Sakurako-san no Ashimoto ni wa Shitai ga Umatteiru

Sakurako-san is a brilliant anime that would have excelled had it simply chosen what it wanted to be; a series of short one off mysteries set in the same town with re-occurring characters, or a dramatic clash between two intellects with a similar yet conflicting interest in bones. Credit where it is due, the music is brilliant and kept me invested or built suspense where it was needed. Some of the visuals were brilliant if insanely underused (Sakurako surrounded by her walking bones blew me away every time, especially with the swell of music accompanying it.) The detail the bones was fantastic and I found myself almost being drawn into the subject in real life. There was clearly passion put into the visuals and the sound. However it is let down by the story, which I enjoyed most of the time. The first half has a more mature tone with the descriptions of death and the accompanying grief. In particular episode 2 "Where do you live" which has a bitter ending that I wish I'd seen more often. By the latter half it seemed to devolve into feeling more like a soap opera. You don't tune into a first episode where a character looks at two bodies and describes being drowned and expect it to end with teenagers screaming at each other about a bald man they all love. If it had been that from the start I would've enjoyed the build up to some sort of confrontation, but instead the sting for a second season feels sad because you know that will be the focus instead of inspecting bodies to solve people's sorrows.

TLDR: Recommended to fans of crime/forensic investigations/Sherlock (BBC)/Natsume Yuujinchou. Had potential to be a masterpiece, but I took 1 point off for 3 major unsolved plot points and nonconsensual relationships. -- I wanted so bad for this anime to be a 10/10. It had all my favourite elements: A strong and beautiful female protagonist, Sherlock vibes, crime/forensic drama, and the other main character resembling Natsume Takashi from Natsume Yuujinchou. Indeed, I found out about this anime while searching for more of Ishida Akira's voice acting work (he plays Natori in Natsume Yuujinchou). Sakurako is so cool and attractive, and I wanna be as smart as her, though maybe not as weirdly passionate about morbidity. I felt the same way about Sherlock, so I was positive this anime would be a new favourite to my collection. Sadly, there were a couple of alarming points that I couldn't look past. The rest of my review will include spoilers / elaborating on the problems. Please stop reading if you don't want spoilers. 1) Unaddressed plot points - We never see Sakurako's fiance Naoe Ariwara, not even once. I get that she lives alone, but aside from a one line narration in the beginning, it's a little disturbing that he never visits, contacts her, or seems to have any memories with her. Heck, no one (not even the housekeeper Grandma!) mentions him except Shoutarou. I want him to exist, for Sakurako's sake. But also so that his existence would balance the story and also put a curb to Shoutarou's ridiculous fantasies and romantic overtones. - Sakurako's late younger brother... we get glimpses of flashbacks, a photo, and even the transition slide that says 'underneath Sakurako's feet' constantly suggesting that we'll find out about her brother... nope. Nothing. I really thought we'd solve his case in the last episode, and they didn't even touch on it. To say I'm annoyed about that would be an understatement. I don't even want to think about it, that's how mad I am. - Hanabusa ... I think the finale was less of a cliffhanger and more like 'studio ran out of money' and couldn't deliver what they promised. Extremely unsatisfied. They could've cut the 'high school festival' filler scenes and actually added more time to the butterfly case. 2) Shoutarou is the problem Because his looks and personality traits overlapped with Natsume's, I thought he'd be my new best friend. I was willing to overlook the fanservice on Sakurako's body during Episode 1, telling myself "these are normal high school boy fantasies." When the fanservice appeared again... and again... and on other characters such as Kougami, I stopped smiling. I thought this was a mystery / psychological series open to all genders, but there's an unfortunate bias towards the male gaze in this one too. The biggest red flag was this comment: "She may be pretty, but she's pretty with flaws." -Shoutaro describing Sakurako to Isozaki sensei. I was so pissed off. Who doesn't have flaws? Are there beautiful people with no flaws? I don't know if this was coming from Shoutarou's ignorance/inexperience with relationships... OR a shallow, superficial mindset talking... but either way, it's unattractive and I'm not here for it. Sakurako is way too cool to have this lout beside her. The biggest problem I have with their dynamic is that Shoutarou's romantic affections aren't consensual. Sakurako is repeatedly shown to care for him as she cares about her little brother. What should be a healthy sibling-type relationship is consistently challenged by Shoutarou to 'be something more.' He denies it in public, but then has an internal emotional crisis about how he feels about her and wants her to like him. Again, if Sakurako felt the same way about him, sure, go for it. But she doesn't, and so his affections felt wrong and incredibly uncomfortable for me to watch. It just got sickening and tiresome to have that element in the series, and definitely detracted from what could've been a masterpiece. The best supporting character throughout the series had to be Kougami. Her character didn't seem like much at first, but her past, relationships, and most importantly, how she views 'protecting the ones she loves' as her top priority is seriously admirable and so, so precious. She's an excellent role model for high schoolers imo and I really hope there will be more girls like her in future anime. Such an inspiration! Isozaki sensei also had decent depth, and I'd be thrilled if he got a bigger part in their story in the future.

