English Dub Review: The Millionaire Detective – Balance:UNLIMITED “Money Burns a Hole in the Pocket”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Now with Daisuke, Haru, and Cho on the same page they investigate Daisuke’s parents and the laboratory they worked at while researching a material known as adollium. They keep Takei at the mansion since Daisuke can’t trust the police. Haru grabs the case files from the lockers and while studying through them he finds a photo of the family. Suzue realizes that HEUSC is erasing the information on Daisuke’s parents and goes to inform Daisuke. Meanwhile Cho grills Takei for more information while having a drink with him. The trio finds the building in the picture to be the Kambe family villa that’s being used by an affiliate company. Daisuke and Haru go to investigate it while Suzue supports them from the mansion.

After an explosive distraction with Suzue’s gadgets, Daisuke sneaks in as Haru runs from the guards. Meanwhile there’s an intruder in the Kambe mansion Suzue tries to hinder the intruder but the intruder is heading to Cho and Takei very quickly. Suzue urges them to escape if it gets bad while going to intercept the intruder when the controls go offline. She gets knocked unconscious not while Dasiuke gets to the laboratory where he goes through the camera to reveal that his father is alive. Afterwards we find out that Cho and Takei have died which Haru blames Daisuke for since they could have gone back to the mansion to save them.

Our Take:

The Millionaire Detective has been steadily building up its mystery to reach this point. Now that Daisuke and Cho are on the same page, their investigation speeds up a bit. From them finding a clue in an old family photo to the explosive distraction at the laboratory and then the murder of Cho and Takei. We get the identity of Sayuri Kambe’s killer, but in an unexpected way.

The first flashback is when Daisuke saw his mother being stabbed by his father and the rest of the flashbacks gives brief hints to the cause of her murder. It’s interesting to structure the episode like that since we get Daisuke’s perspective on it and how emotional he was a child. That first flashback drained out some of the suspense to the identity of Sayuri’s killer, but leaves a bit of mystery left and more importance on why she was killed because of the adollium. The fact that there’s so much importance on the adollium means that it could be a core part of something to Shigemaru Kambe.

Then there’s HEUSC erasing the information on Daisuke’s parents from Suzue which leads her to inform Daisuke. Now that the AI is actively covering important information, this has to lead Daisuke to a crossroads when it comes to using the AI especially with Suzue’s warning. He’s been reliant on it for a majority of the anime, but now with it’s repeated refusals Daisuke might have to try out a different method to get the results he needs to crack the case. On the other hand, we get the usual explosive action thanks to Suzue’s gadgets on Haru. Even though it was a brief scene, it still holds a familiar aspect when watching this anime.

Now the mentor figure getting killed by the villain is a classic death flag. Admittedly I expected to see the fight, but the anime kept their murderer’s identity a secret even though we know it is Shigemaru Kambe. It’s a secret that doesn’t even work as a secret given the information we’ve seen beforehand with Daisuke’s flashbacks to Suzue’s words when he unmasked himself. The fact that he can stroll in that casually into the mansion shows how much the family relies on technology. Additionally he doesn’t talk, the only time we’ve seen him talk is during the flashbacks which gives us a sense of what kind of man he is, and how easily his ambitions drive him especially with the research on the adollium. At any rate how they introduced the anime’s antagonist was a bit thrilling as it was slow with his entrance as the red light brightens the interrogation room.

Overall the episode was good as it can be now that Cho is dead with Takei. Hopefully it will force Haru to take more of a lead with Daisuke despite his anger to Daisuke. Haru’s been taking a backseat in all of this ever since Cho asked him for help in the earlier episode.