Discussion Thread: Detective Conan Files 913-917

[alphajjc]

Spoiler:

Okay that last image... this is kind of creepy. One of these two is Rum definitely.

[Wakarimashita]

Spoiler:

If that's the case it will be the new character. Can't see Gosho making an old and recurrent character evil all of a sudden. Or he'll end up being from the FBI/CIA/Interpol/Secret Police etc.

[alphajjc]

Spoiler:

If that's the case it will be the new character. Can't see Gosho making an old and recurrent character evil all of a sudden. Or he'll end up being from the FBI/CIA/Interpol/Secret Police etc.

Spoiler:

But we still need to figure out what the hell is Yamato up to and what is with all of his suspicious behavior? Eespecially that "boss of an organization" comment he made to Conan?

[unclesporkums]

[alphajjc]

Lol I remember I first thought Camel the first time we met him was Vermouth in disguise with all the creepy smiles sand things of that sort. Gosho trolled us big time with that one.

[Wakarimashita]

Spoiler:

If that's the case it will be the new character. Can't see Gosho making an old and recurrent character evil all of a sudden. Or he'll end up being from the FBI/CIA/Interpol/Secret Police etc.

Spoiler:

But we still need to figure out what the hell is Yamato up to and what is with all of his suspicious behavior? Eespecially that "boss of an organization" comment he made to Conan?

I bet it will be linked to the case, not the overall story.

[k11chi]

Spoiler:

Okay that last image... this is kind of creepy. One of these two is Rum definitely.

That's kind of weird to see Yamato act like that now that I take a closer look at this, and I wonder who exactly saw him there?

[MeiTanteixX]

I bet it's the culprit! I have this strong feeling from all that's happening that the culprit is kan-chan's supposedly dead childhood friend!!! Takeda did indeed shoot him, but he survived and had his death report faked somehow. He killed takeda for his long awaited revenge and has a grudge against the whole former takeda division(including Kansuke) for trying to kill him that time. Kansuke started to get suspicions about his childhood friends supposed death and wanted to investigate this personal matter alone! Meanwhile, his childhood friend was planning to...

Spoiler:

...to frame kansuke for all the murders so he dressed up in the manner in which he would be identified as kansuke and made sure the police got a fake testimony! He killed kano, the moment after kano realised the childhood friend was alive(after reading the the case files from 9 yrs ago). The targets he meant when sending a text message for the police to see ("Only three woodpeckers left") was Akiyama(who died later in the chapter), Saegusa(who's left), and then lastly, his scapegoat...his childhood friend Yamato kansuke, who's gonna take the blame for the murders to the grave(staged suicide). But following the DC cliché, yamato is gonna confront him with the resolution of his investigations (after saegusa is killed) first and then conan will join in the talk and save kansuke, who fails to convince his friend to surrender.

[unclesporkums]

That's possible!

[k11chi]

Maybe. I don't know if Gosho would make someone we don't know about much the culprit though. If he's alive, then I think it's more likely that he's another culprit kind of like in the Red Woman case.

[alphajjc]

That's possible!

Spoiler:

At this point that has to be one of the scenarios.....if Gosho is not making a well known supporting character for a decade and a half(Yamato and Komei) end up randomly being perpetrators. True there is still the one officer left whose name I forget at the moment(not Koruda) but the more huskier guy that could be the culprit but my gut just tells me its not him. And not just because he was not there wehn the car with the rope attached to the victim's neck pulled him off the cliff.... because we have seen dozens of cases where the killer was not there and he is the culprit.

I just got a feeling its not him...and if not Yamato or Komei(if they aren't gonna change) would it really be Koruda? This is one of the hardest cases in a long time.

[MoonRaven]

This case is interesting indeed. I can't wait for the next chapter. I hope Gosho won't take a break again after that though...

[Wakarimashita]

This case is interesting indeed. I can't wait for the next chapter. I hope Gosho won't take a break again after that though...

Those two breaks are double isssue breaks. That means the magazine isn't published and all authors are automatically on break.

[Incomplete-tantei]

Anyone got the soliloquy for file 915?

[doitsu]

Had this whole thing written out properly and then my laptop battery died. SIGH. Didn't manage to be quite as eloquent second time round:

Spoiler:

Stuff is really hitting the fan in this case. I had Akiyama down as the culprit much like several others here but apparently not.

