Rum Arc Discussion Thread (Plot + Characters)

[Zerozaki4869]

Why you complicate Asaka’s identity , Zero

In episode 861 , when Conan was reading about Haneda Kohji case on the blog , written on it :
Asaka is the prime suspect in killing Haneda Kohji , but she has fled and missing since that day .

In chapter 1052 of the manga :
Bourbon said: " The one holding the shogi piece is the prime suspect in killing Haneda Kohji " .

We all know that Wakasa Rumi is holding that shogi piece , so if you tie those two conclusions together , you can easily conclude that Wakasa is Asaka .

It's just that.....you know.......
Hotta said Asaka was a woman and held the same hand-mirror. ----> Mary said it was bogus.
Thus implying neither Asaka was a woman nor the mirror belonged to Asaka.(most likely it was not found at the scene.)

So we are now in a condition where it pretty much appears as Asaka is a make believe identity created by the uploader to put duress over the real culprit.
In the picture of Asaka it was literally proven that Asaka is very tall. Rumi isn't that tall.

So there's my answer.

[Kor]

since kuroda has a direct memory of kohji.
he cant be tsutomu as he wasnt there at that time.

Mary also wasn't there at the time, though.

I dont think gosho will make rum so obvious.

But that's what people have been saying for the past few years about Kuroda and Rumi too.

Kuroda is a scary looking guy who literally has the word black (kuro) in his name and he remembers a dead Kouji.
Rumi's targeting Conan, triggers Haibara's BO radar, has an object from the crime, asks Haibara about Shinichi, and has an APTX victims list.
Wakita's most damning thing so far is that he... asked about the shogi piece? Somehow that makes him more obvious than the other two?

We all know that Wakasa Rumi is holding that shogi piece , so if you tie those two conclusions together , you can easily conclude that Wakasa is Asaka .

Yeah, the Asaka/Rumi thing is probably the most solid thing about this arc. Even before the shogi piece, it was the most likely conclusion.

[vaibhavgupte]

since kuroda has a direct memory of kohji.
he cant be tsutomu as he wasnt there at that time.

Mary also wasn't there at the time, though.

I dont think gosho will make rum so obvious.

But that's what people have been saying for the past few years about Kuroda and Rumi too.

Kuroda is a scary looking guy who literally has the word black (kuro) in his name and he remembers a dead Kouji.
Rumi's targeting Conan, triggers Haibara's BO radar, has an object from the crime, asks Haibara about Shinichi, and has an APTX victims list.
Wakita's most damning thing so far is that he... asked about the shogi piece? Somehow that makes him more obvious than the other two?

We all know that Wakasa Rumi is holding that shogi piece , so if you tie those two conclusions together , you can easily conclude that Wakasa is Asaka .

Yeah, the Asaka/Rumi thing is probably the most solid thing about this arc. Even before the shogi piece, it was the most likely conclusion.

The memory if mary and memory of rumi are exactly same.
in files1037 and files 1033 respectively. the two panels are exactly same .
but kuroda' s memory in file 987 is different as many have pointed earlier. there is no kohji blood and he basically is less beaten than in rumi and mary's memory.

now we know for sure mary has not been to crime scene.
this proves that rumi has also not been there when the struggle happened and reached crime scene later
when kohji was already dead.


Now kuroda's memory is different from those two.
if kuroda is tsutomu his memory should have been
like mary and not like kuroda . he cant a different
memory of kohji face if he wasnt there. no matter how much he investigates later.

now someone may claim from this kuroda is rum since he has a different memory but imo he is kohji father and
this memory is from earlier day from fight between them.
the memory of kuroda isnt kohji corpse but alive kohji

[Reader]

Pardon me, if I sound redundant or if this has been answered before:
Picture of Kohji's corpse lying on the floor is not uploaded on the site. So how do Rumi and Mary remember the same picture?

