Countdown

Neunundneunzig Luftballons

Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont 

"99 Luftballons" (Nena)

Oh, I finished Twilight of the Golden Witch earlier this week by the way, so I'm now done with Umineko no Naku koro ni. Due to the type of story being told in that episode, I didn't add much to the my Umineko no Naku koro ni playthrough though. Now to find some time to organize my thoughts...

Gee, it's been a while since I last read a new Detective Conan volume, I thought after volume 99 was delivered. Looking up the release date of the previous volume explained things, at it's been exactly a year since volume 98 was released. While the Detective Conan release schedule hasn't been regular for some years now, the one constant is that they'll release a new volume in April to coincide with the annual Detective Conan theatrical release. Last year's volume 98 was released to accompany the scheduled April 2020 release The Scarlet Bullet, but that film first got delayed to the summer and then all the way to April 2021. And while Detective Conan 99 was originally slated for a Winter 2020 release, they decided to push that release back to April 2021 too (for the new The Scarlet Bullet release), so that means we only got one Conan volume last year. Interestingly, the release of volume 98 was announced first by Aoyama himself... on his Animal Crossing: New Horizons island, months before the official listings came!

The Truth Behind Poisons and Drugs started in the previous volume, where Ran, Sonoko and Sera are invited by their classmate Yumi to her joint birthday party with her older sister Remi, a succesful model. The party is held at a small restaurant where an old classmate of Remi works as a cook, and among the other guests are also people in the modeling and entertainment industry, including the sleazy (but talented) hair artist Hanasaki, who's infamous for trying to hit on all the models, including Remi and her sister Yumi. After the birthday cake is brought to the room, the lights in the restaurants are dimmed for a short slide show while everybody is given cake, but Hanasaki cries out at that moment. At the same time, the projector suddenly switches off, leaving the room in total darkness. After the lights go on, they find Hanasaki lying dead on the floor, with the words "Heavenly Punishment" written on his head with permanent marker. The victim's piece of cake was apparently poisoned and afterwards, the murderer wrote something on his forehead. While the layout of the room and other circumstances limit the number of suspects to Remi, Yumi, Remi's manager and Remi's old classmate/the chef, none of them seem to have been able to do it for various reasons, like Yumi having a permanent marker, but sitting too far away from the victim to have poisoned his cake, to the chef who could easily have poisoned the victim's piece of cake, but not being in possession of a permanent marker.

It's the familiar poisoning story in Conan, which seldom really disappoint. It's not a bad story, but after 99 volumes, it's pretty easy to see how Aoyama structures these stories, by combining smaller tricks in a calculated manner to make the mystery seem more baffling than it actually is, but if you can identify the two 'core ideas' you can see that the individual problems can be solved fairly simply and that also makes the identity of the murderer obvious. That said, this story is definitely worth a read for long-time fans who follow the big storyline, because as the poisoning case in the restaurant unfolds, Sera also reflects on past events, which include some pretty big reveals and also introduces a very neat tie-in to an earlier story that I hadn't expected! Great to see how Aoyama reveals how some past stories we read like 10 years ago turned out to be a puzzle piece in current storylines.

The Tragedy at the Farm is a very unique story in comparison to the first story, as it follows a slightly different story format than the usual ones. The Detective Boys and their two elementary school teachers Kobayashi and Wakasa are riding a bus to visit a chicken farm outside of town. Teitan Elementary's pet chickens have recently died, but the owner of Hatoyama Farms has kindly offered two chickens to the school. In the bus, they also meet a few other people who also get out at the same stop, but they seem to have some business in the woods around the farm. The kids and their teachers arrive at the farm only to find it completely deserted though, and the chicken coop outside is damaged with a big hole in the side, with not one chicken inside. They split up in two groups and explore the farm, but Ayumi is taken hostage by someone claiming to be the brother of the owner of the farm, and he locks the group up in a cellar, where they find the body of Hatoyama himself. Meanwhile, the other group of Haibara, Genta and their teacher Wakasa is still roaming outside, but they too stumble upon hints that something odd is going on at the farm, but what?

