English Dub Review: The Detective is Already Dead “That Was Directed at One Year in the Future”

Overview:

Flashback to Kimi and Siesta on the beach. They are searching for a killer who is mimicking Jack the Ripper and Siesta intends to use Kimi as bait. The killer is named Cerberus and is a shapeshifting werewolf who needs hearts for some purpose. Hel, the leader of SPES kills Cerberus but abducts Kimi in the process.

Our Take:

I’m pretty sure I might have whiplash from this episode. Like can I please recap? We start with what seems to be a typical beach episode, which then turns into a murder mystery. Okay, it’s about a detective so I can see that. But then the murderer turns out to be a shape-shifting werewolf. Alright… given who THIS particular detective deals with on a regular basis MAYBE I can give it a pass. Then the leader of SPES shows up, her name is Hel and she kills Cerberus. Hold up?! Wasn’t he working for them?! I can take a lot but now we are throwing in someone with the name of a Norse god and she also is raising a giant monster. Plus, Siesta apparently has a mech.

I can give A LOT of things a pass but that many?? Sorry, this episode was too wild even for me. That’s not even taking into account the fact that we just went and flashbacked to all this with no warning and last episode everything wasn’t quite over yet. It just feels like it knows that Siesta is what people want but since she’s dead that kind of hamstrings them so we are just going to do a flashback arc more often than not. Just for the record, not a fan.

The animation has also taken a noticeable dip in quality. There was a scene that was very similar to the first episode fight scene and it wasn’t even close to as good as the first. It’s making me wonder if the budget was blown on the first episode or something. Either way not a very good look and also not very promising going forward.

The plot is going wacky really fast. I guess we will see what happens over the next couple of episodes but this feels like it’s trending downhill. I know the light novel is really popular in Japan and I’ve read the first volume and it was very good. So maybe something is just lost in the adaptation? I’m not sure but there is one positive. That is the voice acting of Austin Tindle. He really does well in this show and I really like this side of him, I hope he gets to do more characters like Kimizuka in the future.