Synopsis

Detective Waver 9 – 12: All aboard the Rail Zeppelin as Waver – I mean, Lord El-Melloi II – gets to the bottom of cases that occurred 7 years ago as well as the death of Trisha. That’s after he deals with Hephaestion (?) and the Mystic Eye auction first.

Impressions

• So if there’s a Servant…you have to find the Master.
• Olga reminds me of Reines…kind of.
• LOL, whoever thought of a zombie cooking show…?
• This series really goes all-in on the zombies and the fake-outs thereof, huh? Dangit, Melvin, don’t scare us.
• Melvin has a really odd relationship with Waver, huh? If you’re really insisting you’re “the only person to ever be able to hurt Waver”, I don’t quite see how you guys can be friends in the normal sense of the word.
• Why would someone have a violin at a time like this…?
• Interestingly, they don’t bother to do any fanservice of Caules. That scene with Gray and Yvette was fanservice for those who like them, but the only guy who’s getting to do any fanservice in this series is Waver himself…(what with him being naked and knocked out right now.)
• “Sibyl” seems to be a synonym for “virgin”…(*whispers “Awkward…”*)
• Update: After reading some of Marth’s posts on this series, I’m inclined to call this “Murders on a Train (with an Exploding Helicopter for Good Measure)”.
• For some reason, there’s episode 0 – 9, then 11 – 13 on the service I’m using. Where’s 10?
• I think Waver’s relationship with Rider is interesting because of the way I think of relationships myself. Waver has made it clear that he wants to see Rider again so he can basically prostrate at his feet all over again (and maybe win a wish and/or see Oceanus while they’re at it), but – hey, hear this! – I used to believe, when I was still an impressionable kid, all relationships, whether they be between friends, family or even lovers, lasted roughly in the same state basically forever (as in, friends stay friends forever, they’ll never be so far apart that they can’t keep their relationship alive etc. etc.)…Obviously, I was wrong and arguably, this change in thinking, plus the related changes in technology, are where my ability to fleetingly but passionately love both 2D boys and the series they come from comes from.
• Wait, so the Child of Einasshe (sp?) is the forest, yeah? I don’t think I got that 100% straight.
• I never thought the shield form of a Mystic Code could be used for snowboarding down a mountain/hill…whatever Gray just went down. I didn’t even know Add had a shield form, for that matter.
• “[U]sual individual” – LOL. What a way to refer to Waver.
• “Wait a minute!” – I’m just imagining Phoenix Wright all of a sudden. A Waver legal mystery series would be boring as all get out – I’m far less interested in the courtroom versions of mysteries and more interested in how the pieces fit together. (Update: Then again, I am a person who likes the action genre and courtroom mysteries don’t have much of that, which might also explain my choice.)
• “…lacking the element of motive to begin with.” – Well, Waver’s not wrong…
• I’m observing this apple and noticing someone skimped on the detail around the stem. Does anyone still remember Art Academy for the DS? After looking at some promo material for it, I basically learnt how to draw a proper apple (and nothing else, really). If an apple is just drawn as a circle, it doesn’t quite look like an apple up close. (Two of the main things I screw up on when drawing are perception and the colour of highlights, both of which are covered in something like an apple stem and the related indent.)
• Oh goodness…I was hoping Karabo would keep his vision (or actual eyeballs)…but that’s gruesome.
• I’m guessing, based on the wheelchair, that Waver’s still paralysed or otherwise not able to move around like normal. Update: Spoke too soon.
• Someone encoded the video funny again…
• What was that crossword thing…? A warding spell of some sort?
• Is that an owl in the back?!
• Stealth fighter…Rider wanted one, didn’t he?
• Every time he appears on screen now, I basically curse Melvin. He’s entertaining to watch, sure, but he’s annoyingly prodigal. He’s basically Dice from HypMic at this stage (aka he’s the sort of person who’d bet away his own clothes, given the chance and incentive).
• Look at the way Waver’s hair drags behind him as he walks…it’s gorgeous…
• “Residual Image” (as translated in the title) is literally “the left-over image” (zanzou). Not surprising, but I find the exact combo of characters used interesting since it could be short for “nokoru eizou” (残像, where the nokoru’s character is read as zan in the combo, as you can guess).
• Wow…this series really pulled something out of its butt this time, huh? “The guy without a heart”…no viewer would’ve known that actually referred to a character called Dr Heartless unless they knew of his existence somehow (the closest they would’ve been was having an inkling that this pointed to a name of the culprit).
• There is an owl in the back of the auction room!
•  Ay? So what the heck is Pandemonium in this case?
• “dotard” – Turns out this means “an old person, especially one who has become physically weak or whose mental faculties have declined.” You can’t say I don’t enrich my vocabulary through watching anime, huh?
• I’m still wondering…why adapt case 7 of this series (Rail Zeppelin)? Why not case 1 (Adra)? Update: Rail Zeppelin‘s volume 4 of the LN series, so I’m starting to doubt the fact this is case 7…(I have no idea where I pulled that number from, now that I think of it.)

What Now?

Well, considering I’ve gone ahead while I was at it, I finished the series. You’ll see my thoughts on the final episode soon, but I might as well talk about the whole series (so I’ll spoil episode 13).

Watching a bunch of cases in a row makes it more obvious that some cases are more solvable than others, given the precedent and surrounding history. Apparently, Mystic Eyes have their introduction rooted in the other Type-Moon works Tsukihime (never seen anything of it until I started digging, although I think I had heard of it in passing prior to this project) and Kara no Kyoukai, something I haven’t seen yet (but have a wallpaper of!). Furthermore, some of these characters show up in F/GO and Apocrypha so I am clearly missing a lot more knowledge to understand why things happened the way they did than I should, but the series is still fairly complete (albeit it still somewhat looks like Waver is pulling from a knowledge we are not privy to – and haven’t been privy to for 10 or more years) without that.

I find it quite cute that Waver had the ceremony for Svin, but because we’ve not really seen Svin develop as a character, it kind of lost its impact – a similar thing happened with quite a few of the incidents, not necessarily because of what I just said but because the choice was to adapt Rail Zeppelin, which is clearly not the beginning of Lord El-Melloi II’s Case Files. As noted, Adra Separation Castle is first, but the vacuum here is created from the fact we don’t have access to the original novels or manga adaption (the only source materials with a possibility of making it to predominantly-English-speaking shores if VNs don’t become more prolific) to get at why this case, of all cases, was chosen, aside from how well it wraps up the Waver characterisation arc started in Fate/Zero. (Of course, with my Japanese skills, I could easily go and dig up a preview of Adra or the other preceding novels if I so chose, but trying to read Detective Conan in its native language has taught me I’m not yet good enough to understand mysteries in it, let alone mysteries laced with Fate/ terminology.)

The humour was definitely there more than F/Z or UBW, but I probably took that for granted since I am much more inclined to comedy than the other reviewers I’ve found reviews of (Marth, ThatRandomEditor and Theron Martin of Anime News Network).

I have a bunch of series where even though I feel like I enjoyed the series itself a lot, but upon closer inspection, suddenly the logic doesn’t quite hold up (possibly because the series is style over substance, like with Un-Go and Ranpo Kitan). This seems to fall into that category, if you don’t consider the things I’ve listed in the other paragraphs.

…Also, no one explained Mystic Codes or the random owl in the back of the auction room, so I assume those explanations are elsewhere as well.

So what are your thoughts on the anime of Lord El-Melloi II’s Case Files? Otherwise, I’m not sure if I should look forward to Prisma Illya or not anymore…but I guess you’ll find out more about how I feel in the next post.