Jd- wrote:I'm doubling-down on the guys helping Amuro not being Black Org members. I just can't see these guys being fully-informed Black Org members of any sort, as stated ages ago. Their guns seem like police issue revolvers, whereas most of the Black Organization guns that I can recall off-hand are more like Brownings and generic 9mms. We've seen police in Conan and Jodie both use revolvers so far (and Vermouth after she was faking Araide as well), so my instinct would be that these guys are part of some sort of law enforcement or security or something like that; secret police or fellow PIs seem the most likely off-hand.
As for everything involving the awards show and the broadcast: I feel like Gosho has placed a lot of unnecessary attention on this. The tape delay trick would have been practical, realistic, and wouldn't have involved so much theater. We wouldn't have had to introduce yet another disguise for Yukiko as Yuusaku at the ceremony nor we would have had to introduce another red herring on top of the several that are already at play.
I was saying before how it'd be interesting for Gosho to actually use a time discrepancy between "now" (Okiya/Amuro) and "then" (Ran watching the awards at home). The thing is, though: It's unnecessarily deceptive in a lot of ways, chiefly due to it serving primarily as a way to fool the reader instead of serving as a real addition to the story being told. Showing Ran's perspective is meant to show, for whatever reason Gosho decides, that it's "LIVE", so using Ran's perspective to fool only the reader is not something that would come off as particularly clever, at least to me. It will take one hell of a twist to make this something practical and interesting, and it'd revolve around the news flash if so.
To me, it seems most likely that Yukiko is Yuusaku at the awards show, Yuusaku is Okiya in the house, and Conan's being Conan behind the scenes. My guess is that Conan's secondary goal with regard to helping see through the Okiya/Akai plot is to protect him, his friends, and his family. I have a feeling the explanation is going to be a litttle bit flimsy when everything is over and done with (which has happened a few times with Yukiko--in fact, almost all of her appearances have ended this way, now that I think about it). Conan's intention appears to be to deceive Amuro into thinking that Okiya is just a normal guy and he can't be Akai nor can he be Yuusaku, because Yuusaku is on TV behind them. I'm really hoping there's a lot more to this, because that is just not a very compelling answer to what's going on outside of that house. Also figure in that there are hidden cameras everywhere and obviously something is up.
I thought the tape delay trick would work fine and would explain the reporters outside as well without Amuro being any the wiser: Okiya could just be a disguise that Yuusaku uses when he's in Japan and wants some peace and quiet. It explains why he's in the house and explains why the identity is fake if Amuro looks into it too much. It's still a bit flimsy as well, since Amuro could check on Yuusaku's whereabouts against Yuusaku's at a given time (even though Okiya has kept an extremely low profile). Amuro would think he was mistaken about Okiya being Akai's alter-ego while he was in hiding and the ruse would be a success. The cameras could be written off as security measures of a very famous guy in need of home security, etc. However...
...Akai has now re-appeared in public (Gosho, don't forget Kir, please), completely confirming that he's still alive (Gosho: Kir!). So, what is it we're meant to think Amuro is to conclude here? He was right about Akai being alive, check. Akai has been hiding out somewhere, check. Something fishy is clearly going on, check. Is the plan to get him to just give up on the Okiya angle and go back to square one? That seems to be the most obvious, but not necessarily correct, answer at this point. (KIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!)
All in all, there's not really much else that can apply to this situation. There's no way Conan could have just taped the awards show and run it in the background because there's no way to know if Amuro had seen it or heard about it. All of this charade with Okiya and Yuusaku and Yukiko is ultimately very unnecessary when you think about none of it would ever be necessary if Akai had just used a different house. Yes, I know the prevailing opinion is that he wanted to keep an eye on Haibara and it'd be good for him to have a (plot-relevant) place to stay without any questions being asked, but that's all for the sake of storytelling convenience and not really applicable to the wider question of just working a bit harder and not endangering literally everyone by staying in that house as opposed to a couple of houses down.
With concern to the rest: Naturally, Akai won't kill the guys chasing them (unintentionally or otherwise) and is looking to disable their cars, not send them flying over the cliff (I'll definitely be amused if he has an entire sniper rifle ready in the backseat with him).
I'm also inclined to think they're not Org. They are aware of what Akai looks like, so either Amuro told them he was hunting for some guy and showed him a photo or they know Akai already. If they know Akai already, I'm assuming they're not just some random detectives Amuro hired, but are actually intelligence agency members of some kind. My question is why they're willing to chase after FBI agents to use as a lure to get to Akai. Why do they want Akai out in the open like this? And that sort of visual confirmation during a high-speed chase bothers me on some level- unless they were notably familiar with his appearance, Amuro wouldn't necessarily trust them. Do they think he went AWOL? Are they aware he is supposed to be dead?
If Amuro isn't Org, which is looking more and more likely from my perspective, then this whole mess and some of the mess on the Bell Tree train is due to pure lack of communication and how Amuro's probably trying to maintain his cover as best he can compared to Kir (who's on thin ice) and Akai (who got his cover blown by Camel). Of course, I never understood why Conan did that in public, asking Amuro like that about the "are you an enemy of bad guys?" thing. There were cops there. There was the FBI. If he's really a deep-cover agent and, with his specialty in psychological tricks and his constant use of ironic process theory, he wouldn't want anyone to know that he was a deep-cover agent. Then they wouldn't act like he was an Organization member, they'd start treating him like his actual allegiance, which is downright dangerous for him as a deep-cover agent. Especially considering how Camel has problems accidentally revealing things when informed of the situation fully and how Conan's so sloppy lately and Amuro's been observing that...
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