Shoushimin Series

Jougorou Kobato has a habit of inserting himself into other people's problems. After realizing his detective skills are neither wanted nor appreciated, he makes an agreement with his shy friend Yuki Osanai to become ordinary together. Now entering high school, they aim to be perceived as regular people, yet Kobato cannot help but fall back into his deductive ways when faced with everyday mysteries.

Unfortunately, mundane occurrences are not all the duo stumbles across. As they go through their school days trying to avoid drawing attention to themselves, Kobato and Osanai at times get caught up in incidents that put their plan of a peaceful, average life at risk.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Osanai, Yuki Main

Youmiya, Hina Japanese

Kobato, Jougorou Main

Umeda, Shuuichirou Japanese

Doujima, Kengo Main

Furukawa, Makoto Japanese

Urino, Takahiko Supporting

Uenishi, Teppei Japanese

Osanai's Mother Supporting

Hayami, Saori Japanese

Yoshiguchi Supporting

Shimabukuro, Miyuri Japanese

Nakamaru, Tokiko Supporting

Miyamoto, Yume Japanese

Houjou, Tomoko Supporting

Ookubo, Rumi Japanese

Ueno Supporting

Takamori, Natsumi Japanese

Hayashi Supporting

Miura, Chiyuki Japanese

Cao, Cong Producer

Matsui, Yuuko Producer

Sotokawa, Akihiro Producer

Endou, Kazuki Producer

Reviews

Mar 16, 2025

TerriblePuns

Recommended

Most of the negative responses I see here are from a few reasonable misunderstandings caused by:

1) Not knowing how extraordinary people behave in reality.
The author doesn't help mitigate this problem very much. The difficulties faced by the characters that motivated them to decide to "become ordinary", or put in better words "feign normalcy", are not shown for a while and what is shown just isn't enough for anyone who either wasn't extraordinary as a kid or didn't interact with someone extraordinary as a kid to understand why the characters would behave that way.

2) Not knowing that real world Japan is very much "Nails that stick ... out get hammered flat.".
This is a problem external to this show, but it is a weakness of the show that this must be known to make sense of the characters' actions with the available screen time given to the relevant motivations.

3) Not knowing that the show takes place in that real world Japan.
This is a problem at least somewhat related to this show. The scenes where the characters are talking are anime-tier embellished with artistic visuals, which does make it feel like an anime instead of the mostly realistic fiction that it is. If the animation maintained its grounding in realism throughout then viewers would be more likely to interpret it in the way it needs to be interpreted to make sense.

4) Not catching the purpose and meaning behind the early mysteries.
Anybody affected by misunderstandings 1-3 would likely be too distracted to catch that the early mysteries are critical to establish the two main male characters. If you didn't catch that you'd consider those mysteries to be a waste of time.

5) Having a mistaken idea of what the plot will be because the title... is wrong.
The English title of this show should be "Feigning Normalcy". Pretend that's the title and you'll have a better time.

Hyouka is a similar anime that didn't have these problems because it didn't have extraordinary characters, took place in anime Japan, and the title doesn't mean anything in English.

There are some negative reviews caused by people not liking the pacing. That's not a misunderstanding. The show's pacing is a bit slow.

For me this show was a welcome break from spazfest anime full of overblown reactions, yelling indoors, lethal injuries treated as gags, breaking objects that seem to fix themselves through plot magic, etc. The writing is good, the art is good, the voice acting is good, the characters are good, and this first season sets up its second season for excellence. Hopefully the second season realizes that potential. I generally recommend this show on those grounds despite the fact that many anime fans may not enjoy it as much, with the caveat that reading this review may be helpful for some (possibly many) to avoid going in with the "wrong perspective", insofar as such a thing exists.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Nov 25, 2024

Marco_Yooo

Mixed Feelings

THIS IS A SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

Honobu Yonezawa is not just my favourite japanese author, but one of my favourite authors in general. His amazing “Koten-bu” series (Also known as “Hyouka”) drew me in with it´s small scale mysteries, great characters and the overall atmosphere. This season, another famous work of his got an anime adaptation and from the outside it looked like this show will follow up in Koten-bu´s footsteps. But did it deliver?

Story – 6/10

This is eerily similar to Hyouka and it hurts this show a lot. The setting, the characters, the pacing, the structure and everything else feels like another version of something he ... has already done. You just cannot stop comparing the two with each other and unfortunately, Shoushimin is far inferior to it´s predecessor. The little mysteries are constructed with similar effort, but the writing as a whole has taken a step back. It just feels a little bit bland and unrefined. The cases do not get enough explanation and some of them leave questions unanswered. This probably happened during the transition from novel to anime, which is a process that is very hard to do, especially in a genre like mystery, where every little remark or sentence can be of extreme importance. The show starts pretty slow and takes a long time to get going. I also think that there are some issues with the tone of the series. In one episode, our main characters sit at a table and eat cake, and the next episode someone almost gets killed with a knife. If you do not commit to one of these directions seriously, they both just feel out of place.
I know comparing this show to something as beautiful as “Hyouka” is not really fair, but even without doing it, this show has some glaring faults.

