Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Doing All Right

「事件に大きいも小さいも無い」 
『踊る大捜査線』

"There are no major or minor cases."
"Bayside Shakedown"

How I want to see the latest Detective Conan film! Afraid of spoilers, I've only seen little bits of people writing about The Darkest Nightmare, but it's apparently an awesome film, even if light on the mystery-side of things. Guess I'll wait for the home-video release..

April is traditionally the most important month in Detective Conan's yearly schedule. It's when the latest film is released (just in time for Golden Week), which is also accompanied with the release of the latest volume. In my review of the previous volume, I lamented how utterly boring it was, as it only featured two complete stories, which weren't that great anyway. Detective Conan 89, released last month, on the other hand is one of the best volumes in recent years, despite not featuring a high profile story! It starts with the final chapter of The Girl Band Murder Case, which started in the previous volume. A member of an amateur girl band is murdered inside a rented studio, but 'luckily', Ran, Sonoko and Masumi were also at the rental studio complex to rehearse for their own girl band. The problem revolves around a security camera that was partially blocked off and what the other band members did as they went in and outside the studio. This is a very decently constructed mystery story, with a fairly clever way of getting rid of the murder weapon. At the core, this is a very by-the-numbers story, with three suspects, a limited setting and a gimmick trick, but the trick is both simple, yet smart and I'd say this is a fantastic example of how to do a good short story.

And the same holds for Inconsistent Testimonies. During Dr. Agasa's Christmas shopping for the kids, a chef of a restaurant in a department store is stabbed. The attempted murderer runs down the staircase, and Conan quickly gives orders to the Detective Boys, who are all on different floors, to keep an eye out for the person. In the end, three persons trying to quickly leave the department store are detained, but the Detective Boys all make conflicting testimonies about the person they saw fleeing through the staircase. The gimmick of inconsistent testimonies is something that has been done earlier in the series, but it was not done as elegantly as in this story. Like many of the short stories, this story revolves around a gimmick, but the gimmick is transformed and rearranged three times, to result in the three different testimonies. A lesser writer might've stuck with the initial gimmick, but Aoyama cleverly changes this in a much more complex story, without making it feel cheap. Once again, a prime example of a good short story.

The title of The Suspect Is An Alien tells it all. Mouri Kogorou is hired to find out the truth about an UFO a high school student saw flying some time ago, and during the investigation, the gang stumble upon Detective Chiba, who is investigating a murder apparently commited by an alien. The editor of a magazine on extraterrestials was choked to death and his body left on (at the time still) wet concrete. A UFO maniac was found lying next to the dead body in the concrete, who claims an alien killed the other man. The man is obviously regarded a suspect, but the footsteps left in the concrete show that it was unlikely he could've commited the murder, and gotten rid of the murder weapon. As an impossible crime story, this one is okay. It is mostly built around some trivia knowledge, which is something I seldom like in detective stories (if not properly hinted at), but there are some other features about the impossible situation that are actually quite neat. And there's a running gag about Chiba suddenly losing weight A LOT which is hilarious.

In Search For The Lost Marriage Registration Form!, Yumi of the Traffic Department has mislaid a rather important document: a marriage registration form already signed by her boyfriend (Yumi: "Ex-boyfriend!"), who is a celebrated shougi player. The caretaker of her apartment building (and hardcore shougi fan) has found the document, but refuses to return it to Yumi, unless she solves his riddle and proves she is actualy worthy of marrying the shougi master. Luckily for Yumi, she's accompanied by Detective Satou, the Detective Boys and Conan. Usually, I'm not a fan of code cracking stories, and the way the old geezer messes around with people's private lives is more than a little bit disturbing, but I thought the code was surprisingly fun, though that was probably because it's connected to some random trivia I do happen to have learned recently. If not, it's kinda random, and overall, this is the weakest story of the volume by far. The volume ends with the first chapter of The Message Cut Out With Scissors, which will apparently reveal a bit about the history of the toxin that shrunk Conan to his current size.

Detective Conan 89 was all in all a huge improvement over the previous volume. It might not have big, long stories, but it shows that good short stories are still good and this volume has a good collection of those. With volume 90 appearing in the summer, we'll finally have reached that last stretch before the series'll hit the 100s. Perhaps I should start working on my big Conan posts on volume 80-89 soon.

Original Japanese title(s): 青山剛昌『名探偵コナン』第89巻

12 comments :

  1. do you still plan not to watch the Sakurako anime ? since she's featured at the end of the volume..

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    1. To be honest, I don't think I've ever decided to watch/read something because of the encyclopedia entries in the manga.

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  2. I may be the last one to say this, but after reading this volume, I began to think how sometimes idea of authors in their story are similar, even if they may not be related.
    Other than that, I agree that this is a great volume minus the trivial knowledge.

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    1. Well, detective fiction is often repeating old ideas. But it's the way the device is dressed/utilized that makes a story memorable.

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    2. Speaking of ideas, strictly in Conan, which story idea leaves the biggest impression in your mind so far?

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    3. Personally, I love Conan's sociolinguistics stories a lot (not Japanese wordplay, but themes like dialects), as they are rare enough in mystery land. I think the concepts, and execution of Aoyama's long-game stories are also good (Raiha Pass, and the Halloween dress-up party one). The /basic/ murders aren't that big, but Aoyama manages to really make a _story_ out of it all.

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    4. That's the privilege of buying original version, I guess. Speaking of which, you were taking Japanese linguistic major or something similar, right?
      Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Halloween get-up is when Conan and Ai confronted Vermouth?
      If yes, then I like those two too, confirming Aoyama's place in my opinion as one with good story telling.
      Eagerly waiting for your next review

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  3. Since your and TomCat's comments on one of his recent Conan posts, I've jumped into the Conan oeuvre starting at vol. 7, and I've worked my way to vol. 14 - enjoying the ride so far! :)

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    1. Glad you liked it! I think it's easier to binge-read Conan than Kindaichi Shounen, because there's just more story variety in Conan in general (length, settings, etc, types of mysteries, etc.). I think I have the best memories of the series from volume 20 ~ early 40s, though, as you can guess from the review, there's still plenty of good stuff to be found in the series now we're nearing the 90s :)

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    2. Personally, I still prefer the length of the regular Kindaichi mysteries; the better Conan mysteries feel like a compact blueprint for a full-length Kindaichi mystery. But I definitely get what you mean about binge-reading Conan volumes - I finished 4 volumes in a matter of days!!

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  4. The latest episode of Conan has a new opening with the movie's theme song and it's pretty much promotional material, they went all-out making this one. Take a look..
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP_3iHK9ZYc

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    1. Thanks for the link, though I think I'll wait till I actualy see the film myself! ^^ (Wasn't watching the TV series anyway).

      I remember they do sometimes use the film theme songs for the TV series, probably part of the contract. Funnily enough, the most recent example I have in my head was another B'z's song (Don't Wanna Lie), so it might be something specific to their contracts.

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