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The last time I gave blood in America, they gave me like a $25 gift card or something.
I guess I would rather have an anime themed pencil than like an Amazon gift card.
That maybe is true about me. So I'm the target audience for that.
Welcome back to 2AM OTTACK! I am your host Mayu, a born and raised Japanese non-otaku, and...
I'm Cisco, an American otaku with 30 years of otaku-ing experience.
In this podcast, we share our reviews of anime and manga through our distinct
perspectives with commentary on Japanese culture, history, and language.
Cisco, what is your favorite detective anime?
Detective Conan. I guess like if I thought about it more, I might come up with like some other
ones. I guess SIDCRAFT, Love is a Mystery, is making a play. It's not really about him being
a detective. It sort of is. I don't know. I think I'm still going to stick with Detective Conan. It's
a classic. I haven't actually read or watched that much of it, but I just like it on principle.
I'm the same. Yeah, I'm pretty sure my first detective anime was Case Closed. That was the
last one. Yeah, I liked Kindai Ichi, the parts that I saw of it, because you could actually
figure it out sometimes. It wasn't just like out of the blue, this random answer. It was a nice
balance of like, oh, you have to think about it, but if you think about it, you might figure it out,
as opposed to Conan, you never figure it out. He explains it to you and you're like, oh,
I didn't pick up on that. I think I like Conan because of the character designs and the story
and the characters, and not really because of the detective part of it. Whereas Kindai Ichi,
I enjoyed trying to figure out the mystery, but I didn't like any of the other parts quite as much.
I've only watched Kindai Ichi in live person, TV drama. Yeah, that was great. I liked the
opening. Again, either opening or ending theme song by Kinky Kids. By Kinky Kids? Yeah, because
one of them was the main lead. What? How did I not know this? Yeah, it was great. I loved it.
アニメの紹介
All right, so we are going to talk about Ameku Takao no Suirikarte. Ameku Takao's Detective
Karte. When I googled it, there are other translations like Ameku MD, Doctor Detective.
That makes a lot of sense. Yeah? Yeah. That's probably a better translation. I mean, first of
all, no Americans know what karte is because it's a German word. Really? Yeah. Interesting.
It means like... It's like the paper you write about what's a diagnosis and then like... Oh,
really? Like a patient's information. I don't think I knew that that's what it meant. Isn't
karte like a card game? Karte is not. That's not related? No, it's a patient's paper.
I'm thinking of karte, aren't I? Oh, karte is probably Portugal. Yeah, maybe so. Okay, well,
all right, that's just my misunderstanding. So yeah, I guess karte is like the patient's
information. I think it's typically like what's the symptoms or how old the patient is or what's
the diagnosis. Right, right, right. The point is, yes, that's what the show is called. There's one
translation I found. Ameku Takao's mystery medical record.
I like the second one better. Like, you know, Ameku Takao MD, detective doctor,
doctor detective or whatever. That's definitely the best one. Because the show is absolutely like,
I mean, I don't know if it's referencing, but it's like built along
very much the same lines as House MD, which was a very long running popular American TV show
featuring a British actor doing an American accent. Just like Carl.
作品の概要
Just like Andrew Lincoln in Walking Dead. That show is pretty close to what this show is, except
with like a slightly more detective-y twist that like they're solving crimes most of the time,
not just medical diagnoses. Before we start, please make sure to subscribe to our podcast
to aim attack on Spotify, Apple podcast and on YouTube, or write a good review about our channel.
Or both. Oh, of course. Yes. All right, let's get started. So what is Ameku MD, doctor detective,
Ameku MD, doctor detective. Sorry, I also like that title because it's like,
it's got a lot of literary techniques in it. It's got some consonants because Ameku MD and
D, doctor detective is just like a lot of really fun alliteration.
Oh, okay. Didn't notice that. It's a Japanese medical mystery novel series written by Mikito
Chinen. The story revolves around a doctor who solves murders and the medical mysteries at the
Department of Diagnosis at a general hospital. Manga adaptation illustrated by Hiroki Ohara
was serialized in Shinchousha's Seinen Manga Magazine monthly comic at BUNCH from April
2016 to March 2018, with this chapter collected into four tankobon volumes.
Anime television series adaptation produced by Project No. 9 premiered in January 2025.
If there's only four tankobon, is this just going to be like a 12 episode series and then it's over?
Or are they going to add some additional anime-only episodes to make it longer?
Not so sure, but that's probably a good guess. But novel itself has more.
Oh, I see. So they might take stuff that didn't get adapted into a manga and put it straight into
the anime. Especially the very first episode of anime was written especially for the anime.
