Reviews for Tantei Opera Milky Holmes (6.91) 484k4

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.