Have you ever seen The Regulation Based on Lidia Poët? It’s a interval drama that’s loosely impressed by the profession of Italy’s first lady lawyer. Although the collection explores the real-life Poët’s lengthy, lonely battle for skilled recognition, it additionally makes loads of room for love and journey, portraying her as a free spirit who solves mysteries with assistance from a good-looking male journalist. The present’s breezy tone is extra Remington Steele than Masterpiece Theater, however it by no means shies away from acknowledging that nineteenth-century Italy was really a person’s, man’s world.
If Lidia Poët appears like one thing you’d watch, you may like My Pricey Detective, which additionally contains a plucky heroine in a male-dominated subject. The setting is Taisho-era Japan, the place twenty-something Mitsuko Hoshino works for the Ginza Detective Company as an investigator. Although Mitsuko is a pure, she faces skepticism and condescension in her day-to-day work that generally shades into outright hostility; early in quantity one, for instance, native hooligans vandalize the company with slogans accusing her of “stealing males’s jobs.” Her boss is unfazed, nevertheless, and stays quietly however kindly supportive of her want to be, in her phrases, “a working lady.”
By means of a kind of only-in-manga contrivances, Mitsuko crosses paths with Satou Yoshida, a good-looking younger man who seems to be the scion of a outstanding household. (The Yoshidas personal one of many poshest malls in Tokyo.) He quickly joins the company as Mitsuko’s assistant, chauffeur, and bodyguard, dropping the Yoshida identify each time it expedites their investigation, and swooping in to save lots of Mitsuko each time she’s in peril. Mitsuko—ever the consummate skilled—received’t admit to herself that she likes Satou, and places up a blustery entrance any time he flirts together with her.
Although the script is full of life and the pacing brisk, the art work is a bit plain. The costumes, hairstyles, and props are simply detailed sufficient to present a way of the interval, however the backgrounds are a bit too sterile and generic to actually evoke Tokyo within the Nineteen Twenties. Extra interesting are the character designs: Natsumi Ito does an efficient job of conveying every forged member’s age, social standing, and character by way of small however significant particulars. Mitsuko, for instance, sports activities a modern, trendy bob and knee-length skirts, whereas the older ladies she interacts with favor Nihongami and kimono, evoking the transitional spirit of the Taisho period.
Taken as a complete, nevertheless, My Pricey Detective is the manga equal of The Regulation Based on Lidia Poët. One the one hand, it’s a fizzy, enjoyable collection that provides stable mysteries with fascinating twists solved by impossibly handsome individuals. However, My Pricey Detective gently reminds the reader what number of sensible limitations skilled ladies confronted a century in the past, acknowledging the diploma to which misogyny made all of it however inconceivable for sensible, formidable ladies to chart a course for themselves outdoors of conventional gender roles. These two sensibilities don’t at all times mesh harmoniously, however more often than not My Pricey Detective toes the road between escapism and didacticism in a extremely entertaining style. Lidia Poët would undoubtedly approve. Really helpful.
MY DEAR DETECTIVE: MITSUKO’S CASE FILES, VOL. 1 • BY NATSUMI ITO • TRANSLATED BY SAMUEL R. MESSNER • LETTERING BY BARRI SHRAGER • COVER DESIGN BY GLEN ISIP • AZUKI • 183 pp. • NO RATING
