The boss, starting to die after Conan kicked the anti-detective poison filled dart back at him, triggers the self-destruct sequence for the conspicuous lair of evil. Then he pulls a gun from a secret compartment, and shoots at Conan. Ran, who followed Conan to the lair and beat up a lot of the boss's henchmen, cries out, "Shin'ichi!!!" and throws herself in front of Conan.
The bullet gets closer as Conan notes that Ran figured out his real identity, yet again, and curses that he can't do anything to save her so that he can confess his true feelings to her.
Then Haibara jumps in front of Ran, "I won't let what happened to Akemi happen to this woman!!!!" The bullet gets closer as Conan curses that he's failed to protect Haibara.
Then Vermouth jumps in front of Haibara, "Yeah, I've killed several people after Angel foolishly saved me when I was disguised as a serial killer, but seeing your true love and altruism has finally made my heart grow two sizes bigger, so to repent for my sins I'll sacrifice myself for the sake of another!!!!!!!!"
Unfortunately, the gun was a high powered rifle and the bullet was designed to pierce armor, so the bullet passes though all four of them.
Before he finally succumbs to the poison, the boss spits, "I told you altruism was stupid…. Vermouth… Sherry… Ghrkkkk…"
Cut to a few hours later. The survivors of the assault on the lair wonder if the kids are alright. Satou and Takagi embrace, happy they both survived several close calls, and start to kiss. Then, the lair's self destruct sequence triggers the hidden atomic bomb and the resulting flash of radiation and heat vaporizes the couple mid embrace.
A mushroom cloud rises once more over Japan.
An instrumental version of "Nanatsu no Ko" starts to play as the camera pans skyward. "The End?" (… "?"? ... !?!?)
* * *
Episode 501… Heizou Hattori and Yuusaku Kudou face off to find out once and for all who is the best detective in the world… After 22 minutes of manly expressions of confidence and derision, and commercials, and 2 minutes of bitterly fought deduction and analysis, as they were both about to drop from the migraines they'd given each other, a child's voice is heard.
"No, you're both wrong… the housekeeper's third cousin did it!"
Episode 502… It turns out that a blast door opened under the boss's central command room and the near dead group fell into the lair's secret bomb shelter. Conan's wound only looked fatal. While the bullet appeared to pass through his head, it actually just skimmed the top of his skull, leaving his brain mostly intact. The Kurozukume high-tech medical robots found him and replaced the damaged part of his brain with cybernetic implants.
While recuperating in the shelter's medical suspension tank, his genes were altered, and his brain's cyber implants were fed new information, making him aware of a new, even greater threat to the world. Criminals were once taken to the lair and genetically altered, given the power to summon up enormous amounts of energy, and, after the appropriate amount of straining and grunting, they could murder people by merely pointing their middle fingers them. They were also given the ability to perform incredible feats of martial arts. The computers in the lair of evil mistook Conan for one of the criminals, and gave him similar powers.
Alas, when he regained consciousness, he found that his harem was dead, Ran, Haibara, and Vermouth all. But Conan himself was now better, and more marketable in the U.S., than ever, with no more of that stupid romance crap weighing down the series. With merely the utterance of the word "foshizzle" he can turn himself from the form of a boy to the form of a long haired martial artist with chiseled muscles. His unerring criminal detection sense allows him to dispense with the childish puzzle solving and boring analysis and immediately hunt down the genetically altered criminals to punish them after the appropriate amount of inspiring, confident, and manly talk and incredible and vicious fight scenes.
Strangely, the show drops out of the top ratings in Japan, and is cancelled after 52 more episodes. But, it becomes a big hit among downloaders in the U.S.. Webmasters of anime fan sites were finally able to figure out that the series was never called "Detective Boy Conan". Websites that once oh so logically proclaimed that Detective Conan lasted from 1996, when the anime started in Japan, to 2004, when Adult Swim said it wouldn't air new episodes, now proclaimed that it lasted from 2007-2008, with the boring crap before not really being worth noting.
Clearly intended for an older audience, the new episodes used much stronger language. In the early kiddy seasons, you'd hear Conan use the weak expletive "kuso" (correctly translated, when anyone bothered, as "darn"), in the last season he'd use the very strong and very adult expletive "kuso" (correctly translated in the popular fansub as "f***").
People gaped in awe at the 12 episode arc where Conan learns to upgrade his "middle finger of death" to the "two fingered salute of doom" in order to overcome the psychic wielder of a gigantic floating geodesic sphere, overcoming such hardship that he nearly doubted himself. ("Nearly"! "Actually" would have been ghey and emo…)
People puzzled about the frames of animation that flashed symbols used by various ideologies. Was that swastika in 512 a sign that Conan's quest was ultimately fascist? Was that sickle and hammer in episode 530 homage to Buckminster Fuller's politics?
The show was re-licensed in the U.S., and massive controversy kept numerous animation enthusiast forums flooded with speculation and demands… Would they pay off trademark holders and finally call it "Detective Conan"? Would they keep the "middle finger of death", or digipaint it so that it became the "index finger of death"? Would the henshin triggering magic word "foshizzle" spark a lawsuit? Would it matter if they changed "foshizzle" to something else, since after episode 504 Conan never bothers to change back to his kiddy form? Could the mass murder at the soccer stadium in episode 510, were the soccer fans' heads were all made to explode, showing their brains flying out and their empty skulls after, even be shown on Adult Swim? Could the German conglomerate that ultimately held the U.S. license legally allow the showing of the swastika in episode 512?
After great success and 14 versions of home video re-releases, from the first "collector's edition" to the final "diamond encrusted depleted uranium edition" -- literally, diamond studs embedded in a depleted uranium display case, the marketing hook being, "Only real men won't fear the low levels of radiation this set emits!!!" -- sales finally slowed, though a few who once proclaimed a release of 400 episodes spread out over 10,16,20+ years was "too expensive" happily paid the 50,000 dollars for the kewl set of 52 awesome episodes.
As the sales slowed, more and more critics of the final season spoke up, and what were once "intellectually riveting unexplained plot threads" became "stupid plot holes", "amazing and surprising twists" became "ridiculous plot contrivances", "logical and foreshadowed plot advancement" became "predictable plot advancement". References to geodesic spheres, moebius strips and impossible stairways went from "cool and smart" to "lame and geeky", and all the "meaningful if hard to grasp symbolism" became "empty and pretentious arts***".
The 12 episode "Buckyball" arc that everyone once loved was called a long string of episodes where nothing happened until the last episode of the arc, about which it was also said that nothing really happened except trash talking until the very last minute. The whole arc was called more boring than the 12 weakest episodes of the first 500. This was all stated in an abstract yet objective manner, disagreement merely proving one's poor taste and inferior intellect.
Aoyama was approached to renew the series as interest waned, hopes were high that new episodes would spark new interest and make more money. Fortunately, World War Three started that year (or the Omicronians arrived to exact revenge for Aoyama killing off their favorite character in the series) and everyone on the planet was killed. The F****** End!
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