Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok - Anime Impression Review Episodes 1-3

I remember watching this series back in my college anime club at St Cloud State and at the time it was intriguing and oddly cute for the subject matter. Now that it's up on www.hulu.com I decided to watch it again from the beginning, so I can finally see the ending which I managed to miss due to finals.

What it is:

Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok, is the story of Loki, a young detective who is actually the Norse god of the same name. In episode 1 we're not given too many details about him, other then the fact that he's apparently decided to run a detective agency with his butler type named Yamino, who often seems to act like his conscience and nudge him toward doing the right thing. We also meet Mayura, a local girl who is obsessed with mysteries and who has decided that attaching herself to Loki is the best way to find more mysteries and specifically find out the story behind a talking doll that calls her "Big Sister".

Episode 2 gives us a little more back story on Loki and, as usual, it's really only enough to keep you wondering. We find out that Odin banished him from Asgard and is banished to the human world as a child, but we aren't told why and even Loki seems to be a bit confused as to the reasoning. However he seems to be taking it in stride, as he helps Mayura explain the "7 Wonders" of her school. Most of them seem pretty normal, until the 7th one actually seems to be real and we meet Thor, another Norse god who may or may not be an ally.

In episode 3 our main villian is introduced, or at least he seems to be that. Our main vilian is Heimdall, another Norse god stuck in the body of a child with longer purple hair, used to cover the fact that his right eye was apparently stolen. Loki and Mayura meet him while investigating a flock of birds at the zoo who seem to be acting strange and attacking people.

What I think:

I will admit I haven't ventured too far into the Detective Child genre, but there are a few I've seen (check out the list at the bottom of the article). The general idea of the genre appears to be a cute child in an overly detailed uniform solving little mysteries and then, by the end, there's some large case that reveals secrets in their past. It seems like an odd place to put a story based on a Norse god and Norse mythology, but it actually works surprisingly well.

By episode 3, it's very obvious that the creator of this series has done quite a bit of research with Norse mythology, or is at least familiar with it and has put a lot of thought into working the story and characters into this genre. If nothing else this series is worth watching to see how such well known and complicated deities will be worked into the Anime enviroment, along with their mythical stories and odd weapons. True, because of the odd setting, there's a chance to be disappointed but I'm pretty confident that won't happen here. There's already enough evidence that the characters and their backstories are part of the overall plot, so if you're a newcomer to Norse mythology, or if you've been studying it for a while, it'll be quite entertaining to see how the overall story develops.

This is a series I would definitely watch all the way through.

Other series like this one (in the child detective genre):
CLAMP Campus Detectives
Black Butler
Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne
Tokyo Babylon