Rum Arc Discussion Thread (Plot + Characters)

[Zerozaki4869]

First of all: Do we agree that Kuroda + Rumi are good characters?
Yes or no?
Answer should be obv.

Next step:
Is there sth that Kuroda + Rumi have in common contrary to Wakita?
Yep, both of them have a damaged right eye.
But Wakitas damaged eye is his left one.

So.... While Rumi+Kuroda were attacked by the same person [a bo-guy]
...Wakita wasnt.
Since I doubt that there are 2 different bo-guys who like aiming for eyes, I guess
Wakita was attacked by a good guy (probably Tsutomu or Shuichi - maybe he was looking for Shu at Agasas)
which means he´s a bad character.

Bingo.

E: To me the Subaru of the arc (the suspect with the most suspicious moments and screentime) obv by far is Rumi.

Kuroda is someone who knows stuff about Shinichi(else why would he have a knowing smile when cover-up got started?)
Why Rumi can trigger Haibara with her aura? Why he thinks random one-eyed men are to be hated?
These two characters have all the essential qualities to come-out as bad guys.(Haibara says, she likes Rumi despite the pressure, Haibara says Kuroda is scary but is not BO, but there are instances when Haibara failed to sniff out BO guys, in cherry blossom case.)
Kuroda and Rumi o me are showing traits which are very dangerous.(Winning someone's trust to strike them down, Kuroda less, Rumi more.)
Rumi's right eye's condition is unverified, Kuroda's eye got screwed in a fire.

Wakita's left eye is not even injured, it has some infection only(a pimple), wakita was going to show it, so I doubt that he was lying back then. I think his pimple is very real.

Wakita is so suspicious that he fails to achieve the same place which Kuroda and Rumi have achieved. He wants to stick with Kogoro, no matter what, he begs him to take him(Wakita) to his next murder case. Now that's suspicious, beyond doubt but his methods are rash and too easy to see. As if he wants to stick with Kogoro no matter what(Gin wants to eliminate Kogoro if he takes another wrong step. Gin is not shown to be person who waits to find concrete proof and then kill someone.) He was the one who made a drastic move towards Shinichi's house(who eventually became Rum's target), anybody who is aware of Shinichi would know that he and Agasa enjoys a cordial relationship.Approaching Agasa doesn't make the move any less discreet.

Subaru was shown drinking Bourbon, Wakita is introduced with Boss' second in command hint.

To me Wakita is coming off as Subaru(minus set-up), who desperately trying his best to stick to Kogoro and making Shinichi aware that he's being targeted. All reasons to show that Wakita is a pro-Shinichi character.(Rumi and Kuroda are unverified as of now.)

[blackmoon]

Aren't you specifically trying to bring the dagger axe thing into it so you'll have a convenient "ka" to help you with the Katsumata interpretation? Has the dagger axe been mentioned in the manga recently so to aid the reader in coming up with such a solution?

Nope the dagger axe comes naturally, that hand position is quite revealing. And no I'm not fixated on Katsumata,(Is the Shogi piece being mentioned explicitly as something which was in Haneda's hand and was taken after his death? The answer is no, but it's not an illogical deduction to make. As the mark matches, and the bruises show that the scissor was held in a defensive grip and not in a cutting grip.)

So basically what you are getting at is it's a hand axe? Don't you think that's stretching things a bit? Where was there such a clue mentioned in the Conan series? And making a deduction based on marks and bruises, by the way, is as funny a jump in conclusion as the first deduction Conan made about Akai when they first met.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz6Wcv-k2QQ

[Zerozaki4869]

Aren't you specifically trying to bring the dagger axe thing into it so you'll have a convenient "ka" to help you with the Katsumata interpretation? Has the dagger axe been mentioned in the manga recently so to aid the reader in coming up with such a solution?

Nope the dagger axe comes naturally, that hand position is quite revealing. And no I'm not fixated on Katsumata,(Is the Shogi piece being mentioned explicitly as something which was in Haneda's hand and was taken after his death? The answer is no, but it's not an illogical deduction to make. As the mark matches, and the bruises show that the scissor was held in a defensive grip and not in a cutting grip.)

