The Stolen Kiss

「アナタは私のほんのイチブしか知らない」

「イチブとゼンブ」（B'z)

"You only know a small part of me"

"Parts and the Whole" (B'z)

It ain't April unless there's a new Detective Conan theatrical release, coupled with the release of a new volume of the manga. And yep, last year was really weird because of that, as Detective Conan: Zero the Enforcer was released on its own, and there was only one lonely volume released in October for the whole of 2018. But now we're in 2019, and Detective Conan: The Fist of the Blue Sapphire has been released in theaters a few days ago. The screenplay is by Ookura Takahiro, writer of the Lieutenant Fukuie series and the excellent Detective Conan movie The Crimson Love Letter, so while the premise of the movie doesn't seem really interesting to me, I'll be sure to catch the home video release later this year in the hopes it'll actually turn out to be really awesome.

But this year, the release of the new movie was also accompanied by a new volume as per tradition. Detective Conan 96 (2019) is an incredibly weird volume though, and taken on its own, it's easily one of the worst volumes of the last decade or so. This is not because of the story contents per se, but has everything to do with the way the comic is serialized. Because each volume has the same amount of chapters, but stories don't always have the same number of chapters, most volumes usually don't end in a neat matter, but often the last story in a volume will continue in the next volume (and a volume therefore usually starts with the remaining chapters of the story that started in the previous volume). In Detective Conan 96, this ends up in the worse possible manner, as it basically only contains one single complete story: a good part of The Targeted Female Police Officers is collected in volume 95, while The Deadly TV Drama Shooting will be finished in volume 97 scheduled for this fall. So if you read this volume, you'll find more incomplete stories than complete ones!

I already briefly mentioned The Targeted Female Police Officers in my review of volume 95, but as the title suggests, this story is about a series of murders on a few female co-workers of Yumi and Sanae in the Metropolitan Police Department's Traffic Section. One night, Sanae has gone out to the karaoke bar with her co-workers Yagi Shiori and Momosaki Touko. Yagi brings Sanae back home after she had a few too many drinks, but on her way back alone, Momosaki is lured by a suspicious figure to a park and brutally killed there. The only clue to her murderer is that it appears she had been trying to point at something as she died, but the message isn't clear. While the police is investigating however, Yagi too is murdered, making this a serial cop killing. The police quickly concludes the suspects are among the three men who were fined and detained by Yagi and Momosaki last week, as all three men claimed they had an emergency and greatly resented being detained by the two officers. The problem however lies in the message both Momosaki and Yagi left behind as they died.This dying message can be split in two parts, and I do like the first part: it's unclear what the dying message exactly is at first, but the clewing here is pretty good and makes use of the visual format. But then comes the matter of interpretation, and well, it's not too farfetched, but yeah, it's one of those solutions where you shrug and say 'sure, that makes sense', but it's not a really satisfying one. And yes, it's a solution that also relies on language, but even then it's rather open for interpretation (the second dying message by Yagi on the other hand is way too straightforward).

What does make this story somewhat memorable is how Aoyama also used the story to bring some new character development. The focus on Sanae naturally also means officer Chiba has a nice role to play in this story, but personally, I loved how that one scene from last year's Zero the Enforcer was now given context. In case you have seen the movie: there's a shot where a certain character has a line that is unspoken, but can only be 'lip-read'. Here we finally learn what that person actually said.

In The Man Who Wanted The Lips, Suzuki Jiroukichi has come up with another scheme to catch the phantom thief KID, this time using the precious pearl Fairy Lip. A chance meeting with Inspector Morofushi of the Nagano Prefectural Police (first introduced in volume 65) gave Jiroukichi a 'brilliant' idea: the pearl is frozen in an enormous block of ice, making it possible for the museum guests to actually see the pearl, but making it impossible for KID to steal it. Meanwhile, Conan and Hattori are also present, with Hattori's mind pre-occupied with the matter that has been worrying him for some volumes now (how to say to childhood friend Kazuha he likes her romantically?). With Conan, Hattori and Morofushi all present, KID sure has a tough night ahead, but despite all the security measures, KID first manages to lock himself inside the glass cage with the ice block and making it impossible to look inside by painting the glass walls with black ink. When they finally manage to get inside, they find that KID has left a card thanking them for the pearl, and also leaving Jiroukichi with a present: countless of pigment-colored Fairly Lips etched inside the ice block itself as ice art. Overall, I'd say this is a fairly weak KID story: it's quite easy to guess how KID managed to steal the pearl and while usually, these kind of stories revolve around who KID disguised himself as is also of importance, this time we're told right from the start who it is, and his secret identity is mostly used as a a gag from that point on.

Similar to the previous story however, this story is also used to further set-up future events for the main storyline. Like I mentioned in my review, the last volume seemed to be moving pieces around for Aoyama to work towards a story climax, or perhaps even the series finale, and this story does that too by revealing the relationship between several characters. By now, it's also kinda silly how many characters in the Detective Conan world turn out to have some relationship with another significant character, but I'm interested to see how this will work out in the future. I also believe this is the first story in the manga where both KID and Hattori appear. They have appeared in the same movies a couple of times, but even in those movies, never really met face-to-face (or at least, not without KID being in disguise). And was that a reference to The Last Wizard of the Century? Usually, the manga makes no direct references to the events that occur in the movies (while mostly seperate stories, some elements from the movies, like character backstories, are part of the Conan manga storyline), but this was a fairly direct reference...

The Deadly TV Drama Shooting starts with Ran, Conan, Sera, Sonoko and her boyfriend Kyougoku Makoto (who plays a lead role in the 2019 movie Detective Conan: The Fist of the Blue Sapphire) watching the latest hit movie Azengers (ft. Kamen Yaiba.). On their way back, Kyougoku (a karate champion) knocks a helmeted robber out, who turns out to be an actor for the TV drama Detective 48. Kyougoku is asked to take over the role (as he can do the stunts too), and actually does a very good job. During the shooting, the gang learns that Tokuzono Saiya, the lead actor of the drama, isn't really getting along with the other members of the cast and production team, especially due to his 'pranks' that actually caused an assistant-director to commit suicide some time earlier. Obviously, he's also the one to die in this story and he dies falling off the fourth floor of the abandoned school building they were shooting at, but the only other person on that floor when Tokuzono fell was none other than Kyougoku, who was preparing for his next stunt. If he wasn't the murderer, how did the real murderer then manage to cause Tokuzono to fall off the fourth floor? The answer... will have to wait until fall. At least, for those who read the collected volumes and avoid the serialized chapters.

I had to laugh out loud because of the Azengers part though, because earlier this week, a special cross-marketing campaign was revealed for Japan, featuring both Detective Conan: The Fist of the Blue Sapphire and Avengers: End Game. And yes, Detective Conan is really that big a phenomenon in Japan that it warrants for these kinds of promotions. Can you actually think of another detective franchise that made it this mainstream in modern pop culture?

But to come back to the main topic, Detective Conan 96 is on the whole a rather disappointing volume in terms of mystery plots. There is only one complete story included, which isn't really a high point anyway as a KID story, and The Targeted Female Police Officers too is at best an average story when compared to other who-of-the-three type of stories in this series. For longtime fans of the series (and I assume you are if you have read 96 volumes), we do get a few more puzzle pieces that relate to the main story, but on the whole, this volume has awfully little to offer, especially as it's been nearly half a year since the previous volume. Let's hope the next volume has something more substantial to offer.

Original Japanese title(s):  青山剛昌　『名探偵コナン』第96巻