Yuukoku no Moriarty – 05

It’s no secret that I was a bit anxious about Yuukoku no Moriarty’s long-term prospects after Episode 4.  It was pretty much a rehash of the premiere – though I suppose since that was anime-original that’s not totally out of line.  That anxiety got all the deeper after I found out there was a lot of important context missing from the adaptation of last week’s story – the kind of stuff that might have elevated it above the simplistic revenge porn storyline it ended up being.  Choices like that worry you, because they don’t usually happen in a vacuum.

I wouldn’t say this week’s outing allayed those concerns, but it was certainly better.  The execution was stronger and the overall premise was more interesting, and that’s all good.  But it was still more or less the same formula – murder the rich scoundrel who’s profiting off the class system.  One of the victims was himself an aristocrat this week, which at least changed up the dynamic a bit.  But ultimately this was a premise we’ve already seen twice, just a snappier version of last week’s take on it.

The victimized aristocrat in question is Lucian, a young playboy who’s one of James’ students at the University of Durham.  His friend and roommate Tate is covering for him, but James involves himself anyway when the lad doesn’t show up for class three days in a row.  If we assume James had no idea there was a potential case here and was just being a busybody, he has one hell of a radar for trouble.  I wouldn’t think a kid blowing off college classes was that much more unusual in the Victorian age, so think is asking a fair bit of coincidence.

The school administrator, Dudley Bale, tries to talk James out of interfering, but of course that only piques his interest further.  It turns out Lucian was in love with a barmaid named Frida, who jumped into the river and drowned for no good reason.  The trail leads back to a mysterious “fixer” who broke up Frida and Lucian, and of course that fixer turns out to be Bale.  His racket is luring young nobles into the opium dens he runs on the side, getting them into trouble, and then collecting hush money to cover it up.

From here you know where it’s going and how it’s going to end, since the rest of the episode is on repeat structurally.  The interesting additions are the arrival of two Doyle characters – Colonel Sebastian Moran and Fred Porlock.  Moran was a Holmes villain, a decorated army sharpshooter gone bad, and Warnock a Moriarty associate who specialized in information gathering.  When Moriarty asked Louis to make the call to London I initially thought he was calling in Holmes and Watson – which may have been exactly the intended reaction – but no, not yet, anyway.

For me, Holmes and Watson can’t arrive too soon.  Everything here was just fine, but Yuukoku no Moriarty’s formula could already use some shaking up.  Feeling a little stale after only five episodes isn’t a great sign, but the fact is that the series is only tapping into a tiny fraction of the potential in its basic premise.  Whether that’s a good thing (loads of upside to be mined) or a bad one (is it good enough to tap into it?) depends on your outlook I suppose.

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6 comments

  1. This week is surely better than last week, but I’m still anxious because the anime waters down Moriarty’s anger and hate towards the nobles. In the manga, Moriarty has a disdain towards the students of the university because they were living in a rather decadent way – his 100x times anger was at the noble students, not at Tate for hiding the fact about Lucian. His problem with Dudley was not only about killing Frida and separating the lovers, and not about him blackmailing the noblemen. He’s more angry at the fact that Dudley let the noble sons do whatever they want and get away with their sins. Anyway, Holmes will appear next week, I hope somehow his appearance will kick this show back to the solid path it created with eps 1-3.

  2. z

    Pacing-wise, the anime’s generally covered a rate of 1 manga chapter for 1 episode (except Eps 2-3 which covered manga Chp 1, and Ep 1’s anime original status).

    From what I recall the manga’s rather episodic in nature, although the parts with Sherlock Holmes adds an overarching plot thread to the story.

  3. I don’t have a problem with it being episodic. My issue is that so far it’s thematically repetitive. And it isn’t really venturing into subversive politics at all, just vigilantism. That’s what I hope changes.

  4. K

    So far all the episodes we’ve seen follow only the first manga volume.

    There is no other Volumes out in English so I am hoping that was just a set up to show us how Moriaty thinks and conducts his business until he gets a real adversary (Sherlock and Watson) . Next week will definitely be a real test to see how the series is going to develop from here

  5. G

    Just wanted to point out that Fred surname is actually Porlock.

  6. Yeah, duly noted. That has to be a Freudian slip but I can’t figure out why.

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