DETECTIVE CONAN ANIME REVIEW: EP 55 - 71

Part five of many more of our episode-by-episode review of the Detective Conan anime. For some more background on how we're doing this, see the introduction to Part 1.

The Train Trick Murder Case

Source

Anime Original

First Aired

April 21, 1997

Our Quick Blip

An anime-original episode that stuck in our minds.

We liked this episode, but we gotta critique how it presents the story in a needlessly wonky order. It opens with Kogoro and family already taking the train back home after yesterday's trip to the hot springs, and then on the train we get a flashback to the group of doctors they met the evening before at the hot springs... and we later learn that since there are two train lines that ultimately wind up at the same place, some of the doctors from the group are on the other train, and they will all meet up with everyone again at the destination. Why wasn't all of this simply presented chronologically?

Kogoro has a hangover from the evening before, he gets on the train hoping to get a nice nap, and of course he's in the train car with people yelling. Classic.

The yelling people are two of the doctors they met the previous evening. One of the doctors (Doctor Date) is having an argument with the other (Doctor Sato), and Doctor Date storms off to sit in another train car. At least now Kogoro can sleep.

We find it funny that these doctors have these particular names. They're the same names as two future characters in this series. Well, in a show this long with these many characters-of-the-day, eventually every name is going to be used, but it's interesting how so many years earlier there were a different Date and different Sato involved in an anime-original episode.

When everyone arrives at the hub station, they discover that one of the doctors has been murdered. And Doctor Date is acting incredibly suspicious, having a ridiculous amount of coins in the wallet. And, when Conan tells him that his jacket button is loose, his reaction is to clean it. And when Kogoro asks Doctor Sato about what happened between them, Doctor Date interjects that he should say what's on his mind: you know I had a fight with the victim over the rumors that I am taking bribes from the pharmaceutical companies!

Way to just lay it all out, dude. He's so confident in his alibi trick that he's just going to reveal his entire motive to the police. He did murder this guy to try to stop the rumors that he is indeed taking bribes from the pharmaceutical companies, so what's the point if he's going to just start blabbing it himself all over the place?

It seems impossible that Doctor Date could have met the victim on the other train, because that train would have left the station before the other. There's one point where the lines reconnect, but the timings are all off. Doctor Date brings out the booklet with the times table and is all, look, look, it's impossible, until Conan realizes that it's not impossible... if... (Toggle spoilers...)

The biggest obstacle here is that Doctor Date knows his rights. When Conan points out that his ticket would be missing the inspector stamp since he wasn't on the train while the inspection happened, Doctor Date simply says he lost that ticket already. And I don't consent to a search. And the burden of proof is on you. Bye.

Honestly, what they get him with is also slippery, and he probably could have wiggled out of that too, but that's when he confesses. (Toggle spoilers...)

Most of the criminals on Detective Conan would have gone free if they had just kept their mouths shut. Yet the culprit always confesses on their knees, even when the evidence is circumstantial or illegally obtained, and if they had been quiet and went to court, they may have not been convicted. Always remain silent! Don't speak without a lawyer! Shut the fuck up!.

In the post-credits, Kogoro wakes up and realizes they're still so far from home. Conan chimes in, why don't we stay here and go to the other hot springs in this other town! Which is a bit out of character for him, but we'll take it. Kogoro immediately agrees, and Ran has one moment of, but Dad... ...oh you know what, screw it. Let's go. And the final shot is them all jumping happily on the way to the hot springs.

The Sunfish Murder Case

Source

Anime Original

First Aired

April 28, 1997

Our Quick Blip

We can't get over the motive on this one...

Today, Kogoro is reluctantly out for a morning jog, so as to stay in shape for his job as a private eye. Ran and Conan are jogging along just fine, and they need to keep waiting for Kogoro, who is a wheezing mess.

And then they happen upon a murder.

The murder method in this case, and the way Conan solves it and proves it, and the whole reason for the culprit's downfall are all interesting. But the motive for the murder is moon logic.

Three friends founded the Sunfish cleaning company: a brother, a sister, and their other guy friend. (Toggle spoilers...)

The Holmes Freak Murder Case

Source

Manga Canon (Volume 12-13)

First Aired

May 5 and 12, 1997

Our Quick Blip

Important canon episode with important Heiji-related developments! It's also a good mystery.

Conan surreptitiously applied to a contest to attend this Sherlock Holmes fanboy convention, and he was accepted, so he somehow convinced Kogoro and Ran to let him attend.

To Shinichi, nothing is more important than Sherlock Holmes, and even though he knows that this will potentially put his secret at risk, and he knows that Kogoro is going to hate every second of this, and Ran is not interested and might connect the dots about Conan being Shinichi... he's gotta go.

This fanboy convention primarily consists of the different attendees gatekeeping each other. Especially the host of the event. The host invites everyone to his vacation home which he named the Mycroft (after Sherlock Holmes's brother), and when the guests arrive he's cosplaying as Sherlock Holmes, and he shows off his first edition copy of A Letter in Scarlet, so that they can all ooh and aah and say he's the biggest fan. He then gives everyone a 1000-question quiz about Sherlock Holmes, and whoever makes it to at least 990 correct answers will get a chance to compete to win the first edition book. At one point, one of the guests mentions hearing a rumor that this guy has been pulling this stunt repeatedly just so he can flaunt his book and assert his place as chief fanboy, and he intentionally makes it so that no one can ever win.

