Meitantei no Okite

Meitantei no Okite (Japanese for "The Conditions of Great Detectives") is a live-action series based on the book of the same title.

The story revolves around Amateur Sleuth Tenkaichi Daigorô as he solves various criminal cases while being bound by the "Conditions" of the Detective genre (which suspiciously seems like a different word for "tropes").

The main cast is completed with Ogawara Banzo, police chief and Tenkaichi's sidekick, and Fujî Mana, female officer and potential love interest for our hero.


 * Affectionate Parody: The creator, Higashino Keigo, is a famous mystery novel writer and through this work, he parodies the genre.
 * Always Murder: Lampshaded.
 * Big Secret
 * Breaking the Fourth Wall: One could say the series provides an example of this trope. The main characters will enter a special dimension where they can talk about the progress of the case and occasionally explain the conditions to the people watching the show.
 * Clueless Detective: The story dictates the police chief is this, but actually subverted in some cases, in which the Great Detective totally misses the truth and the chief will not point that out, although he notices.
 * Clueless Mystery: Parodied.
 * Detective Drama: Well...
 * Genre Deconstruction: The premise of the show. Most tropes used in the book and the series are deconstructed, parodied, subverted, invoked or exaggerated in some way.
 * Genre Savvy: Ogawara and Tenkaichi are aware from the beginning that they are just characters in a novel, and they try their best to fulfill their "conditions". Fujî will get to learn that truth early in the first case.
 * Great Detective: Tenkaichi's very first Condition.
 * Locked Room Mystery: One of the "conditions".
 * The Perfect Crime: Another "condition", exaggerated to the point that the criminal had to help the detective to solve it (and yet, he ignored the truth out of pride).
 * Police Are Useless: Lampshaded by Ogawara from the very beginning, then subverted in various occasions.