Heaven’s Memo pad is an action/coming of age story about a young man in high school who is swept up into working for a detective agency headed up by a young girl, Alice, with extraordinary computer skills. She’s more Victorique (GO SICK) than Sherlock Holmes, but she has a crew of NEET helpers who do the grunt work. She puts those pieces together with what she can find by either hacking databases or accessing surveillance cameras.
Heaven’s Memo pad is directed by Katsushi Sakurabi and written by Seishi Minakami. It aired 12 episodes between July 2 and September 24, 2011, with J.C.Staff in charge of the animation. North American licensor Sentai Filmworks simulcast the series on The Anime Network and released the series on DVD in 2012.
Heaven’s Memo Pad Review
The initial plots of the story are truly mesmerizing, the story starts with a blatant prostitution case ongoing and soon turns viral. After that, the NEETs have butted themselves into many cases and started resolving them. What NEETs? Well, it is simply an interesting title for the protagonist gang. To keep the interpretation simple, they are a bunch of unemployed kids that do detective works for society.
On the other hand, the following cases are much more engrossing and even built a very creative turning point at the back. For further introductions of the cases, I prefer not to tell you here or is gonna be a huge spoiler. Hence, if you’re already interested in it please go and check it out! It is something worth watching obviously.
What hits hard is that Heaven’s memo pad not merely is about working. It shows us what is life and how detectives are prominent in this turbulent society. Team spirit is also something that gets involved which kept me deeply moved. Sacrifasions and many other unpredictable things are happening as well in this anime. Don’t look down it based on its rating, it is a groundbreaking masterpiece and an underrated one.
One interesting fact, Alice other than being brilliantly capable in detective works, is a typical tsundere. Lovely and adorable. In every episode, there will be an ecchi scene of her. That’s something addition that glamorizes the anime even more. I even got a sort of feeling looking forward to the scenes while watching every episode. Love it.
Character Analysis
The character development of Narumi and Alice are great, especially Narumi. His development is wonderful to watch, he blossoms like a butterfly, no pun intended. His transformation throughout the series is obvious and portrayed beautifully.
As for Alice, she is a (super)hacker who is obsessed with Teddy bears and hates to go out. The moment you first see her, you want to walk up and hug her. She’s so adorable, yet scary sometimes. The members of the NEET detective agency only seem to be useful for getting more information for Alice from what is not available in the database and rescuing Narumi when he gets into hot waters.
The leader of the Hirasaka gang, the Fourth, and the former gang member Hirasaka Renji were probably the best characters in the series from my point of view because they were the ones who were independent for the greater part of the anime.
Visuals
Visually, Heaven’s Memo Pad is solid in the designs of characters and scenery. It sports vivid colors and a good amount of detail with the various city landscapes, insides of buildings, and even the inside of Alice’s apartment with its various computers and stuffed animals. The animation is implemented where needed in dramatic and tense moments during cases that can look decent in motion, though the series usually resorts to still shots in mundane scenes.