So, here's a fun convention... come to this remote house, listen to this guy gloat, meet your enemies who just want to prove that you're a poser, and then fill in a 1000-question quiz. And there's no other entertainment in the house, and the owner confiscates all the phones. He even installed security cameras in all the rooms facing the bed, so there's no privacy, and if the couple decides that nevermind the quiz, let's fuck, they can't even do that. The cameras are actually fake, but still, the guests wouldn't know that, and they wouldn't risk getting naked in front of the camera, so the effect is the same.

While the convention goes on, Heiji busts in. Heiji has no interest in Sherlock Holmes, but he arrived because he thought for sure that Shinichi would go to this convention. He was right... but, lol. Heiji's early plot motives. We see why the fandom latched on to this and shipped Heiji and Shinichi. In the early plot, everything Heiji does is motivated by wanting to see Shinichi. He wants to see Shinichi more than Ran does, in fact.

But then, MURDER happens.

Chief fanboy is seen driving his car right toward the edge of the nearby cliff. Heiji and Conan try to chase after the car to save the driver, but they are too late. The car goes over the cliff and explodes.

While everyone is trying to figure out what just happened, was this murder or suicide or an accident or what, one of the attendees proclaims that she's figured it all out, and will give the murderer a few minutes to turn himself in, or else she'll reveal all. Then she goes to the bathroom, completely unafraid. Her boyfriend goes to guard her in the bathroom, and by when she gets out of the bathroom, she says, welp, actually nevermind, I realized I was wrong. Kogoro thinks this was all a big bluff to try to get the killer to reveal themselves.

Then she goes out of the house and explodes in the garage.

Everyone knows her death certainly and absolutely is murder, but everyone else was in the same room while it happened, so how could any of them done it? Some in the group think that the owner isn't really dead, but that he faked his death and now he's the murderer, and he's not done yet. Heiji insists that the owner's death was absolutely not a trick - it was indeed the owner inside the car, and he did see him through the window, and he's positive that it wasn't a puppet or anything.

In the meanwhile that the investigation is going on, Heiji grows more and more suspicious of Conan. Conan is always there investigating exactly the same things that Heiji is investigating, to the point that they've repeatedly bumped heads while throwing themselves towards the evidence.

Then Heiji asks Ran, you know, what exactly happens in all those cases that your father has solved recently? Was Conan nearby? And Ran answers, no, Conan isn't there, but sometimes he pops out from behind Kogoro. And Kogoro solves all of these cases looking as if he's sleeping.

Ran mentions that that's why he's got the nickname of "Sleeping Kogoro". This is the very first time this term is dropped in the anime, and it's so weird and awkward that it happens like this, rather than the audience getting to see when Kogoro gets the nickname. We could have seen the newspapers calling him that, on television, maybe Inspector Megure telling Kogoro that wow, it's like you can solve cases in your sleep... no, we get this treatment as if we all already know this, when this is actually the first time we hear of it. The best pre-cursor we get is when Kogoro said on television that solving cases makes him sleepy, but we didn't really get to see how this eventually became his nickname. Ah well.

Anyway, both Conan and Heiji arrive at the solution to all the mysteries in this case.

However, Heiji is so suspicious of Conan, he decides that, even though he's figured out what happened, he's not going to do anything about it, so as to force Conan to act instead. But Conan outsmarts him, and he hits Heiji with the tranquilizer dart instead.

Conan uses Heiji's voice to deliver his deductions. However, Heiji speaks in the Osakan dialect of Japanese (also referred to as Kansai-ben), and Conan is really lousy at mimicking his language patterns. In fact, he's so far off that Kogoro thinks that Heiji is talking like that to mock him, and so he bonks him on the head in retaliation.

The horrible truth of what happened is that...(Toggle spoilers...)

Anyway, the mystery having been solved, Heiji reveals that he's been awake ever since Kogoro bonked him on the head, and so he was conscious to hear another voice trying to sound like him (unsuccessfully) and delivering the whole deduction. Heiji says that the style of the deduction was unmistakably like Shinichi, so he now knows that Conan must be Shinichi.

...How does Heiji know this? He's heard Shinichi give a deduction exactly once, and it was while Shinichi was very sick. What does he know of Shinichi's personality, having met him exactly once? Heiji must have like a whole construct of Shinichi in his head at this point.

Speaking of shippings, we want to preface this by saying that we have absolutely no stake in this particular shipping. But we don't know how anyone could ignore that Heiji absolutely has some kind of thing for Shinichi, especially in the early series. He's got an entire construct of Shinichi in his mind, which he argues with inside his own head, and he's going to random Sherlock Holmes fan-meets and wherever else in the hopes of encountering Shinichi again, and he's staked his whole self-worth on the opinion of the Shinichi in his own head, and he thinks he knows Shinichi's personality even though he's only actually met him once. Just how much of Heiji's brain is occupied by Shinichi at all times?

So, Heiji accuses Conan of being Shinichi, and he's right. And Conan fails to come up with any way to mask this, so now Heiji knows for a fact that he is Shinichi.

But how exactly does Heiji know that Conan is Shinichi? He knows that Conan has a voice changer, and he knows that Conan is smarter than he makes himself seem, and that Conan is very good at making deductions... but why would this lead to the conclusion that Conan is Shinichi? He could have just as easily come to the conclusion that Conan is a child prodigy. Or that Conan is the reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes. Why would Heiji jump right to the idea that Conan is Shinichi? Unless he's just got Shinichi so much on his mind that everything is Shinichi. He's getting real Shinichi vibes from everything. This time around, he found Shinichi. But we don't get to see all the times Heiji was peeking under rocks to check for Shinichi or accusing random ladies of being Shinichi in a wig.

