English Dub Review: The Dinner Table Detective “The bride is behind locked doors”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Reiko attends her friend’s bridal shower, but the friend is attacked after the ceremony.

OUR TAKE

We’re at the second to last episode of the series and once again we are blessed with having a mystery that fits inside a single episode. To be clear, I’m not against multi part stories on principal, it’s just that this show’s specific way of having stories cover only one and a half episodes got annoying after awhile. Though as usual, this episode has the same problems as the rest, which I’m becoming a broken record about. At least we get a tiny bit of shake up to the formula…but not really anything worth praising. Kageyama’s still the one solving things, but maybe I’ve been seeing this whole format wrong. I’m not exactly great at looking for details in mystery shows or movies as they’re happening, so maybe we’re meant to be in Reiko’s perspective and look for clues as she’s going through things, while Kageyama is the answer sheet at the end of the test to see if we picked anything up. Although even if that is the case, there’s stuff it feels like they at best didn’t hint at very well, or at worst purposefully left out, including the culrpit, the old woman who previously worked with Reiko’s friend’s fiance, and her motivations.

As for other slight modifications to the usual episode format, we have a substitute for Kyoichiro (who is golfing with the police chief), who dresses exactly like him but is trying to make a name for himself. Also, since I tend to have captions on, it seems there was difference between the sub and dub, as the original Japanese dialogue apparently used spanish for catchphrases, while the dub just avoids that entirely. I suppose either one would have been equally bad, so no loss there. In addition, when Kageyama decides to do his usual rundown, they can’t go back to Reiko’s mansion and do it there like normal, so he just puts here in the kitchen of the house they’re in as if that’s the only way he can get information out. I guess he isn’t a detective if there isn’t a dinner table around. And it turns out Reiko’s friend’s family also already know that she’s a detective, which…is not out of the realm of possibility since their families are close, but it just makes me question why even have the secret identity at all, especially since that was kind of important last time. Regardless, we have one last episode to go, and we even get a bit of lead-in to it as Kyoichiro calls Reiko about a kid from this episode getting kidnapped. So, see you next week for the shocking finale of The Dinner Table Detective!