This show is totally fucking with us.
The main girl is named Siesta. “Siesta” is Spanish for “nap.”
And this show does nothing but put you to sleep.
But that’s only if you’re lucky, because staying awake is torture. I know “The Detective is Already Dead” may sound like an enticing title, but don’t be fooled. This is a battle harem. It may not be set in an academy, and there may not be an arena for waifu fights, but the essential elements are there, and the show isn’t ashamed of this at all. In fact, it’s the only selling point. Why is a show about a middle school loser becoming Discount James Bond, traveling the world fighting international counterintelligence and terror organizations, but also aliens, mind controllers, werewolves, and superhuman androids enjoyed by anyone? Because he does so with a cute detective waifu at his side constantly trying to fall on his dick. I don’t know if it’s a spoiler to say this, but as the title suggests, the detective is, indeed, already dead, so everything I just described only takes place in flashbacks, and everything happening in present day consists of new, different girls trying to fall on his dick. This is actually genius when you think about it, because now you and the self-insert protagonist don’t have to choose a best girl, and can instead just fuck them both, one in the past, and another in the present. But I didn’t mean to so quickly sweep all that dumb shit under the rug. To say this show contains aliens, mind control, werewolves, and superhuman androids is not a spoiler, because they aren’t treated as mysteries nor presented as reveals. I know this may seem odd considering nothing about the premise or promotional material would suggest this show gets that ridiculous, but that’s just it. This show makes no attempt to build the world or make the setting feel distinctive. Everything will look and feel totally banal, and then suddenly you’re watching this indescribable Frankenstein’s Monster of disparate genres and ideas which don’t mix together at all. This may be a weird thing to say, but nothing in this show feels like it was done in the right order. Yes, the pacing is incompetent, but that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s hard to put this into words, but scenes are just so poorly considered and end up feeling awkward or like there’re taking place in the wrong context. The lifeless directing and ultra-generic art style don’t help either, because a weird and out-of-place character or concept will be introduced, and the music will change to try and switch the tone, but NOTHING changes visually, so the whole sequence just feels deadpan—like the building blocks making up the scene were ordered wrong or internally misplaced.
With all that said, the real reason this show is such a boring piece of shit is plain and simple: it just has awful writing. Siesta’s motto as a detective is, “A first-rate detective gets a handle on a case before the incident occurs,” and this motto is the central gimmick of the series. We and our self-insert protagonist are the fish out of water, and Siesta is the seemingly clairvoyant, Holmesian mastermind who already holds all the relevant knowledge beforehand. We, the audience, are supposed to marvel at her intelligence, but what the author doesn’t understand is that this does not make for an interesting story. It is well-established that what makes detective stories engaging is the audience’s desire to solve the mystery with the clues and foreshadowing provided by the author, but if you know the author isn’t going to provide you with ANY clues or ANY foreshadowing, and is instead going to constantly pull random shit out of thin air and expect you to applaud his creativity, then you’ll immediately lose interest. However, what makes this show in particular its own special brand of retarded, is that explanatory information is withheld even during scenes which have nothing to do with mystery.
This show is amazingly forthright with how contrived it is.
Why does our teenage waifu decide to move in with our teenage protagonist half a day after they meet?
Just because.
Why does our middle school aged protagonist with no credentials get an international license to carry by an intelligence syndicate?
Just because.
Why does Waifu #2 get a heart transplant that magically imbues her with the thoughts and emotions of the heart’s original owner?
Just because.
Why can our normal human waifu safely jump out of a building wearing a dress, high heels, and carrying our protagonist in her arms?
Just because.
Why does Waifu #3 stop some random asshole on the street who she’s never met before and assume he’s a legendary detective?
Just because.
Why does our waifu’s blood turn into bullets, and why do those bullets magically revoke a person’s free will?
Just because.
Why does our protagonist scream “It’s time for My Teen Romantic Comedy™!” despite rejecting our waifu’s romanic advances?
Just for the memes.
I have twelve episodes worth of this bullshit to chose from, so trust me when I say I could do this all day. Any principle fixture of the plot or character chemistry is totally preposterous, and it’s not even in service of anything interesting. Remember, this show is just a battle harem, yet in its attempts to stand out, it just embarrasses itself when it probably would’ve been better off relying on more standard concepts. The show still would’ve been a boring piece of shit, but at least it wouldn’t be so confusing and dumb.
This show is also amazingly forthright with how trashy it is. It may rattle off endless dialogue in an attempt to feel intelligent, if only on a kindergarten level, but its fanservice is flagrant. Don’t get me wrong. There is certainly diegetic fanservice—like whenever one of the girls squats or bends over right in front of the main guy’s crotch like a porn actress, we’re treated to a nice shot of her exposed lower-back and ass—but there will also be totally lecherous and nonsensical shots of girls’ bodies apropos of nothing. This isn’t even mentioning all the ridiculous shit the characters do in service of pandering which totally shatterers your suspension of disbelief. Waifu #2 is literally introduced by walking up to the main guy, shoving her hand down his throat, fingering his tongue, removing her hand covered in drool, talking down to him like a dominatrix, and then smothering his face in her tits. Seriously, is this a new fetish or something? What that fuck is this?
