Knowing that it is cancelled changes the story completely. While the story lost itself at times, had incredibly fast pacing at times, the show knew what it was: a weird and wacky take on the crime genre, a show with so much heart and flavor. The show revolves around the division I, a special division who has police detective AIOI, known for falling in love with criminals and capturing them herself. Her methods are constantly unorthodox, she’s a yandere without the stabby-stabby or obsessiveness, just the extreme love, and the side characters were starting to shape up as good comic relief. The story set up a main antagonist and goal quite quickly and uniquely and it was looking to be around a 75-100 chapter crime story. Now for a crime story its really not about the mystery and detective elements, those elements almost non-existent. This isn’t some Sherlock Holmes or 5d chess game, but decently complex mysteries that the main protagonist solves in an almost slice of life atmosphere. Its sounds boring in concept, but AIOI is such an enchanting character, not to mention her interactions, that the crime aspects are easy to overlook. It can be better categorized as a slice of life crime show, but with a moving plot and well thought out schemes.
However re-reading the beginning chapters its almost astonishing the drop in quality. While the first chapter was amazing, the later chapters made me forgot one detail. The beginning was pretty bad. Like AIOI’s Yandere tendencies was executed terribly, not to mention the bland side characters and simple plots. As a weekly series it kept my attention and interest, but as a binging series not so much. The story in the beginning and the way it is written feels to clumsy and awkward, fumbling around to keep the story and gimic somehow going. However around the 20th chapter things had started to look better and the writing was getting better. The mediocre/bad plots was replaced with a slightly better one, and improvement was surely on its way. The main gimic still needed some work but it was going to be explored with the main antagonist, and the side characters were slowly improving, but then it got cancelled.
Its hard to evaluate it, as so many things set up and prepared for the future are ignored, like the main antagonist who seemed incredibly interesting, and caused AIOI trauma and depth to her character. Just by the little we knew from him was definitely a Moriarty type villain, and the final arc with him would have been amazing, not to mention the increase in writing quality. It had the idea, now it needed the good writing. The show was putting things in the background, characters and small hints building him up so well without directly mentioning him. However due to being cancelled it looks like we will never see him. To describe the manga, it would be a slice of life mystery with a moving plot and narrative, with unique characters, interesting villains, and such great heart and flavor. The dynamics are extremely fresh, its definitely a shonen, and the story had a lot of out of the box ideas and innovations.
Despite being cancelled the final chapter was quite decent as it embodied the heart of the show and wrapped up quite a lot of loose ends. However as an overall product, I can only say Average. 6 out of ten. A decent short read that does not requite attention, a promised story that did not deliver. Its not something that you need or should read. Its something you just pick up on a Sunday afternoon, read through the whole thing, are sidelined by the abrupt ending, and think, “well that was okay.” Then upon re-read or further inspection start to see the story fall apart. Rest in peace I tell C, my favorite new shonen jump show, you had so much that you could have achived.
