Slightly Biased Manga

It’s a real shame that I’m still running a volume behind on this series.  I still like it a lot, but I’m definitely a lot less enamored with it than I was initially, and I’m just sort of settling into a comfortable routine with things.

There’s one case that takes up most of the volume, and it takes up six chapters, which is sort of unusually long.  Unfortunately, it was hard to follow, and the logic at the end didn’t really make that much sense to me since too many elements were drawn in and it quite literally could have been anybody.  I mean, everything at the end made sense… but I don’t know, it just didn’t feel quite like a Detective Conan case.  Plus, Heiji showed up again, and I don’t really care for him that much.  It’s one thing to accept that Ran, Kogoro, and Conan are always at the scene of the crime, it’s another thing entirely to accept that someone from across the country happens to be there about half the time, too.

The plot of the case isn’t bad, though.  On a private liner, there are ten people who are let onto the boat.  Very quickly, a link between the one of the passengers and the ringleader of an old robbery/murder is established.  Just as quickly, he’s eliminated, and it becomes clear that someone else on board the boat was also in on the old robbery.  Heiji is taken out in spectacular fashion at one point.

The first case was a much simpler Detective Boys mystery that I wound up liking a lot.  While the kids are watching a movie in a theater scheduled to be torn down the next day, the new owner, who’d been bullying the staff, seems to hang himself in front of the projector in the middle of the movie.  Conan basically has to prove that the man didn’t commit suicide.

The third story starts out with a much-appreciated self-referential joke, then goes on to become a race against time for a man who’s chained to a toilet with a police officer.

It was an okay volume.  I’ve had better, and I definitely could have used… I don’t know, a few more references to the plot, or maybe even some Shinichi/Ran, but such is the nature of the series.

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.

Um.  Gosho Aoyama said something in his author notes in the last volume that made me think that Shinichi would once again be himself, at least for a little bit, in this volume.  I was very disappointed, though yes, he does “appear” in this volume.  You cheated, Gosho Aoyama.

Aside from that case, we get two other sort of long cases.  The one at the end of the last volume continues to this one and winds up being pretty long.  It gets pretty good as Conan, Professor Agasa, and the Detective Boys are sort of picked off one by one by whoever is crazily stalking the mansion looking for treasure.

The second major case in the volume is another of the type I like, which means that you sort of know who the killer is right away (in this case, you don’t see him commit the crime, but he’s fairly obvious about things) and the rest of the case is spent trying to pin it on him through a series of mistakes the person made.

The last chapter is a case with Heiji that carries over into the next volume.

I forgot Ai had joined up with the group of mini-detectives.  I was all excited about her finally appearing, too.  The first chapter is a wrap-up of what was going on in the stadium in the last volume, as per usual.

I always read the detective profile in the back and Gosho Aoyama’s author notes first, and Aoyama had mentioned a character reappearing in celebration of the 20th volume.  I was really, REALLY excited, but I apparently read his note wrong.  He says something about how he miscalculated.  Maybe Shinichi will show up next time.

Nothing terribly significant plot-wise happens here, not even any teases between Shinichi and Ran.  It’s just straight detective cases, which I still appreciate.  They’re still really fun to guess at too, even after all this time.

The highlight of the volume for me was yet another case where we saw the culprit clearly committed the crime right in the beginning, and the rest of the case was just trying to connect them to the death.  It was a really odd one involving what appeared to be suicide, and I kind of like these because I love seeing how the criminals get nailed in the end.

Not much else to report on, unfortunately, and if you’re not reading the series by now, there’s not much I can say to convince you.  I think this is definitely a case of… well, you have to really be into it in order to stomach 50 volumes of this sort of thing, and I am.

A quick update tonight.  I would have liked to do three entries, but I only have time to do a short one for Case Closed.  I’m a little behind, I just got the newest volume last week.

We get the wrapup of the case from last volume in one chapter, which wasn’t too spectacular, unfortunately. The case immediately afterwards is of the style where readers can kind of figure things out, but unfortunately the clues are all in the kanji characters in a mystery novel, so it’s not something I personally would have been able to solve.  The mystery is left in Japanese, so the characters puzzle it out, then explain to you what they just did, which is awkward, but handled well.

