Woodpecker Detective's Office

When I hear the title of the anime using Detective Woodpecker, its making me think of Deadman Wonderland. Cause the protagonist's stage name was woodpecker. Its pretty cool that Kataoka-sensei gave all of the characters bird stage names, one of the aesthetics of the series. Although Oda also named some of the characters in One Piece after birds.

This anime looks like it could be interesting. Although Director Shinpei has directed some not so good anime, like Hanebado. Although I think that has more to do with the source material being not so good. So I think this anime might be his break out hit, maybe.
 
Ep 1

I apparently have a weakness for Meiji-era stories? Meiji-era stories that inexplicably drag in a whole bunch of historical figures for no reason other than to go "yes, here is our version of Mori Ogai"? And so I watched Meiji Tokyo Renka last year and now I'm watching this show and going "yes, please, more random cultural figures doing anything but what they actually did irl", no matter how it actually turns out.

I don't know if this one is gonna go the Renka route - I expect not, no one's gonna top a full song and dance routine about the wonders of electricity - but I'm not sure what to expect from it now. The flashbacks are interesting, the whole "here's what I remember from 10 years ago" framing, but depending on the cases, it could get boring really quick.

It sure has some pretty moments with the art, though, I'll give it that. And I like the softer blue of the lines in everything.
 
Episode 1:

I loved this first episode. I don't really "get" why he's suddenly decided to start a detective business other than he needed money and seems to have a knack for it. Or for at least being convincing enough to get people to believe him. It kind of seemed as if he was unhappy with himself as a poet or wanted more than just that or maybe just wanted to branch out and try new things so he CAN be better a poetry? Just vague feelings I was getting. I imagine we'll get more pieces to the puzzle of "why" as we go. For now though, this show is very pretty and the characters are good. Sometime is gives me similar vibes to that Rakugo anime that's whole name escapes me at this moment. That could just be the era and the outfits doing that though.

I think this could be a really good show this season! I hope! :D
 
Episode 2
Dang, they went in way harder on this mystery than I was expecting. 2nd episode in and one main character's already being arrested for murder? Possibly framed by his best friend as well? Good job show, now you've got my attention.

I really liked the way they framed this episode--starting off with Ishikawa's incomplete perspective of the night, and as he tries to fill in the gaps you can see his personal biases leak through (making the encounter a lot more sexual, assuming that she insulted him for his lack of experience), and then we get Kindaichi's version which completely blows up Ishikawa's theory but also presents its own array of assumptions.

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Like, it's pretty telling of Kindaichi's own insecurities that he really believes that his friend would call him pathetic and stupid behind his back.

I think both sides are holding back information, 'cause there's a lot of pieces here that don't quite fit the stories they're telling us. Kindaichi definitely saw something, that wonderfully-directed scene at the beginning with him anxiously downing some alcohol confirms that.

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But Ishikawa was also acting extremely suss that night.
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I just want to know what it was that made him make this expression when he overheard the two arguing. It totally caught me off guard, and at that point in the ep nothing had even happened yet.
Anyways, I'd say that was a huge step up from episode 1 in the writing department. Here's to hoping that this show doesn't get cancelled before we actually get to the end of this mystery.
 
Episode 2:

Shit, that prostitute keeps coughing. I think she might have had the 'Rona.

Imagine being such a virgin that it gets you accused of murder. I am a sucker for Rashamon style storytelling. This was neat how the two imaginative characters give their own interpretations of events and both seem plausible except for the murder part. I can imagine Kyousuke being so awkward that it embarrasses the prostitute leading to a confrontation. I can also imagine that Ishikawa being a nosy troll would lead to his pride being hurt, but neither of them are murderers. So let's see where the next episode takes us.

Unreliable narrators are a cool device. This was a much better and more clever episode than the first.
 
episode one was okay, I really enjoyed the second episode though! As others have said the style of storytelling was really unique and it’s pretty awesome seeing the unreliable narrator device being used in a visual medium, I’m not a big consumer of films or tv so I really don’t know how common it is outside of literature, where it’s one of my favourite things to explore! Really piqued my interest, and it’s a pretty show too. Nice colours and the soundtrack is pretty good so far.
 
Episode 3:

Well, that was pretty messed up. For an episode where it's nothing, but a bunch of nerds sitting around theorizing about what happened this was entertaining. Ishikawa is a dick though getting Kindaichi arrested for being dense. The whole scenario was never going to have a happy ending, but there could have been better communication on Ishikawa's part.

I do like that everyone in the show recognizes how gay Kindaichi is for Ishikawa.
 
