Juvenile Detective Fluff 2 -- Short Shorts with Deep Pockets

Dec 09, 2008 20:41

The first two words in the CLAMP School Detectives anime are “Tokyo Tower.” I find this not at all surprising, given the prominence of (and constant threats to) that edifice in the CLAMP universe.

But really, this show is more about fluff -- just look at the hair.






Do we love the school uniforms CLAMP comes up with? The shortness of the shorts here is kind of ... hmm. And the school overcoats, whose cutout design leaves the short shorts exposed...







CLAMP School, population 10,000, is a self-contained city containing educational institutions from kindergarten through university and graduate school, as well as hospitals, banks, stores, and everything else one might need to gird against the downfall of contemporary Japanese society.



The destruction of life as we know it probably won't come up in this particular series, but it is CLAMP, after all.

And clearly, all is not well even in this ideal environment, if innocent school ducks can be threatened by encroaching shadows!



Oh, wait -- it’s only the school yacht. Which is also a giant swan. Cuz it’s CLAMP.



The school has ridiculously good funding. And the students themselves are either geniuses or filthy rich, if not both. The series opens with our three detectives and lords of the elementary school, Imonoyama Nokoru, Takamura Suoh, and Ijyuin Akira, borrowing the school dirigible and hang-gliders to scope out the proposed site for a school reception. Tokyo Tower, of course.




Nokoru (age 12) is the student council president and seems to run the school, as well as the engineering department of his family's conglomerate. His family happens to have founded the CLAMP school, which explains a lot.



He's brilliant, but kind of absent-minded, with a penchant for sentimentality and assisting ladies in distress.




Suoh (age 11) is conscientious and serious, and the descendant of a ninja family.




He can defeat an entire pile of MIBs single-handedly.

Akira (age 10) is sweet and innocent and a master chef who gives cooking lessons in the college division. But he's also the phantom thief known as the Mysterious 20 Masks (currently on hiatus, since his mothers are on a cruise and can't make him steal things for them).




Suoh and Akira's typical reaction to Nokuro's ideas:



Of course they have fangirls.




And a fangirl radar -- especially useful on Valentine's Day and birthdays.



The first episode is really more like CLAMP School Bodyguards, since there’s not actually a mystery to solve. But there is a Tokyo Tower hostage situation.



But it’s fluff after all, as the kid detective conquers the villain by making him promise not to be bad anymore. Cuz that works.


Well, maybe it does when the kid detective’s family can utterly destroy the villain at any moment, financially, physically, psychologically...

Ah, see - Nokoru’s family is big business. And these kids are smart.



Later episodes have the kids solving more traditional mysteries: who broke into the headmistress’s office, for example. (Did you doubt that it was a headmistress when the boys’ uniforms look like that? She’s mysterious, by the way.)



Typical of juvenile detective fluff, this one is a locked-room mystery -- very locked room, when the headmistress’s office is at the top of a sheer tower, with a retinal scanner at the internal door and heat-seeking missiles to protect it from would-be parachutists.




There’s also the mystery of why one girl doesn’t want to fan them - clearly this is sinister!



(Or the mystery of where all the other male students are.)

The mystery of the apple pie abandoned in a school hallway:



The mystery of the vast amounts of paperwork required of the elementary school student council:



The mystery of the plush penguin crucified in the student council archive.



The mystery of sexual identity in the afterlife.



And of course, the Mysteries of the Heart.
















Not to mention staple activities like crawling through ductwork...



Breaking and entering...



Collapsing from exhaustion in the rain...



Taking the school submersible out for a spin...



Frolicking with the denizens of the school monkey park...



Cosplay of various types...




And CLAMPy stuff like this:




And even cameos by the CLAMP School Defenders: Duklyon! And Santa Claus-san!




Really, all that’s lacking is some kind of conspiracy plotline. (Well, there is a bit of recurring villainy in the last few episodes, voiced by Ishida Akira &hearts)

I begin to think all Japanese juvenile detective fluff is mildly homoerotic. Or maybe that's only the case when there's a detective team. I'll have to find a solo sleuth next.

But meanwhile, I kind of want to pimp Mabel Maney's hilariously snide parodies of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Cherry Ames, and more of that ilk of clean-cut, earnest 1950s teen detectives:





The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse The Ghost in the Closet
Maney takes terrible and wonderful advantage of the original books' earnest stories of good chums investigating "queer" mysteries. They are vastly entertaining in their subversion of fifties attitudes and the amazing naivete of the teen detectives. Much fun!

picspam, anime, clamp, juvenile detective fluff

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