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Do you know how mystery television or film falls into two categories? The ones that throw bogus clues and evidence out there to mislead you until the grand reveal and the ones that give you legitimate clues you can use to figure everything out without having to guess at some point before the end? Well, fortunately, this show falls into the latter category, and damn does it do a good job of it. I haven't had the pleasure of watching much, if anything, that struck this kind of balance in a long time. Generally speaking, I either have everything figured out, or there isn't enough info/too much misleading/incorrect info to get to a conclusion without a leap of faith or without waiting until right near the end. This anime gave us all the clues we needed to solve the mystery within the first 3 episodes if I remember correctly which is coincidentally around when the mystery starts. It's kind of novel to have a show give you everything you need to solve the mystery right around the time the mystery is in place. Well, to a certain extent anyway. There's more that gets filled out as you move through the story that could be considered key to figuring out what happened, but even those final bits are given to you a decent enough chunk of episodes before the end.
Now that I've established that they did the whole mystery thing basically flawlessly in my opinion, I would like to say that it has also been a treat to have one of these shows conduct themselves fairly and still manage to trick me, even while doling out clues the whole time. That doesn't happen very often. If I had to pick a criticism of the mystery, it's that if you're not paying very close attention, and if you're not...well, clever at this sort of thing, you may feel that the reveals come out of left field and are a load of crap - as many people who have reviewed this do.
Onwards! The art and animation is really well done and the sound is definitely a treat. Their attention to detail really shows, especially during one of the best openings and one of the best endings I've ever seen. The questions I found myself musing after and during every episode were also really well posited, if maybe a little shoehorned into things. That being said, I felt like it was in one of the main characters' nature to speak the way he did and I found myself identifying with him more than anyone else. So while it was shoehorned, the character who was doing the philosophy shoehorning was doing it believably (for me at least - there are enough reviews that disagree, and I won't bother using the old "They didn't understand" or "They didn't get the character" arguments). For a longer, clearer, picture of why I liked this part of the show, read this review since I agree with pretty much everything they say http://myanimelist.net/reviews.php?id=205880
Now to the negative.
The main bad thing I have to say about all of this (minus the usual personal opinion stuff that you'll decide for yourself if you watch it) is that the characters were pretty weak overall. I thought that each one served a purpose, and some of them were interesting enough, but it was definitely the plot, story, philosophy, and them making me think all the time that took me through this. If it was just the characters alone trying to carry this in a different situation, I don't think I would have been interested past the philosophical questions that the main character I was talking about spits out. This is in contrast to say, Death Note as the easy example, where I could watch L and Light trying to open competing hotdog stands and it would be enthralling. In The Perfect Insider, the characters are a vehicle for the story, not the other way around. Anyway, to sum it all up, just read the first part of the review that warned you not to read the review ;) Enjoy!
