Cuticle Tantei Inaba has truly proven itself
to be a senselessly funny series hiding in a serious-looking plot. Or maybe it
was just me thinking that it would be serious :P
The first episode
practically showed what we're suppose to expect from this series. The story
seems pretty mess up yet at the same time hilarious. Inaba Hiroshi (Suwabe Junichi) used
to work with the police with Ogino Kuniharu (Morikawa Toshiyuki).
He has a special ability to gain information about a person by simply tasting
their hair and other more abilities that involves hair. Currently, Inaba is a
private detective together with his two assistants, Nozaki Kei (Iruno Miyu) and Sasaki
Yuuta (Shimoda Asami)
in order to find his brother, Haruka (Saiga Mitsuki). He
was hired by the police in order to catch Don Valentino (Ookawa Tooru), a goat
who has the ability to make counterfeit money by chewing the real one.
Cuticle Tantei Inaba's strength has got to be
its ability to pull off the most predictable punch lines in the most
predictable times and still be funny. But you see, comedy value varies from
person to person so I personally don't know what others would feel.
 |
| and you see, their comedy is always like this. |
Just like most
comedy series out there, Cuticle Tantei Inaba's
comedy is mostly character-driven and is subjected to situations which makes it
repetitive at times. But unlike Ixion Saga DT, I never got tired of Cuticle Tantei Inaba even in their serious moments (but Ixion Saga doesn't have serious moments which
kills the comparison -_-). Maybe Cuticle Tantei
Inaba's punch-line comedy can be compared to Gintama
(which is probably more parody-based comedy than character-based) or Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou (which is a
four-panel slice of life series).
Cuticle Tantei Inaba's characters spell
typical comedy act characters headed by Inaba's team of Inaba being the comedy
source, Yuuta being the second idiot in command and Kei being the straight man.
With their typical line-up they are joined by Don Valentino's seriously weird
team which made the series more fun to watch. To complete their comedy line-up,
police officer Ogino Kuniharu (Morikawa Toshiyuki)
plays the other sane person in the series next to Kei as well as Haruka's team
which consists of Yataro (Sugita Tomokazu
<- best gag-series VA), Natsuki (Seto Asami) and
Soumei (Koyasu
Takehito).
 |
| Ogi with Don Valentino's family. |
Visually, Cuticle Tantei Inaba is pretty pleasant to
watch. Their action stunts, punch line delivery scenes and their serious scenes
fit in pretty nicely. Character designs works well for a shounen-gag series
with their pretty memorable looks (Except Kei, I guess. He's the straight man
after all. Kind of reminded me of how Shinpachi and
Tadakuni look so
plain.).
Overall, Cuticle Tantei Inaba is a fun series with
lively characters throwing their crazy lines here and there. It's recommended
for people who'd want some shallow characters thrown in a crazy plot and laugh
at predictable punch lines.
