Hello folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re diving back into the ominous undertones of Shoushimin Series, wherein Jogoro and Osanai have just cracked their first major case, and through doing so embraced more than a little of their initial, antisocial identities. In order to avenge Osanai’s bike and bring the delinquent Sakagami to justice, Jogoro employed his sharp fox nose once more, while Osanai “tore out his throat” by letting him take the fall for his associates’ identity fraud racket. Yet in spite of their success, cracking the case was not a happy occasion for our leads – it was a relapse, an indulgence in self-defeating passions that they have pledged time and again to abandon.
I can certainly understand their positions. You see characters like Jogoro and Osanai all the time in fiction and real life alike, and they don’t generally seem to be happy, fulfilled, and productively integrated into their communities. The instincts that make one a top detective or ruthless bloodhound are isolating, frictious, and perpetually unfulfilling; you end up pushing others away in your unerring, pragmatic dedication to your cause, and even successfully resolving one mystery only leaves you hungry and empty, eager for the next puzzle to distract you from your sprawling list of regrets.
Of course, many are willing to make that bargain, or find some peaceful balance on its margins. The question is, can indulging your obsession actually make you happy? Though Shoushimin’s subtitle references “becoming normal,” the more pertinent question is likely “becoming happy” – and our leads’ conflation of the two could well be the source of their misery. Jogoro and Osanai believe their passions will always isolate them, and they have ample evidence to support that conclusion. But given the anxious identity-stressing tempests of adolescence, they’re not really in the best position to be so harshly evaluating their prior identities – and given the stacking counter-evidence presented by characters like Kengo, the solution may be less “I need to disavow my reason for living” and more “I need to get out of high school and find my people.” Nonetheless, it is high school in which they are trapped, so let’s return to the anxiety factory for one more episode of Shoushimin Series!
Episode 5
“The Berliner Pfannkuchen Mystery.” With a berliner being a kind of German donut, I’m guessing we’re in for a cooldown, group-affirming one-off at a sweets shop before our crew tackle their next major case. Honobu Yonezawa loves those sorts of brief, self-contained dramas, which often take the form of bottle episodes in adaptation – it seems to be a reflection of their fundamental faith in individual “scenes” as the building blocks of compelling character drama. They do not prioritize the overall structure to the extent of viewing individual scenes as subservient to the whole – each scene in their stories tends to stand alone, offering its own contours and pleasures much like in a Lynch, Kar-wai, or Herzog feature. And this structural priority is further emphasized in adaptation, where each individual scene can be given its own visual language (like the heart-clock diner of Hyouka, or the challenge from Kengo two episodes ago)
God, this OP is so good. Beautiful animation and color design, charged imagery that effectively primes you for the episode to come, and a lovely song that serves almost as a counterpoint to the show’s cynicism, offering the broader perspective our leads lack, hoping they’ll eventually find joy in embracing their true colors. Just a top notch example of the form, doing everything a great OP should do with beauty and grace
As ever, Osanai is found looking away, staring out towards the sun. She’s always seeking something far from here, and eye contact with her is inherently framed as making contact with the wolf inside
Lush flowing hair animation as she attempts to disguise her tears. Brain’s Base was a notable animation studio for a few years in the ‘07-’14 era, noteworthy in particular for the worthiness of their adaptation choices, and it seems Lapin Track inherited that sense of discernment when Masakazu Watanabe and Teruko Utsumi jumped ship to create it (a legacy perhaps most clearly indicated through Kunihiko Ikuhara’s jump from Brain’s Base for Penguindrum to Lapin Track for Sarazanmai). Great talent is one thing, but you also require great taste, an appreciation for storytelling and thematic inquiry that goes beyond enjoying pure fluidity of execution. There are a number of studios that have great animators, but don’t tend to choose great projects
Granted, “great projects” is obviously subjective in several ways; I’m sure Ufotable’s animators have a great time doing action scenes, have developed their skills specifically to shine in doing so, and work on some of the most popular, profitable shows in the business. Plenty of reasons to prioritize that over pleasing the guy who draws comparisons between anime dramas and Aguirre, the Wrath of God
She’s frustrated at being called to the guidance counselor’s office yet again, and says she’ll be at Humpty Dumpty
Meanwhile, Kengo is staring with great concentration and annoyance at an empty plate, while three guilty-looking students sit at the table beside him. It’s becoming easy to see why Jogoro’s self-denying behavior frustrated Kengo – if there’s anything that defines Kengo, it’s his active commitment to every moment
Kengo introduces our titular dessert
Apparently there’s a game where you fill some berliners with jam and others with mustard, and attempt to find out which is which. Echoes of Kengo’s coffee challenge, as well as the liquor chocolates from Hyouka
It seems this group is the school newspaper club
“I’d appreciate it if you would get to the point already.” Jogoro says this without antagonism – his true self is bleeding through more in his daily interactions, as he is more frequently called to exercise the mental processes that accompany his underlying blunt nature
