad, like Freddy Quimby in The Simpsons, he was a horrible but innocent person, until he snaps and kills in an over the top way and gets exposed and killed rather stupidily.

Thankfully, the last 4 episodes are way better not only because they adapt A Study in Scarlet and some other case but also because they focus on the cat and mouse game Moriarty and Holmes play with each other, it is not Light and L but still alright to the most part, and they focus on how Holmes is slowly getting corrupted by Moriarty’s schemes while showing how ruthless the latter can be, if I can give credit to the show for something, is being consistent with this character so far, showing his manipulations and preparations in detail and how he never doubts when playing with the lives of people at his will, he’s basically a blonde Shogo Makishima. Also, finally some detective work.

Honestly, this dynamic between Holmes and Moriarty and the similarities to Death Note is what made me want to watch the second season when it comes out the next year, if the whole series was like that, I would have given it a higher rating, but when you spend 7 out of 11 episodes reminding me of series such as Akame ga Kill! and Babylon, then you leave me no choice. Oh, and it was still better than Talentless Nana, because it has a far more consistent tone. But that is a story for another time.