English Dub Review: The Dinner Table Detective “What is it that you have lost?”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Reiko, Kageyama, and the police search desperately for the kidnapped Miyuki.

OUR TAKE

We have finally arrived at the end of The Dinner Table Detective, and it seems they saved the best episode for last! Maybe it’s because this episode involves an active kidnapping and thus more action and faster pacing, or because Kageyama is involved alongside Reiko this time, or maybe even because Reiko ACTUALLY GETS TO FIGURE OUT THE MYSTERY FOR GODDAMN ONCE, but I ended up kinda sorta enjoying aspects of this finale. It was almost as if I could see a better glimpse at what this series could be if it had really dug into what few parts of it actually worked. Unfortunately, it’s a bit too little too late, since the eleven episodes proceeding it were disposable nothingburgers with absolutely atrocious English dubbing, but I guess it’s good to know that this show COULD apply itself just under the bare minimum if it really bothered to try for a few minutes at a time. I mean, I’m sorry for getting so negative here, but as much as I would like to focus on the positives here for once, I’m really just exasperated that things only got going towards the end, and even then, it wasn’t anything of acceptable quality. And frankly, I’m just glad it’s done and over with.

But while I’m here, there are some tiny things worth acknowledging while we work towards the minimum word count. This and the last two episodes were all being single mystery episodes, as well as each involving someone with a rather close connection to Reiko. In the tenth episode, the murder involved a family close to hers, though mainly through her parents. In the eleventh episode, the bride who was attacked was someone Reiko saw as a little sister (and whose family was aware of her moonlighting as a detective despite the other family not knowing that for some reason). And lastly, in this twelfth episode finale, the kidnapped girl is also a member of the family from the eleventh episode, as well as someone who called Reiko “auntie”, much to her chagrin. You may have thought that this may be leading to some reveal that Reiko was being targeted through the people around her, but no such luck on that. Anyway, that wraps up the individual episode reviews and leaves us to go over the whole season overall in a Season Review. So see you all next week as I pass the final verdict on The Dinner Table Detective.