It was not in a novel or anything. Interesting.
Yeah. So I don't know how it's going to go.
So some of it might be just brand new material.
Okay.
著者とキャラクター
Writer, the novelist Mikito Chinen is a licensed doctor. A lot of his family members are doctors
in like four generations. So he was destined to be a doctor, but he loved writing novels.
So he chose to be a doctor like the rest of the his family members, but he specifically
chose to be a physician. So he still sees patients once in a while.
All right.
So that's pretty cool.
I feel like that actually explains a lot of Ameku's character and house.
But I think the author is engaging in some wish fulfillment here by creating a character who gets
to live in a house on the roof of the hospital with a ton of books inside it. Because that feels
like maybe what the author himself would have enjoyed doing.
I see. Can you explain the plot of Ameku Takao?
Yes, I can.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
アニメのプロット
She's a doctor who is a specialist in diagnosing people's conditions. So when somebody is sick
and nobody can figure out what's wrong with them, it's her job to come in and be like,
this is what's going on. And so far in the anime, she hasn't actually been doing a lot
of diagnosing living patients. It's mostly been like somebody dies and then they're like,
why did they... I guess, no, that's not true. Okay. So some living and some dead, but
her job is to unravel the mystery of what is wrong with these people.
So as an example, in the most recent couple of episodes, they're dealing with spontaneous human
combustion and they haven't actually solved this yet. So I'm curious as to whether they're going
to be like, oh yeah, no, it's real and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or if she's going
to be like, there's an alternate explanation for what's going on here besides spontaneous
human combustion and it's this instead, which feels like the direction it's probably going to
go. But yeah, so that's what she does. And the last three episodes, four episodes maybe in a row
have been connected and about linked cases. Whereas the first few episodes are standalone,
one and dones for each episode.
Yeah. And she's got a sidekick.
She's got a sidekick whose name is Takanashi and we'll talk about his name later.
She's a regular doctor, but she does this extra side job of finding out what's really going on in
the hard situation. I don't know. It really feels like house. In house, I think he was supposed to
be a regular doctor, but he never wanted to do any actual work. He only wanted to work on the
mysteries and that definitely seems like it's what's going on with her too. She might be expected
to do some additional work and she just like mostly does not do that. And Takanashi feels like
he's just a regular doctor at the hospital. We see him in the emergency room from time to time.
So maybe he's an emergency room physician. I don't know whether that's whether we distinguish
between those types of people and others, but yeah, I think you're right, but that's the plot.
There you go.
Yeah, we got this like a sense of it's kind of similar to the Apothecary Diaries.
Apothecary Diaries? Yeah, well, I mean, they're both about medicine. So they're set in like wildly
different time periods and places. The main character in both is a like, you know, to some
degree, like homely looking, like, you know, like, like not super hot, like, kind of lowly character,
right? Who like, is very smart, but like looks really young and like small, and then is like
solving people's problems with medicine. Right? Yeah. But we also saw a big Steins Gate connection
there with... God, I can't remember that character's actual name. Hiyajo? Hiyajo, yeah. Who's also like
short and like smart and like... And the hairstyle. And the hairstyle. Yeah, like big hair.
Like big, long, like weird hair. Yeah, Ameku doesn't have green hair. She has like regular
brown hair, I think. Yeah, brown and black. And I think she's like depicted as like kind of like
more cute than either Hiyajo or Maomao. But yeah, why do they all have green? Like, why does...
What's up with the... What's up with the hair? I don't know. I don't really understand this like
type. Like, I get that like lolis are a type, but like... They're all kind of like...
Tsun-tsun. Saba-saba. Saba-saba. Yeah. Yeah. So we should probably explain what that means in
English. So I guess they're all like a little bit like cold, or like uninterested, or like,
excuse me, seemingly uninterested in like romance, or like flirting. But then like,
I think they're all probably actually deeply want those things. And like, we just haven't
gotten to that part of the plot yet. I noticed the similarity between Hiyajo and Ameku.
Ameku is a name, a place name in Okinawa. Oh. And also they're like Ameku-san.
People with last name Ameku in Okinawa. And Hiyajo, if you remember, Hiyajo is the same.
It's from Okinawa? Yeah, she's from Okinawa. Her parents are from Okinawa, and there's a place
name called Hiyajo. So they have roots in Okinawa. It really does not seem like it.
Why? I'm just thinking of like, you know, I mean, maybe because of like stereotypes about Okinawan
people, like in Japanese culture, like particularly like tan skin, thick accent,
like laid back lifestyle, like none of those stereotypes apply to either of these characters.
