Awesome / Kaitou Saint Tail

• Meimi is so good at magic that she's better than her own father... and not only she can both do his old tricks besides her own, in the anime, she's even capable of performing one of his newer tricks after seeing part of it. This is especially visible in episode 10, where he'd been able to do the trick by switching with Eimi while Meimi was holding her hand, leading to Meimi recreating it to misdirect Takamiya later in the episode.
  • One particular trick, The Parade of the Saint Tails, gets note for Asuka Jr. also pulling off an awesome moment for identifying the real one in it anyway (although the manga later reveals that he'd end up coming to see this incident as an Old Shame).
  • The group of dancing kangaroos in bowties from the prequel chapter is one of her strangest tricks... And one of the most impossible.
  • At the start of episode 21, she performs a Doppelgänger Spin with mirrors, all while the copy is far too distant for any realistic mirror trick studied to do that. Later, once again, Asuka Jr. is able to figure out the real one.
  • In episode 22, she uses stage magic to escape with an UFO.
  • Another trick: in-door snowing. Complete with cold, then with the snow turning into something else (confetti in Genichiro's version in the anime, snowdrop flowers in Saint Tail's).
• In the anime episode of chapter/episode 7, the director of the museum targeted by Saint Tail starts complaining to Detective Asuka about Saint Tail successfully stealing a valuable archaeological treasure, asking him how the police is going to take responsibility. Detective Asuka responds by sassing him about the Dagger of Yato being a "genuine replica".
• Takamiya starts suspecting that Meimi is Saint Tail in episode 8, and is one of the first people to not be fooled by her misdirection whatsoever (at least, for a while).
• Episode 9 sees Saint Tail stealing a wedding dress while the model is wearing it. She replaces the dress with a bulky dinosaur costume. Then she covers her escape by tossing dozens of bouquets, leading the girls of the audience to catch them and obstruct Asuka Jr.
• Saint Tail's apparition in chapter/episode 13 to steal Princess Rosa's Mirror: appearing on a decorative chandelier while filling the room with the flowers named after the mirror's original owner, Princess Rosa.
• In the anime-only episode 14, Saint Tail hacked in a video game console not connected to the internet (this being before internet use became widespread). She then steals a bicycle by making it fly in a Shout-Out to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
• Episode 15 has the playful and non-indicatively named dog Little facing three jewel thieves. As soon as Saint Tail eliminated the gun from the fight, Little pulverizes them.
• In episode 18, the villain is a rich man who'd stolen a lot of artworks, and had even bragged about his friendship with the mayor to scare Asuka Jr. He ends up arrested and caught red-handed by both Asukas for the theft and attempted murder.
• In episode 20, a Professor Hyuga swears he'll use his advanced technology to reveal Saint Tail's identity. Saint Tail defeats his technology with magnets (although this one is implied to be less her own brilliance and more Hyuga being too arrogant for his own good.
• Episode 23 reveals that Saint Tail is becoming The Dreaded for the town's crooks, because she got half of them arrested. We're also shown a montage of what had been multiple Offscreen Moments of Awesome, in which Saint Tail caused the arrest or captured some crooks and left them for the police.
• In episode 25, the police brings in Kaede Kitamura, a super detective from Tokyo, to arrest Saint Tail, and, thanks to the use of cars and electronic trackers, she nearly catches Saint Tail multiple times (at least until Saint Tail notices the tracker and dupes her into trying to arrest Takamiya). Asuka Jr., temporarily off the case, comes much closer using only a bike and his brain, and only fails because Kitamura gets in the way to the point of having him forcibly locked up. For obvious reasons, Asuka Jr. is back on the case by the end of the episode, but the episode becomes the first in many incidents in which Asuka Jr.'s mere presence in the caper turns out to be instrumental in protecting Saint Tail from something far more dangerous.
• Also in episode 25, when Kitamura tries to arrest Takamiya, Takamiya fights back and matches an elite officer with judo throws for a few minutes, at least until her uncle the mayor gets over the shock and stops the brawl. This is after Kitamura had the advantage of surprise on her side.
• Chapter 16/Episode 30 has Meimi initiate her Transformation Sequence with her head upside down, followed by a transformation in mid-air.
• Chapter 17/Episode 27 has Asuka Jr. and Saint Tail trade off: Asuka Jr. stages a trap that combines the local environment with what he knows of Saint Tail's showmanship. However, Saint Tail anticipates this and ties up the cops responsible for springing it. When sprung, it succeeds in trapping her but only because Takamiya was coincidentally in the right place to do so. Then Saint Tail's latest "client" shouts for Asuka Jr to release her... which he does, reflexively, because he's started actually putting serious thought into Saint Tail's morality.
• Also in chapter 17/episode 27, Asuka Jr. finally properly stands up to Takamiya, getting her to hand over his calling card and walking off without bothering to look at her. After half a series of having constantly succumbed to his Hair-Trigger Temper and never truly being able to be assertive, Saint Tail had finally become important enough to him that he doesn't have it in him to waste time on things like that.
