Anime: Tantei Opera Milky Holmes 6o6r2y

Do you have a soft spot for "moe" characters? Does lighthearted slapstick humor appeal to you? Are you willing to accept that it's not the destination, but the journey? Then you might enjoy Tantei Opera Milky Holmes.

General Story Overview:

The world this takes place in, as we're introduced to it in the first episode, revolves around the notion that people with superhuman abilities (called "Toys", for no explained reason) fall into the category of Detective or Phantom Thief; two factions that have been fighting against each other for ages.

Thus, the focus of the story is upon the young detective group known as "Milky Holmes"; four school age girls with special powers that have been relatively successful at tracking down and apprehending Phantom Thieves. That is, of course, until a freak accident robs them of their powers. They are immediately cast down the ranks of social status and forced to cope with life in detective school without their "Toys".

The student council president, who moon lights as a master Phantom Thief herself, takes a tough love mercy on the foursome in attempt to bring their powers back for reasons not made clear until the final two episodes.

Art & Animation:

The animation in Milky Holmes is slightly bipolar.

For the most part, every scene is filled with fully illustrated backgrounds, unimportant characters and detailed scenery. Unlike many gag anime of recent years, few if any corners are cut in of filler bystanders or frequent simple background outtakes. When the "Toys" are on display from the main characters, there's a noticeable amount of extra quality mixed in which emphasizes the sense of grand scale to those particular scenes.

In contrast, there are regular instances throughout the anime where character design just becomes comically absurd. In particular, any character with a reasonably large chest size seems to be variable from scene to scene, at times going from C cups to watermelons and back again in a extra comedic jiggle.

There is quite a bit of signage throughout the series, but often times it remains onscreen long enough to be readable (some fansub groups have taken the extra time to subtitles the signs as well, usually reasonable screen time for the signs is enjoyable and rarely requires pausing).

Sound:

There isn't much in the way of memorable sound design in this anime, for better or worse. The opening and closing are good, but not quite catchy enough to stay in your head very long or provocative enough to warrant adding them to a collection for MP3 player use. The voices are fitting for the characters, with nothing standing out as a landmark performance or annoying shrill squeaks. There are some recycled sound effects, but they don't revisit frequently enough to irritate. A solid, average compilation.

Characters:

You've got the energetic high spirited type, you've got the sporty grumpy type, you've got the ditzy hungry one and you've got the quiet intellectual! It's a typical anime four pair and there's literally zero back story to these girls after episode one.

With no reflections of the past or aspirations of the future, the most stand out character in the series is the ever scheming temptress in charge of both the school and the phantom thieves as she twists the heroes around her finger for reasons no one seems to understand until the final story arc.

Story:

Hoo boy. I'm not sure if more back story would have helped this or not, but the little that's thrown in there makes it a bit difficult to care. The "superhuman sub-population" gimmick isn't new to anime, which makes the execution here seem particularly flawed. As covered in the overview, the main four protagonists have lost their powers while going up against four antagonists that still have theirs. Alas, since the "villains" of the show seem intent on cultivating the heroes back to normal status again, there is little in the way of impressive or creative displays of abilities. Outside of the first and final battles, the superhuman power gimmick is used merely a handful of time to comedic effect. This is especially disappointing as they're attending a school where supposedly every student there has powers, yet we only see one other student ever use them and they're a variant of one of the powers we've already seen.

There is a beach episode! There is a prince and the pauper episode! There is a... dead ancestors solving a murder mystery from beyond the grave episode. Honestly, most of the episodes follow a pattern of the girls wanting to get their powers back, but there's an only tangentially related obstacle they have to deal with first instead. The premise of the series seems only to be there to give an excuse to the villains to be funny with their abilities and so the first and final battles can happen at all.

Most unfortunately, the ending is a typical "let's get a season two!" reset. In the end, no real progress is made and we return to the status quo. Some series are forgivable in having at least some revelation in of relationships or new abilities gained carrying into the future, but there's literally no gain at the conclusion of the series. Full stop, back to square one. I can't see this continuing.

