English Dub Review: Pretty Boy Detective Club “The Pretty Boy Traveling with the Brocade Portrait:(Part 1)”

Overview

A huge oshie-hagoita (wooden paddle decorated with a brocade portrait) from an anonymous sender suddenly arrives at the art room that has been transformed into the Pretty Boy Detective Club headquarters. The titular Detective Club deduce that the sender was Kodaki Kawaike, a first-year student at Yubiwa Academy and Nagahiro’s young fiancee (From an arranged marriage both their parents forcibly put them on). Contrary to her youthful & beautiful looks, Kodaki is feared by the Detective Club members as a demon…



Our Take

While the episode this time around wasn’t the most action-oriented, it does a lot to set up the falling action and twists that viewers can expect as this new storyline continues. The weird part of this episode aside from Kodaki’s attitude would have to be how everyone just accepted Mayumi changing the gender roles with her clothing and throwing her ass into the male branch of Choir class. They became almost too accepting that it caused her to have to get singing lessons from the student council president. And that scene when she deepens her voice did give me a good laugh.

Kodaki the weird girl in the beginning who was calling Mayumi out who also brought this strange statue to the club room, sure that this girl is mysterious so far, especially with that last scene. Her motivations actually do make sense but the other mystery is why she was able to bring the whole damn thing in their room despite her small stature. She doesn’t really have friends to help her. No wonder why Nagahiro wants Mayumi to befriend her. Also, the way the art style changes with each person sharing a theory and possible scenarios give the episode a unique flavor of its own…

Overall, this episode does a lot of table-setting for the case at hand, and while the first half of this “whodunit” scenario is solved. there’s still plenty of mystery left to fill out an episode or two. I’m still curious to know how she even got the damn thing in their club room despite her small stature or if she had to hire someone to do it. Hopefully “part 2” answers that…