And another one of the Seven Mysterious Clubs of Yuri Shinkai Gakuen is revealed – and, as usual, it’s revealed by denial, rather than admission. As it should be for a mysterious club.

In the case of the Purrty Catboys Delectables Club, the mystery that enshrouds it less concerns the existence of the club itself, and more the question who is or isn’t a member. As you would expect with a club drawn from catboys, all of the member regularly switch between being very affectionate with the club, attacking it or ignoring it completely. I guess human club members go through similar cycles, but naturally this behavior is much more pronounced in the case of part-felines.

No idea how K’ip is currently treating his club, but it doesn’t really member, sind the PCDC is just a red herring…which, I guess, naturally attracts cats. But the Pretty Boy Detective Club isn’t irrelevant to the plot, as the Bratessor demonstrates by citing one of the club’s rules to very good effect. Fortunately, all of the club’s rules are platitudes, that does wonders for making them generally applicable.

In contemplating how to be a detective, the Bratessor starts at the obvious point: The Hound of the Baskervilles. Which is, for some reason or other, the detective story of all detective stories. And it gives him a very useful idea: using a tracking dog to find Snuka, just like Sherlock Holmes did in that story. Which…he actually didn’t, but most people misremember the details of that story, so why not the Bratessor…or his scriptwriter?

While he misremembered his source of inspiration, his application of the lesson seems pretty competent. Replacing the dog with a robot vampire dinosaur from the future is an inspired substitution on a number of levels, and not falling into the trap of using Snuka’s abandoned shoe for that is clever. Rapey might be robotic and undead at the same time (Somehow. If the Necrons can do it, why not a dinosaur?), but the smell of Snuka’s shoes might still incapacitate or destroy him. Snuka does an incredible lot of running, and it still doesn’t earn him enough money to be easily able to afford many spare socks…or foot powder.

More on Thursday.