Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de

Reiko Houshou, heiress to a large conglomerate, seems like any other wealthy lady. However, not many people know that she is a rookie detective for the Kunitachi Police Department. In addition, she hides her identity from her incompetent boss, Kyouichirou Kazamatsuri, a flashy heir to his family's motor business.

During an investigation involving her college friends, Reiko has trouble identifying the culprit and their motive. Out of nowhere, a man approaches Reiko and introduces himself as Kageyama, her newly assigned butler. As soon as Reiko confides in him about her worries, he criticizes her lack of deduction skills and helps her quickly crack the case. Now with the sharp-tongued Kageyama at her side, Reiko may just become the detective she desires to be.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kazamatsuri, Kyouichirou Main

Miyano, Mamoru Japanese

Kageyama Main

Kaji, Yuuki Japanese

Houshou, Reiko Main

Hanazawa, Kana Japanese

Kanbara, Satoshi Supporting

Kawamoto, Katsuhiko Japanese

Shibayama, Satoru Supporting

Miyamoto, Takahiro Japanese

Kanbara, Shiho Supporting

Ohara, Sayaka Japanese

Williams, Leo Supporting

Hamano, Daiki Japanese

Nagae, Kouji Supporting

Yoshida, Kenji Japanese

Actor Supporting

Hayakawa, Takeshi Japanese

Ishiguro, Ryouta Supporting

Maedou, Tomoaki Japanese

Nishi, Kei Producer

Taguchi, Ayuri Producer

Takeeda, Yoshinori Producer

Hattori, Yuuta Producer

Reviews

Jun 21, 2025

5iv3_

Recommended

To be honest, this show was not what I had imagined this show was gonna be, but I really enjoyed it! It's honestly just a lot of fun comedy with a bunch of different little mysteries to solve (this show did make me realize i'm so bad at mysteries though, omg).

The artstyle is fun and very comic book-y, animation is pretty nice. Nothing over the top, but it's better than decent. Plot was fun and I think the characters are quite entertaining and make for some fun interactions. Truly, it's a fun show. (don't understand why it isn't liked :/. it's funn).

Also, as ... a little tidbit, i cried a bit (granted I cry really easily haha. i have a soft heart 💕) But the episodes that were a little sad/bittersweet were really well done (Episode 6 especially).


Anyways, It's a good show 👍 You 🫵 should watch it :)

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Aug 27, 2025

Otaku_Senpai

Mixed Feelings

I liked the main characters at their introduction. The lead detective and his assistant are both heirs of very rich families. The lead detective is a bit incompetent but makes a big show with his loud mouthed flair. The assistant is more competent but she isn't much smarter either. However, the butler seems to be the real genius who can solve cases on the spot mainly with observation skills, kind of like Sherlock Holmes. This guy is my favorite in the show. And he isn't afraid to blatantly insult his boss, the assistant detective, which lead to a funny dynamic between them.

Highlight of the ... show for me is not when the murder mystery is solved but every time the butler would insult/tease the lady detective Reiko's 'detective skills' before helping her solve the case. Because that is the funniest moment, though that lost its charm a bit by the end of the show as it was predictable.

The cases they solve are decent but I don't buy how the butler can solve some of them without even visiting the site but by just talking to Reiko. My skepticism is maybe because he would need to see the things for himself, the tiny details which the lady detective probably would leave out as she wouldn't think it was important detail. I mean in one case the butler knew what background picture was on a suspected cell phone. Or he knew about the flower petals on the car of one of the suspects. How detailed description did the lady detective give him, offscreen? Did she show him all the pictures taken in the crime scene? I don't think I saw her showing the butler pictures and videos. The doesn't show us the butler prying out the details from Reiko that would make sense for him to know for his to solve the cases.


Finally I like the opening. I didn't skip it. This is a good detective show that has humor.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jun 20, 2025

KANLen09

Not Recommended

The Dinner Table Detective — Solving detective cases at the comfort of your own dining table? Now that's something never done before, where the stakes of life are tantamount to the judgment of what's on the table.

Listen, I dig detective stories like the plague, and throughout the last few years or so, we've been through some of the best detective-esque settings that the AniManga industry has to offer, the likes of Summer 2023's Undead Girl Murder Farce and the series of Yuukoku no Moriarty a.k.a Moriarty the Patriot, which saw both seasons in Fall 2020 and Spring 2021, respectively. However, not every detective show is ... a whiz out from the mystery hat, which is why we find ourselves underwhelmed by the mystery shows this Spring 2025 season: from the famed mystery author of Aki Shimizu's Chuuzenji-sensei Mononoke Kougiroku: Sensei ga Nazo wo Hodoite Shimau kara. a.k.a The Mononoke Lecture Logs of Chuzenji-sensei: He Just Solves All the Mysteries, to the crux of this show of novelist Tokuya Higashikawa's Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de a.k.a The Dinner Table Detective, which saw a rather short run from late 2010 to 2012, and the rather weird decision to have Madhouse's adaptation a full 15 years apart.

