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The first thing I want to say is that it's too short. For an anime premise that involves a whodunnit, most of the crimes are solved within 1 episode.

I stumbled upon this anime by accident, and being a fan of the CSI franchise, I was welcoming of such an anime. But boy was I wrong. The relative ease that the mysteries during the series get solved turned me off. The main character, like most main characters in anime is overpowered - she's basically a genius when it comes to solving mysteries. As a viewer, I am not taken on a journey or even allowed to ... come up with my own hypothesis for who may have committed the crime, why or how they might have committed said crime; I've got to take Sakurako's hypothesis to be 100% accurate, and thanks to her being the love child of Sherlock Holmes and Partriot, in most cases she's not far off.

The thing about the mystery genre that drew me to other series like the CSI franchise is that there was a step by step process by which a crime was solved. With Sakurako-san, the anime takes shortcuts and jumps over a few steps to help solve the mystery, which I didn't like. At one stage she manages to solve a mystery in mere minutes!

STORY: Not much of a story for this, there are few arcs, but because the whole anime is only 12 episodes long, there isn't time for the development of these stories, it's over before it begins really. Some might call this anime episodic, in that each episode isn't related to the previous or upcoming one, except in 3 cases where the mystery is solved over 2 episodes.

CHARACTERS: There are 6 characters that make an appearance in more than 1 episode. Obviously we have the 2 main characters (Sakurako and Shourtarou) then we've got an incompetent police officer, a teacher, a love interest and a granny.

I have to say, these characters aren't developed or given time to develop. In most cases it would be fine, for example, yes you can have an incompetent police officer, but why not give him more screen time to develop? The only real person that got any development was Shourtarou's love interest - hell she even got her own filler episode, yes that's right - filler! Which by the way was a total waste of time and added nothing to the overall story; the anime is 12 episodes long and you waste it on the character development of a supporting character? Why?

Shoutarou is just a very dull character, and the last episode showing how the main characters met and their relationship is not that noteworthy either. There is no character development for him and he is mainly served as a conduit for us, the audience - explaining things we may or may not know. I can understand this, and I want to believe, if this series got a second season, this character troupe would have gone. However, I’m pretty sure the series pretty much would pan out the same with or without him. That’ s how much influence or input he has throughout the series - and it's kind of sad. Here you have a character you could've developed and made us understand him more, but they chose not to. Maybe they knew it wasn't going to a "hit" and therefore decided not to.

Now the main character, Sakurako, and her bone fetish! My god! She literally is like a dog when it comes to looking at bones! And the fact that she’s a genius doesn’t help either, okay, if you were as old as Horatio Caine or Poirot, I could understand your boundless knowledge, but she’s not. And yet she’s a know it all. Really ticked me off with her know-it-all attitude and probably makes the anime as a whole suffer. Her superpowers end mysteries before they begin. Would've been much better served having Shoutarou find the dead bodies and solve mysteries - his lack of or limited knowledge would've a) allowed us the viewer to begin solving the mysteries with him as he tried to find clues and what not; b) would've been allowed character development and if by the end of 12 episodes manages to wrap up a mystery in 10 minutes we can understand why and c) probably would've been more enjoyable than having Sakurako as the main lead.

The others aren’t really worth mentioning in more depth other than that they serve in some cases to help progress the story arc, but because of poor development overall, if they were erased from the anime it won’t make a that much of a difference.

ART: One thing I must say it's vivid to say the least. Considering it's a dark subject matter, the colors provide a stark contrast to the plot of each episode. The colors do help in trying to show possibly accurate (I'm guessing) picture of human and animal bone structures/anatomy, other than that, I think they've made an error with colors for this anime, it's a dark subject matter (death, decay, dead bodies), so the colors should reflect that to set the mood.

Overall, I give it a 6/10, it's not that bad I couldn't see it through (there were times I was considering it), but it's definitely not the best. Here's hoping that there are better mystery anime in the future.

You know the saying "bringing a knife to a gunfight"? That's exactly what Mamoru Hijikata does. And boy does he do it well. He's a swordsman fighting for justice in modern day Tokyo with his team of other uniquely strong characters.

STORY: It's a story about a girl who can predict the near future, who befriends a lone swordsman. Although the MC is blind, he uses specialized glasses to help him "see"; kind of like a bat's echolocation (through vibrations). I found a quite refreshing story, probably because it was completely different to what I've read before. There's some sci-fi information which may throw off a ... few people, it was at times hard to digest the concepts in the manga, but it didn't really deter me from reading on. Also, the badassery and unpredictability of Mamoru really made me want to see what he will do next.

CHARACTERS: The characters are well though out and the designs of the characters themselves are very diverse which I enjoyed very much. There isn't much character development, probably for two reasons;
a) most of the characters are already at the top of their game, and those that do need to train, do it on the side (outside the main story plot).
b) it makes for better reading. You don't have characters going off for 4 or 5 chapters and all you see is them learning a new technique or mastering a skill further.

With such a diverse array of characters and individual stories for each one, you become really invested most of them, of course, the two main protagonists develop their relationship, which at first you think it's weird, but as you go on reading further, you realise it becomes more than just a mutual understanding and they truly do wish to help each other grow.

ART: The artwork is wonderful, I especially love the color pages. The artist took their time to develop and get the scenery right. The diverse locations, also help with the artwork and reason why it took so long to complete was probably because the artist really wanted to capture the essence of each scene. The action bits are also not to laughed at, the artist really brings intensity and energy into what is essentially black on white.

Overall, I give it a 9/10, for me, it’s a good story and the characters, visuals and setting work together wonderfully.