Alternative title(s): Ameku Takao’s Detective Karte, Ameku Takao no Suiri Karute
Novel Series Adaptation by Project No. 9
Streaming on Crunchyroll
Premise
Despite her eccentric personality and youthful appearance, Dr. Takao Ameku is a brilliant doctor and current Director of Investigative Pathology at Tenikai General Hospital. She solves cases that others can’t, whether she’s asked to or not.
Jel’s verdict: Anime Sherlock (like, specifically 2010 BBC Sherlock)
The first half of this double episode premiere actually had me excited and interested. Episode 1 ends with a wild mystery: a Yakuza thug is brought to the hospital bleeding blue blood and his leg is bitten off, presumably by a T-Rex according to our genius main character. In the trailer I had picked up possible hints of supernatural elements in this series, so I was thinking maybe we this would be a fun, absurd mystery opening up to a bigger plot line. Hell, Dr. Ameku even teams up with a guy that is, for legal purposes, definitely not Columbo. There’s no way they could drop the ball on this one, right?
I’ll avoid spoiling the details, but let’s just say the second episode was extremely disappointing. The explanation for the mystery is one of the dumbest, most non-sensical gotcha moments I’ve seen since BBC Sherlock. It’s that thing where the main character is a genius but the writer is not a genius, so all they can do to show their genius is come up with something the audience would never have enough information figure it out.
Some people enjoy this type of Anime Genius mystery show, but personally I find it to be one of the most frustrating and annoying genres to watch. It’s too bad because I kind of liked the characters and their chemistry and felt like there was potential here. So unless you really like this type of mystery series, I think it’s best to pass on it.
