Thank you for this amazing masterpiece. I really wish one day you will write a second story.

Re-read this series years later and it still gives me the excitement and joy from when i first discovered it. Thanks again for giving us a very intriguing shiznat perspective on a sherlock holmes AU.

I started reading "Elementary, My Dear Natsuki" several weeks ago during my downtime at work and ended up getting completely engrossed in the wonderful series that you've written. I think this project has to be my favorite work of fanfiction that I've ever read. I've thought about creating an account for years, but it was this series that finally got me to up and do it—I just had to give it a proper review.

I'm thrilled to see Shizuru and Natsuki reach a happy conclusion, of course, but I'm also quite sad to reach the end of this incredibly well-written and emotionally gripping story. Reading it has reignited my passion for the ShizNat ship, and it makes me want to give Mai-HiME a rewatch. The anime holds a special place in my heart as the first story that got me interested in yuri. At the same time, though, I almost don't want to rewatch it, because the anime as a whole doesn't have that large of a focus on Shizuru and Natsuki's relationship, while this fanfic on the other hand is exactly what I'm looking for: a yuri love story which is richly developed and plays the central role in advancing the plot, with no clichéd heterosexual romance to distract from the ShizNat goodness (I'm looking at YOU, Mai and Tate!).

I'm not very good at writing reviews yet, but this fanfic has honestly meant so much to me, and I'm left with an empty feeling upon finishing it. I know it's been seven years since you concluded work on this project, and you probably don't intend to come back to it anytime soon, but I would be positively overjoyed to see another EMDN side-story. It wouldn't need to have any mystery to solve, as I'm sure that thinking those up is a tremendous amount of work. I would be perfectly happy with a fluffy one-shot that shows how Natsuki and Shizuru are adjusting to living together as lovers rather than just companions, or how different characters react to finding out about their relationship, or even a lemon that explores how the dynamics of Shizuru and Natsuki's relationship transfer to the bedroom. The universe that you have created seems ripe with possibility to me, and I would just love to see more of it.

By the way, you can count me among the readers that decided to start reading the original Sherlock Holmes because of you—thanks for that!

The past few days I've been reading this have certainly been well spent. I can't even begin to describe how much I enjoyed this series, all I can say is thank you for creating this masterpiece!

Great series! Thank you. What a well spent holiday reading this.

What an exquisite chapter. I'm with Mido-erm I mean Mrs. Hudson, about damn time.

Woop and that's another one! There goes a couple hours of the past two days lol. This fic made me laugh, tear up, sit on the edge of my seat, and blush.. I really enjoyed the ride. Great job! Even though it's an older fic by now, it was really fun being able to follow the mysteries (and even guess a couple plot devices correctly!) with a clear understanding as opposed to when I "followed" Belladonna Lilies as a seventh grader.. (and so I'll probably be rereading that at some point in the near future).

Looking forward to more of your content!

I am SO GLAD our favorite flirt is back..!

:D

Wow these stories are 5 years old and I still keep coming back! I do love me some Sherlock with Shiznat sauce on top. These are extremely well written stories to the point where (unlike most fanfic) the intricacy of the plot is the main draw rather than the romance, so thanks for taking the time to write them :)

Hi !
It's the second time I read all the series you did and I enjoy it as even more than the first time ! (but that must be because my English improves)
And again, I have this urge to read the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, to watch the BBC TV series...
Will you continue to write this project ? Did you finally write You Know My Methods Natsuki ?
I had to ask, even if you don't because... well you know when you love something, you don't want it to end.
I will certainly write something again if I read it again in the future !

As far as conclusions go, this story is quite solid, despite a few complaints. I'll use it as a springboard to discuss both it and the series as a whole.

The main focus of the story isn't really the mystery so much as bringing Shizuru back and bringing closure to their relationship. And the story does that splendidly- you don't handwave all the pain and anger that Natsuki would have naturally felt at being abandoned by Shizuru for six months, but actually have the characters confront it and discuss the matter, and help them recover from it and even get closer as a result. It felt somewhat rushed (although you do revisit the issue as the story goes on, to your credit), but that was really out of necessity and didn't annoy me to a degree that it dragged me out of the story. You never really strictly explained how Shizuru managed to get out of the burning building, which bugs me somewhat but in the long run isn't a big deal.

As I said in my Final Problem review, the Shizuru and Natsuki relationship on a whole is very solidly done. If you ignore the way it seemed to develop incredibly fast between Masques and Empty House, it builds quite naturally and realistically to an interesting climax. And the development in this story is quite well done too; Natsuki doesn't really have any sort of dramatic revelation that she loves Shizuru, but sometimes dramatic revelations simply aren't necessary.

I feel like you do a good job of capturing the way that Shizuru and Natsuki's relationship would evolve once they, well, got into a relationship. There is a new level of intimacy in their exchanges, but it still manages to feel natural and not different enough for it to feel like two new characters. And that's definitely a skill that a lot of people don't have.

And in general, I really did love Shizuru and Natsuki's characters. Even ignoring the way that they played off each other, they were both compelling in their own ways. Shizuru was a fascinating character- the way that she would continually be playful and witty, but always seem to be guarded and not actually want anybody to really get close to her. And I think you do a decent job of justifying that in the backstory- it honestly feels like a somewhat extreme reaction to me, but it's at least justifiable.

