A Rom-Com Featuring Talking Puppets and Homicide: NINGYOU WA KOTATSU DE SUIRI SURU | The Puppet Deduces from the Kotatsu (1996)

Sometimes you discover something isn't available in English and kick rocks in disappointment. Other times, at least if you're me, the fact that something is not available in English, and barely anyone has talked about it at all, only drives a stubborn obsession with tracking it down regardless.

That was what happened with the Mario books after I read "A Smart Dummy in the Tent", the sole English-translated story from 人形はこたつで推理する (The Puppet Deduces from the Kotatsu), by Takemaru Abiko (tl. Ho-Ling Wong).

The Mario series is about a ventriloquist, Yoshio Tomonaga, who solves mysteries with his puppet Mario. The trick here is that, as you might guess from the title, it’s the puppet, and not the ventriloquist, who’s the detective. (Mario is, as the series puts it, Tomonaga's "alternate personality", although "imaginary friend" might be more accurate.) This leads to comical hijinks in situations where it would not be appropriate to do a puppetry routine, which is most of them. The pair are accompanied by secret-keeper and love interest Mutsuki Seno'o, a kindergarten teacher who tends to do most of the deductive legwork.

I would not say the Mario series is amazing (the mysteries are often disappointing or outright jokes), but it is compelling. It belongs to a shared sub-genre with Detective Conan, which you might call "murder soap". I ended up being surprisingly invested in the longform romcom between beleaguered kindergarten teacher and loopy ventriloquist, as well as the series' general axiom that its okay to be a little odd.

Thanks to the power of digital bookstores, I've acquired two of the books as eBooks, along with the two-volume manga adaptation by Mika Kawachi, which is (in what is either a brilliant insight into the teenage mind or a bizarre marketing decision) aimed at young girls. The latter was great for me, as it is, if not at my reading level, at least at my "muddle through with a dictionary" level. The manga adapts five stories, mostly from the first book, and since it was so much trouble to read them, I'm going to cover them all in detail below. 

The Puppet Deduces from the Kotatsu

This is the introductory story, and the mystery of a vandal menacing the kindergarten's rabbit hutch has equal billing with what on earth is going on with Tomonaga and his puppet. Mutsuki discovers their secret as well as the fact that Mario can observe and remember things that Tomonaga is not consciously aware of, which allows them to solve the mystery (which has a typically deflating Abiko borderline-joke-ending). Reading this, I could see why they would choose to adapt it as a shojo manga, as Mutsuki does come off more on the pure-hearted heroine side than the beleaguered side.

The Puppet Deduces in the Tent

This is the sole story that has been translated in English, in which a circus performer is bludgeoned to death in a sealed tent dressing room, and when Mutsuki's romantic rival Haruka seems to be the only possible culprit, she has to put aside her jealousy to help prove her innocence. The manga adaptation is quite faithful, with small differences an additional scene between Yoshio and Haruka and Inspector Odagiri (the police detective who they end up working with frequently) puppeting Mario during his explanation, presumably to add visual interest to a long talky bit. The one large change is additional foreshadowing for the joke epilogue. I have mixed feelings on this, as I felt like the total lack of foreshadowing more easily delineated it as a "punchline" rather than a weak solution that you couldn't possibly guess, compared to the "real" solution to the puzzle component. 

Mama Has Vanished Above the Sky

This is a story from the fourth book, and it's a weak one. Mutsuki is concerned when the mother of one of her pupils fails to show up at take-home time, and when asked where her mother has gone, the little girl only says that she's "above the sky". The teachers suspect that there is domestic violence going on in the household, and when the girl is injured, it's up to Mutsuki (and eventually Mario) to piece together where her mother is from her childlike words. 

This story reminded me very strongly of a Detective Conan episode whose title I can't find (where the nonsense phrase involves crabs), or "The Cross of Lorraine" by Isaac Asimov, except those made a little more material sense in terms of how the child would draw that conclusion. Here the core of the mystery is an untranslatable joke, and it's filtered through kid-logic. (ROT13: Wbxr: "Jung vf nobir gur fxl (fben)?" Nafjre: Fuv. Nf va gur zhfvpny fpnyr Fb, Yn, Gv (be Fv va fbzr pbhagevrf, vapyhqvat Wncna). Lrnu, bbs. Zl erny fgvpxvat cbvag urer jnf ubj ba rnegu gur xvq tbg gb guvf wbxr sebz gur zarzbavp fur jnf NPGHNYYL tvira, fvapr gur eryrinag anzr bayl fgnegf jvgu "Fuv".) The abuse material is also significantly darker than the preceding two stories. My best guess about why this was included was because it's both short and Mutsuki-focused, when the next two stories are heavily focused on Yoshio.

The Secret Story of Mario's Birth

Originally from the fourth book, this story describes Mario's first case. A logical choice to include, and also one of the better stories, in my opinion. Shortly after graduating university, Yoshio receives a surprise visit from his former schoolmate Hatano, but when Hatano's girlfriend dies under suspicious circumstances, he comes to believe that Hatano is the killer. 

In some ways this is almost a reverse whodunit, and the evidence is circumstantial, but I think this works for the type of story that it is. The ambiguity is important, and the intense, soul-destroying focus on trivial clues felt like some Hitchcock movies. Also, the girlfriend's corpse is weirdly sexualized? I expect this kind of artistic decision from Kindaichi, but it was pretty intrusive here.

Who Killed the Puppet?

And after two incidents of real violence, we're back to the first book and its more lighthearted mysteries. Yoshio and Mario get spot on TV, which Mario is more excited about than Yoshio. After the show, Mario is found "murdered" (i.e. the physical puppet is destroyed), which takes a serious psychological toll on Yoshio. This one is more about the character drama than the actual mystery, and you can tell. Like in some of the stories in the books, most suspects never show up on screen, and the entire deduction is based on some incredibly specious reasoning from Mutsuki. I think the ending is another deliberate "punchline" that flagrantly breaks a common mystery axiom.

Still, I was really engaged with this one due to the commitment to the series' bonkers premise. It's not every day that the heroine has a heartfelt declaration of love for a puppet, in defence of the hero being pretty weird.

While the books are definitely better if you can get your hands on them, between the more nuanced relationship context and Mutsuki's beleaguered narration, the manga plays up the drama, and also has the advantage of being significantly easier to read. I don't know when (or if) I'll be able to read the first book, but I will be covering the third and fourth eventually, when I get through them.