Imagine that a movie gets to a chase scene, and at the exact moment the action hero turns on the ignition, there is an immediate cut to a theatre set. The action hero and villian, no longer in cars, are under spotlights, crouching, handling invisible steering wheels and chasing each other around the stage while a narrator fills in the gaps. This is, with minimal exaggeration, what watching Ranpo Kitan is like. It seems Studio Lerche, struggling with the workflow associated with three shows in a single season, decided to sacrifice the work and budget put into at least one, and out of a gimmicky moe/horror hybrid (Gakkou Gurashi), pure filth (Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou), and a 50th anniversary tribute to a renowned mystery author, they decided to sacrifice the latter. Excrement, I mean excellent.
Although turning the most difficult-to-animate scenes into theatre sets is certainly bad enough, Ranpo Kitan really outdoes itself to make the story and characters as shallow and unlike-able as possible. For a mystery show, there isn't much mystery, let alone suspense. If you haven't already figured out what's going on you will need to suspend your disbelief pretty hard. As soon as you get over a high school girl who literally wants to be mutilated by her teacher, you meet a man wearing a paper bag who can apparently disguise himself in a matter of seconds.
And what of the main story? It's the most patently juvenile pile of bollocks. Apparently murderers and rapists and whatnot are being allowed to run free because of this horrible thing called the insanity defence. In real life this is meant to protect people with mental illnesses from pointless, inhumane punishment, but in the world of Ranpo Kitan apparently 50% of all the really bad criminals are being released in a matter of days and killing everyone. Sucks, right? Then, under the banner of a 'villian' called twenty faces, people decide to take matters into their own hands and kill the criminals, saving money and making up for the contrived incompetence of the injustice system. From this absurd scenario there is no reason to blame people from wanting to protect themselves, and it seems the scriptwriter realised this a bit too late. After 6 episodes of the heroes failing to morally challenge the situation [SPOILERS] Twenty Faces wins and the world becomes a better place.
So what about the characters? Well, we have Detective Akechi, who's only 17 years old and a detective and drinks black coffee and takes pills etc. Then there's the real main character (I think?) Kobayashi, who's personality is that he's a sociopath with no personality (he's not the only one) and looks like a girl (this is some revolutionary character development I tell you). Who else? We have Hashiba, Kobayashi's bff but really wishes Kobayashi were his bf. There is an imprisoned villian, Kuro Tokage, who pisses herself. Nearly every character in this show is expressly written to annoy the viewer, with the only pleasant characters existing to be savagely murdered or harmed.
In summary, this is possibly the most pointless show I've ever watched. I've read the undercurrent of depraved fetishism and shock value in this show is actually a feature of Edogawa Ranpo's works, but in this case it sits very poorly with the lack of maturity in the script and artstyle. Well, next season Noitamina has another chance to do mystery right with Subete ga F ni Naru, so let's see if that will wash out the bad aftertaste of this abysmal series.
