Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re returning to Shoushimin Series at a moment of unexpected crisis, having just learned that Osanai has apparently been abducted for ransom! It’s a development so sudden and dramatic that I’m frankly not entirely sure I believe it, but Osanai does have a habit of getting dangerously ahead of the team when it comes to these investigations, as demonstrated through her reckless actions during the bicycle thief incident. And as that adventure also demonstrated, there are stakes to these investigations beyond boredom or disappointment; our protagonists are idly toying with their town’s various crime rings, heedless of the material consequences.

But can you really blame them? Abduction aside, these last two episodes have served as a warm celebration of Jogoro, Osanai, and even Kengo in their element, flexing their wiles and enjoying each other’s company and eating a whole bunch of good cakes in the bargain. Shoushimin Series’ marvelous character chemistry should come as no surprise to any fan of Hyouka, with each conversation demonstrating layers of affection, one-upmanship, and an underlying testing of comfort levels, as Osanai continues to push their relationship in a more overtly codified, romantic direction. Well, there’s nothing like a dramatic rescue to prove your love, so let’s see where the case takes us today!

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I imagine we’ll be embarking on a fresh mystery, as we join Osanai and Jogoro for another installment of the sharp, endearing, and immaculately constructed Shoushimin Series. Though our leads retain their commitment to becoming normal, they continue to prove themselves anything but, with even the simple act of sharing some cakes turning into a tense battle of wills. But hey, how else do you apply your restless intellect to a hot summer day, especially when you’ve got such a willing opponent beside you?

By winnowing this show down to its fundamentals, our last episode reveled in the profound chemistry of its leads, echoing the similarly charming duo adventures of author Honobu Yonezawa’s Hyouka. Of course, that comparison also points to the clear differences within these series – while Oreki and Chitanda find a soothing balance in their differences, Osanai and Jogoro are united by their similarly slanted perspective, their desire to bring order to a disorderly world. In their hands, a cake-centered riff on Rope becomes something like a courtship ritual, their one-upmanship demonstrating both their shared mentality and mutual respect. Shoushimin Series has many strengths, but its most fundamental is the essential truth of great romance from Toradora to Spice and Wolf to Hyouka and beyond: spending time with two well-illustrated characters who genuinely care about each other is a delight, no matter where they go or whatever they do there. Now let’s get to the case!

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m delighted to announce we are returning to Shoushimin Series, as Osanai and Jogoro continue their seemingly hopeless crusade to become normal human beings. It’s been a tough road for both of them so far, replete with backsliding and compromises, but I imagine they’re pretty used to that. After all, what they are attempting is nothing short of rejecting and replacing their own personalities, the passions that animate them and the natural talents that make them special.

So yeah, probably a bad call on the whole. But as I’ve said before, their feelings are understandable – they are weirdos who prompt friction wherever they go, uninterested in social niceties and so motivated by their off-kilter ideals that they tend to make enemies by accident (and that’s when they’re not intentionally making enemies). They belong in a smoke-filled room pouring over crime scene photos, but instead they are stuck in high school, forced to play nice with kids who seem like different organisms entirely. Adolescence is a process of defining yourself in a social context, and when you receive only negative signals from your surroundings, you’re liable to think that you are the problem. But it is a tragic, regrettable thing to abandon your reason for being, and I can only hope they’re reconsidering this whole self-lobotomy process. Let’s find out!

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Hello folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re diving back into the ominous undertones of Shoushimin Series, wherein Jogoro and Osanai have just cracked their first major case, and through doing so embraced more than a little of their initial, antisocial identities. In order to avenge Osanai’s bike and bring the delinquent Sakagami to justice, Jogoro employed his sharp fox nose once more, while Osanai “tore out his throat” by letting him take the fall for his associates’ identity fraud racket. Yet in spite of their success, cracking the case was not a happy occasion for our leads – it was a relapse, an indulgence in self-defeating passions that they have pledged time and again to abandon.

I can certainly understand their positions. You see characters like Jogoro and Osanai all the time in fiction and real life alike, and they don’t generally seem to be happy, fulfilled, and productively integrated into their communities. The instincts that make one a top detective or ruthless bloodhound are isolating, frictious, and perpetually unfulfilling; you end up pushing others away in your unerring, pragmatic dedication to your cause, and even successfully resolving one mystery only leaves you hungry and empty, eager for the next puzzle to distract you from your sprawling list of regrets.

Of course, many are willing to make that bargain, or find some peaceful balance on its margins. The question is, can indulging your obsession actually make you happy? Though Shoushimin’s subtitle references “becoming normal,” the more pertinent question is likely “becoming happy” – and our leads’ conflation of the two could well be the source of their misery. Jogoro and Osanai believe their passions will always isolate them, and they have ample evidence to support that conclusion. But given the anxious identity-stressing tempests of adolescence, they’re not really in the best position to be so harshly evaluating their prior identities – and given the stacking counter-evidence presented by characters like Kengo, the solution may be less “I need to disavow my reason for living” and more “I need to get out of high school and find my people.” Nonetheless, it is high school in which they are trapped, so let’s return to the anxiety factory for one more episode of Shoushimin Series!

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to return to Shoushimin Series, as our two mysterious youngsters attempt to crack the mystery of Osanai’s stolen bike. Having tracked Sakagami to a driving school on the outskirts of town, Jogoro feels certain the case can be solved with only a few crucial leaps in logic. Of course, accomplishing such a feat would require returning to his old self, and abandoning the pursuit of normalcy that has defined his bond with Osanai.

