Rating - ⭐⭐
"Sakon Futatsuki is the newest addition to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Criminal Investigation Unit. Alongside his elder brother, Ukon, he investigates a plethora of crimes while trying to uphold his own principles and morals. In contrast, Risa Aioi is a skilled detective who works in the same division, but she uses unconventional means to find and capture criminals. She has the tendency to fall madly in love with the targeted perpetrator and will resort to stalking them relentlessly until they turn themselves in.
Sakon is appalled by Aioi's extremely questionable method of hunting criminals, even though it has a high rate of success. He is determined to get her to reconsider her approach to crime-fighting, but the more he learns about her past, the more reluctant he is to do so. At the same time, Aioi finds herself wanting to rein in her impulses because there is still a criminal she desires to capture above all. Concerned with the safety of his colleague, Sakon must learn how to fight "poison with poison" and control it before it is too late."
Written and illustrated by Kazusa Inaoka, this was serialized on Weekly Shōnen Jump for a couple of months in 2021. This series concluded with 21 chapters collected into 3 volumes.
I read this for a challenge I am doing where I read cancelled manga to see if they had potential and were worth the read or not. (If you want to check that out, you can find it here). I can tell you right away with certainty, this series was not worth it. In all honesty, I don't know what was going through the author's brain when they decided that this would make a good story.
Let's just go straight into some...
DETAILS
This is a mystery series following a group of detectives as they solve crimes, but with a twist (and not a good one). We follow a detective who is newly partnered with Aioi, a girl who falls in love with the people she is investigating. You hear that right, she falls in love with every single criminal no matter how heinous the crime. That is because she was kidnapped when she was younger, and in what I assume is an effort to survive, fell in love with her kidnapper.
I-I...I don't know. This isn't like something like Killing Stalking, though I haven't read that, which is more of a character study and conversation on mental instability. No, this was just the plot and Aioi's background just because. And Sakon might have gripes with it and questions Aioi's mental state and qualification to be on the force, unlike his brother, it still doesn't make it any less weird.
I can't even strip the story down and look at the mystery by itself in order to find some positive thing to say because the whole plot revolves around Aioi and her backstory. This is made worse when she explains her motivations, in that every criminal has a reason to do what they do, and she wants to validate that sadness which...no. Sure I am sure most criminals have some kind of a tragic backstory coupled with mental instability, but you cannot justify their choices nor excuse them.
If this was Hannibal, which I can excuse simply because it is well-written, it would make more sense, but it isn't so it doesn't work. On top of all of this, to make things worse, the story is amped up by utilizing cliche and overly dramatic plot points. If this was used ironically it would make sense, but did it ever have me rolling my eyes thinking 'really, of course that happened.'
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
My rating where it stands now is probably too high. This was an entire waste of my time, and I can see why this was cancelled. Although, I do see people who enjoyed this which... to each their own, I guess.
Instead of reading this, I would suggest Spy x Family if you want something more wholesome and comedic, or Moriarty the Patriot if you want morally grey characters that actually work.
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