It is genuinely challenging for me to describe the characters in this show without describing other characters from other anime. Siesta tells the main guy he’s perfect for covert detective work because his face is so unexceptional, anyone who sees it will quickly forget about it. This is funny not simply because I can say the exact same thing about this show in its entirety, but because I can also say the same thing about her and every other one-dimensional, cardboard character from within it.
Watch Re:Starting Life in Another World From Zero™.
Take Emilia. Cut her hair into an even bob, leave her ribbon on the right side, remove the flower, and make her eyes blue instead of purple.
Take Rem’s obsequious, unconditional love, but also Ram’s wry cleverness, and combine them into one girl.
Congratulations. You’ve crafted Siesta from scratch. Now you have a sexy waifu to leer at, but one who you can also appreciate as an intellectual equal despite your apprehension toward women.
Watch NISIOISIN’s Monogatari Series™.
Take Araragi. Replace his disheveled hair with something more generic and refined, and widen his eyes a little too.
Take his relatable cynicism, but remove all the character complexity and past experience which makes his personality believable.
Congratulations. You’ve crafted the main guy from scratch. Now you can self-insert without having to be reminded of your social flaws which make this kind of escapist fantasy attractive to you in the first place.
The main character’s real name is Kimihiko Kimizuka. In light of this, Siesta decides to nickname him “Kimi.” This makes sense considering his name, but what the show attempts to lampshade is the fact “kimi” is the Japanese word for “you.” If you’ve never seen one of these self-insert harem shows, this may seem meaningless, but if you’re familiar with the way these shows work, you probably see why this is so unbelievably shameless. The dialogue scenes in these shows often use a Shot/Reverse Shot directing style, so when the waifu on screen is talking to the main guy stood across from her, she is effectively just talking directly into the camera. In other words, she’s looking at and speaking to the audience. This is prefect for self-insert escapism, and there are even shows like One Room which consist exclusively of a girl talking to the camera and pretending to be your girlfriend, but this show has found a way to have its cake and eat it too. Unlike One Room, it has a real cast of characters, but in practice, it almost nullifies this fact by having the waifu refer to the main character as “you” instead of his actual name, so you can just jerk off and not have to worry about hearing another man’s name ruining the fantasy, because as far as you’re concerned, she’s talking to you. If not so morally contemptible, this manipulation would be hilarious.
“The novel is better.”
This statement is a fallacy. While it’s true most anime are just advertisements for the source material, especially those produced by companies like Kadokawa, shilling the source material to your fellow anime fans is assuming they actually give a shit about reading it, but I don’t. I’m trying to find good anime, not good manga, and certainly not good light novels. Given the absurd amount of monotonous dialogue packed into this show, it’s effectively a novel in and of itself, so if it’s any consolation, this show is still a piece of shit even if you’re only viewing it as an advertisement for the novel. After all, it gives me no reason to assume the novel which it’s advertising is any less shitty, and even if the novel isn’t shitty, that fact wouldn’t somehow make the anime less shitty. If you ever see someone throwing around the word “secondary” as an insult, you know the point they’re making is wrongheaded. Attempting to discredit someone’s opinion on an anime because they haven’t read the source material is a flawed line of thinking, because it’s attempting to force a conflation between adaptations and supplemental materials, when in reality, an adaptation is its own work which should be criticized on its own merits. These people may be correct, and the source material may be better, but it doesn’t defend the anime, and that’s what we’re talking about here.
I almost forgot to mention how ugly this show is. I think it goes without saying it’s artistically soulless, but even on a technical level, it’s just poorly produced. The first episode isn’t mind-boggling or anything, but it’s serviceable, and it has a few cuts of cool animation. However, this premier is unapologetic bait on which all efforts were expended and all good animators were invited, and everything afterward looks progressively worse. The background quality drops to the point it can be painful to watch, and the animation is never too far behind. This is often the case with light novel adaptations, but this show has a particularly bad case of shitty character designs. Light novel cover art is extremely detailed, so it’s rare for an animation studio to adapt these designs faithfully into an anime, but any character designer worth his or her salt shouldn’t have a hard time simplifying the designs for a proper adaptation. However, if the character designer is a hack or if the studio just doesn’t have the talent, and if this ineptitude is then combined with shitty animation, that’s how you end up with shows like Overlord, Youjo Senki, 86, Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, or this fucking trainwreck. I think I’m going to give this show a One, but I honestly believe it deserves a Two. It wasn’t downright offensive, and its only real crime was waterboarding me with boredom, so in all fairness, it probably deserves a Two, but it simply has no redeeming qualities. If you put a gun to my head, I still wouldn’t be able to say anything unconditionally nice about it. I mean, frankly, if you put a gun to my head, so long as it allowed me to stop watching this trash, I’d pull the fucking trigger for you.
Thank you for reading.
