I mentioned last week that The Detective Is Already Dead‘s expanded efforts to elaborate on Alicia had actually worked, and that I could feel myself coming around to being endeared to her. And credit to the series’ storytelling, that turns out to be a calculated effect, an intentional evocation for where this plot was always going. Unfortunately, that same elaboration on Alicia turns this episode’s strength into also its biggest shortcoming: They give away the game for the big reveal relatively early on, hinging everything on turning any attachment we have to Alicia on its head. But since the Dead-tective anime has a middling capacity at best for delivering serious, emotional moments, it results in an episode full of waiting and watch-checking until a revelation that sort of lands.
The general tone this part of the story is going for feels consistent for this episode at…
