Cuticle Tantei Inaba

In a world where half-human, half-animal chimeras live and work alongside normal people, there are sure to be a few bad apples in the bunch. Unfortunately, half-human criminals means non-human clues that often leave the police stumped. That's where lone wolf detectives like Hiroshi Inaba come in. He's literally part wolf and has the amazing ability to extract critical information just by examining or tasting a sample of someone's hair! Of course, that ability has also resulted in Inaba having a little bit of a hair fetish, but that doesn't seem to be a problem for his two assistants. (Well, at least the cross-dressing one isn't complaining much.) And it's nothing compared to the strange tastes of Inaba's nemesis, the omnivorous (and half goat) crime boss Don Valentino, who has an appetite for green legal tender instead of tender young greens! Inaba's sworn to cut Valentino out of the criminal flock before the Don can wolf down more ill-gotten dough, but he's going to have to chew his way through a lot of evidence to get his goat. Can sheer dogged detective work put the baaaaad guys behind bars?

(Source: Sentai Filmworks)

Inaba, Hiroshi Main

Suwabe, Junichi Japanese

Valentino Main

Ookawa, Tooru Japanese

Sasaki, Yuuta Main

Shimoda, Asami Japanese

Nozaki, Kei Main

Irino, Miyu Japanese

Ogino, Kuniharu Main

Morikawa, Toshiyuki Japanese

Inaba, Haruka Supporting

Saiga, Mitsuki Japanese

Ogino, Azusa Supporting

Hidaka, Rina Japanese

Lorenzo Supporting

Kosugi, Juurouta Japanese

Yataro Supporting

Sugita, Tomokazu Japanese

Ogata, Yuzuki Supporting

Toriumi, Kousuke Japanese

Isogai, Noritomo Producer

Tanaka, Shinsaku Producer

Nakamura, Makoto Producer, Script, Series Composition

Takahashi, Kazuya Producer

Reviews

Mar 23, 2013

amakki

Recommended

If you're looking for a nonsense anime, here's your place.

Cuticle Tantei Inaba at first may looks like a ridiculous comedy, but there's a lot of action in there too, as the anime goes on. Ok, there's still the funny stuff, but the background of Hiroshi's life and family starts to get revealed and you may find the seriousness in some episodes awkward, but later all the chibi gags will be back. And it's exactly the balanceament of both styles that made the anime really nice to watch.

Just as I said above, the story is completely made of nonsense. The idea is so crazy that ... it looks amazing, but it also could go very wrong. Inaba went by the right way, thankfully. I mean, when would I think that I'd be liking so much a anime about a werewolf detective fighting against a mafia goat?
[Story - 8/10]

The characters have really nice and creative designs that also resemble their personalities in some way. Kei, the 'only sane man' in this show has this plain look, for an example. The animation was very well done (and I watched the whole anime in SLQ!) and so was the colouring. I never heard of the studio before, but ZEXCS has done a very good work. (Looking at their previous works, I saw it's the same studio of Sukitte na Ii yo and Denyuuden)
[Art - 9/10]

The voice acting was very good! It was a bit strange to hear Hiroshi's seiyuu, Suwabe Junichi (who voiced Grimmjow from Bleach and Aomine from KuroBasu) to talk in such a high pitch, and Ookawa Toru (Mustang from FMA) did a amazing job as Valentino! Kei's seiyuu was also pretty good (poor guy, he screams a lot). I simply loved the opening! It's so fast paced and makes you more excited to watch the episode. The ending was ok, and the ost is rarely noticiable (I don't even remember if there was any music in the anime's background).
[Sound - 8/10]

Someone once said me that 'the characters from Cuticle Tantei Inaba looked like if the creator used some random rpg character generator and copied the results'. It's something like this, because there's no normal person in this! Even Kei, the 'only sane man'-type was a bit freak. And the coolest about the characters are this randomness! We have the hero with a hair fetish, the mysterious man obssessed with his leader (a goat), the psycho trap, a few last-episode characters... The triumph of this anime are the characters!
[Character - 10/10]

So, this review is getting long and you may already be tired of me. Sorry. Resuming, the thing is - I LOVE Cuticle Tantei Inaba. It was the reason for me to look foward to next weekend, and every episode passed in a blink of an eye to me. It was amazing and I enjoyed every second of it at it's fullest. It's a great anime to watch when you're bored, or feeling down, or just... It's so nice and cute.
[Enjoyment - 10/10]

(Oh, a last hour warning. There's a lot of chibi and fujoshi fanservice. You've been warned.)

This is my second review, so a feedback would be really cool!