That in turn brings us to my own subject of fascination: the sharp-edged true selves underlying our leads’ humble, mild-mannered facades. Jogoro’s explosion at Kengo offered our expected and extremely welcome articulation of his anxieties, as he reflected bitterly on how his curiosity and intelligence had only isolated him from his peers, who disliked being examined and “solved” like experimental subjects. And Osanai seems similarly uncomfortable with the ambiguous, ephemeral “human element,” seeing in the impositions of her peers an unresolvable equation, a debt that can only be cleared through retribution.

Both of them are too pure and intense for the thoughtless niceties of high school; both of them have clearly seen in the eyes of their peers a recognition of the remorseless scientific instruments they see in themselves, and have retreated from this negative mutual understanding towards the fuzzy, frictionless malaise of self-conscious normalcy. But the masks slip with their every step forward, and with even Kengo now demanding Jogoro embrace his asshole self, their maintenance of this charade seems at its end. While Hyouka championed sincerity and proud self-expression, Shoushimin Series asks “what if our sincere, earnest self is a creature the world would hate?” Let’s see how they fare!

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I thought we’d check back in on the heroes of Shoushimin Series, though I’m sure they themselves would shirk at such an appellation. Claiming a mutual dedication to the pursuit of normalcy, Osanai and Jogoro are determined to not make any waves, with Jogoro asserting that even his acquaintanceship with Kengo is merely an affirmation of their arcane value system. But normal people do not prize normalcy; in their very preoccupation with assuming this camouflage, our leads reveal themselves as distinctive, self-denying oddities.

Our last episode revealed just how much of a mask Jogoro has seemingly adopted, as Kengo grilled him on his transformation from an inquisitive, conceited know-it-all to a self-effacing cipher. Jogoro claims there was no impetus behind this transformation beyond the natural softening of age, and yet fragments of his old self are perpetually leaking through, so much so that even Osanai has preemptively forgiven him for “returning to how you were when I first met you.” So we are left once again with Kengo’s unanswered question, as to what Jogoro is attempting to achieve through seeking “normalcy,” or rather what he is trying to avoid by denying his talents. For Oreki, the fear of embracing his talent stemmed from a fundamental lack of self-worth, as acknowledging them carried an implicit responsibility to make use of them – a fear he would ultimately overcome through his desire to be a partner worthy of standing at Chitanda’s side. Here, Osanai is performing the opposite role, validating Jogoro’s refusal to embrace his full self. But what is it that makes Jogoro so afraid of his own talent, and why is Osanai so attached to this project as well? The mysteries keep stacking as we return to Shoushimin Series!

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re going to be continuing our investigations of the intriguing Shoushimin Series, originally written by Hyouka scribe Honobu Yonezawa, and adapted by the accomplished Mamoru Kanbe. The series’ first episode demonstrated both of these artists at their best, with Yonezawa offering a fresh collection of intriguing, multifaceted adolescent stars, and Kanbe bedecking their stories in a singular combination of lush background art and sterile, alienating intimacy.

So far, what is most clear about our protagonists Osanai and Jogoro is that we don’t actually know anything about them. Jogoro is observant and Osanai is indifferent to her peers, but they are otherwise self-conscious ciphers, dedicated to a project of “becoming normal” that seems to imply a goal of becoming part of the scenery, making no waves and attracting no attention from those around them. It’s a particularly bleak variation on Hyouka’s pursuit of low-energy living, and its advocates are as strange as you’d expect, their idle exchanges betraying a callous disconnection from their environment. Such ambiguity might be worrying if presented by another team; but given Yonezawa’s understanding of characterization and Kanbe’s fluency in dramatic tone, I have every reason to suspect these mysteries are purposeful, and our leads are precisely as unknowable as this team wants them to be. Let’s delve into their dark hearts as we return to Shoushimin Series!

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re embarking on a new journey, as we check out the first episode of the ongoing Shoushimin Series, bearing the curious subtitle of “How To Become Normal.” Of course, if you’re familiar with original author Honobu Yonezawa’s other works, that title actually seems perfectly appropriate – for it is Yonezawa who wrote Hyouka, centered on Oreki Houtarou and his own quest to live an ordinary, low-energy life.

Yasuhiro Takemoto’s adaptation of Hyouka is a masterpiece; to be honest, it stands among the handful of shows I’d consider uncontroversial choices for best television anime of all time. And while much of that brilliance comes from Kyoto Animation’s singular elevation of the material, they would have nothing to elevate if not for the fundamental richness of Yonezawa’s characterization, his keen interest in human psychology and mastery of using incidental mysteries as tools for illustrating human nature. I’m frankly not a fan of mystery fiction in general, but Hyouka embodies what I consider art’s highest callings – its ability to illuminate the countless peculiarities of human identity, and to bind such inquiries into anthemic statements regarding our fears and ambitions, our relationship with ourselves, each other, and the world at large.

That’s a tall order for any show, but Shoushimin Series does seem to have a solid team behind it. Director Mamoru Kanbe has a variety of excellent productions to his name, having served as director of Sound of the Sky, The Perfect Insider, and The Promised Neverland, among a variety of other productions. That trio in particular demonstrate a clear knack for matching his direction style to the material at hand; Sound of the Sky is expansive and atmospheric, The Perfect Insider is sterile and precise, and The Promised Neverland features some of the best horror cinematography in anime. Meanwhile, series composer Toshiya Ono both composed and wrote half the scripts for Gatchaman Crowds, alongside working with Kanbe on both Perfect Insider and Promised Neverland, giving me every reason to expect a thoughtful, expertly realized adaptation. Let’s get to it!

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