I'm not completely buying into the Yamato childhood friend scenario at all. Uehara explicitly stated that Takeda killed all Yamato's childhood friend and the two bank robbers. He was shot dead 9 years ago and having him somehow come back from the dead and avenge all this seems just too far-fetched. Also - how old was Akiyama when he joined the police? When the case from 9 years ago occured, he wasn't older than 17. Hard to be believe he was already in Takeda's squad back then. It's mentioned that Yamato instructed him but surely he was attending school aged 17 - or police school at best. Mind, there's a chance that Takeda was just killed to throw everyone else off the track; cruel but within the realms of a pretty cruel case to begin with. However, I do agree that Yamato's bizarre behaviour certainly feels like a case-related red herring serving the overall plot rather than anything else. Also, the fact that none of the victims' families other than an 80 year old grandmother seem to be around anymore, it makes it very difficult to presume that there's another "off-screen" party involved in the vein of the "Akai onna no sengeku" (Red Woman) case. Not impossible, but improbable - mainly because it feels like both the sketchy Takeda cases are motive or neither of them rather than just one of the two cases.

Which leaves us with the two remaining woodpeckers, Saegusa and Yamato, as well as Kuroda. So realistically just Saegusa and Kuroda. (Bless Morofushi for riling up Yamato so much that he'd just wander off on his own - if there isn't an explicit reason behind that, I'll be very surprised.)
Neither Saegusa nor Kuroda have alibis for the first two murders and both could've theoretically been responsible for the third. We don't quite know just how much earlier than the rest Saegusa arrived at the bank robber hideout and we don't know how much after Akiyama left the police HQ Kuroda returned. The culprit certainly wanted Akiyama to get dragged down the cliff infront of everyone but how he did it is difficult to gauge just now. Question is - was the car's engine on? Doesn't look like it from the panels. So there had to be some sort of a trick behind the set-up. And the culprit quite certainly had to be there.
We don't know anything about Saegusa's past or possible motives, so he's a complete wildcard, though he was certainly around for all the events in the Takeda squad as he's 2 years older than Yamato. He was the first to discover Akiyama though - which is interesting.
As for Kuroda - the biggest question mark is his coma. When did his accident occur, how did it occur and how does it fit into the timeline of the two sketchy Takeda cases? Kuroda seems to have become 1st chief just recently and according to Uehara he still has minor memory losses, which indicates that he probably woke up not too long ago - the question here is whether it was before or after Takeda shot the bank robbers. If he was comatose for 10 years, it's reasonable to assume that Kuroda's accident occured before Takeda shot Yamato's childhood friend.
There's a good chance that Kuroda is Rum. Another (slightly more off-beat) theory is that he was the former head of the woodpecker gang or had some relation to them and got thrown under the bus (maybe quite literally) by the Takeda squad and is taking them out one by one now. Uehara said that apparently he looks like a different person now. I'd usually throw in a name change and so forth but that is unlikely considering his position in the police. Also Takeda told his killer that "he'll ruin his entire life" - which would be fairly rich if he had already ruined Kuroda's life previously by sending him into a 10 year coma, causing a prosthetic eye and burn marks. For that particular reason I would remove Kuroda from the suspect list - and going by all my (fairly lightweight) reasoning I have no other choice than to go for Saegusa. Which is unfortunate cause there is no real evidence supporting or denying that presumption. Yet.

Anyways, the whole case has been incredibly fast-paced, leads are erratic and particularly the timelines are pretty obscure. If they happen to acquire Akiyama's phone, that might be further evidence and I'm also hoping for some more background details on the (IMO) two remaining suspects and a specification of the timelines. Cause up until now it's all still fairly murky. This entire case makes the kudzu powder/flour onsen murder from the last case look like child's play to solve.

Also, there's obviously going to be a fairly obvious relation to the entire woodpecker strategy when it comes to the solution of all this. I've thought about matching the historical figures to the policer officers but that hasn't really lead me anywhere. I'm stuck.


As for how this entire case is gonna be handled on tv - really valid point to bring up. I see substantial amounts of the case not making 6pm TV. At a guess they'll just show Akiyama getting dragged down by the car and have him plunge to death. Can't see them showing a severed head next to a burned body either. The last decapitation in Conan was Torakura's suicide by guillotine in 712-715 and the anime has already dodged that one fairly thoroughly. The murder of Takeda is pretty brutal to begin with but Akiyama's mid-air decapitation is genuinely one of the more gruesome "on-screen" scenes in Conan history. Really struggling to remember something rivalling cruel murder stakes right off the bat - still can't quite believe Aoyama actually went there.

In a nutshell, where's Chekhov?