アメクの文化的背景
Except the names. Yeah, just the names. And I mean, like, I think it's great to have like
non-stereotypical characters, but like neither of them read to me as like significantly Okinawan.
Yeah, like maybe that's like where the name comes from or whatever, but it doesn't seem
like there's an actual like tie to like the unique culture or anything else about the island.
By the way, the author of Mekito Chinen is also from Okinawa.
Okay. And I mean, like when we say from Okinawa, do we mean like
Okinawan roots, like identifying with the place or like their totally regular Japanese family
from Tokyo, like moved to Okinawa before they were born?
For the author, he was born in Okinawa and then moved to Tokyo.
But I mean, are the authors like parents from there?
Yeah, I think so.
Like they go back and like are an Okinawan family?
Probably, because Chinen is pretty common name in Okinawa.
Okay. Yeah, that's not a name that I'm familiar with as a Japanese name. So that kind of makes
sense to me. Okay. Well, yeah, I don't know. I mean, like, not like every Okinawan character
has to like look, sound or behave the same. Is there anything about Ameku's character
that makes you think, oh, this person is like clearly Okinawan?
No.
Yeah.
No, it's just like an unusual name. I've never heard of anybody named with Ameku.
Yeah, that's fair. I mean, I don't know. I try to see like parallels between Okinawa and Hawaii,
both in terms of like their tropical islands that were colonized by like some other power and stuff.
And so I'm just trying to get like a read on like, is Ameku like essentially a haole, right?
Like a person from the mainland whose like family moved there, but like doesn't really have like
the roots or connection? Or, you know, is she meant to be like a really Okinawan person,
but who like moved to Tokyo and, you know, grew up without an accent and stuff?
Maybe we'll find out.
Maybe we'll find out later.
I was just fantasizing that maybe Ameku and Hiyajo are like
Related?
Related or meet each other in like a beta line or
The Delta world line or something.
Because they are actually twins or something.
Yeah, that'd be cool. Okay. Or cousins maybe.
Cousins. Yeah.
アメクの特性
So Ameku Takao, this is what I found from Wikipedia or other websites, which is
she has traits of Asperger's syndrome and in the border sense of Savant syndrome.
Savant?
Yeah, Savant syndrome.
You mean in the light novels this is true?
I think, yeah.
Yeah, because it's not showing up in the anime.
But like she memorizes a lot of stuff.
Yeah, like I hear that and I feel like it might be true in like some other versions of this story.
In the anime, they are not playing that angle up very hard.
But the very first episode, she came in to Takanashi and you have like three minutes,
20 something, like, you know, like a very specific numbers left until you get off from your work.
Right.
Which seems like a very unusual thing to say.
Like you've been counting this whole time.
Right.
I mean, the dinosaur exhibit part to me was like, is actually the part that reads
the heaviest as like, you know, she's on the spectrum a little bit.
That like, you know, she's extremely self-centered.
Right.
She has like no consideration for particularly Takanashi's like life circumstances in any way.
And it's like constantly forcing him to like go do stuff with her.
But other than that, the anime has not really shown that in my opinion very much.
音楽スタイルの考察
And I get that like culturally like Asperger's and which I feel like Asperger's is like not a
thing anymore.
Like I feel like like it's now just autism spectrum disorder and we don't specify like
Asperger's particularly anymore as much.
But I don't know.
I'm not like a I'm not a psychiatrist like or a psychologist.
I don't know that that's like for sure.
I just feel like I haven't heard it a lot lately.
And I think it got like subsumed.
But if she's on the spectrum, she doesn't seem like that far on the spectrum.
And like savant disorder, is it even a disorder?
I don't know.
Savant syndrome, whatever that is, like, I think like that often applies to people who have like
more extremes in terms of their functioning, like are nonverbal, but are like but have like
perfect memories or like, you know, have like other really specific behaviors,
but also can like paint an entire city from like memory or something.
And she does seem really, really smart, but hasn't been exhibiting like any other traits
that really make me be like, oh, savant syndrome, like seems more just like sort of eccentric,
but like, and like very, very smart, but not necessarily like grappling with a lot of like the
sort of other extreme.
Let's talk about opening and ending theme songs.
Opening theme song is Scope by Eme.
That's how you pronounce that?
A-I-M-E-R.
I never knew how to write it.
I mean, she's like, she seems pretty popular for anime songs.
Right?
Yeah.
Eme.
It's got to be a French thing.
I think so.
Okay.
Yeah.
And ending theme song is We'll Be Fine feat. Andy.
Featuring.
Yeah, feat.
Oh.
That's short for featuring.
