Beautiful Bones: Sakurako's Investigation Anime Review

Look hard enough and you're likely to find anime themed around just about anything. Whether it's cooking, fishing, a myriad of sports, video games, or countless others, it is truly impressive just how many different things the medium can find to hover around. In the case of Beautiful Bones: Sakurako's Investigation, bones play a prominent role through the lead character, Sakurako, who is an osteologist, and, thus, obsessed with the things. This plays into the show being a series of whodunits as she and her assistant, Shoutarou, solve a series of deaths through forensic investigation.

While Sakurako is the person who the show is named for, Shoutarou is the one that it centers around. He's a high school student who happened to befriend Sakurako through a misunderstanding, and largely helps her out as circumstances throw one dead body after the next at the pair. The first few episodes are one-offs with the pair find themselves in situations where they stumble across a dead body. Sakurako is delighted whenever this happens given her field of expertise and is eager to both figure out how the person died and find a way to sneak the bones home to add to her collection (Shoutarou always prevents the latter, so she'll have to settle for collecting animal bones).

Watching her walk through what likely happened is always interesting, as there's a logic behind the techno-babble. She'll bring up a lot of stuff about how bones work, chemicals, or some such, but in the end the cause of death makes sense and isn't bogged down in the explanation. One thing that I didn't like early on in the series was when she would say she was about to solve the case, as it segued into a silly animation sequence where she would put on latex gloves and there would be these weird silhouettes of animals walking by. It was cheesy and nonsensical. I have to assume that the reason it was there was because the studio that made the show felt they needed some sort of catch phrase for when she was about to solve a case, and it also made a nice way to waste a few seconds on repeatable footage for killing time and bringing the budget down a bit. In any case, this was surprisingly off putting for me even though it was such a short sequence, but, thankfully, they did away with it later on in the season, which was a huge relief.

Such a terrible animation sequence...so glad they got rid of it.

What's also nice is that not all mysteries in the show are murders. There are some circumstances where Sakurako is just trying to figure out how someone died with little to no foul play involved. I particularly liked the episode where she was helping Yuriko (one of Shoutarou's classmates) figure out how her grandmother died. There was still a death to solve, but more so it was about trying to find a way to bring Yuriko a bit of closure in the wake of someone very important to her passing away.

Some of the best bits, though, were anything to do with Hanabusa, a mysterious painter that is involved with many of the deaths and attempted murders that Sakurako has been trying to solve. The guy is obviously very smart and a master manipulator, making for a worth arch rival to her. The only problem right now is that the series ended on a big cliffhanger as of this writing and I have no idea if they ever plan to continue the anime or are they expecting us to get the light novel, which has not been translated into English.

The back and forth between Shoutarou and Sakurako feels very natural as if they're brother and sister, which begins to make sense as we learn more about Sakurako's past. While she can seem cold and distant at times, she obviously cares very much about Shoutarou and always has his best interests at heart. Also, it's humorous when we see a softer side of her should the opportunity for sweets arise, which she is quite fond of. While much of what the pair are investigating is serious stuff, often times there's very good use of lighthearted comedic elements in the banter between them.

Supporting cast also feels reasonably well done. Yuriko is likable enough, and the episode where she tries to help the lost child at the festival makes her out to be quite the sweet girl. Shoutarou's teacher, Ituski, can be fun too. His obsession with plants is almost as intense as Sakurako's is with bones, and he can be quite laid back in so far as teachers go. I noticed that he's voiced by Akira Ishida, which was nice, as I've been a fan of his since Katsura on Gintama. He sure does seem busy these days, being in many of the series I've been watching of late. Hiroki was the only supporting character that I never really warmed up to. Seeing as Sakurako and Shoutarou keep finding corpses, he's the local police officer that often is on the case first when they report what they found. He just seemed too much the stereotypical bumbling, easy going guy, and a bit cookie cutter as a result.

Conversely, the setting for Beautiful Bones felt comparatively unique seeing as the show takes place in Hokkaido. This made for a lot of rather pretty vistas as Sakurako and Shoutarou often ventured of into the wilderness in their travels. As a result, the animation was very colorful with all of the foliage, not to mention a number of scenes at sunset creating golden hues on everything. The detail in the designs of the different scenes and characters are also worth noting, especially places like Sakurako's house.

So, on the whole, the show was a good watch, and I do recommend checking it out. The mysteries are interesting, while the characters add more flavor to the story. My only concern now is that we don't know if there will be a season two, which is a bit worrisome given the ending to the first season. If this is all we'll get and it turns into a "Please Read the Manga!" series, I'll be thoroughly disappointed and have a slightly more bittersweet view of Beautiful Bones.