The only other evidence that Heiji has to back this up was his previous idea that, because Shinichi never asks Ran how she is doing, it must be because Shinichi already knows, therefore he must be nearby. Rather than just thinking that he's an asshole and doesn't really care enough about Ran, which is the much simpler explanation (and also true).

Heiji also noted that he never saw Conan and Shinichi in the same room at the same time, but he was only around either of them for one afternoon. That is so flimsy. That'd be like deducing that, If you meet a person once, and Obama wasn't in the room too, then that person was secretly Obama.

The way Heiji operates, we could probably make a whole book illustrating logical fallacies with the things Heiji has done.

Heiji has the power of being overly genre-savvy, but not in the same way as Shinichi. Shinichi is overly genre-savvy in that he knows he's in a crime series, so he knows it's never suicide, it's always murder. But Heiji goes one step further, and he knows they are in a supernatural crime series, so not only can he solve the crimes, he can also recognize that Shinichi has been transformed into a child, and he just accepts this as the truth.

For comparison, Conan acts so suspiciously so often around Ran and Kogoro that they both often think to themselves that... did Conan plan that? Did Conan do that on purpose? It's almost as if Conan was actually -- no, no, that's a stupid idea, how could I even be pondering something so stupid. But Heiji is unburdened by the issue of stupidity. He's able to think this stupid idea, and see the evidence supporting this stupid idea, and accept this stupid idea. And at no point does he think, that is fucking stupid.

So, that's Heiji's superpower. Not discounting stupid ideas.

Also, if we want to go on the theory that Ran knows that Conan is Shinichi... In this episode, we could argue that she's actually trying to help protect Conan's identity by following his game, whatever that is. In one scene, Heiji is musing about the open questions in the case, and Conan is so deep in thought that he forgets himself, and starts also musing aloud about his thoughts on the case, which sound remarkably un-child-like. Which causes the whole room to fall silent and stare, and when Conan realizes what just happened, he quickly tries to go back to, "But I'm just a child, so what do I know? I like to play pretend-detective sometimes! Please ignore me!" And Ran swoops in and takes Conan away from the center of attention to talk to him off to the side. It looks very much like she's trying to save him from this scene and try to brush this off all, "Kids shouldn't be getting too involved in all of this murder!" Which gives everyone enough time to get distracted by other things and forget about Conan's blunder. It just so happens that Heiji has too much Shinichi on the brain to drop his hunch.

Furthermore, at the beginning of this episode, Ran was very much noting that it's interesting that Conan is such a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, just like Shinichi. And it's kinda cute to see Conan interacting with the other fanboys here. Conan doesn't usually act like a child, but here he's having so much fun, he's actually getting to be a bit like a child. And we could interpret this as, Ran knows (or at least suspects) that Conan is Shinichi, and so she fully supports Shinichi getting a chance to be a kid and to have fun in his Sherlock Holmes fandom activities. And, we guess she's in a good situation where, whether it's Conan who likes Sherlock Holmes, or Conan is Shinichi who likes Sherlock Holmes, either way, it is a good thing for him to have a good time.

This also leans a bit into something we thought would become more of a plotpoint of this series - Shinichi didn't really get to have a normal childhood, and he didn't really get to be a normal teenager either, so now that he's been transformed into a child, can he have some normal childhood this time around? ...But, no, the series doesn't really go there.

So now, Heiji knows, and Conan fills him in on the whole backstory. From now on, Heiji will be something of an ally to Conan.

The First Errand Murder Case

Source

Anime Original

First Aired

May 19, 1997

Our Quick Blip

For us, the most interesting aspect of this episode was learning about this Japanese custom.

This episode taught us about this cultural concept that exists in Japan. In general, kids in Japan are (or at least were?) allowed a lot of freedom at a much younger age than they'd get in the United States. As we see, Conan and his friends are able to walk to and from school without supervision at age seven, and they can simply go to the convenience store and buy something. Rosy says that's nothing special in Italy where and when she grew up, but Denise says that in the United States where and when she grew up, it wasn't really like that. But at least in Japan at the time of this episode, it would be an important event to give a young child their first errand. The task is simple, just buying some basic items, and there is some far-away supervision, but no direct help. The kids get to do the whole errand by themselves, picking which store to walk to, and selecting the necessary items, and paying for the purchases, and bringing it all safely home. And now they know that they can, and welcome to being a big kid now!

For this episode, the "first errand" event is being organized as a larger contest, and filmed by all the parents and families, and the best clips are going to appear on a local news station. Kogoro is a guest of honor, and the Detective Boys volunteered to film and supervise the little kids. Conan is displeased by their altruism. What do you mean, nobody actually asked you - you volunteered for this? To do good for the town for no immediate reward? Insane.

The little kid that the Detective Boys are supervising ends up walking into a convenience store that he didn't realize is no longer in business. Ever after this, someone tries to attack this child. Unbeknownst to the child, the convenience store is about to be torn down, and he walked into the owner hiding a corpse. So the culprit is trying to kill the little kid to silence him, even though the kid didn't even understand what he just saw and, in the dark, he may have not even been able to notice the corpse. But now this dude is willing to murder a child just to silence someone that he thinks could be a witness.