So basically what you are getting at is it's a hand axe? Don't you think that's stretching things a bit? Where was there such a clue mentioned in the Conan series? And making a deduction based on marks and bruises, by the way, is as funny a jump in conclusion as the first deduction Conan made about Akai when they first met.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz6Wcv-k2QQ

Then what is another explanation of the bruise mark in his hand and why the marks in haneda's fingers are closer to the base? No, I'm not stretching it at all.(There was a clue just before the meeting at the beach chapter where dying message involved the position of one's hand and fist. btw aren't you the one who thought that Rum=Asaka without any evidence and said that Haneda hwas hiding APTX capsule in his palm?)
The bruises are more explanatory than let's say filmsy theories. They are as accurate as it can get. The bruise means that Haneda dies while holding onto those scissors and the shogi piece before his death and those stuff were removed after the bruises were made/after his death. It's not a stretch rather a similarity.
BTW let me ask you some questions, if you think the mirror clue is haneda's doing, care to explain how he did it with the backing intact?

[Kor]

No one's denying there are bruises. It's that you're jumping from bruises to "he was holding the scissors in the same shape of some ancient weapon and that's part of the dying message" and that seems like a stretch.

[Zerozaki4869]

No one's denying there are bruises. It's that you're jumping from bruises to "he was holding the scissors in the same shape of some ancient weapon and that's part of the dying message" and that seems like a stretch.

http://i.imgur.com/5JK7hTT.png

This was conceived after I and Check did some hours research with the scissors grip. So if you say it's a jump then I would have only one thing, please show me a different way of holding a scissor warranting bruises at the same place? If you can't then stop calling it a jump.

[dccd]

Kuroda is someone who knows stuff about Shinichi(else why would he have a knowing smile when cover-up got started?)
Why Rumi can trigger Haibara with her aura? Why he thinks random one-eyed men are to be hated?
Rumi's right eye's condition is unverified, Kuroda's eye got screwed in a fire.

Wakita's left eye is not even injured, it has some infection only(a pimple), wakita was going to show it, so I doubt that he was lying back then. I think his pimple is very real.

Wakita is so suspicious that he fails to achieve the same place which Kuroda and Rumi have achieved. He wants to stick with Kogoro, no matter what, he begs him to take him(Wakita) to his next murder case. Now that's suspicious, beyond doubt but his methods are rash and too easy to see. As if he wants to stick with Kogoro no matter what(Gin wants to eliminate Kogoro if he takes another wrong step. Gin is not shown to be person who waits to find concrete proof and then kill someone.) He was the one who made a drastic move towards Shinichi's house(who eventually became Rum's target), anybody who is aware of Shinichi would know that he and Agasa enjoys a cordial relationship.Approaching Agasa doesn't make the move any less discreet.

Subaru was shown drinking Bourbon, Wakita is introduced with Boss' second in command hint.

To me Wakita is coming off as Subaru(minus set-up), who desperately trying his best to stick to Kogoro and making Shinichi aware that he's being targeted. All reasons to show that Wakita is a pro-Shinichi character.(Rumi and Kuroda are unverified as of now.)

Comon bro, cards on the table.
Obv all characters has some aspects which indicate them being "good or bad" but in the end there either are good or bad.
(Vermouth too, yeah -> obv in the end a bad/bo-character)
Or in this context bo or non-bo.
So are Kuroda/Rumi finally (currently(!)) bo or non-bo characters ?
No blabla anymore, but straight up answers - yes or no.

Spoiler:

1) Kuroda: Atleast I discounted him as a bo-guy after the very first panel.
I dont believe that Gosho would introduce a bo-guy with Conan being superscared on his very first glance.
So far even more aspects led me to believe that he is a good guy (I know about Kogoro-drop, Ais reaction, his memory).

2) Rumi: Ai-comment is enough. Her whole behaviour just tops it even more.
Might very well be an ex-bo character.
It isnt even safe that she was the one who triggered the aura - still it looks like she was the one.

