Review of Beautiful Bones -Sakurako's Investigation-

Mysteries. How does one solve a mystery? How does one know when a mystery has been solved? Mysteries aren’t new to storytelling – in fact, they’re quite old. Conan Arthur Doyle wrote short stories about our beloved Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, as they encountered odd mysteries that they had to solve. Detective isn’t a new genre to be exact and said genre has diverted into becoming lackluster and boring. In some mediums, the said genre is one of the lowest denominators. For instance, someone who frequents book reading wouldn’t prefer detective over a fantasy story. Someone who has seen a lot of movies wouldfind one about a detective rudimentary and boring. Detective is a genre that is being looked down upon. You can read classics, you can read short stories and then below them all is detective.

The reason why the detective genre is so frustrating to read, watch or consume mainly stems from one reason. It’s something that we’ve read, seen or heard about countless of times. Something that is even more frustrating is when a production company makes an adaptation of your favorite detective – only to see it get ruined because none of it is even remotely close to the source material.

This has been the case for multiple Sherlock Holmes adaptations and as someone who’s read almost all of Conan Arthur Doyle – I can safely say that these adaptations, not only butcher the stories but also the characters, interactions and what made them special and interesting.

How is all of this related to Sakurako-san, you may ask?

Detectives usually lack in originality. They tend to borrow mysteries from other works that have “inspired” them but manage to give their own touch. It is noticeable how the detective genre has its own musts to pertain to the genre.

Sakurako was sort of special for me, special in the way that it was something new. Not to confuse this with a novelty of any sort, Sakurako reminded me heavily of several Sherlock Holmes stories. The show focuses heavily on different cases in which our two main protagonists see unfold before their eyes. We have Shotarou who’s a young high school student, and the eccentric Sakurako who works as an osteologist. On a fateful day, Shotarou becomes Sakurako’s apprentice and does his best to help her solve rather unique cases. Sakurako is practically a walking encyclopedia and knows everything related with the human body; she knows exactly what and how went wrong by merely looking at bones.

I definitely found this dynamic between Shotarou and Sakurako very interesting as it’s reminiscent of the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Sakurako being a female version of Sherlock and Shotarou being Watson. This becomes more apparent in the show as we get to learn more about Sakurako and Shotarou. Sakurako is the one who always manages to solve the cases by carefully observing and putting all the gathered information to the test. Shotarou is just there for the heck of it, but sometimes manages to say something smart or helpful for Sakurako.

What I liked about these similarities to the classics of Doyle, is that they’re not 1 to 1 replicas of Sherlock and Watson. The similarities they share remain just that, similarities. They’ve managed to make both Sakurako and Shotarou unique in their own aspects.

For the story of Sakurako-san then, well put simply, there is no story. The best way I can describe the so-called “story” of Sakurako-san is something along the lines of random events occurring but happen also to be interconnected with something bigger. In other words, you as the viewer, won’t have any ideas of what’s to come for our protagonists. Each case is rather unique and raises important questions and societal problems. I do have to say that the tonal shifts in the anime are pretty weird and the pacing makes it hard to watch at times. There’s also a hefty amount of mystery fodder – cases that do not lead anywhere and sort of do not move the story forward. These mystery fodders serve as “character development” mysteries in which Shotarou and Sakurako can grow as characters.

Characters are not one-dimensional, as they carry more depth than what’s shown or told through exposition. There are, however, some questionable characters and the side-characters that never feel properly established or developed in any sense, even after the mystery has been solved. Sakurako and Shotarou are definitely the best part of this show and the whole show basically relies on them. It is also shown that there is some degree of character growth and development for these two. The characters change throughout the series and this is definitely something positive.

For the most part, the show manages to handle itself really well. I really loved the fact that they raised important questions that you have to read between the lines to get. Not many titles manage to do that and it truly shows some clever writing. Not only do you have to follow and understand everything that happens in the case, you also have to read character actions, possible motives and so forth. It gave depth to the series and managed to do the show quite well.

Art was definitely the strongest aspect of this show. This was released in 2013 and holds up magnificently to this day. It’s astoundingly beautiful and some of the scenes are so colorful and vivid while others are dark and shadowy. I’d say that most of this show’s budget definitely went on art and animation.

The music was alright, there wasn’t anything particularly memorable. The opening was okay and so was the ending. No complaints here.

