Rum Arc Discussion Thread (Plot + Characters)

Forum reserved for discussing specific points of the story—mostly from the manga. Be warned, these discussions will be current with the manga and will spoil many plot lines for anime-centric fans.
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Iwamoto Yuri
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Re: Rum Arc Discussion Thread (Plot + Characters)

Post by Iwamoto Yuri »

DCUniverseAficionado wrote:
Iwamoto Yuri wrote:no
Can you specify? As in, more detail than "this is *insert negative adjective here*"? I ask because my reaction to this theory just isn't that immediate.
Because Maria couldn't possible be Akasa, it's a dumb theory. Do you think her losing her memory, somehow fleeing to japan after losing her memory and then living as a kid for 17 years sounds credible in any way?

I'm sorry, but no.
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Re: Rum Arc Discussion Thread (Plot + Characters)

Post by DCUniverseAficionado »

Iwamoto Yuri wrote:
DCUniverseAficionado wrote:
Iwamoto Yuri wrote:no
Can you specify? As in, more detail than "this is *insert negative adjective here*"? I ask because my reaction to this theory just isn't that immediate.
Because Maria couldn't possible be Akasa, it's a dumb theory. Do you think her losing her memory, somehow fleeing to japan after losing her memory and then living as a kid for 17 years sounds credible in any way?

I'm sorry, but no.
I'm not all for it, but I'm not all against it, either. Guess I just don't consider Asaka "losing her memory, somehow fleeing to japan after losing her memory and then living as a kid for 17 years" that absurd of an idea.
“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”
“Education never ends... it is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and His Last Bow
"I have decided to stick to love... hate is too great a burden to bear."
— Martin Luther King Jr. (A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr)
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dccd

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Re: Rum Arc Discussion Thread (Plot + Characters)

Post by dccd »

I love the theory.
Even if it turns out to be wrong its horrific to see how many parallels it has to other cases aspects.

One thing I worry about is, that if she shrank 17 years ago, this would mean that APTX-victims do not grow anymore
(or veeeeeeery slowly).
[ ] Yonehara = Rum
[ ] Kuroda = Amuros Boss
[x] MG = Mrs. Akai
[x] Haneda = Brother Akai
[ ] Rumi = Asaka
[ ] Wakita = Bo-Member Whiskey (aka the RAT)
[ ] Iori = just a butler
Kuro No Shinigami

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Re: Rum Arc Discussion Thread (Plot + Characters)

Post by Kuro No Shinigami »

DCUniverseAficionado wrote:
Iwamoto Yuri wrote:
DCUniverseAficionado wrote:
Iwamoto Yuri wrote:no
Can you specify? As in, more detail than "this is *insert negative adjective here*"? I ask because my reaction to this theory just isn't that immediate.
Because Maria couldn't possible be Akasa, it's a dumb theory. Do you think her losing her memory, somehow fleeing to japan after losing her memory and then living as a kid for 17 years sounds credible in any way?

I'm sorry, but no.
I'm not all for it, but I'm not all against it, either. Guess I just don't consider Asaka "losing her memory, somehow fleeing to japan after losing her memory and then living as a kid for 17 years" that absurd of an idea.


It's definitely not just a dumb theory. If you have read the entire analysis, there are literal cases which corroborate such findings. Losing her memory card can be played for any character as long as it makes sense in the story ( as in , not much is known about the character and it doesn't contradict what was established before ). Who knows , maybe Kuroda out of nowhere would be the one with such thing as it was hinted in his introduction case. About 'somehow fleeing to Japan' , we don't know the relationship of Tsutomu with Kohji or Amanda. He is speculated to be one of the parties directly involved in the case and who might have helped her escape or any other person related to Kohji/Amanda could have. Rather than saying it's dumb outright just because it doesn't follow the standard pattern , it would be better if you have contradictions to that.
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Re: Rum Arc Discussion Thread (Plot + Characters)

Post by MeiTanteixX »

Iwamoto Yuri wrote:Do you think her losing her memory, somehow fleeing to japan after losing her memory and then living as a kid for 17 years sounds credible in any way?
assuming that's the only order of events. Post-traumatic stress symptoms don't always kick-in immediately after a traumatic incident. In any case, that's just one suggestion to her child-like behavior.
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Akai Shuichi:''Fear of death is worse than death itself''
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Re: Rum Arc Discussion Thread (Plot + Characters)

Post by NinaSakura »

