About halfway through my watchthrough of Holmes of Kyoto’s anime adaptation a few weeks ago, I found myself checking Amazon Japan on a regular basis to see if the first book in the series would happen to be listed for free (as occasionally happens for promotional purposes). It got to the point where I literally decided to buy it instead of waiting just because I was getting tired of checking. And so, once I finished 風の道しるべ, I jumped right into this series and finished book 1 in just over two weeks, finally catching up to my novel goal with three books down.

As much as I enjoyed the Holmes of Kyoto anime, the main thing running through my mind as I read the book was “the show did not do this justice”. Between the mysteries and character moments that make up the majority of the screentime, we also get tidbits of local history, descriptions of various locations visited throughout the story, and small vignettes with characters who, despite having no major importance, help deepen the overall experience. The author mentions in the afterword that she started writing this series out of a desire to share the beauty of Kyoto, and it shows.

The anime covers material from the first three books, so naturally there was a lot of review here, but there were also a fair few scenes which I don’t remember from the anime at all; my favorite involved a confession of love, and then a rejection of that confession, both performed through the medium of tanka from the One Hundred Poets where both parties relied on the subtext of each poem, rather than the literal words, to send the desired message.

Before I had finished reading the last chapter, I’d already gone back and bought the next five books, so it goes without saying that I’ll certainly be continuing with this series. There’s also an official English release, which I’m sure is also good; if I’m not mistaken, the translator was chosen during the Manga Translation Battle contest, and the samples I saw looked quite well-done. Heartily recommended.