It has nothing to do with the breath of actual elephants.
Impression
Not bad. It’s still not great, and I was really sceptical at first, but this episode was noticeably better than the stunts they’ve tried to pull over the past couple of episodes. I’m not sure whether it was because the subject matter was grounded slightly more in reality, or because Haruta actually showed some tact for the first time in this entire series, but this episode genuinely wasn’t too bad. Of course, it might also be because the eyecatch this week was a wonderful drawing of the twins. I’m irrationally weak to them. I was eating while watching the episode, and I made a muffled noise of happiness as the eyecatch went up. It’s not too futile to hope for a twins episode, right?
I think I said this last time as well, but I’m fond of how Maren and Narushima have stuck around as important side characters even after the end of their designated episode (and they might even have shipping potential, if Narushima is any indication). At times it feels a little contrived, with Maren and his American upbringing conveniently slotting its way into the mystery, but that’s not the case with Narushima – she’s there because she’s Chika’s friend. I thought the opening scene was super cute actually, at least until Haruta turned up – she was patting Chika’s head and accompanying her scales and all that. Haruta then walked past and made a snide remark like he always does.
For some reason, every time he says ‘Chika-chan’ I can’t help but feel like it sounds really condescending. It doesn’t help that he often says her name when he’s revealing an obscure trivia fact extracted from his bottomless wellspring of wisdom – this week we saw him add US history and chemical warfare to his list of subject specialisms. Haruchika sure does like to impute a lot of general knowledge towards its characters. Maren also suffers from the know-it-all disease, albeit on a far more minor scale – and at least he’s not widely known throughout his school (and beyond) as a famous genius puzzle solver. Haruta’s fame stretches so far that even has little girls trespass onto school grounds in search of his infinite wisdom. Instead of chancing upon mysteries, random people give him their problems! He’s a real Sherlock now.
I was honestly unsure of what to expect with the whole storyline. I gathered that Akari’s grandfather was definitely hiding something serious behind his perverted comments about Chika’s legs (well, Chika is rather attractive) but I didn’t think it’d be what it was – the fact that he’s suffered from PTSD over the last 40 years as a result of having fought in the Vietnam War. It’s quite sombre, but not as much as what I’d expected after Kusakabe-sensei strictly warned them to not investigate this any further. I had some pretty morbid possibilities in my mind. Of course, Haruta casually ignores him and decides to continue investigating against his wishes anyway. I can understand why both Akari and her grandfather acted the way they did – the former believed her grandma was being taken advantage of in her old age, and the latter didn’t want to reveal the truth and risk frightening her with the true meaning behind the sky in the paintings of the elephants. I don’t know if that’s worth the cost of Akari hating him for the rest of his life without having heard his side of the story (he’s about to die and her only reaction to that is to want to force him to apologize) but hey, maybe it’s too much to expect coherently developed side characters when they’re introduced as part of episodic arcs.
I wonder if we’ll ever get a mystery that lasts for longer than a single episode? It’d be breaking the current trend, not only because the mysteries haven’t been complicated enough to warrant more than one episode but also because it’d be implicitly calling into question Haruta’s genius detective skills. I will admit that he didn’t cross the line this episode though – I was actually surprised that he recognized that there was a line and actively chose to hide the truth out of respect for what the grandfather wanted to achieve by keeping his PTSD to himself. There was some very un-Haruta-like tact from him.