Art – 8/10

The art is actually really good. They did this very interesting thing with the aspect ratio, giving the whole show a more cinematic feel. The close-ups are beautiful and the show is constantly experimenting with the camera and the surroundings. They also did this cool thing where our main protagonist envisions himself as the culprit, so he follows their steps himself and even wears their clothes. Nothing here is quite as outstanding though, and most of that is because the relatively small and inexperienced Studio Lapin Track lacks the insane amount of outstanding creativity that Kyoto Animation did. This is still their best work so far, so there is definitely an upswing!

Sound – 7/10

The OP/ED combination fits the show extremely well. I actually think this might be the only time this show out-trumps Hyouka, if even by a small margin. They are animated fantastically and set a perfect tone for the show itself, especially the ED. The BGM however does not hold up as well. A lot of the important scenes lack music, and the show does not have these one or two outstanding little tracks that play during the mysteries.

Characters – 7/10

This is a hard category to rank. First, let´s talk about our main Character, Kobato. i really, really did not like him. His backstory didn´t really speak to me, the way he acts is super unrelatable and i think he is a huge step-down from Oreki from Hyouka. There is room for development so I won´t write him of completely but so far, he really missed his mark.
The same can not be said about his friend, Osanai. She was actually really damn interesting. I always love it when there are characters that don´t seem to fit into one of the established character archetypes that have existed for a long time in the anime community. Osanai is mostly a big mystery, but when the show finally delved deeper into her intentions and she reveals her true demeanour, it gets really interesting. She alone might be the reason for me to come back to this show once season two arrives. Other than that, the side characters were alright. Doujima is always nice when he is on screen, but he did not receive that much development so far. The “villains” were absolutely comedic and could not be taken seriously. This also has to do with the insane tone-shifts that this show goes through during it´s climax.

Enjoyment – 7/10

I definitely see potential here. I just love these kinds of small-scale mysteries to much and it is always a treat when a show piques your curiosity, even just a little bit. Season two has already been announced, and I am willing to give this series a second chance to fully win me over. I really want to love this show…

- Marco_Yooo

FINAL SCORE - 7/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Feb 16, 2025

TheEasternModie

Not Recommended

I still don't get why this show has such a following. Probably because the author is known. Well, I never saw Hyouka so I went into the show without any prejudice and all I can say is that it's boring and predictable.

The show starts out in a somewhat interesting way. Yes, the mysterys themselves are pretty boring, but that's not the issue, because obviously this is about the characters, right? I mean, they tell you in the first episode that both of them want to become normal people, so you are wondering: What is it that makes them "not normal"? Well, here is the first ... reveal for you, the one thing you immediately think of is true for both of them. I won't spoil the exact "solution", but the problem is that the characters want to appear deep, but they are really shallow, beacause they both have exactly two quirks that define them. And once you understood these two quirks, nothing can surprise you anymore.

And here is the thing, if the show didn't think of itself as some deep masterpiece, this wouldn't be an issue. It would just be two somewhat weird people that try to appear normal who are thrown into different scenarios. That could be an okay show. But for both characters, the anime takes its time to "reveal" their secrets and both times, I was just like: "Wait, that was not supposed to be obvious?"

This ultimately lead to the final arc of the show where suddenly things turn serious, but again, it's immediately clear what is going on here. However, we spend 3 episodes trying to build up suspense just to have one of the characters tell us all this obvious stuff in the final episode in an exposition scene that makes Sword Art Online exposition scenes look fancy. No seriously, the finale of the show is a boring exposition scene about things that you probably already realized and didn't even think they were supposed to be a mystery.

So in summary: This show is one that wants to appear deep, but once you look behind the curtain, you realize it has nothing really to offer. In terms of mystery, it is just weak as the mysterys revolve around the characters and they are just not thought out enough to surprise you. But it seemingly thinks that it has such deep characters that it can feel pretentious.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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	Poll: Shoushimin Series Episode 3 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Jul 20, 2024	84 replies	by poopsoda »» Mar 6, 2:30 PM
	Poll: Shoushimin Series Episode 8 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Aug 31, 2024	58 replies	by TsumugiSan »» Feb 26, 9:35 PM
	Poll: Shoushimin Series Episode 7 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Aug 24, 2024	63 replies	by TsumugiSan »» Feb 26, 9:12 PM
	Poll: Shoushimin Series Episode 10 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) Stark700 - Sep 14, 2024	170 replies	by Spast1c »» Feb 24, 3:31 AM
	Poll: Shoushimin Series Episode 9 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Sep 7, 2024	88 replies	by Spast1c »» Feb 24, 3:28 AM