The Memorandum of Kyoko Okitegami

This manga is about a young woman named Okitegami Kyouko who is an amazing detective but has a condition that causes her memories to reset to when she was seventeen every time she falls asleep. The manga is composed of a series of short stories of her solving different cases. The story is never from her perspective however. Most chapters are from the perspective of Kakushidate Yakuzuke, a man that seems to be cursed to constantly get falsely accused of various crimes and thus someone that constantly needs a detective. There are a few chapters that are from other clients of hers, though none ofthem appear for more than a single chapter. The mysteries were a mixed bag. I thought some of them were great. And some of them were weak. The final case I found especially weak, which results in a pretty weak ending. Though this is an adaptation of a small part of a much larger novel series, so a great ending was never really in the cards. The mysteries definitely have Nisioisin vibes, though there's never anything supernatural or even close to supernatural in them. The mysteries are much less focused on the how and much more on the why. The mysteries aren't about the tricks the criminal used or anything like that, but rather trying to psychoanalyze the motivations behind why they did what they did. And these motivations generally fall into what you'd expect from Nisioisin. In terms of characters, while we do learn more about Kyouko as the manga progresses, we don't learn all that much. Her background is a complete blank. At the end of the manga she's still thoroughly mysterious. And due to the memory resets, she obviously doesn't have any sort of character arc or character development. She is pretty charismatic and amusing however, so she's likable enough. Yakuzuke is basically just a really nice guy. Other than him being pretty big and constantly getting accused of crimes he didn't commit, there's nothing all that special about him. Still, in context he comes through pretty well. There does seem to be relationship development between the two, but it's incredibly subtle. Since Kyouko can't remember him every case they meet anew, but she does seem to grow comfortable with him more quickly in the later meetings as compared to the earlier ones. With Yakuzuke its more clear that he's clearly falling in love with her, though it's not at the point he's doing anything about it. The art was reasonably solid in terms of quality and style. The character designs were pretty plain for the most part, which fits the realistic setting and more grounded tone. Kyouko's design definitely stood out though, and in general the art seemed to put more effort when portraying her, which worked well and allowed her to stand out. tl;dr: A series of minimally connected mysteries of varying quality about an amnesiac detective.