Forgive me if my speculation sounds stupid :-[ But I think Wakita is RUM. Remember there was this chapter where conan says eye patches can be used to allow one to see in the dark ? :-\ Maybe RUM always wears an eyepatch so that he can even see in the dark in case of emergencies and that's why people in the B.O are so sure that he's had a prosthetic eye surgery or something :-\ And that's what has made me think Wakita is RUM apart from the "Time is money" stuff ;D
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Re: Rum Arc Discussion Thread (Plot + Characters)

Post by MeiTanteixX »

NinaSakura wrote:Forgive me if my speculation sounds stupid :-[ But I think Wakita is RUM. Remember there was this chapter where conan says eye patches can be used to allow one to see in the dark ? :-\ Maybe RUM always wears an eyepatch so that he can even see in the dark in case of emergencies and that's why people in the B.O are so sure that he's had a prosthetic eye surgery or something :-\ And that's what has made me think Wakita is RUM apart from the "Time is money" stuff ;D
not stupid at all ^^
They did however say that he was in some of accident that gave him a prosthetic, so unless the argument is that he started wearing the eyepatch right after the accident without losing his eye...
DC's Awesome Qoutes:
Spoiler:
Image
Bourbon:''A child's curiosity and a detective's spirit of inquiry do have much in common''
Image
Vermouth:''A secret makes a woman, woman''
Image Image
Mary/Gin:''It's like encountering a demon in the darkness...''
Image
Akai Shuichi:''Fear of death is worse than death itself''
Image
Shinichi Kudo:''following the smell of blood to arrive upon a crime scene, using every one of your senses to hunt the culprit, then once you've seized hold of him, sinking your sharp teeth(your evidence) until your opponent gives up the ghost, That's a detective''
DeviantArt:http://meitanteixx.deviantart.com/
Tumblr:http://masterdetectivexx.tumblr.com/
Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFL6Gq ... hWaNIRUu0Q
Iwamoto Yuri
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Re: Rum Arc Discussion Thread (Plot + Characters)

Post by Iwamoto Yuri »

MeiTanteixX wrote:assuming that's the only order of events. Post-traumatic stress symptoms don't always kick-in immediately after a traumatic incident. In any case, that's just one suggestion to her child-like behavior.
And the easiest suggestion would either be she's a stellar actor or, I don't know... An actual kid that simply made a reappearance after a long time and has no connection the Rum whatsoever because you're reaching again just like you did with Iori and maybe you need to stop making Gosho a better plotter than he actually is.
Seriously, if you turn out to be wrong about this promise for your own sake that you'll stop making up far fetched theories to confirm your bias of Gosho being amazing.
DCUniverseAficionado wrote:Guess I just don't consider Asaka "losing her memory, somehow fleeing to japan after losing her memory and then living as a kid for 17 years" that absurd of an idea.
Reread that statement a few dozen times and then come back to me to see if all hope is lost or not :V.
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Re: Rum Arc Discussion Thread (Plot + Characters)

Post by DCUniverseAficionado »

Iwamoto Yuri wrote:
DCUniverseAficionado wrote:Guess I just don't consider Asaka "losing her memory, somehow fleeing to japan after losing her memory and then living as a kid for 17 years" that absurd of an idea.
Reread that statement a few dozen times and then come back to me to see if all hope is lost or not :V.
Nope, guess I'm up crap creek with no paddle. :P
“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”
“Education never ends... it is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and His Last Bow
"I have decided to stick to love... hate is too great a burden to bear."
— Martin Luther King Jr. (A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr)
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Re: Rum Arc Discussion Thread (Plot + Characters)

Post by Lyricadreamy »

Spoiler:
Maria maybe not a 17 year old teenager but Kohji's 19 year old well-trained sister who just so happened to study abroad in America.
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Re: Rum Arc Discussion Thread (Plot + Characters)

Post by Smitty »

I rewatched the Maria case, and this is what I think regarding the crackpot Maria theory.

It has some weight - and in my opinion she definitely is a plot relevant character by the nature of her being a Transfer Student. Maybe she transferred to seek help from Conan/Haibara, or to be in the area (Haido/Beika) where relevant BO occurrences are happening.

From a literary standpoint, Conan wasn't allowed to deduce the solution in the intro case, and Conan wasn't present in the new Maria case. As of before, she was a character as relevant as Nakamichi - she had a keyhole and an intro case about her, but she was a transfer student. There was a dedicated panel talking about transfer students and all three transfer students present in that panel, which means Gosho was aware of what he was saying. There's only two cases to work with from here, but it's interesting nonetheless.

