Review of Beautiful Bones -Sakurako's Investigation-

So the premise of the show is that it is a mystery and that Sakurako is an osteologist and thus knows a lot about bones and can tell the gender, animal and traumas from it, but the biggest problem with the stories/crime solving is that she magically becomes sherlock holmes at whim. She's suddenly knowledgeable in art. She's suddenly knowledgeable in jewellery. She's suddenly knowledgeable in knot tying. When you never present your character as being a very diversely knowledgeable person from the beginning (like Sherlock from Elementary), everything seems to be resolved by deus ex machina. Now the show is presented in a fairlyepisodic format. One episode generally has no relevance to its previous one besides character introduction, similar to Elementary. So what makes a mystery show great is that there are often lots of clues given out, some that are later proven to be wrong to the case or some that are proven crucial since the beginning. This show basically has none of that. How the mysteries are resolved is largely Sakurako showing up at the necessary place and everything is solved instantly, letting only the audience see it being told. There's no amazing in-depth explanation or analysis of things, it's really just: I'll show up, have a glance, and now the problem is solved. A little bit of techno-babble would have been great as well as letting the audience see into the life of an osteologist would have been ever better. But as it stands, it really feels like the author thought up an idea then decided to research it on wikipedia and eventually made the summary of it in his story.

This is a horrible way to present a show, let a lone a mystery. It's boring, it's basically skimped. Let's take a look at another show that does something like this, Mushishi. Now why is this show so much better than Sakurako? It's because there's actually some techno-babble in it along with some developed episodic characters. Most of the episodic characters in Sakurako don't have enough backstory and we're just given a simple exposition explaining their relevance then everything is resorted to melodrama and yelling.

Next, since this is basically Sherlock Holmes, let's compare the two. Now Sherlock has a side-kick, Watson. And basically Shoutarou is Watson in this story. Except for a Watson, he is absolutely irritating and does nothing to contribute to solving the case; in fact it sometimes feels like he's hindering it. Hell, he's more like Watson and the police department mixed together since he ends up bringing the case to Sakurako. Shoutarou is probably one of the worst characters I have seen to date as he basically believes himself more mature than Sakurako but has the obtuseness of a male harem MC at understanding other people's emotions.

So how does the show feel overall? Well it's a mystery without the interesting mysteries. A dialogue heavy show with very superficial and unintriguing dialogue. The only redeeming thing I can find is the art, I find the character design okay, the background art ranges from industry standard to pretty good.

Lastly, yes there's some kind of story and it's told in between and kind of at the end of certain episodes (again, sort of like Elementary). Except we're basically left out of the actual story arc and you're either left to wait for season 2 or forced to read the novels.

In regards to deus ex machinas, Shoutarou is a black belt in whatever style for a single episode so solve that one exclusive case and then it's never heard from again.