All of Shizuru's little tics were nice details and pretty entertaining, and used to great effect. (For instance, I honestly don't think there was a better way you could have communicated that something was horribly wrong with Shizuru at the end of Chapter 20 of Final Problem than having her abandon second-person pronouns like you did.) Shizuru's arcs were handled off-screen mostly, so I can't really talk about how well you carried them out, but the results were realistic and interesting. I definitely did like her struggle in this story to try and finally get emotionally closer to Natsuki; it felt realistic and was really interesting to read.

Natsuki was even better though. Her struggles with being consumed by revenge and yet slowly becoming more and more attached to Shizuru and more concerned about what she might think if Natsuki really went through with it was incredibly compelling. The entire arc her character went through was really interesting. You managed to balance having an amusing character with a good deal of personality and having a character with a good deal of depth, which kind be a pretty precarious balance at times.

The plot is, as I said, definitely more tangential to this story- the main mystery is solved pretty early on and while the final confrontation is definitely dramatic, it doesn't feel like as much emphasis was really put on it as in, say, Game is Afoot or Deep Waters. However, it still remains intriguing. Tomoe is a pretty interesting villain, if somewhat simplistic, and the parallelisms between Tomoe's motivations and Shizuru's motivations in Final Problem are definitely interesting, but you still manage to keep the two cases clearly distinct, and make it clear why Natsuki could find Shizuru's actions more understandable than Tomoe's. There wasn't too much of a mystery this time around, with most of the questions concerning the crime answered very early on. But the set-up was definitely interesting and the deductions always logically sound.

In general, you did a great job with the mysteries throughout. You made sure to properly clue them and add enough foreshadowing for the readers to be able to figure it out on their own, while still making the clues subtle enough that there'd be that "AHA!" moment for most of the people reading. The setups for the mysteries were always interesting and never really felt derivative of other mystery novels I've read, so that's a plus too.

The pacing was good, as it always is. Events flowed pretty well from one scene to the next and every chapter felt like it had a distinct purpose and accomplished something of value, which is something that seems simple but can be pretty easy to screw up. The dialogue is very snappy and clever, with Shizuru and Natsuki's back-and-forth being genuinely amusing, which is something very important when playful teasing is a key part of their interactions. You also manage to add a good deal of personality to the dialogue- the dialogue definitely does feel like something these characters would say, rather than things that you forced into their mouths. Which is very important.

In terms of descriptive language, you do that pretty well too. Not perfectly (there are a few cases here and there where more description could have been used, but they're usually in the case of places that we visited in previous stories), but I can typically visualize the scene and what's going on in it, which is definitely a plus. You definitely do have the skill of knowing which words can draw out the desired emotional reaction from the reader most effectively, which is a very useful skill to have, and you use it to good effect here. Not as much as in, say, The Final Problem, but then emotive language was probably a bit more necessary in that piece than it was here.

From a technical aspect your work is solid- there are some typos and missing words in a few places but they never really hurt my enjoyment of the story significantly, and I can pretty much always tell what you're trying to say regardless.

And this is all things that have pretty pretty consistent throughout. Your use of language has always been pretty good, and your work always feels pretty polished- around as polished as I can expect from a story that doesn't go through dozens of editors before being published.

I'm sure there's more stuff that I could think of to say, but none of it really comes to mind at the moment. But very good story; it's a very good denouement to a very good series.

I finally finished the full series of EMDN! My two favorite parts are no doubt, "The Final Problem" and "The Empty House". What can I say, they are the main story plot, romance, and characters development. They are exactly what I was looking for in Mai-hime fanfic.
That is to say, I'm also enjoy the thrill of mystery that surrounded the whole story despite how terribad I am at deducing them.
Oh, and I absolutely love Natsuki's reaction to Tomoe near the ending.
While I'm glad that I finally finished the whole series, I'm also sad that it is the end. Because you got no idea how absorbed I am when the story started revolve around the two main characters.

Eh. This last story felt a bit contrived to me. I kinda had to force myself to read it. Still, an excellent read overall. I've quite enjoyed Elementary My Dear Natsuki. I feel like the fourth was the best, with the first as the runner up.

Having recently watched Mai-HiME for the first time, I blazed through your entire EDMN series over the course of the last few days, and must thank you for letting me have such enjoyable time reading them! The stories were very well-written, clearly well-researched, and the characterisation spot-on, and it was fun seeing a number of the franchise's characters popping up here and there in this Victorian setting. The various cases were interesting and convincingly Holmsian (is that a word?), and I was feeling a very strong desire to go off and revisit the original books while reading. In fact, I might just toddle off and do so tonight! One area in which you definitely did better than Conan Doyle, though, was how nicely the early cases flowed into "The Final Problem" - Natsuki's investigations into her mother's death provided a very neat entry point, I thought. On a side note, Natsuki and Shizuru's relationship felt extremely natural with its gradual, almost unnoticeable development (from Natsuki's point of view, anyway; Shizuru was always much better with these things!); I was reminded of NOIR's Mireille and Kirika, the finest example of relationship-building I have ever encountered.

What impressed me most, though, was how you wove the subplots into different cases, and in doing so was able to achieve an effect no other AU fic I have read could: the characters retained their core "shapes" despite being placed in roles, situations and a setting different to their original ones. I felt that despite the countless factual, textual and structural homages to Conan Doyle, this series was about Mai-HiME, an analysis and perhaps re-interpretation of the events of the series and the characters' feelings placed within a different frame. The entire package was excellent, a masterpiece that you have every right to be proud of. Hats off!