I thought this is an okay anime for binge watching then forgetting about it. The main characters sometimes feel too fantastic and this is supposed to be based in reality setting. the way they get their cases is just too coincidental or just plain unbelievable. The thing i didn't like about it is that it feels incomplete and unfinished like they built up the plot and the tension and then just finished the series. I do like the fact that they are solving cases but most of the time i am wondering why people are even answering their questions and going along with the whims of a high school boy and a clearly unstable woman. The art is good, i thought the music was a bit boring but the story tries to teach life lessons about human relations that i do find wholesome and i guess this is one of the reasons i continued watching till the end even if it finished what seem like a cliffhanger

Mysteries. How does one solve a mystery? How does one know when a mystery has been solved? Mysteries aren’t new to storytelling – in fact, they’re quite old. Conan Arthur Doyle wrote short stories about our beloved Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, as they encountered odd mysteries that they had to solve. Detective isn’t a new genre to be exact and said genre has diverted into becoming lackluster and boring. In some mediums, the said genre is one of the lowest denominators. For instance, someone who frequents book reading wouldn’t prefer detective over a fantasy story. Someone who has seen a lot of movies would find one about a detective rudimentary and boring. Detective is a genre that is being looked down upon. You can read classics, you can read short stories and then below them all is detective. The reason why the detective genre is so frustrating to read, watch or consume mainly stems from one reason. It’s something that we’ve read, seen or heard about countless of times. Something that is even more frustrating is when a production company makes an adaptation of your favorite detective – only to see it get ruined because none of it is even remotely close to the source material. This has been the case for multiple Sherlock Holmes adaptations and as someone who’s read almost all of Conan Arthur Doyle – I can safely say that these adaptations, not only butcher the stories but also the characters, interactions and what made them special and interesting. How is all of this related to Sakurako-san, you may ask? Detectives usually lack in originality. They tend to borrow mysteries from other works that have “inspired” them but manage to give their own touch. It is noticeable how the detective genre has its own musts to pertain to the genre. Sakurako was sort of special for me, special in the way that it was something new. Not to confuse this with a novelty of any sort, Sakurako reminded me heavily of several Sherlock Holmes stories. The show focuses heavily on different cases in which our two main protagonists see unfold before their eyes. We have Shotarou who’s a young high school student, and the eccentric Sakurako who works as an osteologist. On a fateful day, Shotarou becomes Sakurako’s apprentice and does his best to help her solve rather unique cases. Sakurako is practically a walking encyclopedia and knows everything related with the human body; she knows exactly what and how went wrong by merely looking at bones. I definitely found this dynamic between Shotarou and Sakurako very interesting as it’s reminiscent of the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Sakurako being a female version of Sherlock and Shotarou being Watson. This becomes more apparent in the show as we get to learn more about Sakurako and Shotarou. Sakurako is the one who always manages to solve the cases by carefully observing and putting all the gathered information to the test. Shotarou is just there for the heck of it, but sometimes manages to say something smart or helpful for Sakurako. What I liked about these similarities to the classics of Doyle, is that they’re not 1 to 1 replicas of Sherlock and Watson. The similarities they share remain just that, similarities. They’ve managed to make both Sakurako and Shotarou unique in their own aspects. For the story of Sakurako-san then, well put simply, there is no story. The best way I can describe the so-called “story” of Sakurako-san is something along the lines of random events occurring but happen also to be interconnected with something bigger. In other words, you as the viewer, won’t have any ideas of what’s to come for our protagonists. Each case is rather unique and raises important questions and societal problems. I do have to say that the tonal shifts in the anime are pretty weird and the pacing makes it hard to watch at times. There’s also a hefty amount of mystery fodder – cases that do not lead anywhere and sort of do not move the story forward. These mystery fodders serve as “character development” mysteries in which Shotarou and Sakurako can grow as characters. Characters are not one-dimensional, as they carry more depth than what’s shown or told through exposition. There are, however, some questionable characters and the side-characters that never feel properly established or developed in any sense, even after the mystery has been solved. Sakurako and Shotarou are definitely the best part of this show and the whole show basically relies on them. It is also shown that there is some degree of character growth and development for these two. The characters change throughout the series and this is definitely something positive. For the most part, the show manages to handle itself really well. I really loved the fact that they raised important questions that you have to read between the lines to get. Not many titles manage to do that and it truly shows some clever writing. Not only do you have to follow and understand everything that happens in the case, you also have to read character actions, possible motives and so forth. It gave depth to the series and managed to do the show quite well. Art was definitely the strongest aspect of this show. This was released in 2013 and holds up magnificently to this day. It’s astoundingly beautiful and some of the scenes are so colorful and vivid while others are dark and shadowy. I’d say that most of this show’s budget definitely went on art and animation. The music was alright, there wasn’t anything particularly memorable. The opening was okay and so was the ending. No complaints here. In general, I’d say that the show is quite enjoyable to watch. It’s not on the same level as reading Doyle and it obviously will never be, not that it even tries to be that. Certain parts of the show were good and others not so. I guess you can say that Sakurako likes bones and Shotarou would like to bone her (?). Ratings: Story 3/10 Character 6/10 Art 10/10 Sound 8/10 Enjoyment 6/10 Overall 7/10 Spoilers ahead for the next part. At first, Sakurako is introduced as this very introverted yet eccentric character who doesn’t like people, she only likes their bones. She goes to various lengths to collect these bones and even manages to find bones of deceased people with the help of Shotarou. It is mentioned very early on that when this duo is together, they always seem to stumble on the subject of death and bones. It’s shown as an introduction in the first episode. Shotarou, on the other hand, is unique in his own way. He disapproves of some of Sakurako’s methods and thinks that it’s not right to steal bones if you’re the one who finds them. He always seems to call the police when they do stumble upon the topic of mortality. Shotarou is great, albeit a bit lacking. He sort of serves more as a comic relief and instead of cracking mindless jokes about dead people, he always manages to make Sakurako’s life a bit harder. Continuing with the comparison of Sakurako and Sherlock, while they do share some similarities in their personality, they’re actually very different. They both are antisocial people and hate when someone interrupts them when they work. Both of them are also similar in the aspect of solving cases. Both of them seem to investigate properly, gather all the information before them and make their final conclusion. What would have made Sakurako greater would be to hear her thought process because at many times, we just follow what’s happening on the screen and through the character interactions, we have to understand what’s happening. When reading Sherlock Holmes, we’re narrated about what sort of information Sherlock Holmes gathers to build his conclusion with the clever way of Watson always asking him certain questions about things. This is unfortunately not very prominent in the series and I do find that a little bit lackluster. Given, that the anime is being told mainly from Shotarou’s perspective, he makes up a very lackluster apprentice for Sakur…

