2015 mystery novel adaptation, 11 episodes:
AniDB, vt
"Everything Becomes F" or "The Perfect Insider". Shiki Magata killed
her parents when she was fourteen, but her mind was clearly disturbed,
and she's a brilliant programmer; for the fifteen years since then,
she's been confined to a few rooms within a research lab, with
extremely restricted communication with the outside world. And yet,
someone has managed to murder her.
While this is in theory a story of amateur detection, it's one of
those stories where detective and indeed criminal pause every so often
for a long philosophical aside. It's pretty slow-moving at the best of
times, and several of the "clues" are of the school where the data
could easily mean any of dozens of things – and the Great Detective
works out which one it is without showing his reasoning.
So as a mystery it's a bit of a washout, for me at least. There is one
very fine gimmick that doesn't entirely convince me, but one has to
admire its audacity; mostly the viewer will have to stand around
theorising, since as soon as there are enough data to draw a
conclusion, the characters draw it and talk about it.
There are three important characters through most of the episodes:
Saikawa Sōhei, a professor of architecture and the principal
detective; Nishinosono Moe, daughter of Sōhei's deceased mentor, and
the Watson figure (though unlike many Western mystery stories this
show isn't afraid to let the Watson be right sometimes); and Shiki
Magata herself, whose history is teased out as the episodes progress.
They're all both visually interesting and often well-written, though
in the end they don't do a great deal. Everyone else is very much
flatter.
It's all rather gimmicky and doesn't hold together in the face of a
bit of thought (ubj pbhyq Fuvxv'f nhag pnfhnyyl npprcg gung ure avrpr
unq n fvfgre fur'q arire urneq bs, jub whfg unccraf gb ghea hc ng gur
evtug zbzrag?); I watched this because it was recommended by people
who found Sakurako-san unconvincing, but in the end I'd have to
regard that as the superior show. Still, this isn't without enjoyment,
and it has some very fine character moments.
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