WHEELCHAIR DETECTIVE SATORI REVIEW PART 1

Welcome to the first part of my Wheelchair Detective Satori review! Here I'm going to cover episode 1 and 2. Why only two episodes? Well, episode 3 sadly got removed off youtube due to copyright issues, and while I do have it stored on my computer I don't have the translated subtitles downloaded sadly... Guess that's more work for next week!

So what I'm going to do is just for this week make it the first 2 episodes, then for next week I'll batch this weeks and next weeks together. Saves me time for this week I guess! And I can see how I may want to format all this and what not.

Anyway, a quick overview over what Wheelchair Detective Satori is before I start! (I'll be shortening it to WDS from now on)

WDS is a Touhou Derivative Work created by donjuan. It's about Satori who's a... Wheelchair Detective. She solves a few cases throughout the series, as she tries to figure out who made her Wheelchair bound. If you want to watch it, I got it here

Anyway, with the introduction out of the way, let's begin the review!

Episode 1

The series begins with a black screen, as we can hear a crash and sirens blaring in the background. Rin Kaenbyou (Orin) then recieves a phone call, saying that Satori Komeiji has been hospitalized, and she breaks the news to Koishi Komeiji, Satori's sister, and Utsuho Reiuji (Okuu), as they head to the hospital where Satori is being treated.

Already, we're being thrown right into the action, and we are asking many questions. What accident did Satori get herself into? Who did this?Why did they hurt Satori?. I think this way of starting the story really helps hook the viewer in to keep watching, and it also sets the tone perfectly for the rest of the series.

Following on from this, we then see an electrocardiograph (ECG, a medical tool used to show heart activty) used on Satori, as some music is played in the background, with each note played as a heartbeat on the ECG. Just going to say I love this visualization, and it fits quite well with the mood as well. We don't yet know whether Satori is alive, in a coma or anything else, so the music adds onto the unease.

Koishi enters the room, as the music ends and we find Satori is alive! And then, we have our first of many opening (?) sequences we are going to find. Donjuan for some reason really loves to include a lot of different openings, so instead of having the same one over and over, I'm pretty sure we are treated with new intros every time! Anyway, while there probably are loads of secrets in these intros, I won't be analysing every single frame in depth. We'd be here all day! However, I see something I find interesting, I may decide to show it off...

Like Satori dying... a few times in the intro lol.

Anyway, Satori is now seated on her Wheelchair now, and can't walk around because of her little accident, so in case you were wondering, that's why she's stuck in a wheelchair. Yuugi Hoshiguma, an oni who resides in the Underworld where the Komeijis live, states that it's quite odd that Satori was caught off guard and got in an accident. In case you didn't know, Satori has the power to read people's minds. So, theoretically, she should have been able to premove ahead and know if someone was to attack her. Yet here she is, now stuck in a wheelchair.

When being asked what she remembered, all Satori could remember was 'a sudden force' hitting her back. So sudden in fact, that she could recall 'the sound of dripping blood and stars circling my head...' Yuugi tells us that there were tire marks at the crime scene, so this tells us that someone rammed some sort of vehicle into Satori! Poor her! Yuugi offers to help Satori find who did it, and guess what Satori does after they both agree? Gives Orin 'a report on everything that was on that woman's mind.' and is asked to find the culprit before the oni does. What a Foul Detective Satori is! This already gives us a bit of character development into this version of Satori. Throughout the series, she makes some seemingly overkill and crazy (if those are the correct words) moves in order to reach her goals, and this is one of the more tamer things she does!

Oh yeah and Koishi isn't too happy that Satori is going to spend her time in the hospital, and proceeds to cut her wrists(???). Nothing like some comedy relief halfway through...

Very important to the plot!