[vaibhavgupte]

Pardon me, if I sound redundant or if this has been answered before:
Picture of Kohji's corpse lying on the floor is not uploaded on the site. So how do Rumi and Mary remember the same picture?

In the news shown at that time kohji body with blood must have shown or atleast the secrtet agencies like M16
got the data from american police.
even conan knew before reading kohji case that
kohji was shogi player who died mysteriously in american hotel. so that much was told to general public.
and the photo could be from M16 help that mary saw

[Reader]

The photo of a corpse is not shown to the general public right? They are not even given to the news agencies if I am correct.
The crime scene photo must be with the crime investigation unit or the police in general. About Mary I can understand. The MI6 have their sources obviously.
But what bout Rumi? If she remembers the same picture, she has to be someone connected to the police.
Or if she is BO, then BO also has hold of the same picture of Kohji.

[vaibhavgupte]

The photo of a corpse is not shown to the general public right? They are not even given to the news agencies if I am correct.
The crime scene photo must be with the crime investigation unit or the police in general. About Mary I can understand. The MI6 have their sources obviously.
But what bout Rumi? If she remembers the same picture, she has to be someone connected to the police.
Or if she is BO, then BO also has hold of the same picture of Kohji.

rumi is kohji lover who reached the crime scene late.
proof that she was present there is that she has that shogi piece which kohji never parted.
and proof that she was late at crime scene is that her memory matches mary who wasnt present.
this means everything was over when she came at scene.

[Zerozaki4869]

For comparison.
Kuroda's memory lacks the pool of blood on the floor. (Which can't be explained even if Kuroda's memory had been a photograph and not the actual scene. ) It is indicative of that when Kuroda saw Kohji's body there had been no pool of blood under his face.

Also,
If one compares Kohji's cheekbones it is evident that Rumi observed Kohji from a higher elevation than Kuroda. As if Kuroda saw the body while kneeling and Rumi saw it while standing.

So yup, the memories are vastly different and indicates if anything a time_lapse.

Kuroda is a scary looking guy who literally has the word black (kuro) in his name and he remembers a dead Kouji.
Rumi's targeting Conan, triggers Haibara's BO radar, has an object from the crime, asks Haibara about Shinichi, and has an APTX victims list.

Well if one sticks to facts,
a) This scary man was cleared off the bat..Haibara gave him ok and formalised how he isn't Rum.(though fallaciously), so the scary red herring narrative doesn't make sense anymore, cause then he would have been the one not meeting Haibara and not Wakita.

b) regarding Haibara's trigger, there is something even more interesting.....

(Here on the left is the scenario during camping ground case but on right that is a similar scenario during the Detective's nocturne case. During that case Haibara was triggered and she realised that Subaru wasn't the trigger at it was coming from the back, hence it was Amuro. But Amuro never saw her directly wasn't even paying any attention on her. So this only proves the person closest to Haibara isn't necessarily the source of the trigger.)

(These two panels compare the difference of Haibara's reactions about when Subaru approached the culprit from the Ikkaku rocks case and when Rumi approached the culprit from camping ground case. Rumi didn't trigger Haibara but Subaru did trigger her. Now Haibara was already triggered once so the argument of unreliability also won't make any sense.)

Regarding the APTX list on Rumi's laptop, an APTX list can be screen-shotted, scanned, made into a pdf by the various spies infiltrating BO.
Biggest hint that Rumi is not BO is Haibara's cautionary words regarding Rumi. (Don't badmouth her.)
[Haibara isn't a fool. She in that case was making an argument that how Rumi could be Rum in her mind-space, so even if she thought Rumi is not Rum but the chance of Rumi being another BO agent would seem pretty high. Yet she is completely fine in letting Rumi around her, which means Haibara thinks Rumi is not BO.)

[Reader]

rumi is kohji lover who reached the crime scene late.
proof that she was present there is that she has that shogi piece which kohji never parted.
and proof that she was late at crime scene is that her memory matches mary who wasnt present.
this means everything was over when she came at scene.

