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![憂国のモリアーティ 1 [Yūkoku no Moriarty 1] by Ryōsuke Takeuchi](https://assets.thestorygraph.com/assets/placeholder-cover-a3ae92250eb3301e32dc3eabf8d50576c2f047dda89f6ee7cfa9a859cb1fd746.jpg)
4.18 AVERAGE
4.18 AVERAGE
I had such high hopes for this series. Coming on the heels of the likes of 'Black Butler' and 'Godchild', and the sundry other Victorian noir manga starring morally ambiguous twinks with great fashion sense, I thought, 'well heck, Sherlock Holmes fanfiction starring an anime-boyified Moriarity is the perfect choice for this niche subgenre.'
I was mistaken.
Now listen: as a leftist in my 20s, I am all for the catharsis of seeing the Victorian artistocracy eat crow and maybe even getting murdered a little, but if you're going to give me that wrapped in a T+ rating, then treat me like I'm a T+ reader, not someone just coming into a sense of class consciousness. And frankly, even if I were, I wouldn't need every other page (and I do not exaggerate) to remind me that rich people are leeches lounging about with their feet up while the underclass suffers. I get it. But what about some poor little rich kid? If they picked this up and got the lecture of how much they suck in every third panel, don't you think they'd be a little defensive? It's just words, after all.
But imagine if this were shown. It's not like there are no examples (opression of the working class being a real thing and all) of genuine injustice -- use them. Have young master Moriarity witness these things and come to question the validity of this class stratification, go on a little internal journey, have an existential crisis. Something.
But no, no. From page one, our boy gets it, and from his mansion, I tell you what, he's gonna do something about it. Interpersonally.
Cuz that's the thing, see. The big problem with just having every single aristocrat (except our titular white knight, of course) be a massive jerk is that it makes it a 'bad person' problem rather than a 'bad system' problem. Moriarity and his brothers are good landowners and don't tax the peasants to the point that they starve. Love that for them. Meanwhile, their neighbor is a big meanie who even refused to let a lowely member of the hoi poloi bring her dying child to see his doctor because... because he's just not a nice person ???
The message here being: we're going to break the system by... being nicer aristocrats than the ones who are...not nice.
Why, if I so disliked the execution, did I give this 3 stars then, you might ask.
Two reasons. One, as much as I deeply dislike the execution, the idea of Moriarity being re-imagined as a kind of Robinhood-esque figure is neat, and it could have been quite interesting to see how that would have changed the framing of Sherlock Holmes in a narrative about class warfare.
It's not what we got, but there was a good idea in there somewhere.
Two, the artwork by Hikaru Miyoshi is really, really gorgeous. Granted, many of her characters look frustratingly similar, but the backgrounds: stunning. The aesthetic: sublime.
If only I could say the same about the plot and writing.
Ah, well. I suppose that's what AO3 is for, amirite?
The art style for this reminded me of the [b:Black Butler|6690979|Black Butler, Vol. 1 (Black Butler, #1)|Yana Toboso|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1336691148l/6690979._SX50_.jpg|6886418] manga series, Because the main character of this story, William, resembles Sebastian from Black Butler in the best way possible. In general, the art was really well proportioned with clean line art and was pleasant to look at. I also have a fascination with following highly smart and capable protagonists, so having an uber-intelligent protagonist like William was great. This story follows a mystery plotline and knowing that a character as likable and fascinating as William was the one solving these mysteries is likely what made me so eager to continue reading this to find out how the events presented would play out.
This manga took the whole eat-the-rich concept to a whole different level, because let's just say (for the sake of avoiding spoilers) that William and his allies go to extremes to ensure that the tyrannical and corrupt nobles learn their lesson. It was shocking to see at first, but I warmed up to it quickly enough because I realized that often in stories—especially in the ones that aren't fantasy—the really bad guys don't get punished to the extent that I'd like them to. So, though initially jarring, seeing this manga stray away from that so heavily became somewhat refreshing as I kept reading this.
Though I don't have any strong feelings on this eat-the-rich plotline, what I did find to be a bit unnecessary was the constant heavy-handed reminders of how oppressive this class system in the story is. In the beginning, when we're getting introduced to everything, there are multiple instances of characters having 3 or 4 panels worth of internal monologues reciting how messed up and horrible this class system is. The thing is, we can already see this fact from the actions of the corrupt nobles portrayed throughout the pages, so even though I understand that this is an important and prominent theme of the story, constantly rehashing this same point over and over was redundant and unnecessary. Also, the characters' responses to events regarding this whole oppressive class system situation was sometimes a bit too melodramatic for my tastes as well.
The plot itself was a little underwhelming, but perhaps that was my own fault for going into this with really high expectations. It's just that being presented with such an intelligent protagonist made me inclined to believe that I would be reading a story with unexpected but believable twists and turns in the plot, with the protagonist's high intelligence being utilized efficiently. Though William's intelligence is definitely displayed a handful of times, it wasn't to the extent that one would expect with a character who is believed to be comparable to Sherlock Holmes and shown to be intellectually capable enough to be a professor in his early 20's (which he is).
So some parts of this were kind of a letdown, but in general this manga was still good enough for me to be interested in picking up the next volumes eventually. But to be honest I think I'll just watch the anime adaption instead since it looks very promising.