When the kid is kidnapped and Conan and friends realize what's going on, they go to the convenience store, which is about to be demolished today. The wrecking balls are getting ready. And the dude locks all the children, the little boy, and the corpse in the basement, hoping to get rid of all of them at the same time when the building is destroyed.

Naturally, the kids all manage to get out of the building before it's too late, and they can reveal the truth of what happened. And the little kid that the culprit was trying to murder goes up to him and requests to buy the last items on his shopping list.

This dude is going to every single hell.

One of the murder attempts involved disengaging the emergency brake on a car parked uphill, so that the car rolling down would kill the boy while he was crossing the street. Imagine that the car did hit and kill the boy... then the owner of the car would spend the rest of his life going, I thought I put the emergency brake on?! And a child died! Would that car's owner go to jail? But more importantly, this would drive him insane. For a murder that someone else wanted to commit, over something that wasn't even an issue.

Even the original murder... The culprit murdered the debt collector who probably was just trying to collect the debt. Murdering this guy in no way helps the situation, does nothing to resolve the debt, and his shop is still going to get demolished. This is just a really shitty and stupid guy. He says his wife and kids left him because of his debts, but maybe there was another reason...

This is a rare episode where Conan acknowledges that this is all really stupid, and the kid may have not even seen anything that he would be able to report... but the culprit doesn't know that, and what he thinks is real inside his own head is different from the actual reality, but understanding this false perception is more important because that is what is motivating the culprit's actions. We can tell that this is an anime-original episode, because Shinichi doesn't really have that level of understanding other people's frames of mind. In fact, it's kind of his main issue.

Another thing about this episode is that Conan really becomes protective of this particular kid, because he notices that the kid mostly plays by himself, talking for all roles. Conan remembers his childhood, where he also spent a lot of time playing alone and needing to act the part of both the detective and the culprit.

That's a lot to put in an anime-original episode. Though, it does check out. It must have been how it really was for Shinichi. Ran has been his only friend, and his parents didn't play with him - or at least not in a normal playing way... they toy with him in different ways.

An Illustrator Murder Case

Source

Manga Canon (Volume 13)

First Aired

May 26, 1997

Our Quick Blip

This absolute monster of a person.

So, there's this artist guy, and he is having an affair with his young underling - she's an up-and-coming artist who works for his design studio and secretly is the one who actually makes most of his art, even though he signs it for the prestige. She's 25 and he's 50. And he's her boss. And he's married. She even asks him if he would divorce his wife and make this all official, but he states that this fuck-relationship is strictly business, because in exchange for these favors, he keeps her employed and busy. So yeah, this is all already enough to send this guy to several hells.

But she's realizing that she doesn't actually need this guy, and she can make it in the art world on her own. The work that she's been doing for herself is doing well, and the work that she's done for him that he signed is also doing well. And she can even prove which artworks were her doing. All this time, she's been signing those artworks too, right underneath his signature, with her own personal symbol. And he didn't even notice.

Unfortunately, she doesn't consider that he might murder her in a fit of rage after he knows all these things. She thought maybe to blackmail him, or at least expose him, and was in the process of explaining all of the things she could do, when she gets clobbered in the head with a crystal ashtray and dies.

The guy did not intend to kill her. But now that she's dead, he invents this absolutely devilish plan to make it look like a suicide and craft himself an alibi. He constructs an elaborate rube goldberg machine to make it so that her corpse would fall off of the balcony while he would be in the building across the street, and then the same mechanism would even automatically make all the evidence disappear.

After his scheme is revealed, he does this whole dramatic monologue bullshit that she was a butterfly that drank too much nectar from the same flower, and geez, this dude even sucks at metaphors. He didn't even intend to kill her, yet now he's telling the police that he must have killed her because he felt threatened by her talent.

A Ghost Ship Murder Case

Source

Anime Original

First Aired

June 2 and 9, 1997

Our Quick Blip

The first ever anime-original two-parter! …But it's not that great of a case.

This whole case must have been inspired by The Goonies.

Seven years ago, a ship carrying a billion yen worth of gold disappeared. Now, it has reappeared, sans the gold. Kogoro is hired to come to this teeny weeny island where the ghost ship has reappeared, to find out what happened to all the gold.

The mayor immediately tries to mollify Kogoro through food and drinks, and Kogoro will take the food and drinks, but even half-drunk he does point out that, even if he does find the gold, that'll probably be property of the government... the mayor points out that they gotta get something for finding it. Kogoro isn't overly convinced, until he's promised 10% of the reward. We mean, he is doing all the work to find it, it is his commission, fair enough honestly.

But while the mayor is trying to bribe Kogoro, someone else wants him off the island. Kogoro was supposed to give a speech, but the party ball was filled with gasoline, so when Kogoro opens it, fire comes raining down on him. Ran was on the case with the extinguisher which was thankfully right next to the stage, but Kogoro does wind up with a burnt butt.

Of note in this moment is that Kogoro went to do this speech shit-ass drunk. Ran and Conan can complain, but we wonder if he willingly got so drunk as a way of dulling the fear of public speaking.

After the fact, with Ran holding an ice pack on a fishing pole for Kogoro's poor bottom, Kogoro understandably wants out of this arrangement. This stupid gold isn't worth a murder attempt. This stupid gold isn't even worth a burnt bottom. But the mayor points out that he gets to say when boats come and go, and if he says his boat can't go, it can't go. So either find the goddamn gold, or die on this island.

