天下制覇

Now watch them spend half the episode coming to the same conclusion.

Impressions:

It’s really hard to take a detective/mystery show seriously while there’s a guy with shifty eyes cackling like a madman to himself in the corner. Then again, this is a Shonen Jump adaptation and it doesn’t pay to overestimate the deductive powers of your audience.

I’m not really certain what to think here, because for a mystery show, the mystery should be the meat and drink… and as far as this episode went… the mystery kind of sucked ass. Many other parts of it were pretty decent, though there was some hilariously awful facial art in the background a couple times. Nougami’s relationship with Yako was kind of amusing, but I can’t imagine that staying amusing for more than an episode or two since it’s totally one sided and she’s just a puppet to his whim.

Aside from the occasional ugly stuff going on in the background, production values were fine. Nougami’s arm transforming into a blade was probably the best animated thing in the episode, including his fight with uberchef, so I kind of question why the decision was made to animate that instead of actual action… but whatever. The whole problem is that it’s hard to judge everything else going on when the core plot for the episode was simply painful.

If they can put together mysteries a little bit deeper and more entertaining than “the evil guy laughing in the corner with the shifty eyes” is the villain, this could be a pretty decent show. As far as the first episode goes though, it’s about as shallow as a puddle and it’s absolutely tortuous to watch characters struggle for 10 minutes to reach a conclusion that’s painfully obvious to the audience. Given the Shonen Jump origin, I wouldn’t hold too much hope for it getting all that much better though. It probably all comes down to whether or not you like Nougami’s character enough to look past the mysteries that even Bugs Meany would be able to solve or not.

No summaries for the first episodes. I write as I watch, and I don’t know if I’ll care about a show until after the first episode.

Nogami Neuro OP