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Mar 3, 2014

post_human

Recommended

Does an anime have to make sense to be good? Or even have a general direction to be appreciated? And how far can a show really go through just plain humor and gags? Well, pretty far if you consider this gem of a show which neither did get the attention it deserves nor did it fool itself with that notion. Rather the creator and the artists just tried to give enjoyment to the select few viewers it is likely to get and achieved even a certain level of perfection in their approach. And having a cool villain or rather a cool mafia goat (not joking ... really) villain is a huge boost to this awesome attempt at insane comedy.

The plot-line is absolutely ridiculous in a good way, it follows a werewolf detective Hiroshi Inaba in his attempts to catch the goat mafia Don Valentino through solving some really funny cases along the way. The overall story also has subplots involving Hiroshi trying to reunite with his brother and various other side characters including the narrator Kei generally goofing around. On a first glance it doesn't seem much as you expect some kind of show that is bound to get repetitive, well that is so wrong. Each and every episode has generally 2 parts in it and you never guess what to expect next. With a interesting cast of characters the writers threw one after another of these funny situations and you can never guess what to expect next. There are episodes featuring flashbacks and even chibi characters in a unrelated story and even a day at the zoo. Despite the randomness and wacky humor at a few times during the show you almost think the writer is trying to get serious with some emotional scene and right then you are almost smacked in the face with even more slapstick humor.
There is a background plot involving the main characters' past and corruption in police department which seems to have a more serious basis but then again the writer pulls you back into the fray with his very rich sense of humor and enjoyable variety of characters.
The story gets 8 out of 10.

The characters as always are the life of a show like this and this show is quite lively with them. From the hair fetishist werewolf Hiroshi to his cross dressing over protective assistant Yuuta to almost normal yet manically cat loving other assistant Kei. From superhuman detective Ogi and his incredible family to all other minor side characters (such as the goat's Lorengo, hot blooded assassin Gabriella, cute mad scientist Noah and real weak brother of the main character to name a few) all are very unique in their roles and add to enjoyment in a very nice way. Special mention is to be given of the mafia goat Don Valentino, to me he is one of the most interesting villainous character ever in any anime out there (at least comedy wise). His unique way of speaking and his money eating tendency, his various tricks that usually backfires in weird ways and his unique sense of mafia honor really adds to the overall charm of the show. No matter what other people would like to tell you the goat is the star of this show, period.
The characters are the most interesting and gets 9 out of 10.

Although a show like this one obviously had a low budget the people behind it really did a great job of not making it noticeable through the animation. While it never really tries to reach any new boundaries with its art and animation it does the job perfectly well through its various comical drawing styles with nice chibi drawings and some excellent shots of the characters in many forms (as they even did a manly goat!) which overall add to the wacky humor and make you really laugh out loud.
This gets 8 out of 10.

The sound was once again quite nicely complimentary to the atmosphere of the show. But I have to mention the voice actors as in a show like this they have huge responsibilities which in this case they pulled off nicely. Tooru Ookawa was once again the star as the Don Valention, I mean that ending theme is something that I almost never could skip. He did an excellent job and despite everything most of the times I really rooted for the Don knowing fully well he would never succeed. Other aspects of music and sound on the show was not bad by any means but never really draws attention to any detail.
The voice acting pushes the show to a new boundary so the sound gets 8.5 out of 10.

At the end of this reminiscence, I really do keep remembering the fun I had watching the show, as at the last episode while the cast kept saying how they are sad this is the last episode I couldn't help but be sad with them. This show was something I enjoyed just for sure power of wacky humor and incredible cast of characters and would love to see more of them which I know is never gonna happen. Fortunately this show have much re-watch value and I just might do that in the future. Highly recommended to any fans of comedy or any one just wanting to watch a light show for fun.

Overall Score -
8.5 out of 10.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Mar 25, 2013

Hectotane

Mixed Feelings

I don't like "gag anime." It's not that I don't have a sense of humor; I just don't have it for today's so-called comedy. People curse too much and think they're "funny." People hurt each other and it's called "slapstick comedy."

But Psycho-Pass is too serious and Inferno Cop is ripping off Marvel's Ghost Rider.

Detective Inaba is the type of comedy that takes no prisoners. A GOAT is the main baddie and nearly everyone is too slow to catch him. Said goat and his henchmen are also slow in certain ways and everybody ends up sabotaging each other.

However. The jokes are not heavily "Japanese jokes;" they're ... ease to translate and are pretty good for a couple of guffaws. There are even times when the people behind it forget that this animu is mainly "cops versus robbers"... And then it REMEMBERS and sucker-punches you like Black Lagoon's first episode.

I don't even know anymore.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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