Slightly Biased Manga

I received the next volume in the mail before I realized I still hadn’t read this one. That’s a shame, because I still really like this series. One thing I always neglect to mention but I appreciate every volume are the little bits at the end. Gosho Aoyama draws himself dying in a different way in his author talks in the back of every volume (this time it’s death by shark attack) and he also takes the time to profile a famous fictional detective, and the people he covers really do run the gamut, Colombo being my favorite so far. I also really like the spine illustrations. Conan’s head appears on every volume, and at first he was just making random faces, but after 10 or so volumes they’ve formed sequential action sequences of him getting slapped around, taking notice of things, etc. Not as cool as the Dragonball spine, but notable.

The middle case was the most notable in this volume. The criminals take a page from an unpublished and unfinished Booker Kudo story that got stolen years ago, so Conan has to stay one step ahead of them based on his faulty memory of the story. Of course his parents play parts as well. I was a little disappointed when I correctly guessed one character was his mother, but otherwise I was quite pleased with the story. It’s one of those mysteries where you can’t quite figure out how things are possible since… you don’t hear about things like a metal latch until Conan goes through the explanation at the end, but I could pretty well see what was going on through the whole thing, even if I couldn’t quite explain it.

The first case was okay, but I’d read the volume before so long ago that I had a hard time remembering the introduction chapter and had to put the pieces together while reading through it. I liked the use of the culprit’s fear of heights, though.

Was there a last case? Yes! I also liked it. A killer targets Sabrina and a red herring makes things a little more exciting and confusing. The killer goes after girls with bleached hair, and lots of things wind up happening to Sabrina before all is said and done.