Alternative title(s): Mattaku Saikin no Tantei Tokitara
Manga Adaptation by LIDEN FILMS
Streaming on Crunchyroll

Premise

In his youth, Nagumo was famous for being a boy genius detective. Now at the ancient age of 35, he’s tired, broke, and washed up when a young girl bursts into his office and begs to be his assistant.

Jel’s verdict: An Open Case

I desperately want a good, incredibly stupid anime comedy, the kind I couldn’t beg the rest of the GLORIO crew to watch with me. I’m tired of all these chill, slice of life shows, giving me something high energy and full of irredeemable dirtbags misbehaving. Detectives These Days Are Crazy comes close to what I’m looking for, but I’m afraid it falls flat overall.

To be fair, there were parts of this first episode I found genuinely funny. I appreciate how quickly they were able to move through the character introductions and dive into their first silly job, which involved casually murdering a lot of Yakuza. The main girl, Mashiro, is like an old school cartoon character in the best way possible. She’s indestructible and can pull anything out of her school uniform, not as like a super power or something, but just because it’s fun. The show plays with this using a bit of a fourth wall breaking and I enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, she is immediately introduced as a sexualized high school girl, supposedly for humor but it’s not very funny. Opening up with a “you were looking at my panties!?!” joke is not a great start. Thankfully that dies down a bit as the episode moves on, but I’m confident that is a well they will go back to at least once per episode. I can do my best to ignore that, but then we get to all the other jokes. It’s an extremely mixed bag, with a few really funny moments and a lot of flat ones. For example, there’s a lot Nagumo just randomly tripping and falling because his back hurts, since haha he’s old, and that’s it. It gets old fast.

As much as I was disappointed in the first episode, I MIGHT try to watch another one, I’m just that desperate for a comedy. I will say the second half of the episode was better than the first, and it seems like they will be bringing in more characters to form an ensemble cast. So maybe there’s a tiny, microscopic sliver of hope here. We’ll see if I have time for more.