The Detective is Already Dead... except she isn't!?
The Detective is Already Dead was one of the most highly anticipated shows of 2021 which did not live up to anyone's expectations. The quirky title and the early teaser piqued my interest from the very beginning. I had been starving for a good detective/mystery anime for a while and this seemed to deliver everything I wanted across the board. However, I remember thinking that the character designs were oddly cliched and the illustrations strangely resembled a harem anime amongst what seemed to be some pretty exciting and refreshing new concepts. I should have noticed those massive red flags.
The Detective is Already Dead is just another addition to the ever-growing pile of terrible light novel adaptations.
The animation is mediocre at best, with lifeless backgrounds and settings with minimal details. Kimizuka's dry humour (which is actually pretty funny) makes the episodes somewhat tolerable. The show has annoying characters with character designs we have all seen before and is full of many, many problems but my biggest problem with this show is the story (the novel handles some of the issues I'm about to bring up but the anime just fails to do so).
With a title like The Detective is Already Dead, I was expecting two things - good mystery writing and A DEAD DETECTIVE. The first episode already failed to deliver one of those. We get introduced to Kimizuka, see the beginning of his and Siesta's relationship as they solve a mystery, witness Siesta's superior intelligence and enjoy a well-animated scene during the fight on the aeroplane against Bat. However, the mystery was boring. Good mystery writing gives the viewer just enough clues to try and figure out the conclusion to a compelling problem without making it too easy. The viewer just watches and tries to process new information as Siesta explains the conclusion. AND THEN IT BECOMES A SCI-FI SHOW!? I was already tempted to drop the show as soon as we learned about the androids and SPES.
The second episode introduces Nagisa (this is where the novel begins, which makes so much more sense from a narrative standpoint) who approaches Kimizuka with the dumbest mystery to date in all of fiction. The conclusion, once again, is given to us without much foreshadowing. The next few episodes are just... terrible. They introduce the obligatory light novel idol loli, Saikawa. This time around we are given many clues that purposely lead nowhere, only for us to be given the solution without any foreshadowing again. At the end of the episode, we see a small glimpse of the new character Char just so that she can be used in the upcoming flashbacks. Nagisa rarely contributes to the investigation. Each of the solutions until now required Bat's assistance, leading me to believe that Kimizuka is completely useless without superpowers. At this point, however, the show was just a badly written mystery story that I didn't particularly care for. The next few episodes completely ruined the show for me.
The show decides to show us Kimizuka and Siesta's adventures... even though the show is called The Detective is Already Dead.
These episodes are comprised of nonsense mysteries with unsatisfying conclusions that are centred around the new antagonist Hel... until she's completely forgotten and replaced by a different loli, Alicia. However, Alicia is then revealed to be Hel amidst horrible attempts at romance between Kimizuka and Siesta. We then learn the members of SPES are actually aliens (I was just done by this point lol). Siesta dies and her heart is taken by Hel. The twist that Nagisa was another of Hel's personalities was surprising and tied up a few loose ends but it was definitely not satisfying nor was it worth the garbage exposition dump I was forced to sit through week after week. It was also confusing because (unlike the novel) the anime never made it clear that Kimizuka doesn't remember how Siesta died.
The last few episodes introduced Saikawa as the new crutch for Kimizuka to lean on instead of Bat. We meet Char and are expected to care for her despite her being the most poorly-written character with no development at all. The final mystery is just terrible. I couldn't care less for Chameleon and his plans. Then episode 11 really threw me for a loop.
Siesta manages to switch consciousnesses with Nagisa... even though the show is called The Detective is Already Dead.
The final episode was befitting of a show such as this. An unsatisfying, random ending just like each of the mysteries until now. I am definitely NOT looking forward to any future instalments of this series that try to appeal to the mystery-media demographic, only to throw that all away to pander to unoriginal, formulaic harem fans with a few random twists sprinkled in to pretend it is still a detective story. 40/100 for effort.