After nearly two months of patiently waiting (and actually forgetting that this series even existed at all), the third episode is finally out reminding us that Il-chan and Tomoe are still there and it was investigation-heavy that hardly had anytime for characters development. Anyone who is familiar with nisiOisin writing will know that his styles are heavily influenced by detective works, in particular he is fond of “perfect murder” concept (which I personally don’t find it at all appealing) – meaning that the crimes are so well-staged that it cut off all the leads to the real murderer. This episode is a textbook example of this kind of murder: locked room (sort of, anyways), many uncertain clues, and the utterly lack of motive from other characters. Akagami the host steps up to open an investigation, and all eyes are squarely on Akame, the only with no real alibi and has some kind of motive for killing the artist. But both Il-chan and Tomoe clearly see that the investigation is nothing more than a blame game and only leads to people suspecting each other. They instead provide an alternative, keep Akame in one room while waiting for Jun Aikawa (I presumed is the person he spoke at the beginning of the series) in six days to crack the murder case.
One of the most fascinating factor about this case is of course the painting on the ground. It hadn’t dry yet when the cast appeared, indicated that the murder had to happen before the earthquake, since there is no way a normal person could escape that huge chunk of paint without leaving any trace behind. But then Sasaki called her right after the earthquake and Kanami was still alive then. So what was the trick to escape the room then? Curiously the painting of Il-chan was still standing there. As I said last episode, and even as the show right out acknowledged in this episode, decapitated murder often used to swap the bodies, but since the remain cast is all there, then what is the point of chopping her head? It takes much more effort to kill, and then hide the head to somewhere safe. Remember they said that she was blind before she became a painter, and that her style is not a fixed style, right? Maybe those eyes are some legendary items (might as well be The All-seeing eyes) so the murderer wants to take those so they have to cut her head off.
I do have a theory on how Il-chan can break the case after all. He told Tomoe to take picture of the painting of his, claiming that something was off in the painting. Now remember that on that day his watch actually didn’t work, so I’d say that Kanami left some kind of clues in his clock, thus can direct us to whom might involve to this case (well, they literally took few minutes last episode to inform us about how the dinner table was set up like a clock). Let see how he pick up this details in the next few episodes.
Well, not much else really to say about this episode. This is a mystery episode through and through so besides those clues and the motive from each character, they don’t have much time to focus on anything else. NisiOisin writing is famous for its snappy dialogues and memorable characters, even when he tends to get to mystery mode in other stories, the mystery often ties directly to the psychodrama of those characters, but as far as this episode goes this episode offers none of that. This is easily their worst Zaregoto episode to date and hopefully this murder case serves as a catalyst for more characters development in the future.
