We kick off the summer season proper with Mattaku Saikin no Tantei to Kitara. It’s a show that was solidly in the “Modestly Interested” section of the preview. But I did have it as a potential deep sleeper, largely because it’s seinen. Also, it comes from the same mangaka as Senryuu Shoujo (Igarashi Masakuni), which is a series I quite liked in anime form. It’s also a Lidenfilms production and they’ve become a studio I pay attention to more than most, even if they’re not yet at the elite level of someplace like Bones or Production I.G..

While I knew Mattaku Saikin no Tantei no Kitara was a comedy, I was a bit taken back that it seems basically to be a gag series. That’s going to take you into hit-and-miss territory generally, but I didn’t find the humor working for me most of the time here. The premise is that a former teen great detective named Nagumo Keiichirou runs a detective agency. But he’s old (he’s not in anything but animanga terms), with a bad back and a hopeless disconnect with the modern world. A teenager named Mashiro shows up in response to an ad for assistant he posted sometime in the hazy past, when he was actually getting regular work.

The main problem I have here is that most of the jokes weren’t that funny. But also, Hanazawa Kana’s turn as Mashiro grated on me instantly and only got worse. This is my least favorite of her personas, I have to say, and I found both performance and character consistently annoying. The idea that Mashiro’s actually sort of competent and Keiichirou is mostly clueless has comic potential, but we didn’t see much of it realized here. And the whole thing with her taking down a yakuza group (the fact that it was conveniently called “The Crime Family” was my favorite gag in the episode) after being assigned to remove a hornet’s nest was pretty ridiculous.

Unless I hate something (I didn’t) I try not to make a call after one episode. It is the case though that comedies are easier to peg than dramas that way, because humor is such a personal thing. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that Mattaku Saikin no Tantei to Kitara could grown on me, and the comedy just click on – it does happen. But that’s rare and it’s a freakishly huge schedule, so in coverage terms I think it likely that this one is a one and done.