It's always on the peaceful tiny island that there's all the psychopaths…

Besides the ship of the missing gold, the only other tourist attraction on this island is the CURSE OF THE WATER ARMY! At least, that's how the fansub we were watching translated this. The Funimation dub translated it as "pirates", but we don't think that's in any way accurate; they were just thinking too much about The Goonies. Digging a bit more into it, the word used is "shuijun", which comes from Chinese and is a literary term meaning "an army which fights from boats on the water" and considered synonymous with the modern term for the navy. But it maybe sounds even more silly to translate it as CURSE OF THE NAVY!

In any case, the story goes that 400 years ago, "the defeated Water Army" fled to this little island, and the islanders knew there was a bounty on their heads, and so in their greed they drove the Water Army into a cave and murdered them all. Ever since, the island has been CURSED by the Water Army. To try to make up for it, the islanders made a shrine inside the cave dedicated to the Water Army, and no one sets foot inside the cursed cave, and there's a whole museum about the Water Army in the town. But any time any of the islanders so much as stubs their toe, they yell, CURSE OF THE WATER ARMY! And of course, when the boat mysteriously disappears, it's the CURSE OF THE WATER ARMY! A professor comes to research the cave and mysteriously vanishes, CURSE OF THE WATER ARMY! And when the boat mysteriously reappears, it's the CURSE OF THE WATER ARMY! Even events with clear cause and effect are blamed to the CURSE OF THE WATER ARMY. Someone booby-trapped the party ball and Kogoro gets his butt burned, CURSE OF THE WATER ARMY!

In the night, someone steals the historical armor from the Water Army museum and goes to attack Kogoro. And even though he had just been sleeping, he manages to dodge the attack. When he sees his attacker fleeing, Kogoro chases after him with the power of pure rage. Kind of impressive for a hungover guy with a burnt butt. Like, geez, running like that has gotta hurt, ow ow ow.

Kogoro chases the attacker into the shed where the ghost ship is being housed, but he ends up getting hit on the head and passing out. When Kogoro wakes up, the guy in the armor has been stabbed dead, and Kogoro's being accused of his murder!

Or well, the opinion is split. It might have been CURSE OF THE WATER ARMY!

But enough of the islanders have Kogoro surrounded with pitchforks. Conan ends up darting Kogoro and has him very cooly point out all the evidence that this guy has been dead for awhile, tortured even, and that Kogoro couldn't have possibly done it. He vows to find the murderer. This would have been a very cool moment for Kogoro if he had actually been the one doing it…

In these episodes, we meet the little daughter of the mayor, who is eight. She latches on to Conan and says it's fashionable these days for girls to be with younger men. She later will force Conan to kiss her in exchange for important help on the case (Conan manages to haggle it down to a kiss on the cheek). Apparently there's a term in Japanese for little kids that know too much about adult things, and Conan calls her that.

Weird that the anime team thought they could introduce this girl and have this dynamic... it seems like it would be a useful plotline for exploring how messed up it is that Shinichi is trapped in the body of a child and he needs to socialize with children... or maybe something about his feelings for Ran... but they ultimately don't really do anything more with this than, haha, Conan kissed the girl.

Also: what is going on in her home life?

Ultimately, the case leads Conan and the little girl to the forbidden cave where the Water Army had been killed. The cave has a secret passage with many stairs down that leads to a secret coastline. Here, Conan finds everything: another murder victim, the culprit, how the ghost ship disappeared and reappeared, and all the missing gold. (Toggle spoilers...)

We didn't overly enjoy this episode. We thought it was a bit too long and a bit too snarly. But why do all these awful things keep happening on peaceful little islands?

Kaiju Gomera Murder Case

Source

Manga Canon (Volume 13)

First Aired

June 16, 1997

Our Quick Blip

A bit of an odd episode for a canon one.

Agasa is friends with the director of the Godzilla movies!!! What?!?!

Actually, the character is called Gomera - it's totally Godzilla crossed with Gamera.

Because the Detective Boys love Gomera so much, Agasa is able to ask his friend to let them have a tour of the studio. The next movie is actively in the process of being filmed in the studio, and so the kids get to watch it happen. Wow, they are so lucky. They even get to walk around among the miniatures to feel Godzilla-sized themselves, and they get to meet the actor inside the Gomera suit. Even though the kids think that literal Gomera will also be somewhere at the studio for them to meet.

This is all lovely, except that this is going to be the last Gomera movie. The producer comes in and makes a big ugly scene, talking all about how Gomera is just kiddie stuff at this point and too expensive to make, so this movie is going to end the series. He is so rude to have this whole tirade in front of the kids. And he's even already reassigning the actors to new roles in a crime drama instead. The actor who plays the role of the fairy is going to become the detective, and the actor inside the Gomera suit is going to play the role of a criminal in the new show.

The special effects guy is especially cranky because, while the actors can get new roles, if the higher-ups are slashing all the budgets, he's going to have to find a new job entirely. His work is expensive and they won't be having miniatures for a crime drama...

In the same breath as the producer is insulting everyone for everything, he also tries to ask the actor of the fairy out on a date, which she has to firmly shoot down. We get the sense that this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened...

The actor of Gomera is guiding the kids around some more, making sure they are out of the way of the director, who is also in a bad mood after the whole stink the producer made. But then the actor of Gomera gets stabbed in the leg, and the kids end up seeing someone in the Gomera suit murdering the producer in the middle of the set.

