SHOSHIMIN: How to become Ordinary

Episode 10

Akechi Kogoro and the Black Lizard. Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler. Kobato and Osanai. None of these pairings are destined to work out based solely on the fact that one member of the duo is the detective while the other is the criminal, but I can tell you right now that at least the first two have more tension in their stories than the last one. But then, Shoshimin isn't about tension—it's about the ways that we can delude ourselves and be willingly duped by others.

It's hard to even assign blame to one party or the other because Kobato seems to have been a party to his own deception. He opens the series by professing that he wants to be “ordinary,” then spends the next ten episodes proving that if he wants any such thing, it's only on paper, or at least in the confines of his mind. In reality, Kobato revels in being special—he wants to be the smartest man in the room, the genius detective who can figure out the crime, and then assemble the cast to reveal his brilliant deductions to as many people as possible. He's been doing that right along since the very first episode which makes for some mildly sweet irony when Osanai sits him down to reveal her ingenious plot. Apart from the brief appearance by Sanae, though, Osanai doesn't bring together all the players: she quietly expresses herself to Kobato and Kobato alone. Osanai doesn't need to be the smartest woman in the room. She already knows she is.

That firm belief, and the fact that she's been using Kobato all along and is now the person to essentially break up with him, let us in on the real secret (or maybe “secret”) of the show all along: Kobato has always been ordinary, in the blandest and most basic of ways. He wanted someone to notice him and to appease his ego, and if that someone was a pretty, soft-spoken girl, so much the better. He was crowing about his desire to be ordinary while amply demonstrating that he already is, and Osanai simply took advantage of that. And the reason she was able to? Because at the end of the day, Osanai isn't “ordinary.” Ordinary people don't spend half a school year coming up with an intricate plot to ensure that their middle school bullies end up in police custody. Ordinary people don't set up their own kidnapping. Maybe the most “normal” thing she does is use Kobato for her ends…which, in some ways, makes her no better than the girls she sets up. What has she done other than destabilize another person for her ends?

I get it, to a degree. I had a terrible time in middle school, too, to the tune of an arm deliberately broken in gym class. But I don't think that necessarily excuses what Osanai did, at least because of the collateral damage she caused. Shoshimin never fully lives up to its potential, either as a mystery or statement on mysteries nor as a story about someone being forced to see the world for what it is. When the van burns by the river in the final scene, my patience burns with it. Yes, it was symbolic of the end of Osanai and Kobato's relationship and the kidnapping debacle, even though it looks like Osanai's next target has just agreed to go out for sweets with her. But it's also a statement on Kobato and Osanai's relationship in the first place: one that she engineered for her benefit and destroyed when she no longer needed it. That feels like a very empty ending indeed.

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SHOSHIMIN: How to become Ordinary is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.