The Most Crucial Game

から紅に染まる渡月橋

導かれる日願って

川の流れに祈りを込めて

I've been thinking about you

I've been thinking about you

いつもこころ君のそば

「渡月橋　～君　思ふ～」（倉木麻衣）

The Togetsukyou-Bridge is colored crimson

Oh I wish for the day that we'll be led here

Sending my prayer along the stream of the river

I've been thinking about you

I've been thinking about you

My heart is always by your side

"Togetsukyou ~Thinking About You~" (Kuraki Mai)

Drawing manga for a weekly is a pretty stressful job, as the average manga artist has deliver about twenty pages each and every week, which means they not only have to plan, plot and illustrate the chapter of the week, but also plan all the storylines ahead together with their editors, do research and more. And sure, the really succesful artists will have assistant to help with backgrounds or inking, but still, it's a lot of work. Which makes that more impressive that Aoyama Goushou will be publishing the thousandth Detective Conan chapter  in next week's Shonen Sunday (first week of August)! He originally thought this series would only last for a few chapters when he first started in 1994, and he never could've guessed his series would grow out to be such a mammoth in the world of Japanese entertainment.

Volume 93 of Detective Conan starts with the final two chapters of Three Detectives and Hyakunin Isshu, which started in the previous volume. Conan and Hattori are having a short break in the restaurant Poirot, located right beneath the Mouri Detective Agency. A small group of friends is also having a drink there, but then the lights suddenly go out, and when the lights return, the people present inside Poirot are shocked to see that one of the friends has been stabbed in the back. But to the great surprise of Conan, Hattori and secret agent Amuro (who works part-time at Poirot), they also learn that none of the others have blood on them, even though the stabbing was so gruesome that even Conan and Hattori, sitting at the table next to the victim, had splatters on them. The resulting story is a fairly basic which-of-the-three-suspects set-up, though with a strange execution. It is more-or-less an impossible story, in the sense that it appears that none of the suspects could stabbed the victim without getting some blood on them, but strangely enough, this part of the mystery does not form the focus of the story, as the three detectives basically figure out that part out almost instantly with almost no clues and swiftly brush that away, shifting the main problem to that of opportunity, as it appears like the person who's most likely to have done it, couldn't have committed the murder they way the detectives think they did. This struck me as very odd though, as the problem of opportunity is a lot less interesting and inspired than the problem of how the stabbing was done, while the clewing of both pillars were a bit poor. The opportunity problem is poorly clewed, because it involves the use of a bit of trivia, while the clewing for the stabbing was apparently less elaborate because it was demoted to secundary importance, even though it's actually quite original. So Three Detectives and Hyakunin Isshu turned out as a story with some good ideas, but where the execution was unbalanced. The story also introduces us to another new face who I think is an important character in the 2017 Detective Conan film, The Crimson Love-Letter, but I haven't seen that one yet (waiting for the home-video release near the end of the year).

The Kisaki Eri Kidnapping Case is easily the most entertaining story of this volume. Kisaki Eri, mother of Ran and succesful lawyer, has been kidnapped by a gang of three men, but she manages to temporarily escape from their clutches, though still unable to leave the building they're helding her captive. She also managed to steal the phone of one of her kidnappers during her escape, and while she doesn't dare talking on the phone for fear of being heard and found by her kidnappers, she does manage to contact Ran with a chat app. The kidnappers however quickly catch on and use Eri's own phone to chat with Ran too, making it impossible for Ran, Conan and Kogorou to figure out which of the messages is coming from the real Eri and which ones from the fake. What follows is a thrilling game of hide-and-seek with the kidnappers hunting for Eri in the building and sending fake messages to Ran to confuse them, while Eri is trying to figure out where she is so she can tell her husband and Ran. The story re-uses some elements from previous stories (Eri uses a trick a murderer used in an earlier story to hide herself), but it's overall a nice change of pace, with a more action-packed story (this would've been perfect for the movies!) and some nice ideas involving how Conan figures out where Eri is, and also the use of a chat application as a tool in a detective story. Whenever chat rooms/applications are used in mystery fiction, you can bet that there will be the not so shocking revelation that somebody was pretending to be someone else. This story however tells you right from the start that this is the case, and uses it as the starting premise to do much more original things with it.

Match-Up Of The One-Eyed is another camp story with Conan and the rest of the Detective Boys, but this time, they are joined by their assistant-teacher Wakasa instead of Doctor Agasa. We as the readers have known since her first appearance that something is up with Wakasa, and it appears Conan is also starting to suspect that his new teacher might not be all she seems at first sight. The kids become friends with the members of a basketball club who are out camping too, but one of them rather prefers locking himself up in his tent to enjoy some beers and comics than sit outside with the others. While the Detective Boys and the other member of the basketball club are having a curry dinner outside, the loner's tent suddenly catches fire, and the others are sadly enough not able to save their teammate. As the fire started inside, with the tent locked from the inside, and with witnesses having seen the victim moving around inside the tent until the moment the fire broke out, it appears that this was just a sad accident, but Conan suspects this was murder, an opinion shared by Police Commissioner Kuroda, who "happened" to be camping there too and totally not stalking Conan and/or Wakasa. The mystery of the fire is a bit too brilliant for its own good. It's a great idea, that it certainly is, combining a locked room tent with a fantastic manner to start the fire, but I wish the story offered a few better hints. The decisive hint is given in such an unnatural manner, it feels like Aoyama just gave up on natural clewing and decided to brute-force one in the plot. The story is by the way also connected to the ongoing storyline involving the unknown character RUM, as both Police Commissioner Kuroda and teacher Wakasa seem to fit the description Conan has of the elusive Black Organization member.

The final story included in this volume are the first four chapters of The Two Swordsmen from Naniwa, which is basically a sequel to a story from volume 31, as this story follows the same plot in a way: a murder happens during an important inter-school kendo competition, with Hattori being a contender for the gold. The victim is a judge in the competition, which means he's an experienced swordsman himself, which in turn means that the person who was capable of cutting his neck in just one move must've been a talented swordsman themselves. While three suspects are quickly detained, Conan and Hattori have trouble figuring out who the murderer is, which is not helped by the fact that while there's a witness to the murder, this witness is completely blind and only heard bits and pieces of what happened. Without the conclusion it's hard to tell how the mystery plot will end up (though it does neatly involve all sorts of things related to kendo) and there's a lot here for fans of Aoyama's works, as like the story in volume 31, The Two Swordsmen from Naniwa is basically also a crossover with Yaiba, a hit comedy-adventure series which Aoyama created before Detective Conan. The volume 31 story featured the genius swordsman Okita, who returns in The Two Swordsmen from Naniwa as one of Hattori's greatest rivals in the competition, while the perhaps the most dangerous character from Yaiba makes his first appearance in Detective Conan too in this story.

Detective Conan 93 was on the whole a decent volume. No real duds in terms of mystery plots, but also no particularly memorable ones, save for the kidnapping case, I guess. It's only natural that things go a bit slowly now, after the revelations made in the previous volume, and the camping story does tie back to the ongoing RUM investigation, but it'll probably take a while for things to really get moving again. That said, this volume offers fairly diverse stories and even volumes of Conan without any really impressive stories still tend to be much better than your average mystery story.

Original Japanese title(s): 青山剛昌　『名探偵コナン』第93巻』