In general, I’d say that the show is quite enjoyable to watch. It’s not on the same level as reading Doyle and it obviously will never be, not that it even tries to be that. Certain parts of the show were good and others not so.

I guess you can say that Sakurako likes bones and Shotarou would like to bone her (?).

Ratings:
Story 3/10
Character 6/10
Art 10/10
Sound 8/10
Enjoyment 6/10
Overall 7/10

Spoilers ahead for the next part.

At first, Sakurako is introduced as this very introverted yet eccentric character who doesn’t like people, she only likes their bones. She goes to various lengths to collect these bones and even manages to find bones of deceased people with the help of Shotarou. It is mentioned very early on that when this duo is together, they always seem to stumble on the subject of death and bones. It’s shown as an introduction in the first episode. Shotarou, on the other hand, is unique in his own way. He disapproves of some of Sakurako’s methods and thinks that it’s not right to steal bones if you’re the one who finds them. He always seems to call the police when they do stumble upon the topic of mortality. Shotarou is great, albeit a bit lacking. He sort of serves more as a comic relief and instead of cracking mindless jokes about dead people, he always manages to make Sakurako’s life a bit harder.

Continuing with the comparison of Sakurako and Sherlock, while they do share some similarities in their personality, they’re actually very different. They both are antisocial people and hate when someone interrupts them when they work. Both of them are also similar in the aspect of solving cases. Both of them seem to investigate properly, gather all the information before them and make their final conclusion. What would have made Sakurako greater would be to hear her thought process because at many times, we just follow what’s happening on the screen and through the character interactions, we have to understand what’s happening. When reading Sherlock Holmes, we’re narrated about what sort of information Sherlock Holmes gathers to build his conclusion with the clever way of Watson always asking him certain questions about things. This is unfortunately not very prominent in the series and I do find that a little bit lackluster. Given, that the anime is being told mainly from Shotarou’s perspective, he makes up a very lackluster apprentice for Sakurako.

What I liked the most in the show is how clever some parts of it were written and that we get an insight in serious topics and issues such as the question of mortality and death, suicide and even domestic abuse. When these questions are raised, they are not explicitly asked and not shoved down your throat. As I’ve said before, it’s rather subtle, so you have to read between the lines to understand. These questions are raised as you get to see and learn more about different characters and dilemmas they’re facing. This is definitely one of the stronger aspects of this show.

There is also some foreshadowing of mental illness and more particular, Sakurako’s mental illness and honestly I’m glad that the show never explored that topic more because it would set quite a different tone for the anime. Sakurako is projecting her dead little brother onto Shotarou, because they share the same names and are quite similar. She tries to hide the fact that she cares about Shotarou but that is definitely not the case. She’s genuinely worried about him a lot of the times. This was definitely a very strong point and it was just briefly mentioned, I do not believe this to be a far stretch though.

The part I disliked most about the show were the mysteries themselves. They were lackluster, boring and some of them were over-the-top unrealistic. This show isn’t exactly the most hyper realistic detective out there but that doesn’t excuse for the amount of plot conveniences a story can have. At first, you do not think much of the presented mysteries in this show but it’s when you start digging a bit deeper you realize that the logical foundation for many mysteries and how to solve them is gone.

The best part about the detective genre, no matter the medium, is the fact that you can let the audience solve the mystery themselves. This engages the audience in a different way and sort of stimulates them to uncover more of the mystery to see if their presumptions are correct. This concept seems to be foreign for almost all mysteries that are slightly more complicated and dark, which should really not be the case in my opinion.

My main gripe with this series is the god awful villain they shoehorn in. It feels like they’ve completely forgot about him for the entirety of the show even though he makes appearances every now and then. He’s a really bad villain, like really bad. He’s bad because he’s never given any screen time aside from his doings and so forth. His motivations are never explained and he remains a complete mystery up until the last case. In the end, it turns out that he was the mastermind behind almost all the mysteries that Shotarou and Sakurako had to solve. This was never setup properly and feels like it was sort of retcon’d into the show the last second.

I can safely say that if you don’t try to overanalyze this show and just see it for what it is – a detective slice of life with certain dark elements, you will most likely enjoy watching it. I certainly enjoyed watching it but was thrown away by some moments in the show. I believe that most of the issues revolving around pacing and story could have actually been fixed if this show was 24 episodes as opposed to 12. They never managed to write a comprehensible story line that just “clicked” with the audience, mainly due to the fact that it was too short and there was no room for developing anyone other than Sakurako and Shotarou.