Ranpo Kitan: Game Of Laplace – Review

The series itself delivers the best summary for how little it actually has achieved with its story: First it throws around big words and then what you get to see is such a basic and simplistic story that you can’t help but feel disappointed.

In the beginning I absolutely hated this series. I hated it, simple as that. The mysteries were shoddily implemented, the characters barely registered as people and the overall story had some eyebrow-raising issues. What the series has become after that is worse and better at the same time. For one, I feel like the Twenty-Faces-thingy was a good choice for a mystery-series-gimmick and using a Laplace’s demon to basically create a urban folktale people would use as a mask (and excuse) to exact revenge was also intriguing. I don’t know if some studio or producer has forced the writers and directors of this series to fuck this all up or if the creators themselves had some misguided ideas about what they ended up saying with this series but what this series ends up offering is such an extremist, prejudiced perspective that I shudder to think of a person who would look at this and think it’s smart.

Ranpo Kitan: Game Of Laplace – 06/07 Review

Well, technically there’s a lot of surprising stuff to unravel in this “surprise-party” but how serious of a series is this anyway, if situations like this one can be part of its plot-line…?

Ranpo Kitan 06/07; First, the bunch of sociopaths have to deal with a cat, a bomb and a baby and then terrorists are present, too, for some reason. But it all resolves itself luckily without any incident and we’ve all learned about why the devil is in the details. The seventh episode returns to another murder of other despicable people and this time around it’s a locked-room-mystery.

Ranpo Kitan: Game Of Laplace 05 – Review

You heard it here first: There’s a 50/50-chance of getting away with murder in Japan!

This time I review:

Ranpo Kitan 05: Get this: You kill someone, rape someone and steal from them (not necessarily in that order) and then you get caught by the police. But it isn’t a big deal, you know? You can just claim to be crazy and you’re right back on the streets within hours. Dealing with crazy criminals is such a hassle for Japan that the police just don’t bother doing that (if this series can be believed). In a world where there’s a prison for super-villains basically, criminals have a get-out-of-jail-freecard by claiming they’re insane (which they are but not enough to make an insanity-defense work under realistic circumstances).

Review-Roundup: Aquarion Logos 04, God Eater 03, Ranpo Kitan 04

Sure, bad puns are one way to deal with high-concept story-ideas…

This time I review:

Aquarion Logos 04: Love is in the air! Obviously the upcoming Tanabata-festival is a big chance for the shy girl to confess to the dude who considers himself to be the savior of the world. And… that doesn’t go anywhere really. Instead we deal with three people finding out that synchronizing with three people for an Aquarion-gattai-formation feels MUCH better than doing it with two persons. And shy-girl confesses… that she has a traumatic past she now has managed to overcome somewhat! Truly, it’s exactly what you would call a victory for love!

God Eater 03: There’s a special kind of Newbie on a plane. She’s surrounded by monsters. Newbie-dude and two veterans come to her rescue. Things work out in the end. … The End.

Ranpo Kitan 04: Someone who calls himself Twenty Faces has been killing off criminals which haven’t landed in prison or exited it early for some reason. The best solution genius-kid and girly-boy come up with is to just release a very evil criminal as bait. Turns out when you secretly help an evil criminal to avoid prison, some vigilante-like killer shows up! And after the killer who tried to kill the dude from the last episode gets revealed we’re supposedly very anxious to hear his excuses for the whole thing.

Ranpo Kitan: Game Of Laplace – 03 Review

That’s one of the good guys. You know, being into little girls as a middle-aged man… turns out it’s not THAT weird apparently!

This time I review:

Ranpo Kitan 03: Someone who weirdly sounds like a child-molester gets falsely accused in a case of various girls having gone missing. Girly Boy is right there to help him clear his name and find the most recent girl Shadow-Man had gotten close to. Also, the kidnapper wanted to bang the Girly Boy – but that’s par of the course at this point, I guess.

Ranpo Kitan: Game Of Laplace – 02 Review

Sure, there are some special agents like James Bond who have a license to kill and then there are guys like this one who have a license to not have to go to school…

This time I review:

Ranpo Kitan 02: Girly boy sets up a trap for a killer while enticing his boyfriend. And… the killer falls for the trap. The police are right there as well for an applause-break (it’s the most active they’ve been during this investigation).

Review-Roundup: Ranpo Kitan: Game Of Laplace 01, Aquarion Logos 01

Finally we get a hero insane enough to have a genuine hero-complex!

This time I review:

Ranpo Kitan: Game Of Laplace 01: A dude gets murdered. The police’s best suspect? A little boy! And there’s even a genius-boy-detective getting involved as well! Naturally the little boy loves it all – even as when he gets imprisoned by the police because at the end of the episode they really consider him to be part of this murder… It’s hard to tell where the series’ seriousness and sense of humor starts and ends with this absurd tale…

Aquarion Logos 01: Another one of those! This time around it’s language itself that goes berserk and needs to be fought with the Aquarion-mecha! Also, the heroic main-chara is simply crazy.