They played the game, but no one admitted to having the mustard-filled pastry. A private smile from Jogoro as his curiosity is piqued
Jogoro assesses the context – a disused refrigerator in the corner, the shape of the pastries themselves. His line of questioning speaks to his general first priority in investigation: ascertaining a motive that would explain the end result
“They gave us some child-size ones they’re experimenting with.” That seems important; both the experimental nature and intended audience of these pastries could point to reasons that none of them were filled with mustard
Of course, “the bakery screwed up” is likely outside the confines of acceptable answers here, which again underlines my overall problem with mysteries: there are generally many viable solutions depending on some unspoken confines of the setup, and achieving a “eureka” moment is more about assessing which of these potentially script-flipping confines is intended to be disregarded than it is about finding a satisfyingly inarguable solution. Thus I feel a huge number of mysteries resolve in a question of “what answer does the mystery designer desire” rather than “what is the only possible answer”
Lovely composition capturing the whole team in the reflection of the room’s clock, emphasizing both the physical and temporal confines of this quasi-locked room mystery
Kengo reveals there was a fifth person here earlier, club president Seba-san, who’s the one who actually brought the pastries. Another variable that could easily inform a variety of solutions
Jogoro pulls Kengo aside to discuss potential motives. As usual, he’s laser focused on discovering a reason to pull this trick, which of course means he’s starting from a baseline of distrusting all of Kengo’s associates. Easy again to see why this behavior might have distanced him from others – he’s basically flipping our empathetic social contract for the sake of pure intellectual curiosity. Most people value their feelings much more than the truth
Kengo reveals the reason he cares in the first place – the members of the newspaper club are already at each other’s throats, and validating their distrust like this would likely break their current unity
Jogoro reveals the four reasons someone might not speak up: that there was no mustard, that the mustard went unnoticed, that someone lied about receiving the mustard, and that there was outside interference. I’m glad he’s incorporating the cases that might expand the confines of the mystery
Jogoro starts digging into the blocking of seats in the room, seemingly gauging how their sight lines might have interacted with the refrigerator
He travels to the home ec room for more info, where the room’s steward is introduced like a goddamn serial killer, through a high-angle shot concealing his eyes in shadow while he ominously sharpens a knife
The home ec rep reveals he didn’t use mustard, which wouldn’t actually be spicy, and instead used habanero sauce. Thus Jogoro then works to rule out taste disorders with a habanero taste test, methodically knocking down every potential answer
Lovely transition from “who puts this stuff in pastries” to “I do” over in the home ec room. I like how this production treats time’s passage; scenes proceed at the pace of the mystery’s unraveling, meaning a temporally disjointed scene might sneak into an ongoing situation just to offer a bit of context (like how Kengo’s reflections on their new club member were portrayed as simultaneous with his conversation with Jogoro), and a “grand resolution” like Osanai submitting the anonymous tip of the previous mystery might be totally excised, because its conclusion is foregone
What Jogoro is most clearly pinning down is a psychological profile of Seba, the club president – a man who takes good care of his subordinates, who is aware of their personal struggles, and attempts to take his responsibilities seriously. Did he engineer this situation to force his team members to talk out their disagreements? It seems likely, especially since he was the one who could most easily have tampered with the pastries, perhaps removing the habanero sauce – or more likely, he actually got five pastries, and switched out the contaminated one for one he was hiding in the fridge
As Jogoro understands, once motive is established, everything else tends to fall into a pattern supporting it. I suppose that’s the reason mysteries and psychological dramas are so often entwined; divining a mystery’s solution is really about understanding the person at the heart of it, while our personalities often establish themselves downwind of our inspiring passions
Seba tapped the one person in the room on the shoulder “out of nowhere,” meaning he was unnoticed entering the room, and could easily have set things up
The missing fifth pastry is conjured when Jogoro affirms that no one told Seba there would be four participants instead of five
Thus the culprit is affirmed, using a touch of additional evidence: Osanai’s tears, prompted by her snagging the booby-trapped pastry and munching on habanero sauce
And Done
Welp, to the surprise of no one, Jogoro ultimately cracked the pastry case. As usual, there were some jumps in logic here that I’d quibble with if I were presented with this array of evidence, but also as usual, the point here was less the precise breakdown of the events than what those events reveal about our main cast. It’s clear that Jogoro’s allegiance to normalcy is fraying with every episode, but his interactions here seemed to once again offer a productive path forward, where his bluntness is accepted as simply another quirk inherent in him articulating his true, vibrant self. Normalcy might present less friction, but it will never allow Jogoro to meaningly connect with his peers – and in fact, it seems like it’s precisely in the resolving of a mystery that Jogoro feels most in touch with his community, assessing their motives frankly, and thereby coming to genuinely understand them. You’re finding your people, Jogoro!
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