Right.
Right.
I know.
I know, I know, I know.
Not, not the part of body.
Yeah.
Performed by the Gospelers.
Yeah.
What?
So the Eme opening is like, sounds a little bit out of place.
Right?
Like, it really sounds like this is going to be like.
It's exciting.
I think it's just that I'm so influenced by having heard them do the Kimetsu no Yaiba opening.
Yeah, yeah.
And like, it's got like that, like, kind of like rock feel to it.
But like, just to me, like, doesn't scream procedural like show about medicine.
But like, and like the animation is like really high quality.
Like, I like the opening animation, but it seems like really exciting.
And then like the regular show is like, it's good.
It's just not like exciting like that.
You know what I mean?
Like once every couple episodes, someone will like bust like an Aikido or karate move.
Yeah.
But like, it's not about like, biting.
Like.
No.
They're like slowly thinking through a mystery of like how a person died.
Like it's not, I don't know.
I mean, whatever.
It's a good opening theme song.
Yeah.
I like it.
It just, it feels like a little bit of a mismatch.
And the ending theme song is like, great.
The gospelers are awesome.
I love them.
And I'm really pumped that they got like an ending theme song, like good for them.
But also it's just kind of like random.
What?
Like, why?
Why did you go with this?
You know?
Yeah.
Good for them.
I'm happy for them.
Yeah, me too.
Gospelers are great.
But like, it's just a weird choice.
I mean, I don't know, like what I expected, you know, like, I'm not sure there is like,
oh, this is the type of like ending and opening you're supposed to have for like a medical
drama.
But I feel like even apothecary diaries, which we are also watching, like the opening ending
of that somehow seemed to me to like fit a lot more with like what's going on in the show.
Whereas this one, like the opening, the opening feels like it's selling you a totally different
show.
And the ending is just kind of like, I mean, like, again, makes it feel like it's about,
it's like a different, like, it makes it seem like it was like a rom-com or not a rom-com,
but like, you know, like a love story about like, you know, like a, like a, you know,
it's pretty chill, you know?
Yeah.
It's like, and neither one of them feel like medical mystery, you know, I mean, not the
whatever, like what kind of music is like a medical is like medical.
I think if they had gotten something by who did all the Detective Conan like openings,
it should have been Komatsumi Ho.
No, no, no.
They needed like, it needed like a Kuroki Mai ending with like a, with like a Zard opening,
you know, and then I would have been like, okay, yes, I know exactly.
Yeah, they could have had like some Kuroki Mai and some Garnet Crow and you would have
not watched the show because you hated the opening and ending so much.
Can't.
I can't.
Too much.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, whatever.
They're both good songs.
I like them.
The end.
Yeah.
Anni is from Okinawa too.
Oh, I mean, you know what?
That's cool.
Like, I, I'm all, I'm all for it.
Yeah.
Again, it's not like if it was like Shokichi Kina, I'd be like, oh, they're like really
playing the Okinawa angle here.
I think it's too much.
It definitely is too much given that it's not said in Okinawa and nothing about the
show is really about that.
Like, oh, here's like a gospel singer who like, you know, or like a, like a, you know,
a female pop star who just like happens to be from Okinawa.
That is the vibe of the show for sure.
Okay.
アメクタカオのトリビアとキャンペーン
Here's a trivia about Amekutakao.
Okay.
In 2024, August, there was a comic market.
Okay.
During the comic market, there was like a blood donation campaign featuring Amekutakao.
And if you donate more than 400 milliliters of blood, you get some special thing.
Goods?
Goods.
Like what kind of goods though?
I don't know.
Something about Amekutakao.
Like you get like a pencil?
Yeah, maybe.
The last time I gave blood in America, they gave me like a $25 gift card or something.
I mean, like, I guess I would rather have an anime themed pencil than like an Amazon
gift card.
That maybe is true about me.
So I'm the target audience for that because I would have been like, if I give 800, will
you give me two?
Yeah, I think that's a good campaign to go.
Yeah, that's smart.
声優の特別ポッドキャスト
Also, I've been listening to Amekutakao's special podcast.
Okay.
It's by the main voice actor, Ayane Sakura, and she does it every single day, 400 days.
Every single day?
I mean, she doesn't like record every single day, but like they post every single day.
Okay, so she like recorded them like over a long period of time and then they're releasing
them.
Yeah.
That's a lot of podcasts.
Yeah, so she does like all sorts of like challenges and then to be closer to her character.
Are they medical challenges?
Well, she did like a ningen dokku, examining the whole body and then her rank was D.
She's like not very healthy?
Whatever, my rank would be F.
