Ameku M.D.: Doctor Detective

Episode 8

You know what, credit where it's due: I've hardly been shy about the fact that I just haven't been able to get into this show thus far. But while this week's episode wasn't single-handedly good enough to completely change my mind about it, it was still an alright episode overall. Not that the bar is high, but I'd even say this was the best episode yet.

So right off the bat, if you've been reading these reviews, then you know: week after week I've been lamenting that one of this anime's biggest issues is its pacing—it's been mostly trying to keep mysteries confined to one episode, whether they're complete mysteries, or mystery-within-a-mystery. And because of that, they all happen at breakneck speeds. And I think a lot of the anime's other issues—unengaging mysteries, poor writing and structure, and a protagonist who doesn't come off as smart as the show obviously wants us to think she is, for example—stem from that. But finally, we had an episode that didn't seem hellbent on speedrunning an entire medical mystery that probably would've taken 2–3 episodes of any other (20-minute-long) show. We got the mystery—the angel the kid is seeing—but most of the episode was instead spent focusing on Dr. Takao and this kid who's seeing these angels.

And because the show has more time to spend on developing this story, we're finally treated to something with some real emotional substance to it. This show actually accomplished something I was pretty doubtful was ever going to happen, and it made me feel bad for Dr. Takao—who showed us a more vulnerable side this week. And honestly, I like this. It took eight weeks, but I finally feel like I actually know something meaningful about Dr. Takao aside from how she's theoretically supposed to be smart (key words being “theoretically” and “supposed to be” but I don't need to bang on that drum again). At this stage in the series (which is to say: with only a few weeks left before it ends) this is unexpected, but also really refreshing.

But if I feel bad for Dr. Takao this week, I don't even have a word to describe what I feel toward this young kid with cancer, who's also being bullied by other kids in the hospital. If there can be said to be a theme of this week's episode, it's word-that-rhymes-with-luck cancer. Relative to the other ailments we've seen in the series thus far, this one is almost certainly the least unusual. Yet thanks to how much more developed this story feels, it already stands out as one of the most memorable mysteries we've seen in the series thus far.

All that being said though, it's hard to ignore how the animation's quality is markedly worse this week. In contrast to a much-needed slow down story wise, the visuals look much more hastily drawn, and border on sloppy at times (Dr. Takao's hand as she was going in for the fist bump in the flash back, in particular, looked so messy). I even got an example of this in the thumbnail image; the kid's eyebrows kept changing, and at one point, they were drawn, but not colored in. The opening aside, the animation has been anywhere from fine to serviceable thus far (some weeks have been better than others) but this week marked the first time whilst watching this show that I thought the episode overall just felt really half-baked.

For the first time since it started airing, I think this show took some steps in the right direction this week. There's still room for improvement, of course, and I worry about the animation quality moving forward, but that's for us to worry about later. For now, I actually find myself doing something I haven't been doing at all in this series up to this point, and wondering what's going on in the mystery. Who knew? When you give the audience reasons to care—say, some better storytelling, or more accurately in this case, any level of storytelling at all—as it turns out, they just might find themselves more willing and able to care.

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