Dropped: Kabukichou Sherlock – Case Closed

This was a tough one, but as we always say, when you know you’re done with a show, you just know. Sherlock seems content to continue its lighthearted and zany cases-of-the-week while, meanwhile, a teenager is in prison for murdering a monster who tore out and ate his invalid twin sister’s reproductive organs.

The tonal dissonance has grown too intense. I can’t enjoy the new cases while I know Moriarty is being abused behind bars. I realize there’s no getting around the fact he committed a murder himself, but he deserved a break. Sherlock shoulders some of the responsibility for getting a child and a victim so involved in the case, but when it came time to deal with the culprit, he lost control.

Even if Sherlock reckons with that failure and Moriarty is given early release, the show’s fast-and-loose attitude towards narrative seriousness has poisoned my emotional investment in the show beyond repair. It was a decent enough first cour; I just wish the show had ended with one.—Preston

Kabukichou Sherlock – 13 – Holes in Their Hearts

A dreary pall of despair is immediately cast on the second half of Kabukicho Sherlock as Watson, Sherlock, and Mrs. Hudson visit James in prison. He’s trying to keep a brave face, but there are clear signs he’s receiving beatings from other inmates.

It’s gut-wrenching to see such a bright kid of such potential to help people behind bars, but he doesn’t try to run away from the fact he chose to murder Jack, and this was the consequence.

Mycroft pays a visit to Holmes’ house and thoroughly examines it, while a client-of-the-week arrives with a murder case. As Sherlock starts to unravel the case on the spot, Watson is happy his friend is able to stay busy.

Mycroft tells Watson how Holmes left his accomplished family for Kabukichou because he was missing something very profound at home. It was a void he was able to at least partially fill in his new role as detective and performer of mystery-solving rakugo.

It turns out that rakugo was James’ idea, suggested to Sherlock soon after the two met quite by chance (the fact that Sherlock’s brother was James’ father’s secretary for five years was mere coincidence). When his mother took her life and even before losing his twin sister to Jack, James had a similarly large hole in his heart that Kabukichou and the people in it managed to fill.

Now he feels alone again, as his attackers in prison grow more brazen and one of his protectors being beaten half to death and being released early. It’s just a horrible situation all around. No matter how many cases Sherlock solves, as long as James is in prison (and danger) the emptiness and despair will always creep back into the spaces between the cases.

Kabukichou Sherlock – 07 – The Itchy Wives

The nature of Kabukichou Sherlock’s setting and cast is that it can go just about anywhere and focus on anyone it wants, and has to its credit been doing so. But we’re back to the titular detective this week, in an episode that dusts off a couple more very familiar names: Sherlock’s older brother Mycroft, and the beautiful, brilliant Irene Adler.

In this alternate universe in which Holmes hangs out in Kabukichou, Tochou looks way different (and more expensive), and Tokyo is split in two, instead of lines for the next iPhone, there are lines for the latest version of the AI wife doll. Oh, and the ward mayor lost a USB drive containing sensitive information, and believes Adler is the one who stole it.

Mycroft knows his brother well, and so knows the best way to get him interested in a case he’d rather not take is to sweeten the 15-mil deal with a rare rakugo trading card he desires. Still, Sherlock sends Watson in to deal with Adler as a kind of useful idiot. I was also a bit skeptical that Adler’s boyfriend hadn’t previously consulted with many doctors before building so many wife dolls.

As for those dolls, dear lord, it’s never explained why Irene is okay with having them not only resemble her, but stored in closets in her soon-to-be-former house. I guess she’s not going to stand in the way of progress and profit, huh? In any case, Watson gets a text that the USB is under the skirt of he French version of the “Wives of the World.” Turns out Sherlock was there, in disguise.

After a quick rakugo sesh to detail how he deduced that, they check the USB, and it’s video footage of the two of them sneaking around Irene’s house. In other words, she played them both. She’s at the bar (Mrs. Hudson is an old friend) and tells Sherlock the USB is already safely in France, but better luck next time, and departs.

After stewing for a bit, that next time comes far sooner for Sherlock. As she’s waiting for a taxi, Irene is accosted on the street by a thug demanding the USB at knife-point, but Sherlock arrives in time to rescue her. In the moment she’s in his arms he snatches the real USB drive from her pocket, realizing she’d worked too hard on the fake never let it out of her sight.

In another twist, Sherlock hands the damaged fake USB to Mycroft, and when Irene comes by wanting the real one back, Sherlock plugs it into his laptop and asks Irene for the password. If thugs are being hired to accost her, there just may be something more important on it than revenge porn.