English Dub Review: Case File nº221: Kabukicho “Moriarty Savors”

 

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Moriarty lures Lucy away and has Albert knock her out, using her later as a hostage to get Mary to kill Watson, then gets in Moran’s car with him and Mycroft. He gets them to go back to the house, where he lures Moran and Carlyle, a governess, to give up the combination to a safe in Moran’s office. Meanwhile, Sherlock determines that the man, Moriarty killed, Godain, was Moran’s major contributor, basically wiping out any hope of him remaining mayor. He then gathers with the other detectives and calls Moriarty, who admits to being responsible for the whole thing, including Lucy’s disappearance. Sherlock sends Fuyuto and Michel after Lucy (who put trackers in their badges) while he talks to Moriarty over the phone.

Moriarty monologues about his odd childhood, when he knew there was something wrong with him, that being an empty heart. His mother and Alex treated him like a normal kid, but his father was always unsure of the boy. One night, he saw some fish in their koi pond get zapped by lightning, which dazzled him, so he decided to do the same thing…to his mother, but by throwing a plugged in hair dryer into her bath, killing her. Still, Alex didn’t blame him and stayed by his side up until the day she was killed by Jack the Ripper. This left another emptiness in him that he couldn’t place until he killed Jack. He didn’t hate Jack for taking his sister, it was for taking his PREY. Knowing this, he got to work being a killer in prison after killing Jack, brainwashing and forcing prisoners to kill themselves and each other, and the rest is history.

In the present, Moriarty congratulates Moran for figuring him out before he himself could, beats the combination out of him, retrieving his book of Jack’s murders, a gun, and Alex’s hairpin. He then kills Moran and Carlyle while taunting Sherlock that he’s the same way, with Watson doing what Alex used to do for him: try to fill his broken teapot. As Sherlock races to the house, Mary corners Watson and stabs him on Moriarty’s orders, not knowing that Fuyuto and Michel have already retrieved Lucy. When Sherlock arrives, he finds Moriarty gone and the house littered with dead bodies.

OUR TAKE

Things continue to escalate this week with Moriarty being in full villainous monologue mode. I checked back on a previous review of when he killed Jack the Ripper, wondering if there was anywhere left to take his character if they weren’t going to play up his trademark cruelty…which turns out they definitely were! In fact, it’s kind of a complete turn around from where things SEEMED to be going before. Where previously it seemed that Moriarty was being abused and targeted in prison and THAT would be what drove him over the edge, it now appears to be that he had already been driven there the moment he killed Jack the Ripper, then slowly building up and molding his skills to manipulate and compel the deaths of several prisoners and even people outside the prison. Although maybe I’m missing something but I still have no idea HOW he was able to brainwash people in the prison to kill themselves, let alone people outside it like that weirdo with the giant ring.

And I might have mentioned this before, but it seems like they’re going for a bit of “Batman vs Joker from The Dark Knight” dynamic going on here between Moriarty and Sherlock, with ol Morty thinking he and Sherlock are really just inhuman and intelligent monsters who should stop pretending they’re normal when they’re really just in this for the hunt, Moriarty for killing and Sherlock for mysteries. So he’s set up the last few cases as ways of proving that Sherlock doesn’t and shouldn’t care about innocent lives being lost in this, but just to focus on the game. But now that he sees Watson as Sherlock’s equivalent to what Alex did for him, now Watson has become a target and his death will be the “one bad day” Sherlock needs to go over the edge like Joker believes Batman would.

But I highly doubt that that last scene showing Watson in a pool of blood is really leading to his death, since this seems prime for cliffhanger bait and not much else. Plus we have four episodes left and we can’t do that with only half this iconic duo! But now I’m once again at a loss for where they can go or what they can do with nearly an hour and a half of material left. Looking forward to being surprised with this show as I have been a few times now! There’s quite a bit they can pack into four more episodes, I’d say.