Migi & Dali

Episodes 1-3

Nami Sano's Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto is one of my favorite comedy anime of all time. The premise follows the titular Sakamoto, a high school boy who is so preternaturally adaptable that he can turn any inconvenience into another showcase of his coolness. Often, these scenarios veered into absurdity to hilarious effect, like fighting off a bee with a math compass. The series included callbacks to previous gags, but episodes were primarily two or three loosely connected vignettes of Sakamoto injecting weirder and weirder reactions to everyday situations. Migi & Dali has some of the comedic blueprints of Sakamoto but with a murder-mystery twist. Well, it might be a murder mystery. Our twin leads aren't exactly reliable narrators.

The story primarily takes place in the early '90s in the fictional Origon Village, a wealthy neighborhood in Kobe. In 1982, twins Migi and Dali's mother was found dead in the street as snow softly fell. A button with a snowflake pattern was clasped tightly in her hand. The boys, approximately five years old, put their mother's corpse into a wagon and wheeled her to a cliff overlooking the neighborhood. She was buried there, and the boys swore to find their mother's killer and end the murderer's life.

Fast-forward to 1990, and Migi and Dali have successfully orchestrated their adoption while maintaining the facade that they are one person: a chipper and naive 12-year-old named Hitori. Their middle-aged parents are none the wiser that another boy is living in their house, just out of eyesight, and the two often swap places while the other lies in wait. Their plot evolves from investigating their new parents to scrutinizing their neighbors as it's revealed they previously lived in a home with their mother but were kept hidden underneath a bed in a room with paisley wallpaper.

The first episode sets the expectation that, like Sakamoto, Migi and Dali are exceptionally perceptive and can easily manipulate individuals and scenarios to their benefit. This is true when it comes to their doting parents, but the characters begin to differentiate themselves from Sano's other work and one another, beginning in episode two. As the boys search their new home while their parents are away on an errand, it becomes apparent that despite being clever, Migi and Dali are still just 12 years old. They scour their parents' bedroom for evidence of anything suspicious, only to discover their new mom's racy g-string and mistake it for a small kite. They assume an old photograph from their youth is evidence of an affair and that a display of wigs surely means their upcoming welcoming party is really a cover for a scalping ritual.

None of this ends up being true, however, and it casts a shadow on the rest of the twins' memories, too. Certainly, there are not great people living in their well-to-do neighborhood. We see this when a playdate at Maruta's house turns into outright bullying, but we never see any direct evidence of her cause of death, only that she seems to be bleeding out of the back of her head. Her body is also shown on its back in episode 1, but it looks like she's found lying on her stomach in episode 3.

Migi and Dali's imaginations are the main draw in the later episodes. Episode 1 focused on their absurd tricks to fool their parents, pass food off to the hiding twin, and other antics, but there's less "hiding in plain sight." Instead, the show shifts focus to make Migi and Dali more distinctive. They both pretend to be Hitori, but Dali is the older and more goal-oriented brother compared to Migi, who has a penchant to get distracted (and a little jealous). There's some friction in episode three after they try to make friends during their Boy Scout retreat, and Dali gets to enjoy cake (at the cost of discovering his neighbor is a specific type of bird enthusiast.

The jury is out on whether Migi & Dali is a true murder mystery or a comedy couched in childhood misunderstandings. Regardless, the sound design is phenomenal in instilling a sense of tension and dread. Hiroshima-based composer Hiroko Sebu crafted one track with choir-like vocals that gets me every time. The music adds a sense of dread, like whenever the twins worm out of the portholes of their toy tent or works as an effective fake-out, like when the twins falsely interrupt their parents' trip to buy a bicycle as something far more sinister.

Rating: (Episode 1)
Rating: (Episode 2)
Rating: (Episode 3)

Migi & Dali is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.