Ranpo Kitan - Game of Laplace - 01
Not a bad first episode, I suppose. It's really just another murder mystery story with a slight horror tone, as the
Ranpo name clues us in, It could be good or bad or just plain average, but hey, we are talking of anime here, beggars can't be choosers.
We have the protagonist that seems a potential diamond in the rough in terms of mystery-solving talents that has to discover who is the killer as he is being framed. He seems a sociopath, he didn't have any kind of problem in watching the corpse nor he acts normally. In fact I wasn't liking the visual trick of putting everyone in a shadowy silhoutte and then discovering them but then I understood it could be a way to present his viewworld: people are nothing to consider, just background shadows, he only sees real people who gets close to him.
We also have his friend as the "straight man", and the also senior high schooler but special detective that I suppose it's the detective genius archetype.
It's not perfect, the series goes too far away in explaining things and character's psyches through straight dialog instead of letting the viewer appreciate it with time. Oh yeah, and the token animu~ moment that was totally jarring with the rest of the series:
Trying the spoiler image feature (the dead guy, nsfw I suppose?)
Shadow people
The club/house/base of operations is fairly striking
but apart from that most of the episode was done in boring backgrounds like the classroom and the police station.