If we assume Maria was present in the Haneda Kohji case, the question is how she got to Japan. I guess that question however is relevant for all remaining witnesses from that case too, and Mary too.
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Re: Rum Arc Discussion Thread (Plot + Characters)

Post by DCUniverseAficionado »

Smitty wrote:If we assume Maria was present in the Haneda Kohji case, the question is how she got to Japan. I guess that question however is relevant for all remaining witnesses from that case too, and Mary too.
My only guess is that Tsutomu took her from there. If we assume that he, Amanda, Kōji, Asaka and Rum were the only people present at the crime scenes, he's the only one who could've gotten her out of there.
“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”
“Education never ends... it is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and His Last Bow
"I have decided to stick to love... hate is too great a burden to bear."
— Martin Luther King Jr. (A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr)
Kor
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Re: Rum Arc Discussion Thread (Plot + Characters)

Post by Kor »

MeiTanteixX wrote: Maria's personality is very child-like and innocent, and ever since her intro in File 548, she never showed any signs of having an adult mind (more than likely because even if she happens to be Asaka, she was probably not initially conceived as another APTX victim). How Gosho could handle such a plot move, where a seemingly normal older character enters the plot, is maybe by playing the amnesia card, meaning that Maria suffered memory loss as a result of a post-traumatic stress from the Kohji case. In which case, Maria-chan may have lived those 17 years with her "grandparents" in the Kansai area as if she was a normal child.
How do you live for 17 years as a normal child who's stuck as a 7 years old? That's the opposite of normal. Amnesia or not, shouldn't she have grown mentally by now?
Iori Muga, who I deduced could be Rum,
And no conclusions were drawn?

hey, you're the one who brought it up.
Asaka was also compared to Ran (File 954),
And yet you ignore what was said just a panel earlier by Okiya. Image
How do you connect this notion to Maria?
In other words, 17-year-old Maria came along with Haneda Kohji to the US in order to watch him play in the chess tournament. Her black hair colour in the Asaka photo would be as a result of her dying her hair black, like how Gosho seeded that concept in with Takashi during department store case (File 941).
Aren't you just recycling and repurposing old ideas you claimed to be hints from your butler theory?
If Maria shrank as Asaka 17 years again, then the true purpose it would have would mainly be to answer the question regarding Conan's and Haibara's aging state, and that answer would be that they can't age like Vermouth, since Maria is still a 7-year-old, because, as mentioned above, the drug they were affected by is a recreated version of the one Asaka would have been drugged by (and is very likely to have the same effect). If Maria has been a child for 17 years then her parents would be much older and the parents that she is currently said to have (File 1006) would have to be fake/stand-in parents.
Going back to the idea that Asaka was Kohji's sister who inherited the hand-mirror from her mother Haneda Ichiyo, there's another detail about Maria that fits with this interpretation. In File 1006, Maria's grandma gave her the advice "it's important for a girl to watch over her appearance", which is very consistent with someone who would pass down a hand-mirror. This could be a small clue to that Maria's grandma is actually her mother, and by extension, Haneda Ichiyo (which in turn would make her grandpa Haneda Yasuharu). In other words, those cherished memories in her reintro case was actually her with her real parents (Kohji's parents-in-paper). Considering that Gosho hid Maria's grandparents' family name outside their house, that leaves such a possibility open.
Don't you see that every step of the way in this theory is actually actually a major leap you don't have anything to base it on other than "ifs"? You don't really have any evidence for any of it, just the notion that various stuff counts as foreshadowing, yet you still build this weirdly convoluted theory based on all these building blocks.

"Asaka got the mirror from her mother", leading to "Asaka and Kouji are siblings". But hey, so far it's not such outrageous ideas. There's no real evidence for it, but it's still within the realm of plausibility I guess...?

