The Fall 2023 Anime Preview Guide

Ron Kamonohashi's Forbidden Deductions

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Ron Kamonohashi was once regarded as a genius at the top detective training academy. But after a fatal mistake, he was expelled and forbidden to become a detective. Years later, police officer Totomaru Isshiki knocks on Ron's door seeking help on a serial murder case. He finds Ron, now a messy-haired recluse, who agrees. Together, this mismatched detective team begins solving their first mystery!

Ron Kamonohashi's Forbidden Deductions is based on the Ron Kamonohashi: Deranged Detective manga by Akira Amano. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Mondays.

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Richard Eisenbeis
Rating:

I've watched more than a few procedural crime TV shows in my day. They're the kind of thing I put on in the background while I played games for hours on end. Frankly, I rather enjoy them and Ron Kamonohashi's Forbidden Deductions certainly scratched that itch. I mean, here we have the classic “partnered with an eccentric” style of show—like Castle, Monk, Bones, or The Mentalist. And just on that level, it's a decent enough show.

We have a murder mystery that seems impossible—i.e., people drowning in places with no water, missing their valuables, and somehow never putting up any kind of a fight. After six of these, clearly, someone thinking outside the box is needed. So our hapless in-over-his-head detective teams up with a “damaged” private eye to solve the case. As is usual with these types of shows, there are more than a few leaps of logic made to find the criminal and determine his MO (which, of course, all turn out to be correct). But, all in all, it's a fun enough ride for what it is.

...and then comes the twist.

While it's obvious from the start that there is some kind of issue that forced Kamonohashi into early retirement, the hints all point to either the death of his childhood best friend (hence why his friend's father keeps trying to get him back on the job) or a disability like an extreme case of narcolepsy (hence the floor padding in his room). Yet, the truth of the matter is that we're suddenly going full Code Geass. Kamonohashi has the ability to order people to do what he wants—which he uses subconsciously to make all the criminals he catches kill themselves.

At this point, I'm not sure if it is a supernatural ability or if his brilliant mind just knows exactly what to say to get them to do as he wants but either way, it's one hell of a bomb to drop on us in the closing minutes of the episode. Now, is it enough to keep me coming back week to week? I'm not sure but it sure does make this anime stand out more than it otherwise would.

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Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

If you look at this a certain way, Ron Kamonohashi's Forbidden Deductions is a fair play mystery series, or at least has a fair play first episode. That means we, the viewers, are given all the necessary clues to solve the case alongside the detective. This story is meant to instill a sense of superiority over hapless Isshiki and appeal to mystery fans because most will tell you that a fair play story is a lot more fun than a classic "smartest man in the room" one. Perhaps that's why this episode felt like Dr. Watson teaming up with The Old Man in the Corner (Baroness Orczy's answer to Sherlock Holmes). Isshiki is very much the sidekick, but Ron's got the same almost childlike glee that the Old Man exhibits, rather than Holmes' more steady hand. All of this is to say that I read too many mysteries and that if you do too, you'll easily spot the narrative devices this works with.

That said, it could have benefited from a two-part case to open the series. Yes, the police have been trying to track down a serial killer who seemingly drowns men on dry land for months, but Ron figures it out almost too quickly to make this any fun. While some elements of the solution are trickier, I find it hard to believe that no one connected a few of the dots beforehand, particularly the details about the hair and where each victim was headed. We get a sense of Ron as a preternaturally gifted detective (in more ways than one), but it all happens so quickly that it almost deflates the joy of solving the case. Much more time is spent showing us how weird and quirky Ron is, which feels like something that could have been doled out a little at a time rather than crammed alongside his work with Isshiki.

The fairly cut-and-dry nature of his solving the crime also begs the question of whether or not the supernatural element revealed at the end needs to be there. It is interesting, but again, it undermines the rest of the story, even as it shows Ron that Isshiki is the right partner to team up with; his naiveté nicely compliments Ron's cynicism and unorthodox style. Isshiki's also not stupid; he does figure out why Ron's been living as he has been all on his own, so the two are a good pair. But adding in Ron's superpower takes away from the series as a classic mystery story, primarily in that it's trying too hard to set itself apart.

That doesn't mean that this isn't interesting. I liked the mystery portion and got a kick out of Ron's cat, who sleeps like he's dead. It's worth another episode to see where it goes now that the basics have been established.

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Nicholas Dupree
Rating:

This series was always going to suffer for being a detective story airing right after Undead Murder Farce. Sure, that series was far more supernaturally inclined than this largely mundane one, but it knew exactly how to build engaging, complex mysteries while presenting them with theatrical flair. By comparison, this debut caper from Ron Kamonohashi is far more barebones in its presentation and far less sophisticated in constructing its whodunnits and larger character mysteries.

Honestly, if you've seen any Sherlock-inspired detective drama from the last 30 years, you've seen everything this premiere has to offer. A brilliant but quirky detective is paired with a bright-eyed police investigator to solve crimes, and he does so by taking a brief look at the corpse and figuring out everything off-screen. There's no visible process of deduction or theorizing, either. Ron looks at the corpse for about 15 seconds, has the whole case solved in his head, and then leads his hapless Watson analog by the nose until they find the culprit. There's no chance for the audience to think about the mystery for themselves or concoct theories, so all that's left is to watch this disheveled guy smugly declare his brilliance and explain clues we never saw so that his deductions can be dramatically surprising. Solving the crime is so limp – and the crime itself so needlessly convoluted – that it only acts as a preamble to the reveal of Ron's "fatal flaw" at the end.

That flaw is also pretty underwhelming, though that's mostly down to presentation. The idea of a detective who doesn't just chase down criminals but actively pressures them to take their own lives is undoubtedly potent. Yet here, it happens so quickly – and with a hint of the supernatural that feels wildly out of place – that it doesn't land at all. The direction and pacing of the episode are so neutral that there's no weight or sense of drama, and that completely undercuts the twist's intended gravitas. The resolution with Totomaru saving the suspect from Ron could work better if they had emphasized his selfless nature rather than making him a hapless sidekick to Ron, but as-is, it lands with a wet thud. When discussing this fatal flaw, including that Ron has killed multiple people this way, you would think they were discussing a particularly boring sporting event from the characters' body language and musical score. It's a tonal misfire that left me uninterested in further following the characters or story.

The production is fine; they've adapted Akira Amano's designs very well, and while there's not a ton of fluid animation, it works just fine for what this episode calls for. Yet there's no sense of atmosphere to complement our supposed genius' sleuthing, and that leaves us with a weak mystery that's boring to watch on all fronts. Maybe this will get better now that the character introductions are out of the way, but this first case is a total flop and doesn't leave me interested in watching more.

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Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.