So Orekis first mistake and we got his friends trying to get him on the right track. Though I like how Chitanda, Fukube and Ibara secretly tried to tell Oreki about his wrong, the way they treated him on his first mistake was in my opinion… over the top. I mean, it’s his first mistake, you can’t expect him to be perfect even if he did do well in the past mysteries. Yeah I guess you can scold him a bit on his mistake but their reactions were as if he did a bigger taboo. I guess the producers were trying to exemplify the smaller, more subtle emotions since the series isn’t exactly big on the epic stuff? This was really something that stood out in the episode that isn’t exactly good in my opinion.
I got “sad faced” when I found out the true scheme of the empress, Irisu. I really liked those striking eyes, white skin and black(-ish) hair, but in the end problem was brought to its level because of her. With all that said the last scene of her chatting left much to be desired. Who was the senpai she was chatting with (I’ll go more into that in the last paragraph)? They didn’t really put a close to the part where Oreki and the team find out about the empress’ true objective. Hopefully this is actually a bridge to another story arc later on.
I still like her looks though (づ￣ ³￣)づ. Also kudos to her genius in manipulating the people around her.
Taking a look at the mystery itself, it really wasn’t anything. I’d say it’s not even at the level of those generic mystery cases. But there’s this saying, “it’s not the destination but the journey” and this saying can be placed well with the mystery. When you take a look at the way they got to the conclusion, all the twists and turns and mistakes our characters went through, it comes together as a very entertaining ride. Not to mention the way story was plotted out is something a lot of other stories are missing. The writer did a good job in controlling what you know, kind of like this episodes “narrative tricks”, to create a more exciting twist when a surprise comes up (Now I’m talking about the entire series, not just this arc).
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For those of you who didn’t understand what whole conclusion and how the mystery came to be, read the following:
Hongou actually tried to create a mild mystery where no one died, because she preferred happy endings instead of tricks. And apparently it was the tricks that Oreki concentrated on in order to find the true end instead of figuring out the kind of person Hongou was.
So while making the story, Hongou made a poll asking people whether they prefer death in the story or not. Although the poll told her that people wanted at least 2 deaths, she ignored that fact and went for no deaths. But since she wasn’t in the set at the time of the shooting, the crew also ignored her script and went for the blood.
After Hongou saw what they filmed and she felt guilty for ignoring the poll results but she isn’t the type to fight back. This is where Irisu comes in and from the start she too didn’t like the story and thought of the situation as an opportunity to reject in the script in a way that wouldn’t hurt Hongou. So Irisu somehow managed to make Hongou feign illness and leave the script undone.
Now Irisu brought in not the mystery solvers but the new script writers. She made the Oreki and the rest think that the film was Hongous original idea and asked them to solve it. But in reality Irisu just wanted someone to continue writing the script.
Awesome story isn’t it?
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Looking back at the first episode of this arc, I now know that the person typing on the phone was Irisu who was exchanging text messages with Hongou. Now the person Irisu was chatting with on the computer, the person who used orange text was her senpai. Next using the pink text was Chitanda, this was when Irisu invited her and company to come in. Going back to Irisus senpai, they never told us who he/she is… however!! Her senpai did say this “but you shouldn’t lie to me either since I’m on the other side of the world”. Those words, “on the other side of the world”, makes me think that her senpai is somewhere else. Also it was this senpai that introduced our protagonists to Irisu. So how would someone somewhere else know about the detective team? Only one person fits that bill, Orekis sister. Now you may ask why then did Irisu not go directly to Oreki and instead had Chitanda introduce everyone. Well it’s to simply hide her plan more thoroughly. Of course this is all just theory, a theory that has a lot of holes so in the end it could still be anyone. I’m just solving things based to the circle of knowledge I have right now. Though it would be awesome if it was Orekis sister eh?
OkamiSan~
