Lord El-Melloi II-sei no Jikenbo

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Lord El-Melloi II Case Files is not a traditional detective novel, and it is open about it. Self-admittedly, you can't really properly solve whodunit and howdunnit in the context of magecraft that throws casual logic out of a window. Instead, the refined focus is whydunnit, resulting in an interesting modification of the usual crime novel structure.

This structure is also mixed with magical lectures that are basically an in-universe lore dumps (non-derogatory). You could say that El-Melloi is something of a supplementary material which happened to have a story through it and you wouldn’t be exactly wrong. This I’m not pointing out as a bad ... thing of courses. Though it might be not for everyone, the writing very nicely replicates the academic environments, both character-wise - with tired mentors contrasted to hyped gifted students, and lore-wise, with the above mentioned lectures that convincingly create the world-building and make the contemporary fantasy setting sound like a real target of serious study, filling an unfortunately small niche of phantastical academia politics mystery.

I wouldn’t want you to think that the story is meaningless though. Even if you as a reader with limited knowledge of the in-world magic will be unable to guess the solution along the protagonist, the twists and reveals are still written in a believable way due to building up on previously provided information. And this crosses the bounds of the presented separate cases, as knowledge about the inner workings of magic learned in one arc could and will be useful for later cases.

What really carries the story, other than the intriguing lore concepts for deep in rabbithole fans of type-moon, are the characters. The titular protagonist quickly became one of my favourite characters from Nasuverse, if not the most favourite. He is unlike the more traditional mcs. He doesn’t have a great power, he doesn’t have predetermined powerful connections, he’s not a gifted genius. He is, well, just a guy. Someone who keeps surviving through a combination of dedication, a connections of goodwill he created with other people, and a knack for getting to the core of things. You could think of Waver, the lord El-Melloi, as the sort of opposite to Shirou. Rather than a show of might, idealism and badassery we have someone who has to come in terms with realization that he can’t do much by himself and embracing it – cultivating strengths of others rather than an own one. But still, even in environment when everyone is more powerful than him, he manages to sneak in a change in the order thanks to still believing in some principles, even if he has to bow to others. Pushing for your best despite being outclassed and despite having to question your own worth can be a very relatable inner conflict.

I won’t get much into analysis of other characters, but know that they are all actual characters. Not plot devices to get the plot moving, they all have their own goals and ambitions, and they influence the story due to acting according to their want, not simply because the plot wouldn’t happen otherwise. This is best showcases on the overarching conflict against the primal antagonist in the later volumes, which isn’t about good vs evil, but rather a conflict between different doctrines which each has a point in context.

I’d like to finish this review with some information readers might find useful. First, don’t worry about this being just some “spin-off that doesn’t matter”, this has been consulted with and approved by Nasu himself as a canonical part of the /stay night universe, so read away. Secondly, if you are here after watching and liking the anime, then I have good news for you – only the prologue and the train arc were adapted from the novel, rest of the anime episodes tie in to the novel story rather than adapting it, so you will encounter new content right from the first volume. And lastly, this shouldn’t be your introduction to the fate universe. You should at very least be familiar with /stay night, /zero and Kara no Kyoukai. And even then, this has much more lore density than the usual spin-off, with the processes that usually serve as a background taking the front seat, so unless you have both knowledge and memory, once in a while you might find yourself googling a character or concept wondering if you are supposed to recognize them from a previous work. But such is the kaleidoscopic nature of Nasu’s multiverse.