The final word:

Tantei Opera Milky Holmes has an interesting premise but a sub-standard execution. There's adorable anime girls of an indeterminate age to be had here and next to no fan service, so the series relies on it's quirky sense of humor and frequent physical slap-stick. There's glimmers of potential to be seen, but nothing that's followed through with as the epic final battle rolls into a cliche formula reset. Truly a series that fits snugly into the category of comedy anime that have one or two memorable gags, but was never quite enough to run past twelve episodes.

Good enough to finish, not quite good enough to re-watch, and a recommendation only to fans of the moe-humor genre.

Objectively, Detective Opera Milky Holmes should be a terrible show. Its premise is fundamentally incoherent, it's hopelessly derivative, and much of the plot only makes sense if one assumes every character is incredibly stupid. Yet somehow it manages to be the most enjoyable show I've seen all year.

A lot of it lies in the character interactions. Cutesy girls doing friendly, cute things is nothing new - a lot of the time I could've been watching K-ON!, which had deeper, more realised characters and higher production values. But Milky Holmes' plot and setting, absurd as they are, serve to make all the interactions more engaging. The four heroines are struggling to recover their magical detective powers, and must do so within a month or be thrown out of their magical detective school. It's still interesting to see the girls adapt to their loss of powers and the resulting shift in fortunes (going from top of the class to the bottom, and being moved onto poorer food and board); while it's all kept lighthearted, there's some genuine cruelty in their treatment and it makes everything that much more emotive.

The other twist (if something so unoriginal deserves the term) is that their opponents, the masked Gentleman Thieves, attend the same school in their normal guises, and so we have many amusing conversations between hunter and hunted, Death Note style. The whole setting - a world where magically empowered people exist only as the duelling thieves and detectives - seems so artificial that it must be happening through tacit collaboration; one gets the feeling the whole city is one giant pseudo-roleplaying game. Viewed through that lens, the plot starts to make a lot more sense, and the gentlemanly conflict becomes a great way to have tension without having to get too dark.

The series is quite formulaic but for a show this short (12 episodes) that's no bad thing; it's character-driven, and the simple plot (familiar at the series level, and repetitive at the episode level) allows time for a surprisingly large cast to be developed. The lead thief, Arséne, gets as much time as any of heroes, while the rest of her squad at least get a bit of backstory each; rival detective squad G4 also puts some time in, and there are a couple of substantial one-episode characters. While this doesn't allow the same level of detailed backstory as a more focussed show, there's a lot of charm in seeing how everyone gets along; in particular, Arséne's two-sided interactions with the leads are probably the highlight of the show.

Presentationally, this is yet another of those series that shows how much progress has been made in the last few years; we'd've killed for visuals like this back in 2005, but by now this is standard, even slightly low-budget stuff. Voice acting is good, impressively so given the large number of characters, and I seem to recall the music was enjoyable at the time (although as I look back, I can't much of it). It bears mentioning that there's actually quite a lot of fanservice, somewhat at odds with the cute, childish plotlines - see for example Arséne's thieving outfit, as shown in the ending animation. But it's kept quite self contained; nothing gets in the way of the plot beyond a few seconds' breast jokes, and it never gets out of hand. Likewise the humour in general; this is a very funny series, and not afraid to sacrifice a little realism in the name of it (my favourite part being a character getting kidnapped and returned, purely in the interests of a one-liner - and a geeky reference at that). But it doesn't let the humour push out the important things, the large-scale plot and the interactions between the main characters.

In fact, I'm starting to think Detective Opera Milky Holmes may not be the simple stroke of luck it appears. Sure, the plot and setting are laughable, but they're not there to drive the show by themselves. Instead, like everything else about this series, they're geared towards showing off the character interactions, by setting up an environment that really brings out their cuteness. So while the series only does one thing, it does it very well, repeatedly. I can't see much that's truly innovative here, but its cuteness and humour have me wishing for more - much like Absolutely Lovely Children did, in fact.