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Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok, Vol. 2: Love and War
The second volume of Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok is doesn't really improve on the first disc, which is unfortunate since the premier volume was pretty bad. This boy detective series tries to add an original twist of having the main character be a Norse god, but the stories are nonsensical and the characters just aren't that interesting. You'd think they'd be able to write an interesting tale about the Norse god of mischief.
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.) 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:
A mystery thief is about, causing trouble and perplexing the police. This villain announces his crimes in advance and still manages to steal the objects of his threats even though the police are guarding them. Mayura wants to solve the crimes and capture the criminal, but Loki couldn't care less. Until the thief announces that he's going to steal the Brising necklace, a piece of jewelry that belongs to the Norse god Freya. The mystery thief realizes how important this necklace is, since he's a god himself.
The necklace is the key to this series of episodes. Next up Loki takes the case of a young girl who has lost her memory. Loki is perplexed when he talks to her though because this little girl who calls herself Reiya is actually the goddess Freya. Why she is in the form of a little girl and what happened to her memory are a mystery.
Of course all of these happenings have been orchestrated by Heimdall in another Machiavellian plot to kill his enemy Loki.
The final episode on the disc is a stand alone episode where Loki gets kidnaped after seeing a robbery. He decides to let Mayura and Yomino solve the case in his place and rescue him. This was the best episode so far, with a surprising revelation about Yomino at the end.
This Case Closed rip off is pretty lame overall. The child detective who is really an adult trapped in a youngster's body isn't a plot that is ripe for mining, and the creators of this series (that started out as a manga) shouldn't have even bothered. This show is hard to get into since none of the main characters are interesting or engaging. Loki is a cipher, he doesn't have a goal or purpose to drive the plot, and they've seen fit to give him a bland personality.
The episodes aren't really mysteries that viewers can try to solve, they are more strange adventures with that have a supernatural bent. This wouldn't be bad, but the show does a bad job of setting things up, so viewers aren't really sure of where the plot is going. Things seem to happen at random, with the plot meandering around until it eventually draws several strings together and calls them a conclusion.
The biggest question mark though is Heimdall. He has the ability to control people's minds, yet he can't figure out how to kill Loki? Seems like it would be pretty simple. Have a cop shoot him.
Okay, so the characters aren't engaging, maybe this is a plot based series. Well, not really. The four episodes on this disc serve to introduce the main characters, so maybe the stories are hampered by that, but they aren't that entertaining either. The mysteries that they are involved with all involve other-worldly powers, so there really aren't any rules that determine what needs to be done. A lot of the solutions are deus ex machina endings that were just pulled out of a hat. Being terrorized by an evil doll, put on a bracelet. Yeah, that'll make things better. Most of the time I was left scratching my head wondering where they came up with the lame ending.
This series is touted as being based on Norse Mythology, but it really isn't. Aside from the names, nothing is the same. Loki himself is supposed to be at least partially evil and have the ability to take on different shapes. Hemidall, who show up in the third episode, is nothing like the God in mythology. In the series he has vowed to kill Loki for stealing his eye and has the ability to control people's minds. Where are they getting this stuff from?? Not from any Norse legends that I've run across.
The Norse mythology is very rich and has a lot of wonderful characters. I would love to see the Japanese take on this pantheon, but I'll have to wait for another series. This one has nothing in common with it aside from the names.
The DVD:
This volume presents episodes 5-8 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 warning that appeared before the Japanese broadcast of the show. There is also the second part of the interview with the Japanese voice actors Yuriko Fuchizaki (Loki) and Takehito Koyasu (Frey.) The actors chat about the show, but don't really give too much background information.
Final Thoughts:
I wasn't impressed with the first disc in this series, and this volume hasn't done much to win me over. The last episode was mildly entertaining, but the three episode Frey/Reiya/Freya storyline was a muddled mess. Things just seemed to happen for no reason and the story didn't hang together at all. Even my nine year old son, someone that the show is aimed at, found it dull. Skip it.
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