Content Warning: Gore
What’s it about? Louis Hartmann’s dad has been murdered, and they took all his blood. Was it vampires? Louis has doubts–but he teams up with a group of suspiciously supernatural-looking local detectives to figure it out.
In the best premieres, the first lines and opening shots are often a statement of purpose for the show as a whole. Bakemonogatari opens with a panty shot that calls attention to its own male gaze. Revolutionary Girl Utena opens with a girl being teased that “her boyfriend” has left her behind–who turns out to be another girl. Journal with Witch opens with a girl singing a song making fun of her new guardian, then apologizing for singing too loudly and annoyingly. Because of this, I usually pay very close attention to the first lines of any premiere to see if I can pick up on what a show is thematically putting down.
Case Book of Arne opens with the episode’s protagonist saying, “In this world, there are two types of people: Those who love comics, and those that don’t. I’m the former.” This statement has absolutely nothing to do with any of the themes of the show. This tells us nothing relevant about the protagonist. Comics never come up again.
This is, suffice to say, not one of the best premieres.
I’m sad to say that Case Files of Arne is yet another entry in the list of “mystery shows by somebody who has no idea how mystery fiction works.” Maybe it’s the pernicious influence of Sherlock. Who knows. But the most basic building blocks of mystery writing–revealing suspects’ opportunity and motivation through meaningful dialogue and subtle clues–seems to have become a lost art. We’ve barely met the suspect who turns out to be the killer for more than five seconds before the big reveal, and their motivations are completely asinine. “I’m just that insane” rarely, if ever, makes for compelling motivation to kill in a mystery show.
The light-hearted tone of the deliberation around the evidence felt strange, like we were in the middle of one of the Bakarina Council meetings of the director of Arne’s other major work, My Next Life as a Villainess. Like, sir, people are dying. The actual proceedings here left me longing for the amusing character writing of Villainess, however, as Arne, Lynn, and most of all Louis were just boring to listen to.
I did not like this premiere. I will be writing a bit more though about why after a spoiler warning for the ending. You’ve been warned.
Spoilers: For the ending of the premiere
Okay, are the people who don’t want to be spoiled gone? Good. The ending was completely baffling. Louis is dead? Not that I care much, but spending the entire premiere in the head of a character you’re going to kill off and making it all goofy shenanigans just feels utterly bizarre. I had to rewatch the ending multiple times just to shake my disbelief that they had killed him–and then looked up in the Wikipedia page that he is allegedly an anime original character, and this whole episode may have just been anime-only filler. Whoops. I wonder if the writing will change significantly next week once the manga content actually begins. I will not be around to find out.
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