Review of Beautiful Bones -Sakurako's Investigation-

Sakurako-san is a brilliant anime that would have excelled had it simply chosen what it wanted to be; a series of short one off mysteries set in the same town with re-occurring characters, or a dramatic clash between two intellects with a similar yet conflicting interest in bones. Credit where it is due, the music is brilliant and kept me invested or built suspense where it was needed. Some of the visuals were brilliant if insanely underused (Sakurako surrounded by her walking bones blew me away every time, especially with the swell of music accompanying it.) The detail the bones was fantastic and I found myselfalmost being drawn into the subject in real life. There was clearly passion put into the visuals and the sound.
However it is let down by the story, which I enjoyed most of the time. The first half has a more mature tone with the descriptions of death and the accompanying grief. In particular episode 2 "Where do you live" which has a bitter ending that I wish I'd seen more often. By the latter half it seemed to devolve into feeling more like a soap opera. You don't tune into a first episode where a character looks at two bodies and describes being drowned and expect it to end with teenagers screaming at each other about a bald man they all love.
If it had been that from the start I would've enjoyed the build up to some sort of confrontation, but instead the sting for a second season feels sad because you know that will be the focus instead of inspecting bodies to solve people's sorrows.