“You’re guilty of the crime of being you, and so, too, shall that be your punishment.”
– Jun Aikawa, the World’s Strongest Contractor
When I reviewed the first volume of the Zaregoto series, I was somewhat at a loss as to what to actually write about, as I’m not really a mystery fan. It’s clear that Nisio Isin himself started his writing career far more fascinated with mysteries for their own sake than he ended up – though shows like Monogatari are technically constructed around mysteries, they always ultimately reveal themselves to be about human psychology, instead. Who did what to who is never the actual point; it’s what drove a given story’s players to that point which is interesting, and “solutions” generally hinge not on figuring out who’s guilty, but on whether the guilty party can learn to embrace whatever truth they’re hiding from themselves.