Welcome all, to a special double feature of a week! Apologies for missing last week, Covid and other health problems sort of screwed me and I barely got out the posts that I did. To be frank some are still ongoing, so if I’m late on something that’s why. Getting old sucks yo. Anyways on with the show(s)!
First up we have episode 5, “The Undead in London”. This one was… Odd. And not in a good way. In fact the best way I can put it is that, at 5 episodes in, Undead Murder Farce feels like it’s starting to bloat. What do I mean by that? Well simply that Undead Murder Farce introduced a lot this episode, to the point where it has become very clear to me that the show isn’t going to be able to cover everything and maybe even won’t reach a satisfying stopping point. What does “a lot” mean? Well we’ve got the entire Sherlock Holmes canon, what was once just a cheeky reference are now fully fledge characters involved in the plot, a whole new organization of super powered monster hunters, who probably won’t like Rindo, not to mention our “antagonist” for this arc. It just feels like… a lot.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all bad. I actually like how many of these are inspired by literature and folk-lore, I’m usually a sucker for that kind of stuff. And depicting Holmes as kind of an arrogant asshole is something I’ll always love, I think RDJ did a fantastic job there. It’s just that… I don’t really know where Tsugaru and Rindo fit into all of this. I’ll talk about this more in episode 6, but they almost feel like after thoughts in their own show. Like the author wanted to write a supernatural Sherlock Holmes story more then they did Undead Murder Farce, and the show itself is (At least for this arc) an excuse to do that.
On top of Holmes we also have these weird insurance agents. They sort of connect the story to the larger plot, but neither of them seem to have much character just yet, and this continues into episode 6 as well. So far at least I don’t see any reason for them to have been included in the plot. Speaking of the plot, tangent for a moment, the cast of this particular case is so large and the idea of Arsène Lupin stealing a rare gem is so broad, that this could have been an entire show. So that’s another concern, just how will this arc be paced. Undead Murder Farce took a single murder mystery and dragged it out into 3 when it could have been 2. Will this suffer from the same problem, or perhaps the reverse? I’m not sure.
Now as for things I did like, or am looking forward to, I’m happy that Moriarty is also going to be involved in this. He wants the diamond too, putting him at cross purposes with Lupin, Holmes and Rindo. That’s nice, it makes for a 3/4 way conflict and should spice it up a bit once he gets involved. I also think the whole bit with the Werewolves is cool, I always enjoy the supernatural stuff that gets sprinkled in. I’m curious how/if that will get used at all in the future, either for Moriarty’s plans or what. Hopefully it’s not just window dressing, because if so… why include it? All in all it was a bit of an eh episode for me, but it’s the start of a new arc so hopefully something good comes next, yeah?
That brings me to episode 6, “The Phantom Thief and the Detective”. This episode was better than the last, but also had many of the same problems it did. On the good side, there were a lot just flat out fun scenes. I’m talking Rindo and Tsugaru hijinks, the thing that makes this show run. On the bad end though… Well it felt like our leads might as well have not been in the episode at all. They didn’t do anything, they barely interacted with anyone, and what interaction they did have was just meeting Lupin for a moment and Tsugaru getting his ass kicked. Aside from some pretty marble fighting, they didn’t actually do anything. Which considering it’s their god damn show, feels like a mistake. Like… Sherlock did/discovered more this episode than they did. What the hell?!
Now like I said, the fun bits were good. Undead Murder Farce hit gold with Rindo and Tsugaru’s dynamic. Their banter, the whole “I grabbed the wrong bird cage” gag, him doing a rakugo performance because he’s that obsessed with theatre. That all, once again, is great. It’s the most fun I had with the episode. Rindo screaming out of a car as she drives by, getting stolen by some random punks, or her head flying through the air as some random guy finds it, was hilarious. I would honestly watch an entire show of just her and Tsugaru doing stupid shit together, and I almost wish Undead Murder Farce was just that. But the problem is that none of this had anything to do with the actual main plot of either the show or the arc at hand.
Like… Would it have been so hard for them to have Rindo and Tsugaru walk in on/interrupt Holmes little planning session/interaction with Lupin? Maybe Rindo could have set something up on purpose to run into him, suspecting he would visit Holmes because both are arrogant twats? Just give me anything at all that shows proactive engagement on their part and I’d be happy. Instead we meet Mycroft, Sherlocks brother, Lupin does this whole “Disguise” thing to introduce himself because he gets off on making things harder for himself. Hell, Sherlock might even be more involved with our main villain Moriarty then our leads are, as he caught/dealt with him 8 years ago, meaning Moriarty is more his villain then ours. Does that not feel weird to anyone? Because it feels weird to me!
Now as for the good bit, the actual heist has been fun. The one-upping of each other, shooting the lock to make it unpickable, flooding the room knowing Sherlock would do that after dropping the hint about picking the locks. It’s cute, and reminds me a lot of the mind-games from the RDJ Sherlock Holmes movies. The marble fighting style was kind of cute to, it’s pretty and I like that someone is actually putting up a fight against Tsugaru. It feels a tad weird, since he just bodied a vampire 2 episodes ago, but Lupin has a special name so I’ll take it. The only issue with all of this is just that, once again, none of it feels very connected to our actual main plot.
So yeah, all in all these 2 episodes were… kind of a disappointment for me. I love our leads, so seeing them get relegated to side-characters in their own show is disheartening. Tack on to that the clear bloating and I’m just not concerned that Undead Murder Farce will end in any sort of a satisfying manner. I don’t need a clean-cut, full stop, completed story. Just a satisfying place to stop and rest. And I don’t really think we’re going to get that. Maybe Undead Murder Farce can prove me wrong, maybe it has a plan and Rindo and Tsugaru are just biding their time before they take over this arc. I dunno. I sure hope so! That would be fantastic! But as of now, halfway through, a lot of what I loved about the show isn’t really there anymore.
This is what happens when to adapt a msnga series that has 4 volumes available. Why they couldn’t wait until more volumes came out us beyond me.
They’re adapting the original novels, not the manga adaptation, and apparently the novels have been released infrequently since 2015, so… it’s kind of like waiting for the next Game of Thrones novel to come out. It may come out this year, or next year, or sometime in the next decade, if at all.
But the issues mentioned in this post are not pacing issues and don’t come from lack of source material. This is a one-cour series, adapting 4 volumes in 12 episodes is pretty much standard procedure. They come from the source material itself. The main characters feeling like side characters in their own story, etc.
Personally, I’ve been having the same problems, with the additional issue of just being so extremely tired of these anime adaptations of Sherlock Holmes and whatnot. Like… okay, sure, but… get some new characters, please? How about the Three Musketeers, or Robin Hood or, I don’t know, even the King Arthur characters, or Dracula lore… Greek mythology… (never mind all the characters in various Asian myths and folklores…)
An anime about Greek mythology would be pretty cool.
My main takeaway from episode 5 was holy crap they dropped a lot of new characters on us. Which seemed inevitable as the opening sequence featured a lot of characters that we didn’t see in the early episodes. I can see the concern that our leads are pushed a little bit too much to the background in these episodes. Although what drew me into this show was two things, first being the crazy premise about our heroine being just a head, and second the setting and possibility to bring in all these monsters, Sherlock Holmes, Lupin, etc… as characters, which these episodes certainly took big advantage of. If one is watching this solely for Aya and Tsugaru, I get the disappointment, but the other stuff still kept me engaged.
Zemo x2: Check out the 1980s movie Arion directed by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, should be right up your alley.