An interesting story because the tale really focuses on presenting a mystery that doesn't seem to make very much sense. Why is there a body in the cellar? Why did the man lock them up in that same cellar, and didn't he kill the kids and Kobayashi? What are those men on the bus looking for? Why are the chickens gone? As things develops, things slowly come together to reveal a fairly unique story, with an original background story to the motive. The story is in some ways similar to other "Detective Boys in the woods meeting new people" stories, but the way the story is told is different from the usual pattern. Meanwhile, this story too has some ties to the overall story, as Kazama of Public Safety is also involved as he's tracing a stolen load of explosives, but that too leads him and his superior to a curious connection to another major storyline in this series.

The Locked Room Murder in the Attic starts with Kogorou in desperate trouble in his own office bathroom: there's no toilet paper, but he is too embarrassed to ask for paper because his beloved idol Okino Youko is in the office, with a new case. Youko recently went on location scouting with the network producer Heijima Wanya for a detective drama with a ghostly theme. They eventually found the perfect villa to film, which is also the holiday villa where the producer's older sister disappeared from a few years ago: the villa is owned by his brother-in-law Baba Nukiyasu. Nukiyasu happened to be staying at the holiday villa together with his younger brother Fuugo and his wife Himi, and both Heijima and Youko were offered to stay for the night. During the night, Youko woke up hearing odd noises and she found a trail of blood in the hallway, which stopped suddenly. The others woke up too, which was when they noticed that Nukiyasu was nowhere to be found. They all started looking for him, but there was no trace of Nukiyasu, until he sent a picture to Fuugo's smartphone, of a curious formation of playing cards. Heijima and Youko stayed longer to search for Nukiyasu, but on the fourth day, Fuugo recalled he and his brothers used to play cards in the attic when they were children. When they try to pull down the attic door however, they find it locked so the police was finally informed. The police broke through the attic window at the front of the villa, where they found a dead Nukiyasu, with a crossbow arrow in his back. But how could Nukiyasu have been killed with a crossbow inside an attic which was locked from the inside when they found the body?

A story that often feels a bit weird, though that is calculated. The howdunnit of the locked room is relatively simple, but it does lead to an interesting whydunnit: a lot of the actions of a certain character could make the locked room possible, but at first sight it doesn't seem to make any sense for that character to have act in that manner. The story ultimately does a reasonably good job at providing an explanation as to why the character would take those actions despite them not making any sense initially, which makes for a nice switch in dynamics in the solving of a locked room mystery. There is a part that doesn't make any sense at all though in terms of time: two middle-aged characters refer to a certain nickname they used as children based on a certain acronym, but two people who are middle-aged now, could never have used that word when they were children. I know Conan has a sliding time period, where "the present" in the earliest Conan stories use mid-1990s technology etc. while current Conan stories uses 2021 technology, even though in-universe, not even a year has passed in these 99 volumes. But still, I'm mostly used to "modern" technnology and concepts showing up in "present" Conan stories, not "modern" technology and concepts being introduced in segments that are clearly set several decades ago.

The final chapter in this volume is the first in Kudou Yuusaku's Detection Show, which deals with a series of locked room murders across the country, a television special starring Kudou Yuusaku where he's going to reveal the truth behind these murders and.... a very ill Kudou Yuusaku who can't possibly appear on television, and it seems like it's going to be a fun story, but we'll have to wait for the next volume for confirmation on that!

Detective Conan 99 did not have any 'big' stories, though Aoyama did make sure to insert segments in the smaller stories that do tie in to the current storylines in the manga and especially the first story has some of the major story puzzle pieces finally falling into the right place. The announcement pages at the end of volume 99 have volume 100 scheduled for a fall 2021 release, which I really hope they'll make this time. And I guess that the special occassion is a great excuse to do a special Conan-themed post around that time... anyone any ideas? 

Original Japanese title(s): 青山剛昌　『名探偵コナン』第99巻