What is the most baffling recent development in Conan?

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PhantomWriter
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Re: What is the most baffling recent development in Conan?

Post by PhantomWriter »

Regarding Shuichi telling Shukichi offscreen about his identity, shinichi1977, I can understand why he'd do so. He has no real reason to keep some stuff hidden from members of his family anymore- Bourbon knows he's alive, his family is already cleared of suspicion with the Org. due to the Scar Akai stuff, and his coworkers (and several others) now know that he's alive. Shukichi could easily be used as a hostage, at least, since we don't know of him having any martial arts background, if things do go to hell and the Organization does stuff like that to get their way.

(If we're being entirely honest, Yusaku has shown the same BS proclivity of pulling a deduction out of literally nowhere, though. It's still frustrating.)

But, yeah, I also agree that all the uproar immediately dying down after the Kyoto arc was ten shades of bad. It's to maintain the status quo, of mysteries of the week or whatever, I suppose, but it removes all tension from the story because nothing has weight then. There's no immediate, permanent, and severe consequences to the thing that everyone was so worried about in the first place. Especially jarring when they just go back to normal case stuff like KID stealing a gem and a Heiji romance subplot thing.

I'd also agree with you, Antiyonder. Some of Gosho's weakest stuff is romance plots. I don't give a single damn about nearly all of the relationships and it's not just because of my general neutrality or distaste in the romance genre as a whole. The stuff with Ran doesn't work because of the sheer lack of trust on Kudo's part and constantly convincing her that what's real is not. (The Organization excuse doesn't work because they wouldn't know who he told and it'd be reasonable to assume that a person would tell the people harboring them about being a victim of an attempted murder and to watch out for fishy people wearing all black...) He also pushes away any possible suitors, again pointing to a lack of trust.
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Re: What is the most baffling recent development in Conan?

Post by DCUniverseAficionado »

PhantomWriter wrote:All the uproar immediately dying down after the Kyoto arc was ten shades of bad. It's to maintain the status quo, of mysteries of the week or whatever, I suppose, but it removes all tension from the story because nothing has weight then. There's no immediate, permanent, and severe consequences to the thing that everyone was so worried about in the first place. Especially jarring when they just go back to normal case stuff like KID stealing a gem and a Heiji romance subplot thing.
I can't really agree about all the tension already being gone when the big confrontation still hasn't yet happened.

Nope, it wasn't immediate. If you value that, then you've definitely got Gosho there—I suppose you could indict him for failing to meet the ideal. He clearly didn't want to jump right into the big Rum arc confrontation case immediately after the Crimson School Trip (even with how he's increased the pace this past year, it's still him—the increased pace will be balanced out with fewer files and cases, overall). Thus, we're still waiting to find out just what the Kudōs and Shūichi said to Bourbon the night he broke into the Kudō house.

Since then, Gosho has given us the following info:
Scotch is Kōmei's brother (1,021)
&
Spoiler:
Mary Sera/Elena Miyano info (1,025)
Delivering this info to us is, I presume, part of what he thinks must be done before he draws the big confrontation case and delivers it to us.

I guess it'll just depend on whether or not Gosho decides to have permanent and severe consequences take effect due to the big confrontation between Team Shinichi/Conan and Rum we're going to get—if we do get such consequences, I'd say, then, that while the delay between Kyoto and the confrontation did reduce the maximum potential tension that could've been achieved if the confrontation had taken place in 1,006 or 1,009, it still would have impact... just not the ideal impact, I suppose.
“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.”
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PhantomWriter
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Re: What is the most baffling recent development in Conan?

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Don't get me wrong, I like that we got the information you mentioned, such as Scotch and Koumei or that spoiler information.

The reason I'm so antsy is partially because, relative to other characters, the Kudos have avoided a lot of the more permanent negative effects of being tied to the main plot, like deaths of people close to them or their family being torn apart. It's not to say that it necessarily needs to be the case, but they're the exception to it compared to a lot of the other characters tied to the main plot (the ones that we know details about their backgrounds), so it stands out to me and I wouldn't say it's in a good way.

It also feels jarring, for a want of a better term, when a major story thing that's part of the premise doesn't get that follow through. It's so jarring because that's something constantly hammered throughout the series- if the Organization finds out Kudo's possibly alive, they're going to hunt him down and kill him, because that's what they do in literally every other situation like this. Then, when the time finally comes, the consequences aren't happening yet. It's somewhat anticlimactic.

(I'll grant that Rum needs to find Kudo, sure, and that's on par with Rei trying to flush Akai out with the Scar Akai act, but it needs to come to a head at a reasonable point. The Bourbon arc was riddled with pacing problems and he'd be best to avoid those now.)
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Re: What is the most baffling recent development in Conan?

Post by DCUniverseAficionado »

PhantomWriter wrote:The reason I'm so antsy is partially because, relative to other characters, the Kudos have avoided a lot of the more permanent negative effects of being tied to the main plot, like deaths of people close to them or their family being torn apart. It's not to say that it necessarily needs to be the case, but they're the exception to it compared to a lot of the other characters tied to the main plot (the ones that we know details about their backgrounds), so it stands out to me and I wouldn't say it's in a good way.

It also feels jarring, for a want of a better term, when a major story thing that's part of the premise doesn't get that follow through. It's so jarring because that's something constantly hammered throughout the series- if the Organization finds out Kudo's possibly alive, they're going to hunt him down and kill him, because that's what they do in literally every other situation like this. Then, when the time finally comes, the consequences aren't happening yet. It's somewhat anticlimactic.

(I'll grant that Rum needs to find Kudo, sure, and that's on par with Rei trying to flush Akai out with the Scar Akai act, but it needs to come to a head at a reasonable point. The Bourbon arc was riddled with pacing problems and he'd be best to avoid those now.)
They've avoided it... so far. I don't think a one of them is going to die—but if they are going to suffer consequences, it's going to be due to the death of someone else due to their moves against the BO, which would lead to immense guilt, no doubt, and perhaps anger from others also close to the victim.

I, too, would've preferred it if Gosho had already set up the Akai, Haneda, Miyano, and Morofushi threads (and everything else he intends to do in next year's cases, and up until he actually decides to finally write the big confrontation case) before the Crimson School Trip, so then we could jump right in to the confrontation from there. I've done no end of taking DC's cases and reordering them/combining them in my head to see just how fast Gosho could've gotten from A to Z in every arc, especially since the Bourbon arc—he probably could've finished it in 2 years, as opposed to 6 and 2/3rds—but I do think we're past the worst of it. The past year has been lightspeed, judging, at the very least, by Gosho's pacing standards this decade.
“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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