You Should Celebrate Leap Year by Enrapturing Your Mind with Milky Holmes
Over the last three episodes, Milky Holmes has continued its descent into utter chaos, and it’s been beautiful.
EPISODE SIX
The series finally gets around to something resembling a mystery. Since, y’know, the fucking title is DETECTIVE OPERA Milky Holmes. With this episode effectively being the midpoint of the season, you’d think this might be a turning point. Maybe the girls will finally pull off a case and put themselves back on track to become real detectives, save their school, and regain their Toys.
Nope. Milky Holmes ain’t about triumphing over adversity. Milky Holmes is about failure.
The episode begins with the aftermath of the episode’s “mystery.” Everyone is in a slovenly, defeated state. People are either missing their clothing or wearing something out of character. Kokoro is in a catatonic state. One of her subordinates has a Facehugger latched onto her face. Motherfucking Duke Togo is standing in the background, the only one looking remotely triumphant because he’s fucking Golgo 13.
This isn’t the afterglow of a case closed– this is the stench of defeat. We don’t even get to see Milky Holmes try before we see them fail. At this point, their failure is a given. Failure is their natural state of being. God wants to see Milky Holmes wallow in despair.
The actual gags in this episode are pretty great, but the crux of it all is that the mid-season turning point is having the girls lose before they even get a chance to win. And to make matters worse, once everything’s said and done, it turns out that Milky Holmes is the true culprit. While it was some obsessive fanboy who set up the bomb, it was Sherlock who accidentally set it off. Not only did they fail to reveal the criminal (he turned himself in), they managed to turn that victory into an even worse defeat.
Milky Holmes suck, and that’s why they rock.
EPISODE SEVEN
The way I see it, the villains in this series are audience surrogates. But they aren’t us watching Milky Holmes, they’re us watching anime as a whole. They don’t mind Milky Holmes being all cute and shit, but they want them to stay on target. Arsène especially wants the girls to return to their former detective glory in order for her to have a true rival. Milky Holmes at full strength is the only opponent that makes her blood boil, much in the same way that so many of us anime watching nerds need a series to go full-out and not hold back to really capture our imagination.
But the Milky Holmes girls aren’t doing that. Despite what they say, the girls don’t even want to be detectives. They’re easily distracted by food and trinkets and giving meaningless messages about friendship and hope. Like I’ve said before, the Milky Holmes girls are a reflection of moe tropes, and the way they drift away from their initial purpose (being badass detectives) is wearing away at the Gentlemen Thieves.
But with this episode, Arsène snaps. She can’t take this shit anymore. She’s done everything she can to help the girls in her own way, and all they do is turn right back around and do the exact opposite of what should be done.
There’s no hope left for Arsène. She’s beyond the point where she wants to see things fixed. This whole series– and thus anime as a whole– is beyond redemption. She’s no longer the God who “works in mysterious ways,” doing odd things to bring about good in Milky Holmes’ lives. She’s the angry god Samuel L Jackson rants about in Pulp Fiction. She’s the fucking Joker in The Dark Knight. Arsène’s going to destroy everything.