A review by redheadbeans
Moriarty the Patriot, Vol. 8 by Hikaru Miyoshi, Ryōsuke Takeuchi

3.0

I wish I cared at all about the main Jack the Ripper plot in this. I wish any character in that storyline was compelling in any way. This series does so much that's progressive, by having a canon

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trans male character, who's in a romantic relationship with a woman

, while simultaneously being one of the most boring series I've read in some time.

I did somewhat enjoy the

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"Good Will Hunting"

rip-off where

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Sherlock and William go on a lunch date, mostly because Sherlock and William were cute

, but without that cuteness, it was literally almost a beat-for-beat rip-off of a better film, minus some of the more important plots in that film, so it's like... not even good fanfiction of the film. Even an earlier scene in the story feels like "Bungo Stray Dogs" fanfiction, where

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Patterson and Bond

are meeting in a bar to talk information, which is eerily reminiscent of Dazai and Ango meeting in a bar to do the same thing, even down to what the bar looks like, how they're sitting, much of how the characters look, and the drinks they're having. The problem is, even though "Moriarty the Patriot" is actually canonically

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queerer

than "Bungo Stray Dogs", "Bungo Stray Dogs" has a far better story and more compelling characters.

Overall this series is slow, boring, and mostly just an "Oh I got that reference" reel, with nothing to really add of its own, other than some homo-erotic subtext between the different male characters. It only has a three star rating for me because of that one-chapter story that's a film rip-off, because otherwise I would have ranked it one or two stars for that terrible Jack the Ripper story.