Subete, I am not even angry. Just disappointed. When you started you promised something intelligent and I thought this might be that murder mystery I have been waiting for. But you have let me down and now that you have revealed your full hand, I see that a majority of the series has been fluff. How someone got into the room has been figured out mainly because we the audience have seen her past where Souhei seems to have made a huge assumption to reach that conclusion. Meanwhile figuring out how the murderer left was just completely impossible. No one could have figured out about the time difference using the info they gave us and most importantly the nature of a computer replacing a file of the same name is incorrect. A computer will never overwrite a file without being told to, in the case of a duplicate file it would likely create a file with something added on to the name to differentiate it. Sure the explanation for this would be a that Magata programmed it to overwrite files automatically but that’s something the viewer has never been made aware of. You may think that a Unix programmer might be able to figure it out but I do work with Unix systems and I didn’t have a clue. In the first place the timestamp issue only came up when Souhei used a script to extract the files. This is just cheating on the animes part. The addition of a new character at this stage is pointless and to make matters worse she’s downright obnoxious and completely unrelated to the story.
Thus the murderer is revealed to be none other than…Magata Shiki! Well of course it’s Magata, how can it be anyone other than Magata? That spotlight hasn’t budged an inch away from her for the entire series and no other character has enough exposure to possibly be a satisfying reveal. I guess I was hoping for her to be a red herring and for someone else to be the murderer but as it turns out, it’s that simple. That bugs me because I feel like I have been listening to someone who felt like they had something smart to say only for them to declare the obvious as if it was great wisdom. So with the murder mystery turning out to be a waste I have to ask just what has this anime brought to the table. The sad thing is that when the mystery is gone there really isn’t anything left. The only notable characters are Souhei, Magata and Moe. The majority of the dialogue not related to the mystery was basically coming down to Moe getting sulky because Souhei doesn’t notice her affection or her getting jealous over Souhei. Souhei on the other hand is usually debating the philosophical or smoking. Magata is too enigmatic and alien to possibly relate to and I really do hope she has some reasonable motivation for this ridiculously convoluted plan. I mean if the goal was to remove her parents so she could give birth to the directors child then they are far better alternatives to consider than this. A tragically timed accident for example. If this was truly the only way Magata thought of on how to do this then I truly question if she even deserves the title of genius. In all honestly in the material presented feels like half a series stretched out to a full cour.
Let’s get into it then.
Clues about Magata having a child with her in the room. (Only the ones available to the characters, so no flashbacks that they don’t know about or hints in the OP/ED for example): “Magata” looking younger than she should and wearing gloves during Moe’s interview, being disturbed by Moe asking “Who are you?”, sets of 2 chairs in Magata’s room, lego blocks and toys, sewing machine, Magata’s father saying “I won’t let you do this!”, Michiru robot made to unlock doors only makes sense if someone else was there to lock them.
Clues about the time difference: Elevator going from Basement floor 2 to the roof instantly on the security footage, in episode 8 Saikawa’s watch indicating 10:59 when the Red Magic reset is scheduled for 11:00.
About the file overwrite: The default behavior is usually to override, append, or fail the operation, not to ask the user (the “rm” and the “cp” commands will never confirm by default, and that’s the case for every similar command in every OS). When you’re asked for confirmations about deleting or replacing a file, it is a safeguard from the application you’re using (typically, the file explorer) against normal users who might commit accidental things.
About the new character: She isn’t new at all, she appeared in episode 1.
This is going to change your mind or make you love the show, but I think too many people are underestimating what is a very competently written mystery.
Yeah you could cut it down to 2 hours in length (the live action drama did it) but it wouldn’t be as fun and certainly wouldn’t do the story any justice even if you got the gist of it.
Lets shoot these down.
“Magata” looking younger than she should and wearing gloves during Moe’s interview, being disturbed by Moe asking “Who are you?”, sets of 2 chairs in Magata’s room, lego blocks and toys, sewing machine, Magata’s father saying “I won’t let you do this!”, Michiru robot made to unlock doors only makes sense if someone else was there to lock them.
One might give some clue but in regards to “Who are you?” only Moe had that info and even then Magata JR barely reacted to it. She pretty much just went silent. But she does that at everything. The lego blocks and toys? Magata is the eccentric type, isn’t exactly unusual. “I won’t let you do this!” could mean anything from, I won’t let you kill me or I won’t let you inherent my company. The robot makes even less sense. If the kid was locking the door then why build a robot with the sole purpose of unlocking the door when you can just ask the kid to unlock the door? If the kid was locking the door and refusing to open it then why would she leave the robot that can unlock the door in the room?
“Clues about the time difference: Elevator going from Basement floor 2 to the roof instantly on the security footage, in episode 8 Saikawa’s watch indicating 10:59 when the Red Magic reset is scheduled for 11:00.”
1: Could be easily mistaken for an animation error.
2: Only came into play last episode and the very nature of the internal clock of the facially wasn’t touched upon at all.
“About the new character: She isn’t new at all, she appeared in episode 1.”
She didn’t make much of an impression then. She’s still obnoxious and pointless.
“This is going to change your mind or make you love the show, but I think too many people are underestimating what is a very competently written mystery.”
I think the way you refused to say good or great and instead said “competently” shows that you too find this mystery underwhelming.
You can downplay each individual clue’s importance (I don’t know why you would want to do that when watching a mystery show though), but when you add them up and combine them with the fact that no one has entered the room in 15 years you’re not left with many possibilities. The point is Saikawa had more than enough to think about the possibility of a child and make sense of all of those clues.
Same thing with the clock, the clues are there and trying to downplay them as errors or late doesn’t change that.
About Setsuko, disliking a character’s personality (especially such a minor character) isn’t on the same level of criticism as saying she was introduced too late into the story.
I didn’t say good or great because I’d rather argue with facts than opinions.
If you want my opinion, then I’d call Subete ga F ni naru one of the best mystery shows in anime with only exceptional stuff like Mouryou no Hako being better.
There is no facts when criticizing anime, just opinions.
I will just leave it at that as it’s clear we won’t agree on matters regarding this show. Its good that you found something more to enjoy than I did. It might just be me as I found Mouryou no Hako equally as disappointing.
It goes both ways, sometimes you feel left out by not liking a hyped thing, like Pixar movie, and sometimes the choir can’t tell from a remarkable story until years later.
That’s why I’m backlogging on old stuff at the moment since I wasn’t hooked by the current season. [I loved Wolf Children, and got underwhelmed with Brynhildr in the Darkness since the first 4 episodes give me hope it was gonna be like Elfen Lied.]
> A computer will never overwrite a file without being told to, in the case of a duplicate file it would likely create a file with something added on to the name to differentiate it.
This statement is not really true given what they were working with, which is commonly assumed different varieties of unix, with these file operations done by code. I’m more curious as to why you think this is so, because what you said make sense to me even if it’s technically wrong.
This is likely a goof on my part. I work with AIX Unix and thought this was the case but thinking it over I have run scripts that overwrote files without permission. Call it a stupid moment of mine.
I figured out most of the mystery by episode 4.
Completely agree. Magata is such an idiot! She kills her parents and locks herself in room to have a child from her uncle, then kills her child to escape the room she locked herself in!! A genius who contradicts her own actions!!! But why you ask? Why would she do this you ask???? She wants to be free
To be fair. Her child killed herself after being asked a question. Magata just chopped up her body a bit.