Meitantei Katherine: Kieta Sôzokunin

The rich American lady Katherine returns to Kyoto for a personal reason, but gets involved in investigating a kidnapping. Again together with her sidekick, the historian Ichirou.

Though this second movie about Katherine has the same setting and many of the same actors as the first, it has a different director. The style seems similar though, and I am unable to perceive a difference between the directors.

The biggest difference is in the subgenre. While the first movie was a puzzle mystery, offering an intellectual challenge, the second movie, as a kidnapping scenario, is more about following one clue at a time, while offering suspense.

Katherine as a detective is not as super-intelligent or peculiar as some colleagues like Sherlock Holmes. That's fine, since she is not a detetive by profession. She has a distinct personality and style, though. Although upper class, she seems like a person that could realistically exist. One trend-breaking difference is that her story contains a little bit of romance, and she does show feelings sometimes.

The sidekick Ichirou also has a distint personality and fits in well with Katherine. Still, he seems weaker as a main character, because he is over-protective in a whiny way sometimes.

The movie has a lot of contents of various kind. Some mystery, some suspence, some romance, and some jokes. It is quite good and has its own style, but is unoriginal in some ways.