Oshiri Tantei and the Noble Art of the Fart Mystery

Japan has given the world a lot of things I’m glad exist: convenience store sushi, bullet-train punctuality, vending machines that sell things I can’t explain. And now, bless them, a detective manga whose protagonist is literally a butt. Not a crude metaphor. An actual butt face—two cheeks, a crack, two small eyes—who drinks tea, eats sweet potato cake, and when cornered, defeats his enemies by farting directly into their faces.

Oshiri Tantei—Butt Detective—began as a manga by Yoko Tanaka and Masahide Fukasawa and became popular enough in Japan to earn its own anime adaptation. The premise holds up to scrutiny: our unusual hero is a well-mannered gentleman whose face happens to be an ass, and he solves more or less delicate criminal cases alongside his animal companions. Dignity intact throughout, except for the fart attacks.

It’s easy to put this next to Detektiv Conan—Japan’s apparently immortal detective anime about a cursed teenager trapped in a child’s body who has been solving murders for over twenty years—and say, well, Japan loves detective stories and will apparently never stop making them. But Oshiri Tantei feels like a different category of thing. It’s genuinely silly in a way that Conan never allows itself to be. The trailer alone is enough to make you want to know more about this curious, flatulent, tea-loving ass.