Gomera steps in some green paint from a can that got knocked over, and the kids follow the green Gomera footprints up to the roof, where they see that Gomera has jumped off the roof and burst into flames on the ground below.

Conan solves the case, but because Kogoro's not there, Conan asks Agasa to submit to being his puppet instead. Why does Conan insist on delivering the deduction himself? Why doesn't he simply tell Agasa about it and let Agasa speak for himself? Why must Conan be like that?

There's one moment where Conan has Agasa explain who the suspects are, and the list includes Agasa's friend, the director. Agasa tries to interject that, now hold on, that's my good friend and I wouldn't be suggesting that he's a murderer like that... but Agasa is stuck going along with what Conan says into the bowtie. And of course Shinichi has no regard for the interpersonal fallout that might happen because of how he delivers his deduction. There was no reason for him to do it like that, but that's how he sees the world, so he must say it.

Conan comes out from behind Agasa and is about to deliver the final nail in the coffin of his deduction, and the actor of the fairy holds him by the shoulders and basically asks him, is it really important to say this? Do you really have to? Does this criminal really need to be caught?

Conan of course does it anyway. (Toggle spoilers...)

We think this episode was inspired by Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995), which Toho hyped up by announcing that it would feature the death of Godzilla, and it ended up being the last Godzilla movie at the time. The author of Detective Conan must have been pissed by these events, for him to present the murder of the responsible producer in this light...

The Third Fingerprint Murder Case

Source

Anime Original

First Aired

June 23, 1997

Our Quick Blip

One of our favorite episodes. The anime team must really like Kogoro, because they make so many great episodes focused on him.

In this episode, we meet Kogoro's senpai. When Kogoro first joined the police force, this guy was a higher-ranking cop, and he mentored Kogoro and helped him out. Senpai says that Kogoro, more often than not, had bad deductions, to the point that he nicknamed him Mistaken Kogoro. ✽︎ But he's happy to hear that Kogoro is doing much better and getting some fame as a detective now.

He's having a barbecue and invited Kogoro over to relax and have some beers together. Although Senpai won't actually have any beer - he's off-duty, but on-call, and he wants to be prepared in case he is needed.

By the way, we found this while researching Japanese drinking laws for a later episode, but apparently in Japan your blood alcohol content must be zero to drive a car. A BAC of 0.0001 will get you sent to jail. So Senpai doesn't even have one sip of beer because he might need to drive.

At noon, he indeed gets a phone call. It turns out that a gang member that he was working with committed a murder and called him for help. Senpai is going to go talk to him to try to convince him to turn himself in. Kogoro objects about how dangerous it is for him to do that alone, unarmed, and without any backup. They compromise that Kogoro will ride along and wait in the car.

While Senpai is alone talking with the gang member, there is a gunshot. He's found standing over the now-dead gang member. He says that the gang member had a gun, and he tried to take it from him, and in the struggle the gun misfired, and, unfortunately, the gang member was shot and died instantly. Ultimately Senpai ends up on probation, but because Kogoro was able to testify, no one (except Conan) thinks anything more sinister happened.

The only point of confusion is that there's an unknown fingerprint on the gun. The gang member's fingerprints and Senpai's fingerprints make sense, but who else would have touched the gun? Maybe the person the gang member bought the gun from? Who knows. (Toggle spoilers...)

This good episode would have been greatly improved if Kogoro had been able to solve this case without getting knocked out… but maybe that would have had too many plot repercussions for an anime-original episode. Then again, inventing Kogoro's senpai seems kinda major... Essentially, we wish this episode was canon, and had the freedom to have impacts on the status quo.

The Crabs and Whale Kidnapping Case

Source

Anime Original

First Aired

June 30, 1997

Our Quick Blip

Good anime original.

Kogoro takes the family out to dinner at a hotel's biergarten. Conan has some snide thoughts about how these snacks hardly qualify as a meal, and what kind of person takes a child to a biergarten. To which we counter, what, you expect Kogoro to give up the pleasant time of going to a biergarten for the rest of his life just because somebody (you) dumped a small child on him without any notice and for the foreseeable future? Geez. Plus, the table is arrayed with delicious things. We see rolls, edamame, sausages, shish kabob, some fried things, lemons... Fill your plate and shut up.

Funimation pulled a "Whatever it is I'm holding" over a plate of hot dogs.

Kogoro has been drinking on an empty stomach, and so he is completely smashed. He needs to use the restroom, but goes off in the wrong direction, and Ran has to run after him.

In the meanwhile, while Conan is alone, he overhears a man at the next table having a disturbing phone call. It sounds like he's here to fulfill a ransom demand, but the kidnapper ultimately cancels the deal.

Conan tells Kogoro and Ran what he's heard, and, as usual for him, Kogoro immediately sobers up. Yet, one sign that this is an anime-original episode is that Kogoro is willing to believe Conan and even to work together with him on the case.

They all get in a taxi, and get to tell the driver to follow that car!!! The dream of every taxi driver.

The guy they are following is a dentist, and he goes into a building which is his dentist office. Kogoro wants to help with the kidnapping case, but it could be dangerous - the kidnapper could be anyone, and they don't know if the kidnapper is watching. So they come up with the plan to have Conan pretend to have an unbearable toothache, which he is screaming and crying about, so that they can have a pretense to knock on the door and enter the office even though it is closed.