There’s a case which brings Heiji back in grand style by having him take the three main characters on a tour of Osaka.  It actually reads like a tour of Osaka for awhile, it takes a few pages for the mystery to kick in.  People are being stabbed through their wallet into their heart, and the characters are brought into the fray when one of the victims hits the hood of their car.  Shinichi and Heiji work together, and there’s actually some really nice scenes of them being buddy-buddy which I’m sure spawned hundreds of doujinshi in Japan.

The last story is a Detective Boys mystery, so I’m not pleased with that, but it’s a pretty good one so far.  A soccer stadium full of people is being held hostage by a man with a gun, and Conan, the Detective Boys (including Ai), and the police do their best to flush the terrorist out of the crowd, who turns out to be two men, actually.

I liked the Osaka case a lot, actually, though it’s not the kind of thing readers could easily figure out.   The character stuff in it was good.  The one with the Japanese wordplay was probably the best in the volume, but as I said, it was a bit lost on me because of the very Japanese-language riddle.

So yes, more Detective Conan for anyone who’s plugging away at it like I am.  I still like it, and that’s good enough for me.

Speak of the devil.  Last volume I was wondering when Ai Haibara joined up with the story, and I got my question answered.  How about that.

First, we get the end of the famous movie star case.  It’s kind of obvious who the culprit was based on the info from last volume, but the trick is to figure out how.  The one thing about this series is that sometimes it can be too tricky.  In this case, most people likely wouldn’t be able to figure out what had happened since it involves… a separate room and some rather meticulous planning out of left field.  But maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe it’s just me who can’t infer stuff like that.

The second case was really sweet.  I mean, it involved someone nearly getting roasted alive in a house, but the side story was about a woman who was supposedly Shinichi’s first love.  Of course she and Ran go through all sorts of stuff, and of course Conan doesn’t take any of this interaction well.  But it’s still just too cute.  I don’t know why I like Shinichi/Ran so much, I just do, and I’m a sucker for any case like this that’s got something to do with that.

Next!  Ai!  She’s introduced as kind of a stuck-up transfer student.  There’s a detective boys case which involves some counterfeiters and possibly the black organization, and a kidnapping… which is slightly more sinister than usual for the detective boys, but the last one was pretty dark too, so maybe they’re moving in that direction.  Then we get… some insight into what’s going on with the black organization and who Ai is, but of course this leads to nothing substantial except a new character.  We’ll see how much I like her as the series goes on.  Cause hey!  We’ve got like forty more volumes before we catch up with the Japanese version, so why not.

Here’s the end of the murder-which-looked-like-a-suicide case from last volume that involved the pottery studio.  This one was much less complex than usual, and the killer this time had a surprisingly good reason for doing what he did.

In the next case, we learn that you don’t get stung by jellyfish when you swim in Japan, you get bit by poisonous sea snakes which will kill you. Of course, apparently these don’t swim on beaches, and they don’t actually bite you, you have to plunge their fangs into someone hand in order to kill them.  This was really bizarre, but we get some Eri and Kogoro interaction for the first time, which was quite nice.  Kogoro can be a nice guy when he tries.  If you don’t want to see Eri-Kogoro relationship stuff, you may want to give this volume a pass, as nothing else vaguely plot-related happens.

There’s a case that lasts literally one chapter which was amazing in its simplicity.  I liked it a lot.  If it had been any longer, it may have turned into a Detective Boys case, and we wouldn’t have wanted that.  As it was, the time frame was something insane like ten minutes.  This format worked out really well, I hope he does some more one-chapter mysteries soon.

The next case involves clocks and an old gang.  The clocks are pretty awesome, and are all set off to go off at the same time to show the location of a gift for the late master’s relation.  He was also some sort of really bizarre animal lover, with animals covering ALL of his possessions.  It was also pretty awesome, and there was no murder.  Really, this volume mostly took a break from murders except for the case that carried over from last volume and the case that starts in the last chapter.  I liked that about it.  Conan in his inner tube on the front cover doesn’t lie about the relaxing break you get when you read this one.

The last chapter is the type of case where it’s obvious who the suspect is, and you have to figure out how he committed the crime to frame someone else.  We only get one chapter, so there aren’t really enough details to figure out much of anything yet.

Ai Haibara hasn’t appeared yet.  I thought she came in before volume 20… but maybe it’s volume 20 exactly.  We could use some more shaking up plot-wise, as much as I like the mysteries.

