Not with this one.
In this one, the cases are sometimes so incoherent and rushed, that I actually have to make sure I didn't miss an episode. The cases seem to follow the same format: 1-2 episodes used to introduce the case and key players within the case and 1 more on the end for Alice, by some ridiculous stretch, to solve the case by some obvious case point that the audience should have known as well. Well, I enjoy the detective genre of anime as much as the next guy, but in the ones that I truly like, the answer is never obvious, but it's there at any rate. Anything else that happened during the case? Left unexplained. This anime's "obvious" is just some data on Alice's screen.
Ah...Alice. She's merely one of a bunch of unlikeable characters in the mix we have here. You've heard of them all before, so let's introduce them all! We have...-drumroll-...the spineless male lead! The highschool friend who likes the invertebrate! The loli-detective! The tough guy with hidden soft spot! The tough bitch! The foreigner! And many more! Put them all together, and you get a swirling ball of WTF, like the Prisoner Horde in Demon's Souls; it makes no sense, they just flail around and it's ugly. This anime seems to pride itself on having a NEET based cast, probably no doubt "Don't worry, watchers of this anime! You can be like this too!". Only we can't. Nor do we want to be. Moreover, it's almost a "joy" to guess to what Alice will spout her nonsense of "I'm not a normal detective. I'm a NEET detective. I'm a speaker of the dead blah blah blah". If I were a client of hers, it wouldn't strike me much confidence if she said that she was a speaker of the dead...I'd rather have my detectives prevent crimes from causing me much personal harm, than be like a fire-inspection officer after the fire has started "Oh yes...the fire started around this corner of the room. It seems that accelerants were use-" "That corner of the room is where I spoke to you, and the accelerants were when your guys decided to piss off the perps!".
The art style and animation can't salvage this wreck from the bottom of the sea. All it can do is preserve the wreckage after it's being pulled out, just so we can all see why, quite clearly, why this anime's story, plot and characters are unlikeable. Sure, it can look quite marvelous, but the ship still won't be able to set sail; no matter how much I wish it would set sail and sink somewhere deeper in anime history.
As with all things, some things will be liked by some people and others not. If you happen to like the major stereotypes that have plagued the anime industry for several years, then this anime is straight up your alley. However, with many other detective anime already showing the brilliance of the genre, this one's flaws and pitfalls are made even more evident. This one will just be another J.C. Staff Light Novel adaptation that is, surprisingly, par of the course for an extremely disappointing Summer 2011 season.
