It’s time for a wholesome mystery title in the Layton universe! This mini series is based on the video game and pretty accurately retells the events. It makes for a good read but I do wish they could have done a little more with the concept. It ends up feeling very by the numbers and I think they could have added a bit more emotion into the end product. If you can’t play the video game (Or just aren’t interested in gaming) then this definitely does the job in terms of telling the story. It’s just not really an attention grabber and I imagine that you won’t really recall the series for very long. It will very quickly fade from your memory and then it will be game over.

The story revolves around a girl named Katrielle Layton who is a star detective! Or at least she sees herself as one but some of the characters are not convinced. She gets called out on this by the pet dog but I don’t think it’s warranted since as far as we can see Katrielle is an expert. She constantly succeeds and is always on top so why would she not be an expert? I’m just a little skeptical about all of this personally. Still, she is determined to make the world a better place and in the process hopefully she can get a lead on the mysterious Professor Layton. Where has he gone and why hasn’t he contacted her at all?

Each story is fairly stand alone and so you really just get to learn a lot about Katrielle and how she solves each case. Her catchphrase of: “This Mystery is History!!!” is pretty great I have to admit. She tends to try and keep everyone guessing by intentionally acting very scatterbrained the whole time. When she obtains a clue she will disguise this by talking about snacks or acting like she didn’t notice anything. It’s not a bad technique in order to keep everyone guessing and lower their guards so I can respect that. You could also argue she is just doing her best to troll Ernest which seems to be a hobby for her.

The main cast is rather small here beyond the main heroine. It’s a short series with only 10 chapters so that makes sense as you can’t afford to develop a whole lot of characters after all. Ultimately Katrielle is already developed really well as listed above so that sets things off on a good note. She’s just fun all in all and sets the manga off on the right tone. Her partner is Ernest who does his best but can never really keep up. By no means is he a bad character though. If anything you feel bad for him because he has a massive crush on Katrielle but she is unaware of it.

Or is she? We already know that she loves to play dumb and with how obvious Ernest is about it, you have to assume that she knows or at least suspects that something up. Such a great detective not being aware of this would definitely be very suspicious. I’m not saying that it is impossible…but yeah I’m skeptical. Either way Ernest always does his best to help. He may rarely be useful but it’s the thought that counts and Katrielle never makes fun of him for this or anything. They do make for a good team.

They also have a talking dog but only the two of them can understand him. It’s hard to tell from the manga perspective if this is supposed to be a serious mystery or just a bit of a quirk. Either way it’s not like he does much. Honestly the Professor Layton stuff isn’t touched upon much either and is treated more like a twist than anything else. You’ll definitely be left in the dark about quite a few things after finishing the series and since a sequel seems unlikely that’s definitely tough.

You’ve also got Katrielle’s rival but she is out of her depth from the jump. I think that’s always the problem about introducing a rival in a mini series like this. There just isn’t much time to establish the rival as a main threat and so what happens is you end up not being able to take the character seriously. After all, she was crushed in her very first appearance so what am I supposed to do with that? Her tough talk will just ring hollow from that point on and being scared of ghosts doesn’t really help her case either. The police detectives don’t get to do as much as you expect here. I felt like they had more of a presence in the game than in the manga.

With 10 chapters that means we get to go through 10 standard cases. With each case being around 30 pages long or less that does mean there isn’t time to do a whole lot here. You will get the start of the crime, an obvious suspect, and then Katrielle saves the day. There’s nothing wrong with the format of course but they probably could have shaken this up a bit more. The best story I would say is the final one. Perhaps that is an easy answer but having Katrielle be suspected of murder is definitely intriguing. That would get you to read the chapter very eagerly. Then of course you have the initial meeting where the agency was formed and that was a pretty good prequel chapter.

The rest tend to be about even and there are no bad chapters. That’s important to note here, this is a series that is very consistent. It may not be winning any awards but it is a very easy read. The art is super clear and I have no issues there either. It may not be super detailed but you can always tell exactly what is happening which is important. I could see this style being an intentional pick to help with the younger crowd who may have a more difficult time with an intricate style.

Overall, This is a fun series but I don’t feel like the author took advantage of the manga medium. It merely recounts the events of the game without adding anything to it. I’m sure there are probably some constraints in terms of not deviating from the story but you could hopefully still get around that with really dynamic camera angles or something. I don’t know exactly the best way to go about that but something to help it reach the next level. Either way it was good though and in the end that’s an important thing. It’s a safe manga that I could recommend to anyone looking for a good time. There is nothing objectionable to be found here and so in the end it’s a good time.

Overall 6/10