Most of this volume is a really awesome Kaito Kid case that doesn’t involve any murder at all.  It was wonderful, and the Kaito Kid is finally someone who will match wits with Conan in Lupin III style (but with less sex, regrettably).  I actually had to read the first volume of Magic Kaito after I finished this to make sure I understood the jokes, the best joke being that Aoyama’s main characters look too much the damn same.  That was really the only joke I needed to understand.

Anyway.  The murder case from the last volume winds up being okay, mostly about revenge and a failed plot to do something else, the suspect you wouldn’t… uh, suspect, stuff like that.  Really the coolest things about it were the two bodies, one that was impaled on the spikes of an iron fence, and one that was found at the bottom of a pond when it was drained (with rocks in his pockets, and apparently the police figured it was a suicide.  huh?).

The Kaito Kid case though!  No murder at all!  Sonoko’s family has a priceless pearl they want to put on display, but the Kaito Kid wants to steal it.  Conan figures out a cryptic note and meets the Kid face-to-face to speak to.  The kid calls all detectives critics as he explodes and glides off into the night.  Later, he makes a second attempt aboard a ship during a party that Sonoko’s mom throws.  He disguises himself as someone priceless and manages to steal the pearl, but loses it in a showdown with Shinichi.   He gets away once again though, and manages to be a suitably showy and grandiose villain that I want to see again and again and again.  And I’m sure I will over the course of the next fifty or so volumes.  The best thing about this case though was when Ran thought she saw Shinichi and he totally snubbed her.  She was really worried about that throughout the course of the long case.  At the end, we realize that the Shinichi she saw was actually Kuroba, walking with his “girlfriend,” and they’re both dead ringers for Shinichi and Ran.  Hahaha!

The last chapter involves another apparent suicide, this time committed at the pottery studio of a famous master and his apprentices.  More on that next volume!

The snowbound murder case with teachers from last volume wraps up.  Ran solves it this time, not asleep, with Conan coaching her from the next room.  She doesn’t wind up liking the verdict though, so the case ends with her weeping into Conan.  Aww.

The next case is a really weird one, and also a Detective Boys case, which also means it kind of sucks.  Members of popular band Two-Mix are kidnapped, and the kidnappers tell the police they will only release the pair if the Detective Boys deliver a certain item to them.  Conan winds up outsmarting them, but of course the other three botch things up and there winds up being some gunfire and everyone is locked in a room that is on fire… you know how that stuff goes.  We also get reminded what an awful singer Shinichi is, and there’s some karaoke at the end.  No murder though (not directly, anyway), so hooray for that.

The next case involves mahjong and murder.  Ran is some sort of gifted mahjong player, but hates that Kogoro takes Conan to the parlors to bet (of course, Conan is helping Kogoro to win, but that’s not so obvious).  The murder is a locked-room case, has three suspects, and involves chemicals and personal habits.  I liked this case quite a bit, it was pretty gimmicky.

The last chapter is the very beginning of a case which carries over into the next volume and involves a guy falling onto a spiked fence and also a mansion.  We’ll see how that goes.

I caught myself up on Case Closed while my internet was down.  Of course, I got the new volume on Saturday, so I’ve got that still, but here’s one that can be stricken from the backlog list.  Which is great, because I love Detective Conan.

Granted, it’s repetitive.  The first case is a pretty awesome one where a magician gets killed, and many magic tricks are discussed and performed to try and decide how the murder was committed.  It was set up to be a suicide, which makes it that much more interesting.  Once again, Ran almost figures out Conan’s disguise, and she has him pretty good this time… but he’s saved at the last minute by his mom, who takes him on a trip to a friend’s house to try and help figure out whether the friend’s uncle is the real person or someone who’s shown up to claim an inheritance.  It quickly turns into a murder case, and there’s someone behind the scenes solving things for Shinichi as well.  Hooray for a bunch of regular characters appearing!

The last case in the volume, which continues on into 15, is about Ran and Sonoko taking Conan with them and winding up in a cabin with some of their old teachers… and a dead body.  After reading a bunch of these in a row, I almost wish less of them involve murder, but I still get a kick out of the elaborate solutions every time.

The one involving Shinichi’s mom and the inheritance was the main case and stretches over many chapters in this volume.  It involves murder, mistaken identity, international espionage, and some trickery from beyond the grave, as well as cool characters that don’t appear very often.  What more could you ask for?