With the third volume of Mythical Detective Loki, the series starts to play up the humor aspects of the show and improves a bit.  The characters still don't resemble anyone from Norse mythology, and the plots are a little bit dumb, but there's a certain charm to some of these shows.

Series synopsis:

The Norse god Loki has been kicked out of Asgard and exiled to Midgard (Earth.)  To make matters worse, he's been trapped inside the body of a young boy.  What is a displaced god going to do?  Why open up a detective agency of course!  He starts the Enjaku Detective Agency with his companion Yamino, but since his offices are in a residential neighborhood, he doesn't get any business.  That is until a young girl named Mayura Daidoji stops by in the first episode.  She's always been fascinated by detectives and sort of forces her way into the agency.  Together the three of them take on some pretty strange cases.

Mysteries aren't the only thing they have to worry about though.  Loki made a few enemies before Odin kicked him out of Asgard, and some of them aren't satisfied with mere exile...they've come to kill him.  Foremost among these is the god Heimdall, who can't defeat Loki by attacking him head on, so he comes up with some elaborate schemes to destroy his foe.

The comic relief of the series comes in the form of the god Thor.  He's using the name Narugami (why?  Loki uses his real name) and is just trying to make ends meet here on Earth.  In addition to going to school (again, why?) he works a series of part time jobs, most of them with disastrous results.

This volume:

The goofy Frey loses a mystical gem in the first episode, and his carelessness has some dire consequences.  The jewel grows into a tree whose leaves will grant wishes.  The only cost is part of the wisher's soul.  When word gets around everyone is fighting over the leaves, including Mayura who needs to pass a test, and it's up to Loki to stop the madness before the gem grows too powerful.

Mayura wrangles the gang into helping out a shop owner in the following episode.  He makes the best coffee in the city, but no one will come into his shop.  With Loki and Yamino's help though, the joint is soon hopping with customers.  It is until a series of odd events happens that drives everyone away again, things that were caused by a haunted tea cup.

In the next story Mayura runs into trouble in school.  The paranormal mystery club that she's in, well, she's the only member actually, is about to me closed by the school.  The student council president wants to see a real mystery that the club is investigating, but they haven't really encountered one.  Luckily Frey is infatuated with Mayura, "the classic Japanese beauty", joins the club, and helps her rig up a psychic mystery.  Unfortunately he's not that good at coming up with something that will convince the president, but he does pull some pretty funny stunts.

The volume ends on a bit of a low note, when Loki has to investigate a haunted video game.  Mayura has been taken into a "House of the Dead" type video game, and Loki goes in after her.  He encounters a series of bosses, and just like a real game, he has to defeat each one in order to advance to the next level.  Not a real original idea, and they didn't do anything new with it.

I didn't really enjoy the earlier volumes in this series, but this one was definitely better.  Since most of these episodes were played for laughs, it's a lot easier to overlook the silly aspects of the show.  The straight investigation episodes, like the last one on this disc, are really stupid, but some of the humor is pretty funny.  Frey's idea of dressing up a pig to scare the class president is great.  The shouts of "Look out!  Zombie pig!" made me laugh, as did the giant Budda that appears in the same episode.  If you look at this show as a light comedy, it isn't too bad.

This volume presents episodes 9-12 on a single sided DVD that comes in a clear keepcase with a two-sided cover.

Audio:

This disc offers a choice between the original Japanese stereo soundtrack and a 5.1 English dub.  I alternated between tracks, switching every episode, and preferred the original language though the English dub is fine.  Both tracks were clear and sounded very good.  There were no dropouts or other defects worth noting.

Video:

This show is presented in full frame, and the image quality looks pretty good.  There was some minor aliasing, but the lines were tight and the image was clean.  A solid looking show.

Extras:

This disc contains the standard clean opening and closing, a character art gallery, as well as a nice overview on Norse Mythology.  There is also the first part of the interview with the Japanese voice actors Showtaro Morikubo (Narugami) and Romi Paku (Heimdall.)

Final Thoughts:

This series seems to get over its sophomore slump with this volume.  These shows have more humor in them and that makes them a lot more fun.  The mysteries are still fairly incomprehensible and the characters still don't have much in the way of personality, but I laughed several times over the corse of this disc.  I have a feeling that this isn't a permanent change for the show since the last episode is a rather tepid mystery without any laughs, but there's always hope.  If you're looking for some cheap laughs, there are worse shows you could watch.  Rent it.