Tsumi to Batsu no Spica - Vol. 2 Ch. 8 - The Last Job (5)

[Levankua]

I don't like how this story resolves the mysteries.

Part of the fun of a whodunnit is that the audience gets to participate and try to guess the culprit before the author reveals it. One of the most entertaining things about detective/mystery stories is when you get to figure it out beforehand because the author did a good job at presenting the information.

This is a bad example of that kind of story. The culprit's identity was pretty much an asspull, there was no way for the reader to know all the stuff mentioned in this chapter before the MC revealed it.

And yeah, you could tell me "this isn't that kind of story, it's about a physic MC solving impossible cases so you won't be able to figure it out" but it's certainly written and presented like one. What's even the point of trying to give us hints if the answer is going to be "this rando did it"?

The idol did have some focus so while it wasn't discernable why the murder happened the character didn't come out of nowhere.

 

[Sancho_2]

OK, before I conclude that this writting is bad, maybe someone here can help me realize I missed something...

We see Spica setting her sights on the idol Yamaguchi Neko (sorry if I misremember the name, but it was something like that). She gests a part-time job to earn money so she can go to the debut concert and participate in the hand-shake event. She does it and when shaking hands she reads the idol's heart and discovers OR confirms her past as a murderer.

When confronting the idol, she made it sound like it was a coincide that her beloved idol turned out to be a murderer. And not only that, she just happens to be the murderer of the case this old detective, who happens to be a client of her part-time job, couldn't solve.

If the author of the manga really want to pass all this as pure coincidence, then this writting completely sucks. If there was some clue I missed that could potencially link the idol to the unsolved case, then this could be salvaged. i guess it all comes down to if Spica just discovered the murder in the handshake event, or she knew about it before hand.

 

[Toki-Kata]

I think the pink haired girl has to be a supernatural force (and I dont mean her psychic powers, more like nanno from Girl From Nowhere).

Cause how does she not get incrimated, especially by leaving finger prints everywhere. Or being seen at the scene of the crime/ being the last person to talk to the deceased criminal.

And every person left a suicide note detailing crimes they got away with? Seems suspicious. But so far it only happen twice, not enought to bring awareness to the police.

But like she said the police are useless so I get why they haven't been on their Ps and Qs about this.

 

[dementati]

I don't like how this story resolves the mysteries.

Part of the fun of a whodunnit is that the audience gets to participate and try to guess the culprit before the author reveals it. One of the most entertaining things about detective/mystery stories is when you get to figure it out beforehand because the author did a good job at presenting the information.

This is a bad example of that kind of story. The culprit's identity was pretty much an asspull, there was no way for the reader to know all the stuff mentioned in this chapter before the MC revealed it.

And yeah, you could tell me "this isn't that kind of story, it's about a physic MC solving impossible cases so you won't be able to figure it out" but it's certainly written and presented like one. What's even the point of trying to give us hints if the answer is going to be "this rando did it"?

I kind of suspected that this was going to happen. The issue isn't even that this is a bad detective story, it's that this arc is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT from the first one. The first one was really good, because it was a long sequence of expectation subversions. It's fine if you can't predict where the story will go if that's the whole point. We were constantly proven wrong about what kind of person Spica is, but also what kind of person Hatori was, who the protagonist is and what even the entire manga is about. It was cool how it gradually revealed that Hatori was an unreliable narrator and that we were kept in the dark about all but his most surface-level thoughts and feelings. And we couldn't quite understand who Spica is until the very end.

BUT, that's where it ends. You can't pull that trick twice. This arc is just a regular murder mystery, and as you rightly point out, it's a bad one, because the resolution is a complete asspull that relies entirely on her supernatural mind-reading ability. The secret sauce of this story is already spent, and the only possible continuation seems to be an anthology series of unoriginal detective stories. And I honestly can't really see what the author could've done different, other than just keep this as a three-chapter story. I guess the mere fact that this is a longer series contributes to keeping us in the dark about the fact that Hatori is not the real protagonist, but that's it.