Recap / The Kindaichi Case Files Fudo High School Festival Murder Case

"Fudo High School Festival Murder Case" is the seventh case arc in the New Series of The Kindaichi Case Files.

As Kindaichi is promoting the Mystery Club haunted house while the Fudo High School festival is ongoing, Souta invites him to a maid cafe being hosted by the Photography Club, which Kindaichi attends to with enthusiasm. Sadly, the festive mood doesn't last long when the popular and controversial member of the Photography Club is found dead in an apparent murder the next morning.

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Tropes include:

• Angry Collar Grab: The supervisor of the forensics team subjects Kindaichi to this treatment out of sheer irritation after Kindaichi manages to slip back inside the classroom serving as the crime scene despite being pushed out of the place. Luckily for Kindaichi, Kenmochi arrives at that moment to vouch for him.
• Brick Joke: Saki takes a picture of Kindaichi and Miyuki together when Miyuki is holding Kindaichi's hand, which prompts Kindaichi to take the camera from Saki and delete the photo before returning the camera to him. Saki, however, is not concerned, as he claims to have a file recovery software that he can utilize to bring back any deleted pictures he took, which gets Kindaichi motivated due to the software being useful in recovering the deleted pictures taken by the murder victim's camera. After the murder case is solved, Saki sends via email the image of the previously-deleted picture he took of Kindaichi and Miyuki, which actually impresses them when they see it.
• Downer Beginning: The case arc begins with a girl tearfully holding a knife as the result of being Driven to Suicide before the scene proceeds to Smash to Black.
• Everyone Has Standards: On the morning of the scheduled second day of the School Festival, Miyuki, with Kindaichi in tow (due to being dragged by the ear), arrives at the school and finds members of the Photography Club trying to keep random strangers in line while awaiting the maid cafe to open. When some of the strangers start commenting on Miyuki's bust size, Kindaichi, who's usually not above Eating the Eye Candy himself, promptly tries to shoo them away.
• Family Portrait of Characterization: Saki shows a photograph of his entire family -- which somehow manages to include his deceased brother in the picture, even if the image of his deceased brother is not clear -- in his camera, in which just about everyone is holding either a camera or a camcorder (even the family dog has a camcorder on the head), late in the murder case. The reason behind Saki showing his family photo is plot-relevant: Since no one in the Photography Club had any personal history with Saki prior to this murder case and the culprit claims to have owned the camera before Saki reveals his family photograph in said camera, the culprit's alibi falls apart.
  Kindaichi: [to the culprit] This is Saki's camera that I planted here, so there's no chance that it can be yours.
• Fan Disservice: The murder victim's dead body is wearing the same maid costume that female members of the Photography Club wear for the cafe when discovered. As Kindaichi reveals during Summation Gathering, this is actually part of the Rube Goldberg Device trick to help strengthen the culprit's alibi.
• Fanservice: Invoked.
  • The maid cafe waitresses, who are female members of the Photography Club, wear costumes that elicit many people who are all male, Kindaichi himself included, to the place.
  • The most popular member of the Photography Club takes pictures of girls — and only girls — and tends to have them pose in rather explicit ways, as Kindaichi, Souta, and everyone else who's in the cafe at the time can attest due to witnessing the person doing so in plain view of customers.^note  This takes a darker tone once the member's habit of making a Reluctant Fanservice Girl out of them is revealed after becoming the murder victim.
  • When Kindaichi meets Miyuki at the haunted house, Kindaichi tries to get her to pose a little more seductively to attract more clients, until his attempt gets him slapped in the face after touching her breast while trying to get her to show a bit more cleavage.
    Kindaichi: Ouch... that maid cafe is influencing my mind!
• Growling Gut: This happens to Kindaichi while the investigation into the murder case is ongoing, resulting in a meal break that actually provides more clues for Kindaichi to solve the case.
  Kindaichi: Got any food, Uncle?
  Kenmochi: [calling out to the police force] Hey! Get us some food!
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • The conversation between Sota and one of the female students posing as a waitress in maid outfit comes off this way.
    Waitress: I... I didn't think that you were the kind of person who enjoys things like this.
    Souta: I don't want to hear that from someone who's wearing the thing.
  • In the next morning, many high school students from different schools arrive at Fudo High before the gate is set to open at 7 A.M. for the second day of the School Festival, and, once the gate opens, make a mad dash to the classroom where the maid cafe is located and wait in a long line at the door, which elicits an exasperated thought about them from Kindaichi, even though he practically dragged Sota to visit the maid cafe the previous day soon after hearing about it from Souta.
• Japanese School Club: The main participants in this case arc are members of the Photography Club.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Done by Kindaichi himself this time, when he suggests for Kenmochi to check out the testimonies of the Photography Club members, for they were the ones to have found the murder victim's corpse.
  Kindaichi: In a mystery novel, the most likely suspects are those who found the body!
• Married to the Job: Late in the case arc, the teacher in the Teacher/Student Romance confesses to having been too immersed in the job of teaching for romance before falling in love with a student.
