English Dub Review: Case File nº221: Kabukicho “Jack the Ripper/No More Nyan-Nyan”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

A crazed Fuyuto is quickly knocked out, saving Watson from certain death, though not from being surprised by Irene actually being alive. She, Sherlock, and Moriarty explain their plan, which included luring Jack the Ripper to the apartment, faking Irene’s death after the encounter at the theater, and using Watson’s suspicion of Moriarty as another lure. This obviously doesn’t sit well with Watson since he was worried he’d lose another loved one, though that anger gets cleared up by a rare apology from Sherlock. They also reveal Moriarty’s real name, James Moran, the son of the mayor and sister of the daughter who was killed by Jack and the person Watson operated on before he was forced to go into hiding.

Sherlock decides to make a big show at the bar of having Fuyuto be the face behind Jack the Ripper, which astonishes and confuses everyone, especially Maki. Though as he tells his Rakugo story, the details start to point to Fuyuto being drugged and driven to kill for love…pointing to Maki as the true culprit. And keeping in mind Jack’s MO of removing the wombs of his victims, Sherlock puts together that Maki, being a cross dresser, took the wombs of the woman she killed due to her lack of a womb herself. They corner her and get her to fess up, along with the true password for the drive: Moriarty. However, when she begins bragging about killing his sister, Moriarty’s rage gets the better of him and he kills her.

In the next episode, Moriarty is imprisoned for murdering Maki, though not before destroying the drive meaning Mayor Moran can’t be linked to the crimes committed by Jack, Irene goes back to be with her husband, and the detectives go looking for Mrs. Hudson’s lost cat. At the end, Watson and Sherlock make their partnership official.

OUR TAKE
Kinda feels like Episodes 10 and 11 should have paired together if Funimation could help it, because this second feels unsettlingly light hearted compared to the first. But yeah, because of the holiday break, we’ve got two Kabukicho episodes to cover this week. The first, Episode 11, gives us the dramatic conclusion of the Jack the Ripper case, while Episode 12 seems more like a breather after such a big shift in the status quo (both in universe and out). I’ll get my feelings about the latter out of the way now since Episode 11 is the analytically meaty one of the two. It’s a serviceable comedic episode that helps relax the mood the way it was designed to. I just feel like, if it were possible, that this could have been released on its own.

As for Episode 11, the finale of the case that has had a shadow over this show since it began…well, I’m afraid that it’s quite the mixed bag. It’s certainly exciting up the last second, with the identity of Jack the Ripper being one I most definitely didn’t expect (though I didn’t exactly have a list of suspects to keep track of anyway but still). Of the people we knew who could be Jack, Maki wasn’t within the realm of possibility for me, but the explanations they gave worked well enough. We also got the blanks filled in regarding Watson’s own case and the remaining mysteries regarding Moriarty’s past and the matter with the USB drive. Heck, it resolves just about every thread that the show started with, making me wonder what they could possibly do for the other half of the season. We finally got payoff for Moriarty’s dark side too, though now that he’s been imprisoned I wonder how they’ll make use of that in order for him to fulfill his role as Sherlock’s nemesis (if that is indeed the way he’s taken).

Though unfortunately, a lot of that seeming good is undone by the execution (so to speak) of Maki as a character, especially once her true identity is revealed. Anime, like most media actually, has never been the best at portraying trans characters in positive roles. I can certainly name some across the medium done competently enough, but more often than not characters who are written as trans are either portrayed for gags (usually a parody of fan-servicey moments) or as deranged killers who are driven to murder by their inability to be the gender they feel they are. The only notable treatment of a trans character in anime I’ve seen recently would be the corrected misgendering of Magne from My Hero Academia, and this was after she had already died. Kabukicho Sherlock already did the former with Mrs. Hudson and her girls, though this seemed pretty innocuous. Now we’ve met the latter in the case of Maki, once again taking from a very tired and VERY reductive well. And it’s not so much that trans characters can NEVER be serial killers, but it’s always a step backwards to write them being killers BECAUSE they’re trans. It’s just not a good move.