SHOSHIMIN: How to become Ordinary

Episode 9

Last week I mused that perhaps the best Golden Age of Mystery comparison for Kobato and Osanai was Akechi Kogoro and The Black Lizard. In Edogawa Ranpo's 1934 novel, Akechi is the detective and The Black Lizard is a mysterious lady thief collecting beautiful human specimens to preserve in her underground museum. The two go head-to-head, with the implication that throughout the book, they're also falling in love. Of course, it can't work out; Akechi is the author's serial detective and it wouldn't do for him to fall for a criminal. But their dynamic, a battle as intellectual as it is about good versus bad, is at least reflected in the denouement of the kidnapping plot. Osanai may not be as vicious as The Black Lizard, but she's no less devious.

As Kobato points out this week, she's got a bit in common with a different reptile, the chameleon. Osanai, as he's noticed, has a real knack for changing her appearance to suit whatever's going around her, projecting the image that she wants others to see in service of her secrets. We saw that most clearly with her look two episodes ago; it was designed to fit in with the revelers headed to the reggae festival. The one that struck Kobato, however, was the outfit that looked remarkably like a summer school uniform. I remember thinking that she looked like she was wearing one, and as it turns out, that was absolutely on purpose. Because the truth behind the kidnapping is that it was more of a “kidnapping”—Osanai orchestrated the entire thing herself.

We've known for a while now that Osanai could hold a grudge. This twist reveals that she wasn't necessarily looking to get vengeance at the moment; she's much too clever and calculating for that. The plan that came to fruition last week appears to have been something that she was brewing for at least a year, collaborating with her inside girl and carefully laying out a trail of cake crumbs for Kobato to follow over the summer. Osanai believes that revenge is best served cold because when you give it time to chill, the result is so much sweeter.

The question we're left with is whether or not this makes Osanai a different character than we've been assuming she is. She may have had her doubts about being able to fool Kobato. Still, she set out to do it, and her collaborator's question about whether he's “the crazy guy” she's been talking about suggests that Osanai may have been saying unflattering things behind his back. She flat-out calls him pretentious for his whole “I want to be ordinary” bit, right to his face which again implies a less-than-flattering opinion of him. Did she only get close to him because she wanted to pull off this kidnapping farce? It seems possible because there is something coldly calculating about her entire persona. This Osanai doesn't seem to care about being ordinary, at least not if she can fool the unsuspecting into thinking she might be.

Where the relationship between Osanai and Kobato goes from here is an open question. I don't trust Osanai at all at this point, and with hindsight, so many of her cute little head tilts feel like an act—a false degree of cuteness and light designed to fool us all. But then it may be our fault if we were fooled—after all, we were warned that she's a wolf. I just didn't expect her to be a wolf that looked so much like a black lizard.

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