English Dub Review: Case File nº221: Kabukicho “Offside is the Best Side”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Ever since their mother died and their father left them, Mary and Lucy Morstan have been on their own, with Lucy taking care of most chores while Mary covers the cooking. But Mary is also really demanding with her costs, the most recent being that they need two MILLION yen to afford a cram school for her to go to college. To help this, Lucy asks for a loan from Nobuo Kaneko, with a deadline of two weeks to pay it back. On the way back from the loan office, she notices a sumo wrestler named Bunmaru about to jump off a building, apparently due to losing two million yen after getting drunk, so Lucy gives him her loan to help another wrestler she admires.

She re-ups the loan to four million, with the deadline still two weeks. She manages to make back the first two million through taking smaller cases for Mrs. Hudson but soon gets a visit at the club from the two wrestlers with a mystery of their own: specifically what happened to Benmaru’s two million that he lost. Sherlock, overhearing, does some investigating of his own and explains, in his own unique way, that it was actually Bunmaru’s boss, Omiyama, who drugged Bunmaru’s food and stole the money in order to rig his own next match. Except, he never actually used the money to rig it due to his honest heart, meaning none of it’s been spent. This is a relief to Lucy, who still thinks the world of him, but this means that she’ll have to work at a host club to pay off the other two million she knows.

But at least she’ll be able to send Mary to college!…except not really since Mary spent the money to buy a dress.

OUR TAKE
This week gives us some focus on the Morstan sisters, though not exactly in the way I would have hoped. It’s really more of a Lucy story than Mary’s, which is surprising to me. Mary seems like she’d be the one to give some focus first over the two since she and John are beginning to have some chemistry (and their numerous other versions throughout their characters being known for getting together), but instead, we’re giving Lucy that time. That’s not exactly a downside since Lucy proves to be an interesting character in her own right, just kind of surprising. In fact, once again we’re seeing a bit more priority on the personal struggles of our characters than the mystery at hand, which I have mixed feelings about. On one hand, it’s good that the show feels that its characters are worth giving time to peek into their daily lives in order for them to feel like they have life, but then we currently don’t seem to have much in the way of the forward momentum of the story. That Jack the Ripper plotline and Watson’s backstory seem to have dropped off the map, if only for now.

As for Lucy and Mary, it’s still a pretty interesting dynamic. The sisters are both clearly foils towards each other, with Mary being the ditzier and traditionally feminine of the two, while Lucy is more androgynous and tough with her exterior along with a major soft spot for helping Mary with whatever expensive thing she needs at the moment. Kind of makes you feel for her when Mary asks for something as expensive as cram school but ends up spending the cash on a dress, but then we likely weren’t going to be seeing her move onto some academic career in a show like this. A shame we didn’t get to see Mary’s investigatory skills or how the two got into being detectives in the first place. Regardless, I’m pretty sure this won’t be the last time either of them gets the spotlight since the show isn’t even halfway yet. We might only be getting twelve episodes for everything but I can appreciate every character getting an episode to themselves before things start to ramp up in intensity. In fact, next week seems to give focus to Kobayashi, who has been seen as the most comedic relief of all the detectives, so I’m looking forward to giving him some depth.