English Dub Review: Case File nº221: Kabukicho “The Dream of Fuyuto Kyokgoku, the Ace”

 

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Watson’s still helping Sherlock out, though hasn’t found time to tell him about his case, which apparently includes finding some sort of transmitter in a girl’s corpse and suddenly having assassins after him. But no time for that, it’s Moriarty’s birthday! And with that comes an unexpected guest, Pu Tanaka, who’s currently on the run from the police at that very moment!

Pu tells them that he got a call from his Uncle Cosmos that he had been diagnosed with cancer and wanted Pu to be the sole beneficiary in his will since he had no children. But a few drinks later, Pu awoke with a bloody knife in his hand, a fire surrounding them, and Cosmos lying dead on the floor. Though before he can explain more, Lestrade comes barging in to arrest him. Luckily for Pu, Mrs. Hudson has a thing for him, and so hires the detectives for an S-Rank-With-Bonus case. While Belmont and the Morstans are out, Kobayashi is in, Kyogoku gets involved since one of his favorite singers is connected, and of course, Sherlock is on things.

The singer, B-zo, gives his account since he was in the building at the time, saying he didn’t bother them since he thought it would be rude, and Pu is the only one on the security tapes. Next, they visit Pu’s mother, who has a lot of bills from loan sharks. Sherlock notes that it would be pretty stupid to kill a client right after being put into their will, as well as Pu’s mother’s debt being due to gambling. Kyogoku surmises that this was because of Cosmos inviting Pu and Gaia (Pu’s father) out for gambling, which then put them into deep debt, giving Pu and his mother motive to kill him. Sherlock is still unconvinced and tests B-zo on the murder weapon. When he guesses correctly without prompting, Sherlock uncovers that it was actually Gaia who was killed and Pu framed. Cosmos is actually still alive AND working with B-zo, who owed him money.

In the aftermath, Watson begins living with Sherlock and explaining his case. Elsewhere, Moriarty sits at a playground and viciously crushes a butterfly.

OUR TAKE

Huh, this case took a bit of thinking for me to really put together, but I’d say that’s a good sign. Last week’s episode felt a little predictable in how it set things up, with the only real surprises being in the sheer ridiculousness in what the scheme actually was. Here, things are actually sort of delving into the classic sort of mystery (as far as I’m aware), dealing with the death of someone in a will and the obvious culprit not actually being super obvious. There have been some obvious facts apparent from the start of both this and last week’s case, with the former being that the flower shop lady was being scammed by her assistant, while the latter is that Pu was definitely framed…but by who? My initial thoughts landed on B-zo since he was the only other noticeable character in things. The details with Gaia were made to seem unimportant, being buried under the matter with Pu and Cosmos, but instead being a good misdirect for the actual culprit.

We also seem to be getting a better sense of Kyogoku now that we’ve seen him in action a couple of times. It looks like he’s the one amongst the detectives that are more concerned with finding fame and kissing the right butts than finding the justice that he claims to want, as seen here and with how he handled the fake Jack the Ripper case. Now his deleting the victim’s phone conversation makes more sense. I had initially figured he was the killer himself, but really he wanted to slow Sherlock down instead of speeding up the investigation so that he could possibly get the win. And given the nature of some of these cases, it’s not hard to see why one might want to be the one and only to claim the prize money, but this sort of behavior looks like it will be biting Kyogoku for episodes to come.

And lastly, we should mention the subtle hints we’ve gotten to some of the bigger arcs going on over the course of the series. First, we finally get some insight as to why Watson needs Sherlock’s help, which I’m expecting to be the topic of the last few episodes. Next, we get some hintings at Moriarty’s sinister nature with how he crushed that butterfly (not sure what that points to, but DAMN WAS IT SINISTER), as well as a possibly dead sister? And Jack the Ripper’s still out there, meaning we’ll get to him sooner or later. Overall, I think this show is hitting its stride, meaning next week should be another fun tale.