The best place to start my review is to point out the fact the ending left me majorly disappointment. More specifically, we got all of this build up and then got a rather lack luster ending which didn't connect with previous episodes like it did, but in the end - I felt the motivations of the two main characters rather lack luster. Now, let's get back to the build up. I loved how until the final arc there were little things here and there which ended up picked up in the final mystery arc. Unfortunately, the ending left the ultimate villain feeling rather lack luster and while the point the series left off was definitely climatic for the two characters growth - let's just say it's not very climatic for a mystery series which set the bar rather high. Not to mention - I found their relationship rather troublesome in that on a platonic level it works, yet there are hints that this is meant - if the series were to continue, to go into a romantic route which leaves me shaking my head due to the obvious age gap and the power imbalance that they ineffectively tried balancing out. Of course, maybe it won't go that route in a sequel series. Oh, and some of the humor which worked on a platonic level starts to not be as enjoyable if the series were to take that route. With the build up falling apart at the end, the other issue is looking back on all of the mysteries solved, they now seem lackluster. They've been done before in other series, but what made them standout were - well, the build up to something which didn't come. There were some which ended up connecting because the series did a good job building up connections between the two characters - such as the mystery with the little girl and the ones involving teachers at the school, but others disconnected because there was no real connect to the characters, including the mysteries involving the assistants friend, possibly because he's a romantic interest. Perhaps these would be resolved in a sequel series, but is this ever going to get a sequel series? As of reviewing this Anime, it's been almost five years since said series ended, so my thoughts are no - it's not going to get a sequel.

