The Shrine

Just noticed a bunch of stuff that's generally considered for the thinking (?) type got updated recently...

Kendaichi: Philsopher's Stone Murder edition - Once again we see Kendaichi can convict people with no shred of evidence whatsoever as long as it's logically possible. The only evidence he had was that the room placement was rigged but the murderer could've answered the same way he was able to rig the rooms in the first place, by saying he's soandso's fan so he wanted to place them near his room (when in reality it's so that it's closer to kill them). I'm guessing the author failed chemistry because there's nothing surprising that rooms setup in the Philsopher's Stone mansion corresponds to the periodic table of elements, but apparently nobody thought of that the entire time, including the girl who actually believed in alchemy. It turns out to be pretty much irrelevent anyway since Kendaichi reasoned that the murderer had a FLAMETHROWER on the side to melt the tin door without ever finding any proof that one exists. I mean by that reasoning the murderer easily could've had a tank of Aqua Regia to melt the platinum or gold doors. Everytime I read Kendaichi, it makes me feel scared about the Japanese legal system, especially after looking at the article Kupek linked before that suggests what happens in Kindaichi actually reflects reality.

I'm also wondering why the murderer never fights back in Kendaichi. The only exception was the time when Takato was cornered and he's like: "Hey guys, I am a murderer that has bloods of hundreds on my hand with a gun, and you guys are just average high school students." and everyone's like "OMG he's right!", and of course that was only an act since apparently shooting bothersome high school kids that get in the way is taboo in the criminal world of Japan.

Liar Game - Every other arc is good, and I think that's from Star Trek or maybe Megaman. I guess this means I can skip the next arc because it'll probably be something stupid. I got to give credit to the author for thinking up these puzzles, even if they're only good half of the time. Also we finally start seeing why Nao even exists in the manga, and it wasn't as cheesy as you'd think.

Gold & Silver - The only thing I can figure out about this so far is that the author went to Eyeshield 21's school of strategy, so to win anything you got to do something so stupid nobody would ever imagine you'd do it to win. The story right now is focus on a fictional variant of mahjong, so it makes as much sense to me as sabbac from Star Wars. I'm under the impression even if you knew mahjong, nothing happens in this series would make sense since they're playing some fictional variant of it anyway.

Gambling Legend something: I'm beginning to wonder if it's really written by the same guy who did Gambling Legend Zero, which was actually good. Maybe that's why Zero is an unspecified hiatus because he can't write anything that good normally. The premise of all the Gambling Legend series is that the Japanese Yakuza kidnapped you and force you to solve Microsoft puzzles (e.g. 5 pirates share 100 coin perfectly rationally) at gunpoint. For some reason Gambling Legend Zero actually made it seem somewhat believeable. The rest of the series is far less believeable. For me it's really hard to buy into the premise that these guys are solving Microsoft puzzles at gunpoint as the sole driving force of the series. If you can look past that the story isn't too bad, especially if you don't know the answer to them ahead of time.

I like Liars Game, but am only up to 137. I havent found a site that has 138+ in english translation yet so right now they are just at the end of the steal a chair game. I agree that the games and strategies are pretty ingenius from the author, its a fun read even if long winded at times and seemingly never ending.

Well Liar Game is kind of routine after a while as you start figure out the pattern. Due to the existence of the loser's bracket the good guys don't necessarily have to win. In fact the best strategy for anybody is to win a lot of money while *losing* the actual game (if you're Nao you'd just come back and keep piling up debt, anybody else will just leave with their money). It's hard to second guess the author since I think most people are still thinking about how to win (I certainly do that) without realizing winning is not the objective here.

Liar Game is very out of the box but it's not like Eyeshield 21 out of the box where out of the box means 'do something exactly opposite of what any rational person would do.' After they explained everything, the idea might be out of the box but it does make sense.

I noticed the author does one major arc at once and then takes like a 3 month break. While most authors takes unspecified leaves for 'research' purposes, I believe in his case he actually does need that time to come up with something that makes sense.