English Dub Review: The Detective is Already Dead “Crimson Devil, Ice Queen”

 

Overview:

Siesta saves Kimi with a mech. Hel is defeated but gets away and Siesta hurts her leg in the process. Another case falls into Kimi’s lap. A girl named Alicia is sleeping in a cardboard box and has lost most of her memories.

Our Take:

The one thing this show has going for it is the banter between Siesta and Kimi. That’s due in no small part to the performances of Xanthe Huynh and Austin Tindle. They have really good chemistry and I love the relationship between the characters as a result. This is why the way the plot is unfolding is so bittersweet.

From a story standpoint, we know that Siesta dies and this lovely relationship will be forever fractured. There’s even a part where Kimi is saying that Siesta can’t die and leave him. Given what we know as the audience that was pretty heartbreaking. From a writing standpoint, it’s clear that the relationship with Kimi and Siesta is their focal point but they wrote themselves into a corner with her being dead already. It just feels jarring to be in a flashback so long and maybe the story just should have been structured a little differently.

My biggest problem with The Detective is Already Dead is missed opportunity. The pieces are there for something really good but they just aren’t coming together how they’re supposed to. It also doesn’t seem to be following the source very faithfully. I read the first volume of the light novel in preparation for this and I can tell you only like 5% of what has been shown was in that first volume. So either they’re skipping around a lot or they are doing their own thing. Which would be fine if it was good and also made sense.

The animation has all but fallen off at this point. I think they really did blow their budget on the first episode because that one had some amazing animation. You can tell a lot of corners were cut and frames get reused and there’s even a lot of still frame use. Just very disappointing with how strong it started. As I said the biggest problem with the show is missed opportunity. We will see what it can do in the last half but I am not expecting too much anymore. At the very least it’s fun and the characters are interesting so you can definitely do worse but that’s about it.