Listen, I dig detective stories like the plague, and throughout the last few years or so, we've been through some of the best detective-esque settings that the AniManga industry has to offer, the likes of Summer 2023's Undead Girl Murder Farce and the series of Yuukoku no Moriarty a.k.a Moriarty the Patriot, which saw both seasons in Fall 2020 and Spring 2021, respectively. However, not every detective show is ... a whiz out from the mystery hat, which is why we find ourselves underwhelmed by the mystery shows this Spring 2025 season: from the famed mystery author of Aki Shimizu's Chuuzenji-sensei Mononoke Kougiroku: Sensei ga Nazo wo Hodoite Shimau kara. a.k.a The Mononoke Lecture Logs of Chuzenji-sensei: He Just Solves All the Mysteries, to the crux of this show of novelist Tokuya Higashikawa's Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de a.k.a The Dinner Table Detective, which saw a rather short run from late 2010 to 2012, and the rather weird decision to have Madhouse's adaptation a full 15 years apart.
In the predictable but ever so elusive vision of the detective mystery world, you'd have your Sherlock Holmes - Watson duo plays with the antagonist of James Moriarty, or you'd have the more simple but still complex and enjoyable ones from the likes of Detective Conan and Inspector Gadget. However, it's the fictional character of Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, created by the famous English writer Agatha Christie, her most famous and longest-running character, who has produced countless novels and stories, that only a relatively few of the most literature-based minds will know. And it's in this setting where we find the series's titular group of not-so-ordinary characters: a wealthy heiress who works double duty with her rookie detective job for the police, which is supervised by a rather eccentric boss that exudes forced comedy for the sake of his glamour, and accompanied by a rather ordinary-looking butler that's as humble as he comes, taking Chuuzenji-sensei's rhetoric as the one whom "He Just Solves All the Mysteries."
For one, for those well in the know about Hercule Poirot's character and how Agatha Christie portrays him to be, that's who the dignified heiress of Reiko Hosho has to deal with: Kyoichiro Kazamatsuri is an inspector serving the Kunitachi Police Department and also the heir to his own family-run car company. This is probably one of a fair few times that you would see literate heirs secretly running their side gig (though not so much with Kazamatsuri), though the outcomes are very different when compared against each other. On the outset, Reiko is as proud as a high-pitched crow as an heiress of sizable reputation, largely because she HAS to maintain her image in front of friends and clients, though this is in stark contrast to how much she tries to maintain this to her cool, calm, and collected butler, who's simply named Kageyama, who is the ONLY one "allowed" to dig her grave when she's trying to rack her brain into solving the usual detective cases and gives her advice on how those cases can be solved, always. Compare that to Kyoichiro Kazamatsuri, and he's the total opposite of how Hercule Poirot carries himself despite his short height and weird body and facial contraptions, but done with dignity. Rude, narcissistic, bombarding — call Kazamatsuri whatever you want, but his role as an inspector, I feel, is a major disservice in regard to how he's supposed to mentor Reiko, yet feels every bit like he was supposed to be portrayed as Batman's Joker character in Sherlock Holmes's body to the female Watson, who, despite her good looks and hidden clumsiness, at least is a decent character at best. I love eccentricity, especially when done right, and this variation of Undead Girl Murder Farce's Tsugaru Shinuchi, Aya Rindo, and Shizuku Hasei are gravely not the case here.
There was a time when series were in episodic form, and there are still series amping that very same rhetoric, which I guess plays its fiddle well to the detective setting it corroborates efforts from, and one that I'll give credit to. The stories here are quite the mixed bag of simple but weird or complex but stupidly compounded. For sure, this is not a series where you want to attach the "detective mystery" genre to it, but if it's for pure entertainment, I guess they'll do.
While I'm not surprised to find Madhouse working on this project, which, to be fair, looks decent and alright for the entity that's been dabbing on different genres of works since post-COVID, it's the choice of the staff team that intrigues me, most particularly the veteran in-house director Mitsuyuki Masuhara. The Diamond no Ace a.k.a Ace of Diamond series' director, has not been around since Act II's adaptation in the pre-COVID days, which is quite a sizable time away from any form of major involvement towards the studio itself. And although he did make a short return with the 2023 movie adaptation of Nao Iwamoto's Kin no Kuni Mizu no Kuni a.k.a Gold Kingdom and Water Kingdom and as episode director for Madhouse's most recent series of Chi. Chikyuu no Undou ni Tsuite a.k.a Orb: On the Movements of the Earth, to be picked to helm this show, it feels like a cop-out that Masuhara wanted to pick up his directorial skills again, but there's little to no work scheduled for him, so this show is what he had to work with for the time being (while Madhouse focuses all their efforts on Season 2 of Sousou no Frieren: Beyond Journey's End).
The music is rather plentiful and fine, though if you're like me and are sensitive to even the most repetitive of sounds, Kento Nakajima's OP, composed by the man, the myth, and the legend of Hiroyuki Sawano himself, I don't know about you, but the OP song feels so egregiously overdone with the usual [nZk] twerks for what should be a relatively calm song at best. And while I appreciate that change with Billy Boo's ED song, it too was just alright. But to my ears, definitely the better song of the two.
If you'd come into this show for anything else but the story itself, Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de a.k.a The Dinner Table Detective is one that gives you entertainment aplenty for the most part, thanks to its unhinged comedy. However, as a detective series, if the short run of the 3-volume-long novel itself isn't a red flag of an indication enough that the series just goes nowhere with the mystery plot, then you're in the wrong place trying to enjoy some police-and-thief action.
It's like having expensive cheese and caviar, but without the complimentary biscuits to support and hold it altogether. What a shame.