And how can you be so sure about Wakita not having an injury?
Since you seem to forgot about it:
Would you agree if someone was offering you to show an eye-pimple while your eating?
Again: No blabla - yes or no.

Btw: It does not make any sense for Wakita to hide his eye if he has no injury.
If he was a good character he could easily show off his eye to the world proving he´s not Rum.
But maybe you have an idea why he´s hiding his eye.
(Only reason: Gosho wants him to look suspicious).

And finally Wakitas suspicious moments are nothing against Rumis.
(Bo aura/Bo list).

[blackmoon]

No one's denying there are bruises. It's that you're jumping from bruises to "he was holding the scissors in the same shape of some ancient weapon and that's part of the dying message" and that seems like a stretch.

I agree with that statement.

[Zerozaki4869]

Kuroda is someone who knows stuff about Shinichi(else why would he have a knowing smile when cover-up got started?)
Why Rumi can trigger Haibara with her aura? Why he thinks random one-eyed men are to be hated?
Rumi's right eye's condition is unverified, Kuroda's eye got screwed in a fire.

Wakita's left eye is not even injured, it has some infection only(a pimple), wakita was going to show it, so I doubt that he was lying back then. I think his pimple is very real.

Wakita is so suspicious that he fails to achieve the same place which Kuroda and Rumi have achieved. He wants to stick with Kogoro, no matter what, he begs him to take him(Wakita) to his next murder case. Now that's suspicious, beyond doubt but his methods are rash and too easy to see. As if he wants to stick with Kogoro no matter what(Gin wants to eliminate Kogoro if he takes another wrong step. Gin is not shown to be person who waits to find concrete proof and then kill someone.) He was the one who made a drastic move towards Shinichi's house(who eventually became Rum's target), anybody who is aware of Shinichi would know that he and Agasa enjoys a cordial relationship.Approaching Agasa doesn't make the move any less discreet.

Subaru was shown drinking Bourbon, Wakita is introduced with Boss' second in command hint.

To me Wakita is coming off as Subaru(minus set-up), who desperately trying his best to stick to Kogoro and making Shinichi aware that he's being targeted. All reasons to show that Wakita is a pro-Shinichi character.(Rumi and Kuroda are unverified as of now.)

Comon bro, cards on the table.
Obv all characters has some aspects which indicate them being "good or bad" but in the end there either are good or bad.
(Vermouth too, yeah -> obv in the end a bad/bo-character)
Or in this context bo or non-bo.
So are Kuroda/Rumi finally (currently(!)) bo or non-bo characters ?
No blabla anymore, but straight up answers - yes or no.

Spoiler:

1) Kuroda: Atleast I discounted him as a bo-guy after the very first panel.
I dont believe that Gosho would introduce a bo-guy with Conan being superscared on his very first glance.
So far even more aspects led me to believe that he is a good guy (I know about Kogoro-drop, Ais reaction, his memory).

2) Rumi: Ai-comment is enough. Her whole behaviour just tops it even more.
Might very well be an ex-bo character.
It isnt even safe that she was the one who triggered the aura - still it looks like she was the one.

And how can you be so sure about Wakita not having an injury?
Since you seem to forgot about it:
Would you agree if someone was offering you to show an eye-pimple while your eating?
Again: No blabla - yes or no.

Btw: It does not make any sense for Wakita to hide his eye if he has no injury.
If he was a good character he could easily show off his eye to the world proving he´s not Rum.
But maybe you have an idea why he´s hiding his eye.
(Only reason: Gosho wants him to look suspicious).

And finally Wakitas suspicious moments are nothing against Rumis.
(Bo aura/Bo list).

I don't deal in Blah-blahs. But you are someone who is adamant to frame the most white character as the bad guy.
Wakita wasn't lying if he was offering to show Conan his pimple. It was Conan who asked Wakita about his eye, so it's not really that easy to tell a lie in a moment.
Also the the eyepatch is a medicated one, his eye has just a stye. Now if Conan really went through(I would in the place of Conan, just to make sure nothing is off, if I had prior information like Conan that Rum has a prosthetic eye.)
If it's a horrible pimple/stye you need to wear a medicated eyepatch, else the infection becomes persistent. So it's very rational to wear a medicated eyepatch if your eye has a stye. And he was going to show the whole world that his eye is not prosthetic, but alas.

