Now, Veronica Mars has got it going on in Japan. I like this series in that each episode not only introduces one single mystery to be solved but also one big mystery to be solved in the final episode. I think that Veronica Mars, the heroine of this show, really looks like Nancy Drew. Both of them help their fathers who are professional detectives.
By the way, Japanese people really like mystery novels whose detectives are high school students. Jimmy
Kudo (a.k.a
Shinichi Kudo) in "Case Closed" is a
highschooler. Also,
Hajime Kindaichi, another popular detective in Japan, is also goes to high school. But,
Hajime Kindaichi is not a top student. He often takes an F in class. One of my friends who love to read mystery
novels insists that great detectives be good at high school subjects as well as crime cases. Now, I would like to refute him, because I think that skills to solve crime cases are not related to those to get high scores in academic subjects of Japanese high schools. I will make three points below.
The first point is that knowledge to solve crime cases are hardly learned in school. Sometimes, great detectives may need
knowlege of chemistry for cases in which some poison is used, but it won't be learned in
highschool chemistry class. Although you may need language skills to understand dying message written in foreign
languges (Nobody leaves a dying message in a real crime), you won't get high scores in tests of foreign language class in Japan, which is mainly occupied with fill-in-blank grammar questions. Social studies and math also seem to be irrelevant.
The second point is that in Japan, problem solving skills is not required to get high grades in any academic subjects. If you can cram, you can get high grades.
Now, you may insist that they try to cram if needed. In Japan, getting higher grades at school is very important to be successful. Great detectives are smart enough to know it. So, they will try to become top students to be successful. The answer to it will be my third point. Grate detectives in any mystery stories do not have any common sense. They are not interested in becoming a winner. They show up for any crime scene even when they are not asked
to come, which is unlikely to ordinary people in the world.
Therefore, great detectives are not always good at academic subjects, especially in Japan.