In the predictable but ever so elusive vision of the detective mystery world, you'd have your Sherlock Holmes - Watson duo plays with the antagonist of James Moriarty, or you'd have the more simple but still complex and enjoyable ones from the likes of Detective Conan and Inspector Gadget. However, it's the fictional character of Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, created by the famous English writer Agatha Christie, her most famous and longest-running character, who has produced countless novels and stories, that only a relatively few of the most literature-based minds will know. And it's in this setting where we find the series's titular group of not-so-ordinary characters: a wealthy heiress who works double duty with her rookie detective job for the police, which is supervised by a rather eccentric boss that exudes forced comedy for the sake of his glamour, and accompanied by a rather ordinary-looking butler that's as humble as he comes, taking Chuuzenji-sensei's rhetoric as the one whom "He Just Solves All the Mysteries."

For one, for those well in the know about Hercule Poirot's character and how Agatha Christie portrays him to be, that's who the dignified heiress of Reiko Hosho has to deal with: Kyoichiro Kazamatsuri is an inspector serving the Kunitachi Police Department and also the heir to his own family-run car company. This is probably one of a fair few times that you would see literate heirs secretly running their side gig (though not so much with Kazamatsuri), though the outcomes are very different when compared against each other. On the outset, Reiko is as proud as a high-pitched crow as an heiress of sizable reputation, largely because she HAS to maintain her image in front of friends and clients, though this is in stark contrast to how much she tries to maintain this to her cool, calm, and collected butler, who's simply named Kageyama, who is the ONLY one "allowed" to dig her grave when she's trying to rack her brain into solving the usual detective cases and gives her advice on how those cases can be solved, always. Compare that to Kyoichiro Kazamatsuri, and he's the total opposite of how Hercule Poirot carries himself despite his short height and weird body and facial contraptions, but done with dignity. Rude, narcissistic, bombarding — call Kazamatsuri whatever you want, but his role as an inspector, I feel, is a major disservice in regard to how he's supposed to mentor Reiko, yet feels every bit like he was supposed to be portrayed as Batman's Joker character in Sherlock Holmes's body to the female Watson, who, despite her good looks and hidden clumsiness, at least is a decent character at best. I love eccentricity, especially when done right, and this variation of Undead Girl Murder Farce's Tsugaru Shinuchi, Aya Rindo, and Shizuku Hasei are gravely not the case here.

There was a time when series were in episodic form, and there are still series amping that very same rhetoric, which I guess plays its fiddle well to the detective setting it corroborates efforts from, and one that I'll give credit to. The stories here are quite the mixed bag of simple but weird or complex but stupidly compounded. For sure, this is not a series where you want to attach the "detective mystery" genre to it, but if it's for pure entertainment, I guess they'll do.

While I'm not surprised to find Madhouse working on this project, which, to be fair, looks decent and alright for the entity that's been dabbing on different genres of works since post-COVID, it's the choice of the staff team that intrigues me, most particularly the veteran in-house director Mitsuyuki Masuhara. The Diamond no Ace a.k.a Ace of Diamond series' director, has not been around since Act II's adaptation in the pre-COVID days, which is quite a sizable time away from any form of major involvement towards the studio itself. And although he did make a short return with the 2023 movie adaptation of Nao Iwamoto's Kin no Kuni Mizu no Kuni a.k.a Gold Kingdom and Water Kingdom and as episode director for Madhouse's most recent series of Chi. Chikyuu no Undou ni Tsuite a.k.a Orb: On the Movements of the Earth, to be picked to helm this show, it feels like a cop-out that Masuhara wanted to pick up his directorial skills again, but there's little to no work scheduled for him, so this show is what he had to work with for the time being (while Madhouse focuses all their efforts on Season 2 of Sousou no Frieren: Beyond Journey's End).

The music is rather plentiful and fine, though if you're like me and are sensitive to even the most repetitive of sounds, Kento Nakajima's OP, composed by the man, the myth, and the legend of Hiroyuki Sawano himself, I don't know about you, but the OP song feels so egregiously overdone with the usual [nZk] twerks for what should be a relatively calm song at best. And while I appreciate that change with Billy Boo's ED song, it too was just alright. But to my ears, definitely the better song of the two.

If you'd come into this show for anything else but the story itself, Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de a.k.a The Dinner Table Detective is one that gives you entertainment aplenty for the most part, thanks to its unhinged comedy. However, as a detective series, if the short run of the 3-volume-long novel itself isn't a red flag of an indication enough that the series just goes nowhere with the mystery plot, then you're in the wrong place trying to enjoy some police-and-thief action.

It's like having expensive cheese and caviar, but without the complimentary biscuits to support and hold it altogether. What a shame.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	Poll: Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 ) KANLen09 - Apr 4, 2025	83 replies	by UglyBastardNTR »» Oct 9, 2025 10:30 AM
	Poll: Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de Episode 12 Discussion KANLen09 - Jun 20, 2025	32 replies	by Vi- »» Aug 7, 2025 10:41 AM
	Poll: Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de Episode 6 Discussion tsubasalover - May 9, 2025	26 replies	by imjayhime »» Jul 31, 2025 7:36 PM
	Should I watch it? Vitolia - Jun 26, 2025	11 replies	by amentet »» Jun 26, 2025 10:52 PM
	Poll: Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de Episode 11 Discussion tsubasalover - Jun 13, 2025	21 replies	by SithSteel »» Jun 20, 2025 11:13 PM