Ep 2 & 3:

I ended up watching these two eps back to back purely by accident, but I kinda think it worked better that way bc while I ultimately liked how it was resolved (though it took everyone way too long to consider suicide considering I was sitting there going "has no one considered that maybe she killed herself?" from pretty much the beginning), it would've been a bit of a letdown if I'd had to wait a week just to watch the table of bros + random bystanders debate the facts of the case with increasingly ridiculous scenarios.

Still kinda wondering if I hallucinated the "she fell in love with Kindaichi but after hearing him talk to Ishikawa, she was worried he was actually incredibly gay" thing or not.

Tangentially, I like the whole ridiculous subgenre of "media with characters inspired by famous Japanese cultural figures" and every time a new one pops up, I ponder what a western version would look like. 1920s France?
 
I like this show a lot, but I can't help wondering why Kindaichi would just forgive Ishikawa for stitching him up over something that was pretty petty.
Even if he doesn't tell him the whole truth, the fact remains that either way Ishikawa blamed him for something he didn't do...
Not a big bug bear, just one of those things I ended up wondering about.
 
Ep. 3-
Well, I had that all wrong. I did consider the possibility of suicide, but thought was an odd way to do it. My money was on the dude Kindaichi saw, who I figured had some grudge against Otaki or something (which seemed improbable, but whatever) and had planned the murder- casing the place out and then using a similar appearance to Kindaichi to frame him for it. Anyway, tragic story all around. I'm glad it wasn't a murder, actually. Having it be a suicide made it more interesting and kind of derailed expectations.

However, Ishikawa, whatever his guilt in hindsight over what went down, is still an asshole. Yeah, Kindaichi annoys him, but none of this was his fault since he didn't know the whole story. Ishikawa, on the other hand did. Of course, we knew Ishikawa was a dick from episode one, where Kindaichi reminisces on his deceased friend and his description is anything but complimentary.

I gotta say, the fact that they spent most of this episode sitting around throwing about increasingly stupid scenarious was kind of dumb. Like, I was expecting Ishikawa's accusation to be a gambit to prove Kindaichi's innocence- since he had his buddies over at the time Kindaichi and him had it out and I figured there might be a reason for that. However, there's no such complexity here, just a lot of red herrings. After this farce, I think this crew should stick to being writers. This Woodpecker Detective Agency is off to a really unpromising start. The main duo accuses each other of murder and it takes an outsider to solve it. Only person who actually did any good work was the kid.

Also, I know people didn't know how tuberculosis spread back then, but Kindaichi's lucky he didn't get it from kissing Otaki. Also, it'd be fitting if Ishikawa dies of an STD- I'm sure he won't though, that's never a popular way to go in fiction. TB seems reasonable, or just his profligate lifestyle in general. He reminds me a lot of Osamu Dazai with his excesses.
 
Episode 3
I can't help but wonder, with that little "my dream came true" note Ishikawa found written in his book after the case, was her goal really to make love with Kindaichi like Ishikawa told us? Even though it didn't end well, maybe her true wish was to just see him again, to have her feelings acknowledged in some way. Either way, it makes me happy that she found some sense of emotional closure in the end.

Overall I thought this was a great episode--the mystery was on point, the setting up of the pieces was satisfying, I liked our new cast and seeing how Ishikawa interacts with them...

I also appreciated the way they addressed Ishikawa's dickishness. It annoys me to no end when a character's a dick but the show treats their behavior as normal, but here it's obvious that Ishikawa's actions are wrong, and we're supposed to see that he's wrong. His friends practically call him out on it. I feel like one thing to consider though is that while Ishikawa temporarily framing Kindaichi for murder is an asshole move, Kindaichi *genuinely* accusing Ishikawa of murder based on a single piece of evidence is also an asshole move. So I feel like Kindaichi's forgiveness comes from the perspective that he made some serious mistakes during this case too, and that at the end of the day Ishikawa did try to make things right. (Would Ishikawa have done so without his friends' prodding? It's possible. But I don't think we'll ever know for sure what he would've done if the case continued).
 
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Akishima said:
Also, I know people didn't know how tuberculosis spread back then, but Kindaichi's lucky he didn't get it from kissing Otaki. Also, it'd be fitting if Ishikawa dies of an STD- I'm sure he won't though, that's never a popular way to go in fiction. TB seems reasonable, or just his profligate lifestyle in general. He reminds me a lot of Osamu Dazai with his excesses.
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If we're rolling with history here, all the writers back then apparently died of two things and two things alone: suicide and TB. It got to the point, as I was poking through Wikipedia a few months ago, that I started to wonder if any Japanese writer working before 1960 actually died of old age. The real Ishikawa didn't die of an std but fiction is fiction.
 
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