Wakita comes off as more suspicious than Rumi, it's a fact. As of now Rumi is only shown to be growling at Kuroda, beating up thugs, looking at a BO list(though Conan didn't see it). Wakita wants to stick with Kogoro, virtually begs for it, runs around when Shinichi's appearance takes the centrestage. He's the most suspicious person and it's out there for Conan and the readers to see.(Both Kuroda and Rumi has faced haibara but Wakita hadn't, just like Bourbon)

Given Wakita's love of idioms and using weird interjection, antipathy towards Rum, I consider his a BO agent who faked his death 17 years ago to infiltrate BO and also sacrificed his good-looks. It's Tsutomu written all over him.

[dccd]

Sorry for doublepost, but this might need one.

1) I thought "Carasuma" is confirmed as the dying message.
How big of a coincidence would it be if Kohji could relate to both - Rum and the boss of the bo - at the same time with 1 dying message?
Doesnt seem to make much sense.

2) All the glory to Kor and friends since I wouldnt consider Wakita and Chikara being the same person.
While Im comparing pics at google I found this:

Spoiler:

And to be fair: I think the dagger axe-shape can really be seen in the scissor-holding-position.
So: Maybe it ends up both of you actually being right.

PS: And wow... I asked you for a clear "yes or no" and I got this. Its ok, I give up.
PPS: Are your kidding me? No way in the world from an average reader kind of view Wakita is more suspicious then Rumi.
Again: Bo-aura and Bo-list. The whole camping-case. 50% of reddit-readers telling "Rumi is Rum".
How can one deny this?

[blackmoon]

Aren't you specifically trying to bring the dagger axe thing into it so you'll have a convenient "ka" to help you with the Katsumata interpretation? Has the dagger axe been mentioned in the manga recently so to aid the reader in coming up with such a solution?

Nope the dagger axe comes naturally, that hand position is quite revealing. And no I'm not fixated on Katsumata,(Is the Shogi piece being mentioned explicitly as something which was in Haneda's hand and was taken after his death? The answer is no, but it's not an illogical deduction to make. As the mark matches, and the bruises show that the scissor was held in a defensive grip and not in a cutting grip.)

So basically what you are getting at is it's a hand axe? Don't you think that's stretching things a bit? Where was there such a clue mentioned in the Conan series? And making a deduction based on marks and bruises, by the way, is as funny a jump in conclusion as the first deduction Conan made about Akai when they first met.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz6Wcv-k2QQ

Then what is another explanation of the bruise mark in his hand and why the marks in haneda's fingers are closer to the base? No, I'm not stretching it at all.(There was a clue just before the meeting at the beach chapter where dying message involved the position of one's hand and fist. btw aren't you the one who thought that Rum=Asaka without any evidence and said that Haneda hwas hiding APTX capsule in his palm?)
The bruises are more explanatory than let's say filmsy theories. They are as accurate as it can get. The bruise means that Haneda dies while holding onto those scissors and the shogi piece before his death and those stuff were removed after the bruises were made/after his death. It's not a stretch rather a similarity.
BTW let me ask you some questions, if you think the mirror clue is haneda's doing, care to explain how he did it with the backing intact?

Hmm... yeah, I did suggest that theory of something being hidden in his palm. But I have no way to prove it until the fact is revealed, and it does look like a shogi piece being hidden and taken away from his palm if there indeed is a connection to the shogi piece left on Rumi's table in front of the computer desk while she browsed through the list of APTX victims in which only BO members are supposed to have access to, and considering the added suspicion that Kuroda appeared to know Rumi from a previous camping experience, and that the two don't seem to be on friendly terms with each other... if you stretch and try to draw all the dots together, this may all be connected in some way or another, but the problem is, there is no actual PROOF until Gosho does the GRANd revelation like how he disclosed the boss connection to K\Carasuma. So yeah, mine was just a theory and I'm definitely not going to hold my word on just a theory, but no, I did not think the mirror clue was Haneda's doing, but I did mention without proof that I suspected that the mirror clue WAS left by ASACA or RUM to derail investigation as to who the real culprit would be as supposed to be an actual clue left by Haneda pointing in the right direction that would lead as to the organization as the direction Gosho appeared to be pointing us. If that actually makes sense... [sign] it's more like... a RED herring.

