Undead Murder Farce

A talking head in a birdcage and her half-demon partner solve vampire murders in Meiji Paris.

Meiji-era Japan collides with gaslit Paris in this supernatural whodunit where the detectives are a disembodied immortal head and her cage-carrying, half-oni partner. Aya Rindō — brilliant, arrogant, and literally just a skull in a birdcage — hires on as a consultant for vampire aristocrats, werewolf diplomats, and the occasional human police inspector who'd rather not acknowledge the monsters living next door. Tsugaru Shinuchi, her stoic bodyguard with a past written in blood, does the legwork while Aya dissects alibis with surgical precision. Each case — a locked-room decapitation in a vampire manor, a missing werewolf child in the catacombs — expands a richly textured alternate 19th century where yokai and European cryptids negotiate treaties over tea. Lapin Track's direction leans into theatrical lighting and rakugo-inspired dialogue rhythms, turning exposition into performance art. The mysteries themselves are fair-play puzzles with supernatural rules clearly established, but the series' heart beats in the quiet moments: Aya's dry wit masking centuries of grief, Tsugaru's gentle care for a partner who cannot touch, the slow revelation of who stole Aya's body and why. It's Sherlock Holmes by way of Natsuhiko Kyogoku — erudite, eerie, and unexpectedly tender.

A stylish supernatural mystery following a half-oni detective and his disembodied-head partner solving crimes across 19th-century Europe. Expect stylized violence, some gore, and a constant unsettling visual of a talking severed head, but the tone leans more clever detective adventure than horror.