It's where you're going next that's becoming bizarre. Somehow from the familial relations between Asaka and Kouji you're jumping to the idea that Asaka wasn't a bodyguard at all, but actually a teenager who came to cheer for her brother and then was drugged and then deaged and then remained at the same age for 17 years and what is any of this even based on?You're actively refusing to acknowledge what's stated in the text and throwing it away in favor of your theory. Why's Asaka suddenly no longer a bodyguard? Why's Asaka suddenly 17? Why ignore the text? Is this all just in favor of wishfully hoping for a more... unique outcome than the simple ones that are known to be expected from Gosho?
Gosho has a tendency to foreshadow the introduction of new plot elements by hinting at it just before it happens.
Gosho also has a tendency to lean towards simple solutions, which this one isn't.
Following my deduction regarding Rumi's identity being Vermouth, this would automatically fill in the holes regarding Rumi's APTX victim interest, since Vermouth has personal motivations for keeping the shrinking effect hidden. If the BO dismissed Asaka as dead, despite her missing corpse, someone like Vermouth, who knows about the shrinking effect's existence would suspect that Asaka is alive.
Why does Gosho need to introduce YET ANOTHER shrunken subject when we're not even done yet dealing with the third one? Why doesn't Vermouth investigate Mary if it means that much to her?
In fact, both of Maria's reappearances in Rum arc consistently followed Rumi's appearance, as if she could be tied with her in the ongoing plot (File 966 & 1006).
How is it consistent if it's just in half the cases? Besides, a super minor character who is an elementary school student appears in a classroom which is the setting the new suspicious teacher character belongs to, that's not so out of the ordinary.
- Asaka was drugged by Rum along with Amanda 17 years ago, but shrank and fled.
And she got the amnesia after she fled, before she fled, while she fled?
Rumi's goal in Teitan Elementary could therefore be to not only investigate Haibara's neighbor in the Kudo mansion (Subaru), but also investigate Asaka's disappearance.
Surely you have to acknowledge that so far Rumi hasn't done either of these things. She's been focused on Conan and that's about it.
And just for a minor sidetrack, while yes, Vermouth did wonder about Okiya, Rumi asked Haibara about meeting Shinichi, and why would Rumi ask her that if she's Vermouth? She already knows Haibara met Shinichi.
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Zerozaki4869

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Re: Rum Arc Discussion Thread (Plot + Characters)

Post by Zerozaki4869 »

To even think that Maria isn't goring a centimetre for past 17 years something parents should be worried about. And won't just leave her alone like that. Her parents didn't come racing back when she didn't come to school but had left home. They would be more worried about her, if that was the case.

The photos in Maria's grandmom's room is a hint that Maria is a normal child. If that wasn't the case, that many photos weren't clicked in the first place. Maria should have been hidden, just like Mary.(because she can't grow a single centimetre.)
Now do we even have evidence that APTX V1 had the same effect that of silver bullet.
If such a poison existed before the discovery of APTX by haibara then Gin's word would have been contradictory.

Maria has no resemblance with Kohji.

Kor has mentioned that "The basis of your theories are" as the negative can't be eliminated it is a theory.
Yup, try your hand in writing fanfictions, don't waste it in writing self contradictory long winded posts of no plotworthiness when the same can be used to create milestones in fiction.
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Re: Rum Arc Discussion Thread (Plot + Characters)

Post by Kuro No Shinigami »

Just few points to watch for [@Kor] -

Maria has just 3 appearances so far, it's true that her maturity is not yet foreshadowed or shown but it's still not too late considering the ASAKA territory is completely out in speculation area even in DC universe.


For Okiya at that point of time in 954 , he used to be in same train as ASACA and RUM being two different names. One of the most obvious conclusion was ASACA=RUM who became a bodyguard of Amanda and killed her off. So it's not stretched to be asking about Asaka and indirectly comparing her to RUM or assuming she is RUM. Okiya asking about someone suspicious around Sera could mean he meant either Mary or Someone else hence it couldn't be Mary imo but someone near Sera who was suspicious.
And Conan still hasn't told about the three descriptions to Akai , so Subaru is still in the dark about RUM's appearance/characteristics (as he also said he has only heard his name couple of times) hence he has no way to connect the notion of Maria being Shrunk to Asaka as of now atleast. Again , Subaru doesn't know about APTX list names. Haneda being killed off by APTX is one of the true core of mystery for him overall. Conan has a big advantage due to Haibara who has been in organisation longer than Akai and knows about stuff that is stirring up the current events.


About Asaka - The whole area surrounding her identity is mysterious. We don't know yet if she was a bodyguard or not. People still don't know if Haito saying it was a woman is legit or not. Sonoko saying that Ran is like a personal bodyguard would make sense if you consider relationship between Kohji and Amanda friendly which actually was. As stated in Kohji's case , How and from where Asaka was from is still unknown which may be hinting towards that she was not an official bodyguard hired from an agency because if she was hired officially from an agency , the friends and acquaintances of Amanda would actually know about her which they didn't ( as specified in clenched scissors case ).


Gosho introducing yet another shrunken experiment doesn't seem normal ,true but it doesn't have to be normal as well. Not everything should be simple but yes , not everthing has to be complicated either.
As for Vermouth not interested in Mary , it might be because Mary was drugged discreetly. It's more than likely that Rum or an underling of Rum drugged Mary , so it's not that hard to assume that Vermouth just doesn't know about her. Vermouth also investigated ASACA case just because she was told to. If Vermouth is tipped of by interest of RUM in ASACA who might have been drugged with APTX , it's well within possibility that she would come to suspect a child and try to halt the investigation of RUM since she has her own reasons.


All this doesn't mean I support the theory but it's better to discuss it with all the points put up front.
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