Chūnibyō (中二病; lit.'middle-school second-year syndrome')

is a Japanese colloquial term typically used to describe adolescents with delusions of grandeur.

Protagonist Kobato Jougorou is a character with a serious case of Chunibyou, he believes he is high school detective Kudou Shinichi, in fact he finds his incredible intelligence to be an unbearable burden that he instead wants to be normal, just a regular guy, a Shoushimin. The author won't let him though, so he is constantly thrown into random murder cases, only without the murder, that he is forced to shower the world with his overwhelming intellect and solve these cases without moving a muscle.

I am not joking here, the show pretends to be understated and humble, it is anything but. It is pretentious, stupid, and completely terrible.

To start us off I will present you,

Spiced muffin mystery.

The newspaper club prepared 4 muffins one of which is spiced with hot sauce, each member is to eat one and whoever gets the spiced muffin is to write the next article. No one got the spiced muffin.

We go on the long roundabout journey checking if someone lied, checking if they really spiced it, checking if someone has a taste bud disability even though spiciness is not a taste and so you can't have a disability for it, you'd think our super smart MC would know this!!!

I digress, you wanna know what happened to the spiced muffin? They didn't close the door, some random student passed by and stole it, that's what happened.

You spent this whole episode watching this murder mystery, getting to know 4 new characters, wondering who'd done it only to find out, none of them did. The show misdirect you the audience with false information that there were 4 muffins but actually there were 5 so there's zero chance you could've been able to figure this out before the MC. To be fair the culprit isn't a no name character it's the female lead Osanai-san and she showed up for 5 seconds at the beginning of the episode. However because she is the female lead, it is normal for her to show up, and you wouldn't think that counts her as being one of the suspects.

This show is full of garbage "detective stories" like this where you can't figure out the culprit not because you're not smart enough but because you've been poisoned with false information from the very beginning. There's more bullshit though, how about the author just makes blatant math mistakes while trying to frame the MC as being super smart? That's as pretentious as it goes, if you're gonna try to incorporate some smart math problem in a show you really better make triple sure you did the math right?

Driver's license mystery,

Kobato attempts to deduce Sakagami's motivation for getting a driver's license by making 3 observations on Sakagami:

1. the school is far when there is a closer one available
2. Sakagami is barely old enough to get a driver's license
3. Sakagami can’t afford to skip even one day of driving school

he assigns to each of these, a probability that Sakagami is NOT doing anything fishy with the driver's license.

Then he simply multiplies the probabilities together and conclude that, there is only an 8% chance Sakagami is NOT doing something fishy.

This is mathematically just outright plain wrong, in fact it's not even close to being correct, clearly Kobatou or I should say the author, is completely ignorant of the field of statistics. The obvious proof is if you inverse the logic and numbers, you get 8.3% IS doing something fishy, and 7.7+8.3 does not equal 100%.

This is so obviously wrong just from a common sense perspective because observation 2 is not the same as the other conditions. The 17% comes from a simple calculation that at this time of year about 17% of the students in grade 9 would be 16 years old which is the minimum to get a driver's license. So knowing this what we really should be saying is there's an 83% chance Sakagami isn't getting a driver's license, right? How can you compound this probability with observations based on the assumption that he is getting a driver's license?

Kobato also just hand-waves his insane logical jump from "Sakagami is in a hurry to get a driver's license" to "Sakagami is getting a driver's license FOR CRIME". There's not even any probabilities involved, he's just like hey if he's in a hurry that means he's a criminal, case closed. I'm sorry? Is it not possible maybe he's getting a scooter for his 16th birthday so he's just excited to get a license ASAP? Maybe the driving school close to him is full? Maybe it's more expensive? Nope Kobato doesn't even consider any of these much more reasonable hypothesizes, he just laser nails onto CRIME, as if he already know the answer, because of course he does, I mean the author does.

If you're still not convinced of the math I'm going to give you a very real example, if you see someone at the airport with a Chinese passport, there is 20% chance their net worth is over $1M, if you see someone with a US passport, there is 30% chance their net worth is over $1M. What is the probability that someone with BOTH a US and Chinese passport has a net worth over $1M? If you do the math like Mr.Kobato you'd conclude the probability is 6% and you'd be dead wrong. the realistic answer is almost 100%, because dual passport is technically illegal for Chinese citizens so they must have very special political connections. Independent observations cannot simply be combined together because you do not know how those conditions themselves intersect with each other.

In the end it turns out Kobato's friend could've just made a call and found out Sakagami's age which is 15, so why didn't he just do this right away from the beginning? Cuz if you knew he was 15 the normal line of reasoning would be, he was never headed for a driving school. Kobato clearly starts his reasoning from the conclusion rather than from the actual evidence available to him.