http://images.slideplayer.com/24/699913 ... lide_5.jpg

[dccd]

So Wakita is Tsutomu who infiltrated the BO - but somehow managed not to meet Shuichi while he was in BO aswell -
just to accomplish pretty much nothing in the last 10 years.
Then he obviously somehow got to know what Gin was saying in a dialogue to Vodka in his car and therefore forced Gin
to pick him as the one who spies on Kogoro.
Sounds legit.

[Zerozaki4869]

So Wakita is Tsutomu who infiltrated the BO - but somehow managed not to meet Shuichi while he was in BO aswell -
just to accomplish pretty much nothing in the last 10 years.
Then he obviously somehow got to know what Gin was saying in a dialogue to Vodka in his car and therefore forced Gin
to pick him as the one who spies on Kogoro.
Sounds legit.

Firstly, even Gin doesn't know every BO member by their faces. It's entirely possible that Papakai never met Shuichi or heard about him as he was doing something else. Now we don't know what he has accomplished, (possibly cracked the dying message, knows Rum's social identity and is waiting to catch him by camping around Kogoro in hope that Rum might be lured out, so much so that Rum thinks he needs to be watched.)

Secondly, he has a good enough brain to suggest Gin the idea to spy on Kogoro on his own, just to make sure that he's posted near Kogoro.(Gin admires him, uses his quotes.)

Totally legit if you go by Gosho's latest interview, where he says the connection between Gin and papakai is a secret.

Also there is a difference between porn-watchers. One type watches it in a closed room, the other in the middle of the road. Rumi is the former(Gosho gives us sneak-peaks of her room) Wakita is the latter.(it's for everyone even the dense MC to see.)

[Kor]

Anywho, a few days ago I also tried coming up with some alternate reading of the shogi piece... just the shogi piece, not anything else that might or might have not been in the room besides that.

馬 can be read as "me" (め) which is also the hiragana you can use for the kanji of the word "eye" (目 or 眼)
龍 can be read as "tatsu" (たつ) which is also the hiragana you can use to write 断つ which can mean "to sever" or "to cut off".
What does this message accomplish on its own? Not much I guess, since we already know Rum's missing an eye in theory, so maybe that's just how Rumi interpreted the shogi piece (which is maybe why Kuroda made her concerned, and why she was triggered when the dude from the camping case talked about almost losing his eye). So perhaps this message is incorrect, or maybe it is the right direction but there's another component missing or something I didn't take into account.

Or maybe (just maybe) like the CARASUMA message, the shogi piece also has nothing to do with Rum. Maybe it's supposed to tell us (or hint) Karasuma's current identity somehow.

Unrelated to the above, gotta wonder what's the general problem with going the simple route with the Time Is Money thing and assume it's supposed to mean that Wakita is Rum. Is it silly that Rum would pick a name that's an anagram of some proverb and also say said proverb to other people? Probably, yeah. But this is also the series in which the big bad evil boss has "crow" in his name and decided that the melody of his phone number will be Nanatsu no Ko. So it's not like we don't have a precedence of a supposedly extremely secretive guy also be obvious because of a silly quirk.

[Zerozaki4869]

Is it the same boss, Kor? Maybe this current boss loves the melody while the ex-boss was the crow??
Also tbh Wakita isn't Rum(most likely) but someone of whom Rum is afraid.

[Kor]

Is it the same boss, Kor? Maybe this current boss loves the melody while the ex-boss was the crow??

Gosho sort of confirmed that the melody was meant to hint to Karasuma, so... it doesn't really matter. A silly quirk is still a silly quirk. SOMEONE (in universe) was being quirky.
Gosho's also the guy who basically disclosed Sera's and Amuro's roles thanks to the gundam naming scheme. It's not beyond him to go with that Time Is Money anagram for Rum.