• Minor Major Character: Fumi makes one brief appearance at the end of this case arc, as she peeks at Hajime's phone right as he and Miyuki are too distracted by the image Saki sends over the phone to them, before seizing the phone in question with the intention of showing it to Mrs. Kindaichi. The case arc ends with Hajime and Miyuki chasing Fumi in an attempt to take the phone back before Fumi can show the image to Hajime's mother^note , though whether they succeed or not is left unclear.
• Moment Killer: While the investigation is ongoing, Miyuki is about to get intimate with Kindaichi after she's impressed with his chivalry, only for Saki to ruin the moment by taking a picture of the two of them together, so the "intimate moment" only goes as far as Miyuki touching Kindaichi's hands, much to the chagrin of both Kindaichi and Miyuki. Saki voicing his thought of posting the picture of them on his personal blog only serves to incense Kindaichi further, if anything, resulting in Kindaichi taking the camera from Saki and deleting the photo in question before handing it back to him.
• Not What It Looks Like: Happens to Kindaichi twice.
  • The first time it occurs, he's trying to get Miyuki to look more seductive to get more clients for the Mystery Club haunted house tour... until his hand touches her breast, which gets him slapped in the face for it.
  • While investigating the murder case, Kindaichi attempts to get something off Miyuki. Unfortunately for him, that "something" happens to be on her skirt, resulting in her punching him before he has a chance to explain himself.
    Kindaichi: It's not what you think! There was something on your skirt!^note  The substance on her skirt is white powder, which turns out to be table salt.
• Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Deconstructed and Played for Drama. As Kindaichi and Miyuki discover to their shock soon after the murder case unfolds, the murder victim used to persuade girls to pose for photo-shoots before secretly taking picture of them in the process of changing clothes and then uploading said images onto the underground webpage, all without the girls' knowledge or consent. One girl, after finding such explicit imagery of herself on the site and the demeaning comments from many an Internet Jerk, was Driven to Suicide, and the culprit was determined to kill the one taking such pictures after discovering the webpage in question and seeing her image in it.
• Rube Goldberg Device: As Kindaichi reveals during Summation Gathering, the culprit arranged several objects, one of which being the murder victim's own dead body that was put in a maid's costume, to cause a lighting effect remotely inside the classroom where the murder victim was located, in an attempt to make others seeing the lighting believe the murder took place right around then, which would help to strengthen the culprit's alibi of not being present when the murder occurred.
• School Festival: The entire case arc starts while the Fudo High School Festival is ongoing before the murder case causes it to be put on hold.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Played for Laughs. Souta comes to Kindaichi, while the latter is doing promotional work for the Mystery Club haunted house with no enthusiasm (or with feigned interest at best), with an extra ticket in hand, telling him that the ticket is for a maid cafe and allows the patron to skip the long line and have photos taken with the waitresses in maid costume. Kindaichi immediately hightails it to the cafe in question, practically dragging Sota along.^note  As for the promotional signboard and poster Kindaichi is holding for his promotional duties, he leaves them behind, with the signboard being bound to the nearest statue.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The School Festival was supposed to last for more than one day, but it gets derailed and then put on hold because of the murder case occurring on the next morning.
• Show Some Leg: Part of Kindaichi's attempt to attract more clients to the Mystery Club haunted house tour via Fanservice is to get Miyuki to pose with her leg sticking out a bit more.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: After the murder victim's "hobby" of secretly taking pictures of high school girls in the process of clothes-changing and subsequent uploading those images onto the underground webpage, all without the girls themselves' knowledge or consent is revealed at two separate occasions, variants of "such a person deserves to die" are spoken out loud, with Miyuki doing this in the first occasion.
• Teacher/Student Romance: The culprit in this case is a teacher who fell in love with a student. After the student in question was Driven to Suicide and the teacher discovered the student's image in the underground webpage, the motive for murder was fully developed.
• Teens Are Monsters: The murder victim is a teenager whose Dark Secret is to have girls posing for his private photography sessions subjected as Reluctant Fanservice Girl before posting those pictures in the underground webpage without the girls' knowledge or consent, and, early in the case arc, he also dismissively claims that the girl who was Driven to Suicide has nothing to do with him, even though it was his actions that led to her suicide, which mark him as a full-fledged Asshole Victim once the truth is out after his death.
• What the Hell, Hero?: It's the main hero calling out Sidekick in this scenario, after the murder victim's Dark Secret of making Reluctant Fanservice Girl out of the girls being persuaded (or, in the case of the girl who later on became Driven to Suicide, blackmailed) into photo-shoots is revealed, but otherwise played straight.
  Miyuki: What a despicable thing to do! If he did a thing like that, then he deserves to be killed!
  Kindaichi: No, that's wrong, Miyuki. No matter how despicable a person is, crime does not beget crime! That's what my grandfather has taught me since I was little!
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Having spent the whole adult life being Married to the Job of teaching, the teacher was happy to have fallen in love for the first time (in a Teacher/Student Romance), which sadly didn't last long when the student in question was Driven to Suicide.