Anyone want one more? Let's go for one more:

Hot Chocolate Mystery

How do you make 3 cups of hot chocolate, which is hot milk plus coca powder, without the use of any additional containers? In order to make sure the coca powder is completely dissolved it is necessary to first pour in barely enough milk for mixing, before filling the rest of the cup. The milk is cold from the fridge so it needs to be heated somehow, in a container.

Since each cup needs another cup to hold the rest of the milk used to fill the cup, this would imply we need 4 cups but there's only 3. For this mystery I think I do have a solution before it was revealed. You simply heat up one cup in the microwave, split it between the 3 cups and add coca powder to make your original mix. Then you fill the cups with cold milk, stick them in the microwave again to heat up. It satisfies all the conditions presented in the show, including the convenience aspect, I would totally do this myself.

However that's not the actual solution, the real solution is,

the milk was never cold.

That's right I fooled you once again! Oh my god how am I just so smart!? You stick the entire milk carton into the microwave to heat up all the milk!

Once again this is another case of the misinformation, in fact they show you the MC holding the milk carton from the fridge, implying it is cold. It's fake news, that scene is supposed to be imaginary all along. He never checked the milk which is in reality still hot in the fridge!

Excuse me but WHO THE FUCK would do it this way? That warm milk will take forever to cool down in the fridge and would go bad! Besides I just measured my microwave there's no way to fit a 1L milk carton which would be 24CM+ tall! I even checked some large microwaves online they top out at 22CM you simply can't fit the milk carton in there so who would anyone ever guess the answer?

In the show they do give the kitchen this HUGE oversized like pizza oven style microwave with a curved dome top so it would just barely fit the whole milk carton. My assumption is the animation team was like fuck me where do we find a microwave big enough for this shit so they're just frantically looking for any references on the internet. I looked everywhere and the only microwaves tall enough to fit a whole milk carton I found was a $5000 commercial unit.

I can't stand pretentious shows, and pretentious people. Kobato says he wants to be normal guy but in reality he can't wait to be the Dark Flame Master, I mean Kudou Shinichi so he can show off what he thinks is vast intellect I would suggest people to do the OPPOSITE of what this show advertises for, don't ever think you are too smart, too talented to mingle with others, don't ever think you have some unique ability nobody else can hope to match, you do not. Because even if you did, thinking that way will have you quickly left in the dust of other people who don't think this way. You would instead, ALWAYS act as if you are the least talented person, do more preparation, more practice, more dedication than anyone else, and only then, if you are actually talented, you might make it into something.

/anime/174788
This is not even remotely the same kind of show but this is how a true master sees talent. When Fujino became frustrated that Kyomoto was a much better artist, we never discover who was more talented, nobody ever mentions that, all you see is Kyomoto's hallway absolutely piled with practice books. Humbleness is the #1 talent anyone could hope to have, the true master is too busy practicing they don't have time to find excuses to show off what they can do.

#BONUS STAGE

Spoiler, click to view

So I did end up watching all of it and yes in the end they do admit they’ve been asking for trouble by playing detective. This does not however absolve the show of the problems I’ve raised because those problems don’t exist in-universe, Kobato didn’t do the math wrong in-universe, the author thought that’s exactly how it should’ve been done but it isn’t. The logic here in-universe is still, damn my IQ is just so high I can’t help but dunk these dumb gangster kids. Which is stupid, embarrassing and 120% Chuunibyou for someone who can’t do Bayes' theorem.

There's also the "Osaka planned all of it" part which is slightly interesting but still full of holes. Can Osanai really implicate the gangster girls for asking ransom when there is no evidence of them making the call? Considering what all the girls might say to the police? And if they can't be found guilty wouldn't the police suspect who's really making the ransom calls? I still don't understand how Osanai was able to send that message, did the gangster girls know she sent it and just didn't stop her because it made no sense? Are they that stupid? Or if Osanai could send it without being discovered why did it have to be in code? Does the author not know that phones can be tracked via cell towers and given cell tower density in urban areas, they can be tracked to specific buildings and there was never any need to drag Kobato along in this plan?

Her entire plan basically revolves around her being able to send that text, how did she know that would be possible? Is this really something you want to bet your own life on? I think if it were me I'd give my phone to the other girl and tell her to drop it off in the van in silent mode. You'd still risk your life on some you can't entirely trust but it's so much more reliable than trying to send a message while being taken hostage. But then that's just the reality of getting taken hostage, you aren't in control regardless of how smart you think you are, the gangster girls can still gut you in an instant and all your planning would have been for nothing.