Visually, it's decent enough but resembles a hipster neo-noir with a 21:9 cinematic aspect ratio, and you'll have to get used to the blandly muted colors. The ED's composited anime characters onto photographs and video cements the cinematic nature and manages to be fairly unique, and there are many dramatic shifts using sunset and the like. I wouldn't say the cinematography is overly memorable, but it does help craft a drab "I'm trying to be as ordinary as possible" and "but, mom, I don't want to go to school!" atmosphere, along with the sound design and an effective ambient score. Even the detached, anti-depressant-tinged dialogue comes across as ASMR. The characters simply melt into the aesthetic.
The mysteries are just as fillerish as Hyouka, there's more or less the same jaded, rose-tinted slacker philosophy of the main from that series, and the same detective component to add the didactic clownishness of Blue's Clues. Kengo, thankfully replacing the dull sidekicks from Hyouka, functions as a brash and fiery foil to the odd couple. The latter mostly spend whole episodes talking about nothing or boring school junk, solving a "mystery," or eating strawberry shortcakes and drinking matcha tea together. They occasionally have cryptic chats about being ordinary, like they're in a bizarro secret society.
It's decently written but comes across as shallow and awkward because it feels aimless, empty, and featuring robotic chemistry between the two leads, until we get to a "mystery," yet these are unrewarding and lack depth. The method seems to be to use the "mystery" to explore the characters, but there's not much to them other than flipping around between being unremarkable high schoolers and a detective duo who have never found a "mystery" too vapid to solve. If you want to make a mystery series, craft interesting mysteries. If you want a character study, you're not going to come to any compelling outcome by wasting our time with a slew of mysteries equivalent to Duchamp's readymade toilet prank from the art world.
The summary gets to the heart of the series and its issues: "However, for some reason, mysterious incidents and misfortunes keep coming one after another into their school lives. Will Kobato and Osanai be able to achieve peaceful days as ordinary citizens?" Are you kidding? The main conflict is for these two goofy goobers to remain "ordinary citizens," but Kobato can't stop from inserting himself into every literal "who cares?" event that prevents him from being "ordinary." Apparently, being "ordinary" means not sticking your nose into the business of other people and solving electrifying whodunnits like who took the last cookie from the cookie jar. I actually don't want to know the answer to this "mystery," if I'm being honest.
Let's walk through an actual episode. Don't worry. I won't spoil the answer to this exciting "mystery." In episode 2, Kengo airs his grievances about how the MC has changed: "Hah. You really think you're man enough to figure out how I made this premium cup of hot cocoa? Quit being a nice guy and start being an asshole! You'll never figure out how I made hot cocoa unless you're willing to be the biggest asshole on the block." After the pep talk is over, three minds come together to solve the "mystery" of how Kengo made hot cocoa. The MC is like, "Yep, that's right, I stopped playing the detective, but I had to step out of retirement to solve the mystery of how my friend made such good hot cocoa." Get the fuck out of here, you pretentious twat. It's like a decoming of age where the main regresses to a child to play detective games with his friends.
The nature of these mysteries indicates that the summary line I quoted is exaggerated and melodramatic to the extreme, yet the characters take these "mysteries" so seriously. During their smarty-pants investigation, the sister even "rules out" certain scenarios because there's a dirty spoon in the sink and the surface isn't wet. What if he simply washed everything down in the sink, wiped it dry, then put the spoon in last? It's so pointlessly speculative. It seems like they would have noticed the solution when they were making hot cocoa, but the eureka moment doesn't come until later. Maybe I missed something because I turned my brain off or was multitasking, but I don't even want to think about something so stupid.
I suppose you could argue Kobato was a man born in the wrong time, and he could have been the next Dupin, Holmes, Poirot, or Conan, but Japan is too serene to offer any mysteries worth solving, except for these cute little vanity projects to puff up the ego of the MC and allow everyone to blow smoke up his ass. Maybe next episode he can solve the "mystery" of who clogged the toilet at school.
