Totomaru Isshiki ("Toto") is an officer at Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Station. He's one of those people who work overtime earnestly and want to do their work so that others can sleep peacefully instead of being afraid of, like, serial killers or something. One day Toto needs the best help he can get so he's instructed to go meet a once known ultimate prodigy student at detective school 'Blue', Ron Kamonohashi himself. Toto and Ron build the detective duo of this series (most series have a detective duo so that the mc's personalities bounce off each other to make it more interesting). In this case, Ron is actually not allowed to do any detective work due to a certain incident in the past and especially due to a certain power he has: hypnotism-like power. Every time a killer gets exposed, Ron immediately always hypnotizes them and orders them to kill themselves. This is basically the 'gimmick' of this series.
So, instead of Ron getting to expose the culprits, he does most of the detective work in the backgrounds and pieces things together, while the person to expose the perps is Toto. The first chapter even ends in Ron telling Toto that 'you will now become a great detective' (due to Ron solving the crimes but Toto getting all the credit). This is just like how in Conan, where the mc is the true mind behind sleeping kogoro. There's a lot of WSJ-type comedy in this series (shouting, especially) that is often even used as a sleight of hand to skip explanations, which I believe is the worst aspect of the comedy especially early on.
Case 1 - The Case of Metropolitan Serial Drownings (chapter 1) is the kickstart to this series, nothing will blow your mind about it and the reader can't solve anything here, but the great artwork is noticeable.
Case 2 - The Case of the Locked Room Piggy Bank Theft (chapter 2) is the worst case in the series so far, makes no sense how they get the perp. The idea of connecting two separate stories to one is always welcome, but this was bad.
Case 3 - The Case of the Benizome Hot Springs Murder (chapter 3 - 4). This case has the hot springs aesthetic and atmosphere to it which is always neat, and has some hints of decent foreshadowing, the main trick is basic but decent.
Case 4 - The Case of the Hand Collector Killer (chapter 5 - 6). Victims are missing hands. The case focuses on using some psychology here, and the setting is a bit original (a truck). So has some ideas worth noting.
Case 5 - The Case of the Live Broadcast Murder (chapter 7 - 8). ESP vs. Brain Surgeon case, sorta. There's time lag trick used here which are always cool. Bit more foreshadowing for the murder weapon was needed but good quick case.
Case 6 - The Case of the Island Observatory Murder (chapter 9 - 13). 5 chp case, easily the best one if you want a proper murder mystery story here. This moves through all the familiar loops but it does everything really well. Two murders on an isolated island with an observatory setting (!). The island has a dark past and is of course used as motive here etc. This case has personal weight to our main character, and it also ties itself into the overarching story of why Ron was expelled from the detective academy.
Case 7 - The Case of the Poisoned Latté (chapter 14-) - pacing here feels off, there's literally only situation where the poison could've been dropped and I'm not sure why the perp put it over there. They just say the suspects were sitting at a table but it's not shown, this legitimately feels like we're missing pages. Unless there's a twist to at least make the ending of this case better this is kind of disappointing. Also there's obviously something off about the reporter so I guess that will be the reveal of next chapter as the case itself is disappointing.
It's actually surprising how little about this series is talked anywhere as it's a decent detective manga with great art. It might be the too familiar ideas for detective series along with the often mediocre comedy that turn people away. The panel framing is very nice and I think it's Amano's best effort to date over the years. Sad to say, the series might get axed if the sales don't pick up.
I think one big problem the series has popularity wise is that it clearly borrows a lot from Conan. It's another urban detective fiction series set in Japan, with same police departments and stuff. The short- and long-story settings and placements along with the length of those is pretty much identical (normal stories in an apartment or city are shorter and the ones when you go to an isolated island are longer), meaning that it uses the same tricks to try to make the cases more varied. The series would most likely have been accepted better from get-go had it been more like Hercule Poirot, who adventures around the world in wide variety of settings. Anyway, the series can still get bigger if Amano manages to garner more readers in the next 3-4 months.