I have like no position to talk.
アニメのテーマと診断の重要性
There's no F.
There's no F?
D is like really bad and there's E.
Yeah, I mean like you get treatment.
You are in chiryouchu.
Oh, damn.
Yeah, so D is basically the worst.
Wow.
Yeah.
I'm afraid of ningen dokku.
Like I guess I dutifully like go for like regular checkups like about once a year.
I often like attempt to like get a better score on my blood test by like purging my
diet for like two weeks before I'm like willing to go get my blood taken so that I can pretend
that I don't have like serious health problems.
Did it work this time?
Well, no, but you didn't give me long enough.
You like forced me to go before I had had time to like clean up my act.
And so I'm still not diabetic.
So that's a win.
But yes, my triglyceride levels were like terrifyingly too high.
This is not about my health.
This is about anime.
Yeah.
All right.
Let's do word of the day.
All right.
What's today's word of the day?
So as a legit word that's related to the show, I think we should do
shindan, which means...
Sounded like shindan.
Shindan, which means you died.
No, shindan, which means investigation or diagnosis.
And so I think, do you undergo a shindan?
Shindan wo uketa?
Shindan wo uketa.
So it's both an investigation and it is the diagnosis.
After they investigate you, they're like, this is our shindan, right?
So she is a member of the diagnostic, the investigative diagnostic bureau,
or I think we read somewhere that was investigative pathology.
Pathology.
So trying to figure out what went wrong with people.
But either way, like that's a big part of her title and it's what she does.
So that feels like a good word of the day.
But there's one more.
I also really think we should talk about Takanashi's name because one of the...
I guess it's not a joke.
One of the running parts of the show that's fairly important is that Takao, or Ameku,
refers to him as kotori, which means little bird.
Because the kanji for his name are little bird play.
In no universe would you normally read that Takanashi.
There's no way to parse it, except that if little birds are out and playing with each other,
it means there are no hawks.
Taka, which means hawk, nashi, like there is not.
And so it's a reading of the kanji that is completely divorced from
how you would normally pronounce them.
And the reason she calls him kotori is kotori is absolutely how you would pronounce
the first two characters in his last name.
So it becomes her nickname for him to his great annoyance.
Probably because one, he's gotten that a lot in his life.
And secondly, because she's got her name, Takao.
Taka means hawk.
So she actually is the hawk.
And he's the little bird that never gets to play because she's always around.
That seems important to translate for people too.
Yeah.
Is there anything you'd like to add?
I mean, I'm curious to see where the relationships part of this goes.
There's like a third character who's just another random girl who works at the hospital.
She seems to tease him about liking Takao all the time.
All of the opening ending suggests that he and Takao are eventually getting together
or that he's in love with her.
But like, I don't know.
Like if you were to, if those people were in real life and I knew them, I'd be like,
I'm really sorry to disappoint you, Takao, but I don't think Takanashi is interested in girls.
アメクタコのスタンス
Like that's my read on that guy so far.
Is like, yeah, there's like social kudanshi.
And then there's like, I just am not interested in women.
And like to be like as old as that dude is and spend that much time with that many different
girls and just be like, my favorite thing in life is my car.
I feel like he's hiding some stuff.
But obviously that's not where it's going because the ending theme song is all about
like them being in love.
And so it's like, yeah, it's sort of boring.
I would love there to be like a subplot about a romantic triangle involving the other girl.
And I can totally imagine her crushing on him a little.
But like, it feels like they're not gonna have time for that in the show.
That's mostly about like medical mysteries.
And so, yeah, okay, whatever.
It's fine if there's none of that.
It's another reason why Detective Conan is better though.
Is there any comment you'd like to say to whoever haven't watched Amekutako's detective
cult?
Yeah.
I mean, like I think it's a, if you like this type of show that's about sort of medical
mysteries and if you enjoyed House or you like other like medical shows, I think it's
a solid one.
It feels kind of in the middle of a detective show and a medical show, which I guess is
like the whole point.
And I might prefer it if it leaned harder into being just one or just the other.
And I, you know, I'm curious to see where it goes though.
Like it definitely took some time.
After the first episode, I was like, I don't have to watch any more of this.
And after the second episode, I was still not sold on the show.
And the last couple of episodes, I think three, four, five have made me more interested
in where things are going and have felt like better episodes than the first two.
All right.
視聴者への呼びかけ
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode.
If you liked this week's episode, please give us five stars on Spotify and Apple podcast
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Make sure to subscribe and follow 2AMOTAK and 3AMOTAK.
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See you next time for more 2AMOTAK.
Peace.