Yeah this makes sense.

[blackmoon]

I actually just noticed something interesting... In the latest Manga chapter wakita seems to be holding his phone using his left hands which Is unusual because he usually holds his phone with his right hand meaning he's a right handed person. But all of a sudden he's left handed?
This means that someone was or is disguising as him but who? RUM... There's no way goshu would directly show us rums face. He alway puts a twist.

well that an interesting point you discovered... if what you spotted were true then..... it could implicate two different people disguised as the same person... now there's the "real" Wakita and another "fake" Wakita... who knows? Maybe one of the "fake" Wakita was actually Vermouth in disguise? As how she surprised us when she disguised herself as Tsutomu? And her disguise skill is so superb that even Mary an MI6 agent almost fall for it if it weren't for her slip of tongue?
You know what is really a wild card? That there never was a REAL RUM in the first place, and the RUM that we all know as the second in command was actually just Vermouth playing another rule in disguise all along.

[Kor]

rumi is kohji lover who reached the crime scene late.
proof that she was present there is that she has that shogi piece which kohji never parted.
and proof that she was late at crime scene is that her memory matches mary who wasnt present.
this means everything was over when she came at scene.

To me this is more like proof that Gosho's reusing assets and doesn't care whether they're consistent with the hints given.
As in, unless Rumi herself took a picture of what she was seeing in the scene and spreading it around, Mary shouldn't have an exact shot of Rumi's vision.

At this point, I'm not even sure we're supposed to make the distinction between what Kuroda remembers and what Rumi remembers because maybe Gosho just felt like changing it without caring whether or not it confuses us. Like, the pool of blood aside, the bruises between the pictures don't match with one another, and bruises don't disappear that quickly.

Plus, I'll be honest, Kouji looks to me deader in the Kuroda memory than in the Rumi memory. If the pics are meant to be different, then they have contradicting elements which make it difficult to determine which happened first. If Kuroda's happened first, then where did the blood stain on the left part of his lips go? Why did his bruise marks change? And how come his head position changed? If Rumi's happened first, then where did the pool of blood (which should have later dried and turned into a stain of blood) go?

[vaibhavgupte]

rumi is kohji lover who reached the crime scene late.
proof that she was present there is that she has that shogi piece which kohji never parted.
and proof that she was late at crime scene is that her memory matches mary who wasnt present.
this means everything was over when she came at scene.

To me this is more like proof that Gosho's reusing assets and doesn't care whether they're consistent with the hints given.
As in, unless Rumi herself took a picture of what she was seeing in the scene and spreading it around, Mary shouldn't have an exact shot of Rumi's vision.

At this point, I'm not even sure we're supposed to make the distinction between what Kuroda remembers and what Rumi remembers because maybe Gosho just felt like changing it without caring whether or not it confuses us. Like, the pool of blood aside, the bruises between the pictures don't match with one another, and bruises don't disappear that quickly.

Plus, I'll be honest, Kouji looks to me deader in the Kuroda memory than in the Rumi memory. If the pics are meant to be different, then they have contradicting elements which make it difficult to determine which happened first. If Kuroda's happened first, then where did the blood stain on the left part of his lips go? Why did his bruise marks change? And how come his head position changed? If Rumi's happened first, then where did the pool of blood (which should have later dried and turned into a stain of blood) go?

Firstly I am sure gosho didnt have
kuroda and rumi's memory different by mistake.
he wont do it for such important kohji mystery.

if agree that the two panels are different .
then yes, any common reader who isnt expert in
forensics would find it difficult to figure which happened
first.
so to sort that confusion gosho even gave us a reference
memory of a person not present on crime scene. ie mary.
her memory is definitely the last one since that is from
photos american police took which were passed on to M16.
there is no way a person not there woud have an earlier memory .

so if we conclude mary's memory is final one this means
rumi's memory is after kohji is dead.
till here probably me and zerozaki agree.

after this zerozaki says that kuroda is rum since he was
earlier at the scene.

but my opinio is that kuroda is kohji father and
that memory is not on murder day but some other day
when he fought with him lik akai fights with mom.
that kohji memory of kuroda acc to me is not corpse but alive kohji.