But wait! Someone is listening behind a wall to everything that is being said! A black silhoutte! (of the person who ran Satori over?)We're actually going to be seeing this mystery silhoutte a lot throughout the series, but not all of these are the same person. It looks pretty funny seeing the same form over and over though. And finally, to end the episode off, Yukkuri hints! While the Yukkuris don't hold much of a purpose right now, we'll be seeing them in action later! We see these Yukkuri Hints at the end of each episode, which give us clues as to what's going to happen next episode, so remember them! The hint is: Rope!

What is he planning?

Oh my, that was quite yappy wasn't it? And it could be like this every single week for every episode!

Anyway, I think this is a really strong start for the series. It's short for the introduction and sets up what the main problem is going to be: Satori finding the culprit of who tried to kill her.

Episode 2

This episode begins with some hospital rabbits on night watch at 10PM!. But their fun and happy shift gets interrupted when they see something in the storage room... A person who was hung with rope!

So our Wheelchair Detective Satori is called to help solve the case, as the rabbits have no clue what to do! After a short argument from all the people (and Koishi hitting a Street Fighter move), Satori begins the investigation. She groups all the suspects B to F, with A being the victim. She then gets them all to say their testimonies, being:

• B was guarding the front entrance, and was resting from morning to noon
• C and D were together the whole time, and were working in the reception all morning. F needed their help for a surgery at 12:30, which lasted until 4PM. The two slept in the lounge after.
• E was napping in the lounge before noon. From 12 - 1PM, she was at the reception. From then until 4PM, she worked in the operaton room with C and D. She worked with F at reception until 9PM.
• F was on break in the morning. At 11AM, she went shopping and at 12:30PM was at the site where Satori got injured and went to the clinic. She was, again, doing a surgery until 4PM and worked in reception until 9PM. She saw the victim and collected the rope on their neck.

So, who do you think could have done the crime after hearing this information?

...Well there's still more information to talk about! Rin and Okuu comes and tells Satori there were two pulleys in the lounge and storage rooms, as well as a dirty rope, as well as a 1 ton weight in the lounge. The security footage also reveals that the only person who entered the storage room was the victim, and not the killer as well. The window is also open.

E proposes that the culprit set up the trap as seen below, and as soon as A walked into the noose, the culprit used the weight to pull the noose up and hang A.

Everyone believes E is the culprit,as she was the only one whose alibi meant she was able to commit the crime. However, Satori reassures them that this was a trap created by the culprit to trick them. Satori never believed E's idea, as 'only an idiot would think of it.' She believes A was ambused and strangled with the dirty rope Rin found amd hung the victim onto the pulley system. Because they had so much time to prepare the system and evade the cameras for so long, Suspect B was the culprit (big applause if you figured it out too!) And what was the reason behind the murder, you may ask? Because of a box of dangos. Satori then shortly passes out, another pretty common occurence due to her still being weak from her accident. They had to nerf her somehow!

Also the victim is completely fine. Praise Eirin! Speaking of Eirin, she asks how quickly did Satori figure the case out. To which she responds 'Since the very beginning.

Yukkuri Hint: Dying Message

Hoo boy, I don't know whether writing an entire synopsis for each episode is going to be the way to go, especially when we start doing 3-5 per week in the span of a couple of days, but I'll find a way. Anyway, the first case is pretty low stake and quite short, compared to some of the other ones we will see. Satori is willing to play along with this quite trivial mystery, especially after the reveal that she was able to deduce just who the culprit was from the very beginning without any information given. Whether she read the minds or immediately knew after finding out the alibis of each person is unknown, but I'd like to think she 'made a report' of everything in each suspect's minds. Anyway, not really much else to talk about, it helps setup how most of the cases are going to be laid out, and it's a nice small problem to start off with. Now, the next one... you'll find out next week!

Final Thoughts

Overall, the first 2 episodes of WDS help setup a strong foundation of what's the come in the future. We want Satori to find out just who caused her to become wheelchair bound and see just how she goes solving the rest of the mysteries she will have to solve and find out on the way.

'Shoryuken!'