Specifically by being a little kid, Conan can get into places that would be harder to access otherwise, and he can hear information that would not be volunteered to a snooping adult. We do wonder if part of the evil scheme of the Black Organization involves creating spies and assassins that look like children…

Once inside the office, they are able to learn about the predicament of the dentist and how his young son was kidnapped. Kogoro tries to convince him to go to the police, but since the kidnapper said not to, he refuses. But he accepts Kogoro's help. (Toggle spoilers...)

The Pitch Dark Road Murder Case

Source

Anime Original

First Aired

July 7, 1997

Our Quick Blip

A good mystery, and an important milestone for a new character.

Kogoro bumps into one of his old friends from the Judo club! He invites Kogoro to have some drinks at his apartment, but he also has a mystery he would like Kogoro to solve. He keeps hearing a strange bonk by the window every night. But when he looks out the window (of an upper floor, by the way), nothing is there.

Kogoro's friend lives in a part of town that is kind of depressed. There are shitty buildings with anti-suicide windows that don't fully open. There's an abandoned building across the street. It is dark outside because the streetlight is broken. The main residents of the area seem to be college-aged students living on the cheap and having drunken parties.

At one point, Kogoro sends Ran to get more beer, seemingly unaware that he's sending a teenage girl to buy beer at night in this part of town. Conan comes along, possibly to make sure that she's safe.

We noticed that Ran was able to buy alcohol, even though she's 17, and not yet of age to drink (20 in Japan). We went on a whole tangent to see if maybe she could buy it but not drink it? It turns out... the cashier broke the law! ✽︎ From what we gather, 20-years-old is the hard cutoff for drinking or buying alcohol in Japan. The cashier must have just gone with trust that Ran really was buying alcohol for her dad. But her dad was being absolutely irresponsible to have her go in the first place.

The way back on the dark road is kinda scary. At one point, one drunk college student opens the window and makes silly sounds until his friend tells him to stop bothering the neighbors and drags him back inside. There's also a guy smoking creepily in the alley…

…who is later found dead.

When the murder happened, the window of Kogoro's friend suddenly shattered. This is a big hint. (Toggle spoilers...)

Beyond the crime of the day, the most important thing about this episode is that this is the episode in which Takagi begins to officially exist. For a while now in the show, there has been one cop with a distinct design that keeps reappearing in the background, especially in anime-original episodes, as an underling of Megure. This cop has been consistently voiced by the same voice actor, who also provides the voice of Genta. So far, he's been having very minor parts, mostly just saying stuff like "yes, sir" to Megure, or maybe taking away the culprit at the end of the episode.

But in this episode, because the crime investigation requires two people to test the murder method, it goes that Megure sends this cop to stand at the other building, and then report what happened over the walkie talkie. So, this is the first time that Megure refers to this underling cop by name. Now we know that his name is Takagi.

There's a cute story about how this character was named. It sounds like the voice acting process for Detective Conan (and lots of other anime, from what we've heard) involves the voice actors recording their lines together, which gives them room for some improvisation. If we're piecing this together right, it sounds like, during the recording for this episode, Megure's voice actor needed to address this underling, and, realizing he didn't know the name of this character, he turned to the other voice actor and ad-libbed, what's your name? The voice actor for this cop, also not knowing the name of his own character, replied as if he were himself, because Takagi is also his name, and so named this character like that, on the spot. This line didn't make it to the final episode, but the name was kept, so now the cop's name is Takagi.

So, this cop was originally an animator's extra that became a recurring background character and that was named by his voice actor. Later, the character will be reincorporated into the manga as well, with the full name of Wataru Takagi, which is also the full name of the voice actor. He will get more fleshed out over time, and will have his very own spotlight episodes, and he'll become a very prominent character of the series.

Since we're here talking about this character and his voice actor, we're blown away to learn that he's the voice of a billion million other roles, including the Japanese dub voices of Daffy Duck, Claptrap, and Dobby. The one role that smacks us across the face for personal reasons, though, is that he also voiced Umio in Mewtwo Strikes Back! We've been hearing his voice for all these years…

The Stage Actress Murder Case

Source

Anime Original

First Aired

July 14, 1997

Our Quick Blip

We thought this would have important implications for Conan's cover, but it's not manga-canon, so it doesn't.

Yet another anime-original friend of Kogoro! This one is a famous old detective who apparently mentored both Kogoro and Megure. Famous, and a dirty old man who believes that he can tell people's lives from touching their butt, which leads to him getting smacked and kicked a lot.

Kogoro is hired to investigate a threat issued to a theatre group. During a rehearsal, the lead actress is poisoned and dies... which means that the murder somehow occurred right in front of everyone's eyes, and nobody knows how.

Dirty Old Detective actually has solved the case, but he won't say anything, so as to test Kogoro and Megure... and probably also Conan, once he realizes that Conan is also trying to solve the mystery. But Conan is completely unaware of the fact that Dirty Old Detective already knew it all. Dirty Old Detective is there feeding him obvious hints, and when Conan figures it out, he thinks to knock him out to deliver the deduction (since Kogoro had to be rushed to the emergency room due to an injury).

Conan didn't even realize that, this time around, he was the one being spoon-fed hints. He thinks he's the only source of brilliance. This episode is anime-original, but this aspect is absolutely in-character for Conan. Even though Conan spends most of his time figuring out ways to give hints to Kogoro, he doesn't recognize the same thing happening to him, in the most obvious ways. Like, the first time around Dirty Old Detective was saying that the culprit is a woman because of some old sexist saying, and maybe you could have missed that he actually knew who the culprit was, and that it was a woman, and that this was a hint to disregard the men and focus the investigation on the women. But the second time, when Dirty Old Detective started talking about a novel involving the Buddha for no apparent reason, anyone could have noticed this was a hint! Well, anyone who doesn't have a ridiculous ego...