• Chapters 18-19/Episodes 28-29:
  • Yabe, a thief hired by the mayor of the town of Sakuraoka, sends a fake Saint Tail calling card to announce he'll "steal" a crystal sculpture borrowed from Sakuraoka, prompting Saint Tail to try and steal it first to prevent Yabe from getting it. What does Asuka Jr. do? First, he actually captures Saint Tail after she had defeated all the guards, then when Yabe actually does the sculpture, he leaves Saint Tail and chases him, even jumping on his car's roof, and staying there until his hands go numb. He still manages to see where he was coming from, and memorizes the license plate on the car while he falls off.
  • Asuka Jr. is confronted with something akin to a Friend-or-Idol Decision when he's given the choice to hand the real calling card to the police or not, since giving it to them would give him nothing to lose: it'd be evidence regarding the first calling card being fake and would get the police on his side so they could recover the Swan, which would also allow Asuka Jr. a near-guaranteed chance to keep his position if it succeeds. The only disadvantage from his perspective is that it would leave him unequipped to find out what Saint Tail is doing later that night and thus put her in even more danger of getting caught by someone else... and for that alone, Asuka Jr. throws everything out the window and makes his way to the Okajima mansion all by himself, because Saint Tail's safety is now more important to him than any of his original motives.
  • Yabe becomes one of the only people to successfully catch Saint Tail completely by surprise and fully capture her (although he doesn't quite succeed in keeping her captured...).
  • Asuka Jr. manages to crawl into the car without anyone noticing until very late, and in the anime, he gets to have some payback on Yabe by stomping on his face multiple times.
  • When threatened by Yabe with a knife, Asuka Jr. declares that he'd rather let Yabe kill him than ever hand over the Swan to him.
• Episode 33:
  • The ninja-like Phantom Thief Mouse Kid: not only is his ability to escape the police almost as good as Saint Tail's, but he manages to steal a sword from Saint Tail herself (for a while, anyway).
  • Later, Saint Tail takes the sword back by attacking with an illusory train. Mouse Kid is so terrified that it looks like he'd crapped himself, before Asuka Jr. jumps on him and ties him up.
  • Saint Tail versus a whole kendo dojo: of course, Saint Tail wins easily.
• Episode 37 has Detective Tomoko Nagata sense Meimi's identity just by touching her hand, and later has her willingly decide not to disclose it out of gratitude.
• Episode 38 has Asuka Jr. now so good at predicting Saint Tail's actions that he's boobytrapped her own escape route, because he'd predicted it well in advance. He later spends the rest of the episode proving his own Character Development by suddenly becoming responsible and assertive when Kyoko and Ryoko wreak havoc on the caper, even prioritizing their safety over anything else.
• Chapter 20/Episode 39:
  • In the anime, Genichiro casually creates a beautiful night sky in his dining room, then changes it to a forest and the sea by snapping his fingers. Meimi then replicates it for the caper.
  • "She's an ideal." Even if he can't put it in explicit words, Asuka Jr. actually manages to verbalize what's actually a very abstract concept behind the Secret-Identity Identity problem and reveals that Meimi's concerns about him only seeing her on a shallow level are completely unfounded, because he's too smart and perceptive to see things that way.
• Chapter 22/Episode 40: Maju manages to confirm Saint Tail's identity with a bit of scent-based hypnosis, immediately followed by Saint Tail completing her caper with a flame-based illusion so realistic that Maju even mistakes it as real for a second.
• Chapter 23/Episode 42:
  • Asuka Jr. stands up to the entire class in Saint Tail's favor, completely contradicting his initial scornful attitude about her and doing it knowing full well that this won't do anything to help his status as the class's social outcast.
  • We see Rosemary's hypnosis skills in action. The previous episode we saw her adopted daughter and she was good, and in another episode we saw Saint Tail and Genichiro and they were comparable to Maju, but Rosemary is just in another league. Poor Asuka Jr. is knocked out for hours and doesn't recover until Rosemary makes him.
  • It turns out that Maju is even better at hypnosis than Saint Tail and Genichiro, even conjuring up an army of skeletons on a whim.
  • Saint Tail's retaliation: she summons wind (with illusory feathers while wearing equally illusory angelic wings for good measure) to dispel the hypnosis and takes all the powdered lavender essence out of Maju's trinket, essentially disarming her.
• Chapter 24/Episode 43:
  • The confrontation between Rosemary and Saint Tail; a hypnotist so skilled with causing hallucinations she can kill against a Master of Illusion supported by Stage Magic bordering on actual magic.
  • Asuka Jr. escapes (with an assist from Ruby) as soon as Maju lowers her guard; he still needed Saint Tail's help to reach the ground safely, but it still takes a lot of guts to insist on making an escape oneself despite being functionally up against three magicians.
  • This is immediately followed by Maju catching Saint Tail by surprise and shooting her down.
  • Rosemary and Maju become the only villains in the history of the show to tangle with Saint Tail and escape police custody.
  • Asuka Jr. catching Saint Tail, literally.
  • The metaphorical version of Asuka Jr. catching Saint Tail carries far more weight than it's presented with at first: we're talking with someone who's got an infamous denseness problem managing to overcome all of that and earning his title as a detective by figuring out the truth behind Saint Tail all by sheer observation, ignoring the arbitrary psychological factors around him and figuring out Meimi better than she even knew herself. Moreover, while he is still dense enough for Maju to have to give him a bit of prodding, it still remains that he figured out Meimi's feelings for him before she was able to ever tell him about it.

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