The first thing I want to say is that it's too short. For an anime premise that involves a whodunnit, most of the crimes are solved within 1 episode. I stumbled upon this anime by accident, and being a fan of the CSI franchise, I was welcoming of such an anime. But boy was I wrong. The relative ease that the mysteries during the series get solved turned me off. The main character, like most main characters in anime is overpowered - she's basically a genius when it comes to solving mysteries. As a viewer, I am not taken on a journey or even allowed to come up with my own hypothesis for who may have committed the crime, why or how they might have committed said crime; I've got to take Sakurako's hypothesis to be 100% accurate, and thanks to her being the love child of Sherlock Holmes and Partriot, in most cases she's not far off. The thing about the mystery genre that drew me to other series like the CSI franchise is that there was a step by step process by which a crime was solved. With Sakurako-san, the anime takes shortcuts and jumps over a few steps to help solve the mystery, which I didn't like. At one stage she manages to solve a mystery in mere minutes! STORY: Not much of a story for this, there are few arcs, but because the whole anime is only 12 episodes long, there isn't time for the development of these stories, it's over before it begins really. Some might call this anime episodic, in that each episode isn't related to the previous or upcoming one, except in 3 cases where the mystery is solved over 2 episodes. CHARACTERS: There are 6 characters that make an appearance in more than 1 episode. Obviously we have the 2 main characters (Sakurako and Shourtarou) then we've got an incompetent police officer, a teacher, a love interest and a granny. I have to say, these characters aren't developed or given time to develop. In most cases it would be fine, for example, yes you can have an incompetent police officer, but why not give him more screen time to develop? The only real person that got any development was Shourtarou's love interest - hell she even got her own filler episode, yes that's right - filler! Which by the way was a total waste of time and added nothing to the overall story; the anime is 12 episodes long and you waste it on the character development of a supporting character? Why? Shoutarou is just a very dull character, and the last episode showing how the main characters met and their relationship is not that noteworthy either. There is no character development for him and he is mainly served as a conduit for us, the audience - explaining things we may or may not know. I can understand this, and I want to believe, if this series got a second season, this character troupe would have gone. However, I’m pretty sure the series pretty much would pan out the same with or without him. That’ s how much influence or input he has throughout the series - and it's kind of sad. Here you have a character you could've developed and made us understand him more, but they chose not to. Maybe they knew it wasn't going to a "hit" and therefore decided not to. Now the main character, Sakurako, and her bone fetish! My god! She literally is like a dog when it comes to looking at bones! And the fact that she’s a genius doesn’t help either, okay, if you were as old as Horatio Caine or Poirot, I could understand your boundless knowledge, but she’s not. And yet she’s a know it all. Really ticked me off with her know-it-all attitude and probably makes the anime as a whole suffer. Her superpowers end mysteries before they begin. Would've been much better served having Shoutarou find the dead bodies and solve mysteries - his lack of or limited knowledge would've a) allowed us the viewer to begin solving the mysteries with him as he tried to find clues and what not; b) would've been allowed character development and if by the end of 12 episodes manages to wrap up a mystery in 10 minutes we can understand why and c) probably would've been more enjoyable than having Sakurako as the main lead. The others aren’t really worth mentioning in more depth other than that they serve in some cases to help progress the story arc, but because of poor development overall, if they were erased from the anime it won’t make a that much of a difference. ART: One thing I must say it's vivid to say the least. Considering it's a dark subject matter, the colors provide a stark contrast to the plot of each episode. The colors do help in trying to show possibly accurate (I'm guessing) picture of human and animal bone structures/anatomy, other than that, I think they've made an error with colors for this anime, it's a dark subject matter (death, decay, dead bodies), so the colors should reflect that to set the mood. Overall, I give it a 6/10, it's not that bad I couldn't see it through (there were times I was considering it), but it's definitely not the best. Here's hoping that there are better mystery anime in the future.

To be honest, I certainly didn't expect something like this. When I read the description before I started, I thought the main character was just going to talk about bones or something. However, in fact, in each episode, the analysis of a corpse is told. Of course the episodes are more or less connected. I love the main character, she is smart and reminds me of sherlock holmes. She doesn't care much about corpses, so she doesn't seem very emotional. Our other main character is also as expected. Someone who is more emotional and tries to help the other character. If you want a long mystery show, I don't think you will find it because the explanations are fast. There isn't much time to think. I don't like waiting too long on these matters so it didn't bore me. If you've watched Sherlock Holmes (BBC), you'll definitely love it. About the other reviews, I don't understand why people get so caught up in details.