Before we knew this was an anime-original episode, Denise thought that this case was going to have major implications for Conan's cover, because Dirty Old Detective is smart enough to realize that he's being manipulated, and he could have noticed that the same trick has been happening to Kogoro. But, since this whole character is an anime invention, and he's an anime invention that didn't get as lucky as Takagi, actually, we'll never see this guy again.

The Night Baron Murder Case

Source

Manga Canon (Volume 8)

First Aired

July 21 and 28 and August 4, 1997

Our Quick Blip

The first ever three-parter! However, we didn't care much for the mystery. Although it at least has some good moments for Ran.

Shinichi's father is a writer, and his most famous character is the villainous Night Baron, who sounds like Jack the Ripper crossed with the Phantom of the Opera, and a dash of a nasty version of Arsène Lupin. It must be kind of awkward for Shinichi to see all these people going around fanning about his father's character…

This episode is about some kind of mystery convention that was sponsored by someone who goes as the Night Baron. But the mystery of the day is not that exciting or interesting. It tries to tease us into thinking that we're going to learn something about Gin and Vodka (since the last time we saw the Black Organization, the plot revolved around something something evil programmers), but, ultimately, that's not how this mystery goes. The whole thing was about a virus in a floppy disk, known as the Night Baron virus, and everyone in the room has some connection to this virus, and everyone in the room has some ridiculous story about their dead family member who is dead... due to the virus. There's the guy who looks like a Super Nerd from Pokémon Red/Blue. His mother died, and he named the computer after his mom. Ew...

And there's the old man who says he lost his son to the virus... the "son" was actually some dirty game he was working on. And the lady who looks like Fujiko lost her husband to the virus, because her husband made the virus and ruined their relationship. (Toggle spoilers...)

The Stalker Murder Case

Source

Anime Original

First Aired

August 11, 1997

Our Quick Blip

To our tastes, a lot of the manga-canon cases are kinda convoluted and silly, and it turns out that most of the cases that really punch us in the gut are anime-original. This is an anime-original that left a big impression on us. It's also one that builds on Kogoro's character, and Conan's as well.

Kogoro is reluctantly going on a morning jog. It's to keep him in shape to be a detective, but, once again, Ran and Conan are the ones dragging him along and Kogoro would rather be in bed. Today, Kogoro goes to a vending machine to get a caffeinated drink, and finds two bottles in the chute. Lucky! Ran worries that one of them may have been tampered with, but nothing seems amiss with the drink, so Kogoro drinks one of them, and nothing happens.

Meanwhile, someone else who also got the same drink dies a few meters away from them.

The drink was indeed poisoned, and that's what killed him. The investigation reveals that this guy was stalking a woman. A few days before, she'd called the police on him, and the police gave him a stern talking to. But now, the guy is dead. Kogoro argues that this was just some random act of murder, and any random sap who happened to get the poisoned drink would have been the victim. And yeah, it's not a ridiculous conclusion. That's why tamper proof seals exist, after all - because people were doing random evil crimes like that. But this show is a murder mystery, so, that's not going to be the right answer...

The key point is that the bottle was probably obviously open when the guy had picked it up, and nobody could have planned for him to drink from an obviously tampered-with bottle. Nobody would pick up an obviously open bottle and just drink from it... (Toggle spoilers...)

In conclusion

The big deal episode in this arbitrary batch is the one about the Sherlock Holmes fanclub, with the major plot development of Heiji learning what happened to Shinichi and becoming an ally. That's a cool episode.

However, we'd say that the real stars here are the anime originals. There are several of our all-time favorite episodes in this set: the one where we meet Kogoro's senpai, the one where Officer Takagi gets his name, and finally the one with the stalker that we're still not done thinking about.

It also happens that a lot of episodes in this set raise questions about whether or not it is a good thing to reveal the truth behind the cases. The Gomera case is a manga-canon one where the question is raised but quickly discarded. The Night Baron virus case is another manga-canon one, which has Ran thinking about something Shinichi said on the topic - about what he would do if the culprit was someone he cared about. His answer was that he'd need to investigate to the fullest to be absolutely certain, but, in the end, the truth would need to be exposed. Finally, the stalker case is anime original and puts this idea to the biggest challenge. We get to hear some of Kogoro's thoughts on how the solving of a mystery is ultimately unimportant, and what really matters is protecting the vulnerable.

But that's all on that for now. Our episode reviews continue in Part 6.

References & Thanks

• Age Restriction Laws In Japan (Drinking & Vice Laws), which came up a few times in this set of episodes.
• Citations about Takagi's history:
  • A Japanese article about an interview with voice actor Wataru Takagi - we read it as best we could through Google Translate.
  • Another Japanese article that gives a bit more detail about the event that gave Officer Takagi his name - we read it as best we could through Google Translate.
• Special thanks to Mat for telling us about Gamera. We actually don't know a whole lot about kaiju, even though we keep finding ourselves writing about them...
• And also special thanks to ScreamOfDespair on Tumblr for sharing such nice crisp screenshots and gifs from Detective Conan and other things (we are using one on this page, with permission.)