Yakushiji Ryoko No Kaiki Jikenbo - Episode 3

After the last episode of Yakushiji Ryoko No Kaiki Jikenbo caught a rather serious case of 'stupid plot disease', I wasn't expecting too much from this third instalment of the series - Which, as it turned out, was a good thing, as this episode was pretty much a lame duck in its own right.

After the fall out of the last episode, destroyed building and all, Izumida has the day off work, while a pair of journalists decide they want to dish the dirt on Ryoko. Now, this particular plot point annoyed me straight away - After giving some grand little snippets of dialogue about hunting for only the truth and hating people like Ryoko who use their position and knowledge to their advantage, this very same journalist then decides to go all paparrazi on her by following her around looking for some sleaze to dig up to blackmail her with. Err, hypocritical much? In my mind, pots and kettles were interfacing to discuss their shades of colour en masse.

Of course, Ryoko knows this is going to happen thanks to the journalist's conversation having been overheard, so she calls upon Izumida so that she can use him to set them up with the scandal they want. Again, this makes very little sense from where I'm sitting, and overall it seems like one of the poorer stratgies I can think of.


If all this isn't bad enough, the ending to the episode makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. What the Hell just happened there? Okay, you could argue that this is a series about supernatural investigations and so on but I'm sorry, if you can't be bothered to even adequately build up to or explain the deus ex machina you invoke, then I can't be bothered to make up an excuse for it for you. It was a hugely lazy plot device, and to be quite honest I get the feeling it would have been better to have simply flashed up a caption saying "Haha, we just wasted half an hour of your life" at the end of the episode - That's certainly what it feels like from here.

This episode was extremely poor in short, and I can't even get too excited about the main characters - Ryoko is far too manipulative to be truly likeable, and Izumida appears to be a bit of a dolt. I should probably drop this series, all things considered, but the sadist in me wants to carry on at least a little further to see if there is fun to be poked at this show if nothing else. It's mean of me, I know, but little things please little minds and I get the feeling that this series has just radically shrunk my brain.