If you’re keeping score at home, we only have two episodes of Shoushimin Series left. Not a lot of time for a statement of purpose, considering how little has actually happened for most of this show. We are getting plot-heavy now (in relative terms at least) but even if the series fully commits to that route (which I don’t think it will) I’m not sure how much it can really accomplish. Especially given we haven’t even really delved into the underlying mystery of why these two weirdos are living like this in the first place.
I don’t think there was any question that it was Kengo’s drug gang that had kidnapped Osanai-san. And given the revelations at the end of last week’s episode – and what we know of Yuki’s character – it seemed very likely she was the one who narced on the ringleader. The interesting thing here is watching Jougorou struggle to not enjoy himself at having a real case to solve. He knows it’s wrong – his sweets-wife has been abducted – but he just can’t help himself. In that light the fact that she seems to have orchestrated the whole thing as a sort of present to him is rather ironic.
For me at least the ship has long since sailed on Shoushimin Series being remotely realistic (in a way it never did with Hyouka, by the way). Most of these scenarios play out in rather silly fashion, but they can be entertaining as long as you don’t apply the realism standard. One thing that bugs me here is how Yuki sent the text (or LINE, or whatever it was) to Jougorou. Fine, she knew she was being kidnapped, but as far as I knew there was no way to send a scheduled text or LINE message on iPhone at least. As it turns out there is and I’m just old, though it does take about 20 steps.
Another rather silly detail is that in all of Gifu City Isawa happened to take Osanai to an abandoned gymnasium perfectly on a line between two of the ten places she’d marked on her sweetie map. The odds of that are, frankly, ludicrously small. Or perhaps Yuki is so many moves of 5-D chess ahead that she knew where Isawa-san would take her. In any event Jougorou had no trouble with her mystery event – once he got the text he found her in about 2 minutes. Next time she gets kidnapped she should make it a little harder to solve.
If indeed Osanai-san has staged (or orchestrated) the whole thing – as Jougorou flat-out accuses her of at the end – it seems like a pretty appalling risk. She did get roughed up a little, not to mention poor Kengo winds up going to the hospital in an ambulance, not that either of them can be bothered to accompany him. I want answers if I’m honest, and “Yuki orchestrated the whole thing to entertain Kobato-kun” is not an answer. Or if it is, then the real question is what sort of person is she that she would do something like that?
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Nadavu
September 2, 2024 at 9:33 pmShe’s a pretty horrible person, as I remember Jogoro himself pointed out. The kind of person who’d have to work pretty hard on becoming ordinary…
Here’s my theory. Yuki had some beef to settle with Isawa (I remember in the first episode there was a girl she hid away from, and also in the obon festival she couldn’t get her bike because a former classmate would see her, this might be all connected), and being the terribly calculated person that she is, she figured out that the worst thing she can do to her is get her arrested. And so she provoked Isawa by letting her know that she was the one to rat her out, because she knew (maybe from the other girls) that the MO is to kidnap to that specific gymnasium. So then made absolutely sure that Jogoro would be both able to find her and intrigued enough to do so even if the police were involved. You’d think she could just text him the exact address of where she was held, but then that wouldn’t quite pull our boy in. So she made it into a mystery, but one she was absolutely sure he could solve. She had, in fact, tested on specifically that in the previous episode. As for the unlikeliness of the gymnasium’s location being exactly 3/4 of the way between two pastries, I think it pretty much proves that she marked these locations for that specific reason, and that it was all planned out before summer vacation started.
The biggest mystery for me now is if this show is gonna stick by its guns and deliver a completely pointless finale to go along with the completely pointless story. I might even be somewhat disappointed if it chickens out last minute and tries to make something of itself. At any rate, it leveled up my hot cacao game considerably, so either way I won’t complain much.
Nicc
September 4, 2024 at 7:54 amWell, this one was solved pretty quickly, though I do agree that a big part of it was that Osanai probably set it up so that Kobato wouldn’t take long to do so. Yep, Kobato could barely contain his excitement to figure out this mystery. He calls in Doujima to help out and Osanai dropped a bunch of breadcrumbs for them to follow, including that text that you mentioned. She’s being held at an abandoned gym, where she seems to be enjoying toying with her kidnappers. That said, she was in danger of physical harm before Doujima and Kobato stormed in.
The fracas takes place offscreen, but the lads were able to hold off the girls until the police arrived. Doujima was injured enough that he’ll have to go to the hospital for medical treatment. Kobato looks like he was roughed up a bit, but is otherwise fine, same with Osanai. Heck, this just worked up an appetite for Osanai and so they decided to hit up place No. 2 on her list. It’s a place that serves some kind of peach dessert. Since we’ve brought up “Seinfeld” a few times already, let’s say that it’s a dessert made from Mackinaw peaches.
Then, they finally visit place No. 1 on her list. Right, even with a depreciated yen, that’s one expensive dessert. He does call her out for orchestrating the whole thing and it looks like at least part of the next episode will be about what happened from her perspective and how much of it went according to her script. Staging your own kidnapping is a perfectly normal thing to do, after all…
Guardian Enzo
September 4, 2024 at 2:47 pmMackinaws!
Simone
September 5, 2024 at 10:52 pmBold of you to assume that Osanai doesn’t simply have so many sweets shop mapped out that virtually any point in the city is expressible via an integer ratio on the segment connecting them.
(hm, that actually might nicely translate to some kind of interesting math problem about the smallest necessary number of shops needed to cover the entire city in that fashion, given a minimum acceptable resolution…)
Guardian Enzo
September 5, 2024 at 11:56 pmAh, but it wouldn’t matter if she did – they had to be on her 10 shop summer itinerary for it to work.