[Zerozaki4869]

I honestly think that missing the blood is not a matter of changing artstyle....(the bruises could be explained as botched up paint job, just like eyebrows, hair, facial contour of kohji.)

Even when Kuroda appeared he used to have a much rugged art style.....there are panels depicting Kuroda with short eyebrows, some depict him with very long eyebrows....
This sort of things happen all the time.....(I have seen none depicting Kuroda's eye issue on different eye, Rumi with a reflection on her left glass, Wakita without the eyepatch.)

(But for Kuroda's memory Gosho even used the shading on the floor to determine that where the body was lying....there is no pooling of blood.
It's very unlikely to be a mistake , it wasn't corrected even in the volume version.)

Regarding why Kuroda has the notion of bigger bruise marks......

Well if he was kneeling to check Kohji's body and Rumi was just standing still, I would say it will appear that Kuroda will have the memory of much bigger bruises, cause things often look bigger when we see them up close.....

[Max1996]

Regarding the APTX list on Rumi's laptop, an APTX list can be screen-shotted, scanned, made into a pdf by the various spies infiltrating BO.
Biggest hint that Rumi is not BO is Haibara's cautionary words regarding Rumi. (Don't badmouth her.)
[Haibara isn't a fool. She in that case was making an argument that how Rumi could be Rum in her mind-space, so even if she thought Rumi is not Rum but the chance of Rumi being another BO agent would seem pretty high. Yet she is completely fine in letting Rumi around her, which means Haibara thinks Rumi is not BO.)

What possible reasons are there for Haibara to trust Rumi?

[Kor]

Firstly I am sure gosho didnt have
kuroda and rumi's memory different by mistake.
he wont do it for such important kohji mystery.

In the beach flashback case, Gosho proved just how much he can mess up memories and flashbacks, which is why I actually don't have much faith in him getting these sort of things exactly right. Conan remembers from the case things that he wasn't around to witness or hear. In an ideal world, our mystery writer would be perfect, but Gosho isn't.

Here are some of my favorite "Gosho forgot Conan isn't around to witness it moments:

First let's start with something that was indicated a bit before the flashback in chapter 905:



Only problem is, there is no indication in the flashback that Ran was next to Shinichi and Masumi for this exchange. We simply don't see her near them when this happens. (in fact, the final appearance of child Ran is on page 9 in the final chapter of the flashback).

Next, we have the glimpses of memories that Conan had in chapter 969. Such as:

1)



But throughout the flashback, Mary's clearly wearing a shirt.



2)



Since Akai asks "who are you", it's logical to assume that Conan remembers when Akai asked him that. But in the corresponding scene in the actual flashback, it's actually like this:



3)

Shinichi wasn't seemingly next to the Akais when Shuukichi said what Conan remembers above.



Also I'd like to add to this that the dialogue isn't 100% the same between the two memories too





4)

As for Mary's shinigami comments, which were said at the start of 972, there's once again no indication that Shinichi's anywhere near them to hear it. Shinichi would need to be right in front of her in order to witness this, but he only first appears in page 10.





Lastly, in the beach flashback, Conan remembers at the end of chapter of 974:



But the only spot in the entire case where Shuukichi says "mary-kaa-san" happens in chapter 972, page 3, where, again, Shinichi isn't actually near the Akais to hear Shuukichi saying that.




Some of this inconsistent memory is between two cases that were written one after the other, and some of it is within the very same case. So if you were to ask me "can we completely trust Gosho to not screw up memories of characters and present them completely consistently", I'd say no, it's quite possible for Gosho to screw up these sort of things.