Tantei Gakuen Q

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Tantei Gakuen Q or Detective School Q is a really special manga. Quite unique.
It’s a shonen(because it features kids), but has murder mysteries.

Greatest mystery manga ever. Period. (No spoilers in this review)



The Story: 9/10
In Japan there is the legendary Detective Dan Morihiko, who wants a successor.
So he announces a detective written+practical exam.
... Many people appear for this. But since it is shonen, the people who qualify are:
Kyu — A kid with sharp intuition and Never say die attitude.
Megu.— A girl with photographic memory.
Kinda—- A physically gifted guy. Brain and brawn.
Ryu——- A quiet genius.

So these kids stumble on a murder mystery. And believe me the mysteries in the manga are UNPARALLELED. They are written in great depth.
I love Sherlock Holmes, Poirot, Agatha Christie, and yet none of them ever care to go in such depth.
The Mangaka keeps giving clues as the story progresses. Then before the detective answers he says “there are 3 clues and only 1 explanation “
I love that part. I love racking my brains to find the answer. And many a times
I’m successful. And the answers are ALWAYS satisfactory. Which is rare in manga world, usually we find loopholes easily.

Gakuen Q is like an anthology, we get mysteries after mysteries. Some last 5 chapters, some are over 10 chapters long. But all are a delight to read.
And parallel to these small mysteries lies a bigger mystery arc that culminates in the final chapters.



Art. 8/10
No complaints here. All characters are drawn well, look different. Details important to the mystery are always shown accurately. When I re-read some chapters to understand the mystery I realised that some clues were hidden in the detailed drawings too.



Characters. 7/10
Honestly as much as I loved the manga, the characters didn’t play a really big role. I love these guys after reading so many chapters but there was barely any character growth. Amakusa Ryu showed good growth though.
But the mystery is the main focus all the time, the mangaka knows it and so do I. No complaints here.



Enjoyment. 8/8
I loved it!! One of the first manga I started reading. But due to lack of scanlations I couldn’t catch up, or else I would have binged it in 3days.
If you love mysteries you’ll enjoy this a lot. Just go, read it.
And if you don’t want to think too much about the cases, don’t worry. The story is also interesting on its own. It’s written such that everyone can enjoy it, as long as read a bit carefully.



The Devil’s Advocate:
-At times the mysteries may seem far fetched. But who wants to read about simple robberies or violent murders.
-Murders have no gore, the story focuses on the brain only.
-Don’t expect any action scenes or ecchi.
-You may have to think to enjoy the story more thoroughly.



The Verdict. 8/10
This is an amazing and unique manga. A must read for mystery lovers.
This is brain food guys. Highly recommended.

And as my fav character says” If the detective gives up, the mystery will never be solved.”


Thank you for reading my review! Hope you enjoy the manga!!

If you love detective stuff, crime and thrills, Tantei Gakuen Q is for you.

The stories are nothing short of amazing and you'll have to rack your brain to solve them yourself. The crimes are good(I mean really good), the detectives are good and the plots are better.

The character developments are subtle but good, and Ryu's growth is certainly a marvel. Romance is a bit light here(what do you expect from a detective manga, eh?) and so is the art. But the story makes up for all the flaws.

If you liked the anime, then definitely read the manga, it's just loads better.

tl;dr: A manga with decent episodic mysteries but that feels like a waste of potential beyond that.

As you would expect from the title, this is a manga about a detective academy dedicated to training a new generation of ace detectives. More specifically, it’s about the five students of class Q of Dan Detective School (DDS). They’re a pretty varied bunch, with their ages ranging from elementary school to high school, and with most but not all also attending normal school outside of DDS. But what unites them as class Q is that they are all in the running to be the successor to Dan, Japan’s ... greatest detective. They must compete amongst themselves for that title, in addition to also competing against the various other classes, primarily class A, who are all trying to take their spot in class Q. While still students, the five take on various cases and many turn out to be quite dangerous. Especially those that involve the mysterious evil organization Pluto who never commit any murders themselves, but are dedicated to selling the plans to perfect crimes.

This is a serial mystery manga, and thus the most important aspect is undoubtedly the mysteries. Overall, I’d have to say they’re decent, but not great. They’re all logical enough and it wasn’t like there were any major holes that seemed to stand out in any of them. The mysteries don’t break any of the rules and are solvable like well written mysteries should be. However, most of them weren’t that interesting. Part of that comes down to how a lot of them are kind of ridiculous, to the point they require a good amount of suspension of disbelief, but at the same time they’re not crazy enough to be truly wowing. They’re in some middle ground that results in the mysteries not being impressive in terms of how realistic they are, nor in terms of how absurd they are. You can follow along and everything makes sense, but it in general wasn’t all that satisfying. Furthermore, I found they got pretty repetitive in terms of the contexts which made things overtly predictable irrespective of the actual mysteries. Even before all the clues had been found and thus without any logical basis, during the second half I could generally predict who the criminal would be based solely on the background, flow, and framing, which kind of took a lot of the punch out of things.

Why this was especially disappointing was that I felt the premise for this manga had way more to offer. The plot has quite a bit more to it with their being a group of varied detectives competing amongst each other, competing together against other classes, and also fighting against an evil organization dedicated to creating mysteries essentially. I felt that this created an opportunity for there to be a lot of variety to how cases played out. And while the manga did use all of these elements somewhat, it felt like it didn’t use them enough. In the end, most of the cases felt very by the book and pretty ordinary. With that said, I would be remiss in not highlighting that the final case is a major exception to that in that it uses a lot of these elements incredibly well for a case that felt very different and much more interesting than any of the others, which resulted in a really solid finale.

The finale was heavily centered around one of the main characters, Ryu. Over the course of the manga he gets pretty solid character development and a good character arc, though a pretty simple one. His friendship with another main character, Kyu, is also developed decently. The cast outside of that felt pretty lackluster however. Kyu has some background and development, but it felt pretty weak for how prominent he was. The other three are even weaker than him however. The only individual development they seem to have is a single instance of trying to solve a mystery on their own as most of the time Kyu and Ryu do all the heavy lifting. There are some light hints of romance here and there but they’re so minor they’re barely worth mentioning. The side characters, meaning the criminals, witnesses, etc. also didn’t really stand out, with the only two that feel particularly worth remembering being Cerberus and Ukon. Thus overall, there isn’t much substance in terms of characters. The sequel Premium is a time skip sequel that doesn’t really do much in the little time it has beyond going through a few more mysteries.

In terms of art, I suppose it’s decent enough as it conveys what it needs to convey. It never looks all that great however, with the style and designs in general being pretty dull and the framing not really going anything to make them stand out.