Detective

There’s something about a detective story that just immediately brings up a story’s score for me. Maybe it’s my childhood obsession with Batman or my fondness for men in long coats, or that time a Columbo-looking motherfucker brought my sister and me back home after we walked a little too far from home as kids.

Any story willing to abandon even one ounce of its seriousness for the sake of introducing some grandiose “brilliant detective” immediately earns style points in my book. And this week’s review is of a show that never ceases to hype up the brilliance of its detectives to the point of shameless self-aggrandizement.

Id: Invaded is a sci-fi mystery show from the studio that brought you DRAMAtical Murder and that one Pharrell Williams music video It Girl… I can’t believe I’m privileged enough to get to type that sentence. Having come out at the start of the year, it’s one of several cool-looking shows that lulled us into thinking the year would be “pretty alright.” Getting around to watching it now, I think it’s safe to say I shouldn’t be too disappointed that I didn’t hop on the bandwagon earlier.

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Worldbuilding is something I get unusually excited about when it is done a certain way. I’ve often ranted about shows like Kekkai Sensen, which depict the supernatural chaos, yet systems of government designed to efficiently counter the chaos. There is a multitude of minor elements of world-building that excite me but it is exceedingly difficult to put into words why. The closest I get is saying that I love the idea of order applied to an unnatural society

Kinoko Nasu, the creator of Fate/ Stay Night, Garden of Sinners, and Tsukihime, has written works tailor-made to cater to me. He has created a modern fantasy universe the complexity of which rivals the works of Rowling and Tolkien. In fairness, the Nasuverse is bloated, with so many alternate universes and different creative minds, but there is still beauty in the chaos.

This past summer, studio Troyca’s Lord El-Melloi II’s Case Files gave me this episode-to-episode joy built entirely on showing off how cool the world is. What I thought would be another misfire in an already packed franchise turned out to be one of my favorite shows this year.

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