Reviewed by: Makenna J.
Grade: 9
The Detective is Already Dead by nigozyu and mugiko had
potential, but it fell short in many areas. I’ll first say that I’ve read a
good amount of manga, but this is one of the few that I was pretty disappointed
by. The plot was interesting, but I was so distracted by the undeveloped
characters, the pacing issues, and how confusing most of the conversations
between the characters were. This may just be because of translation errors,
though. To be fair, the original language was Japanese, which sometimes doesn’t
translate well to English.
The story began with the main character, 14-year-old
Kimihiko Kimizuka, on a plane that was infiltrated by a hijacker. Kimizuka’s a
“crisis magnet” who always gets caught up in trouble he doesn’t want to
be in. The hijacker asked if there was a detective on the plane, and Kimizuka,
sensing trouble, tried his best not to get involved. To his surprise, the
pretty girl sitting next to him stood up and declared that she was a detective.
An even bigger surprise was that she asked him to be her assistant and dragged
him along with her. Her name was Siesta, and for three years after that, he
helped her with her detective work. Until she died. This all happened in the
very first chapter. The story flew through three very important years in just
the span of 15 pages. Kimizuka kept a low profile for the next year, being a
regular high school kid until a girl in another class asked him to help her
find someone through an unnecessarily long conversation. But she didn’t know
who she was looking for. That’s why she went to Kimizuka, a student that she
believed was an ace detective. He finally agreed to help, and then she revealed
that she received a heart transplant a year earlier. The original owner of the
heart has a great urge to find someone, and she wants to help even though she
doesn’t know who it is. All the while, Kimizuka can’t help but shake the feeling
that the girl, Natsunagi, is eerily similar to Siesta.
I’d like to first say that it’s very obvious who the
heart belongs to. I don’t even have to read the second volume to figure that
out. And frankly, I don’t really want to. The first volume had nothing that
hooked me on the story and made me want to find the next volume. I also had
some other issues with this manga. The main character’s only personality trait
is that he’s a crisis magnet. Other than that, he’s very plain. Siesta is only
in one scene before she dies, so I’m not too invested in her. The main problem
I have is with Natsunagi, the girl with the transplanted heart. I don’t like
her at all. She doesn’t have any personality apart from being feisty, I’m not
really attached to her and her story, and she’s very oversexualized. Many manga artists do that, they oversexualize many of
the female characters.
Two out of the three female characters in this manga have
this problem, but she’s in high school which makes it worse in my opinion. But
even if you ignore all this, all the story boils down to is a couple of boring
characters trying to figure out a mystery that the reader can deduce in five
seconds.
Even though I didn’t really enjoy this book, I have to
give credit to the author and artist. nigozyu, the author of the original light
novel story, got a manga and an anime adaptation out of The Detective is
Already Dead, which is also his most notable work. The artist, mugiko, stated
in an afterword at the end of the manga that it was their first-ever published
manga volume. I think they both have some things to work on. I personally would
not pick up the second volume, but this doesn’t mean other people wouldn’t
enjoy it.
I’ve looked at other reviews, and many people say they
really liked it. It even got an anime adaptation as well. So, if you are
looking for a chill and easy read, then The Detective is Already Dead might be
for you.
