Judge Not

 子どものころに わかりかけてたことが 

大人になってわからないまま

「胸がドキドキ」(The High Lows)

 

The things I started to understand as a kid

I still don't understand as an adult

"The Pounding of my Heart" (The High Lows)

So for some reason I thought that volume 100 of Detective Conan was released very early this year, but looking back now, it turns out it was released back in October, even before the home video release of The Scarlet Bullet. Huh. I guess I'm finally getting used to the slower release schedule Conan has had these last few years, because even though nowadays the wait between volumes has doubled compared to the old schedule (about three months) the wait doesn't feel as drastic anymore compared to when they switched to the slower release pace...

Volume 100 of Detective Conan was overall a great volume, with an absolutele banger for a main story featured in the middle, a tense thriller that seemed to merge the bombastic action of the films of Conan with the more sober mode of the manga perfectly, resulting in a spectacular suspense tale that still felt firmly set within the manga universe. And I have read enough Detective Conan to know that after such a high point in terms of story, author Aoyama Goushou tends to slow down a bit again in the following stories, usually following up with smaller stories as he has to restart the game board again, laying down his pieces once more for the build-up for the next big moment. So to be honest: my expectations for volume 101 of Detective Conan, released last week, were not very high because I had seen the pattern more than once. Even the promise of a confrontation between fan favorite mystery character Amuro Tooru and the elusive Phantom Thief KID on the obi of the book wasn't really exciting me. To spoil the conclusion already: I was right, this was a very okay volume that doesn't really stand out particularly, even if you can tell Aoyama is again moving his playing pieces around for a future event. 

The opening story Search for the 13-year old Voice has Conan and the rest of the Detective Boys going to school on a Sunday to tend to the rabbits in the garden, when suddenly a man approaches Haibara and addresses her by the name... Miyano Shiho. Terrified that her cover has been blown, Haibara turns around to learn that the man is actually an alumnus of Teitan Elementary and that his old class, Year 19, is here for a class reunion. Haibara learns that her older sister Akemi used to go to school at Teitan Elementary for a while, and that she had shown her classmates photographs of her and Shiho back then, which is why the man seemed to recognize Shiho in Haibara, but of course, they realize that Akemi's sister Shiho must also have become an adult herself now too, so they assume it's just a coincidence that Haibara resembles Shiho so much. Three of Akemi's old classmates are now looking for their class time capsule: Akemi was the one who hid the time capsule, but she hasn't appeared at the reunion (her classmates don't know she died) and the only clue she's left is a code. Conan instantly realizes the three classmates seem rather worried upon seeing the code, and also learns that Akemi left a message for her sister in the time capsule, so he volunteers to help solve the code and find the time capsule.

Another code cracking story, which seldom make me really excited. Even connecting this story to Haibara's sister doesn't really change things much: the reveal that Akemi went to Teitan Elementary of all places when she was little is of course a biiiiiiit forced and story-beat-wise, this story also reminds too much of previous "Akemi left some message for her sister at some place" stories we have seen two (?) times before in this series. The reason why the three classmates seem shocked by the code is rather easy to guess, though I guess the misdirection ("false solution") of the code, and the true solution are quite solid, both like natural conclusions to the code and not really forced. But ultimately this is just a really compact, small scale story that is not memorable at all despite the minor "bigger" connections.

And the same holds for Meeting With the Goddess of Wind. Agasa is mistaken for the president of a security company, of which a vault was recently stolen which can only be opened by the president. The two criminals kidnap Agasa, severely wounding him in the process and the plan is just to keep the president alive long enough to open the safe, and then get rid of him. Conan chases after Agasa with the help of the police, but they manage to disappear and sneak by police barricades. But how? Another story that mystery-wise is again very minor. The trick of how the abductors managed to slip by the police checks even though their car model had already been identified is, at the core, an okay idea, but this story is basically just that idea when it comes down to the mystery, even though that idea isn't really enough to support a whole three chapter story. Usually, author Aoyama does a great job stringing multiple of these minor ideas into something bigger, but this story also doubles as an introduction of a new character, Chihaya, a traffic police officer who is the sister of the late Hagiwara Kenji, a character who's already dead at the start of Detective Conan, but who's appeared in flashbacks, and these two years Hagiwara also appeared prominently in the Conan spin-off Wild Police Story as well as the 2022 Detective Conan film The Bridge of Halloween which is currently running in theatres. Due to the focus on Chihaya though, Meeting With the Goddess of Wind's mystery side of the story ends up rather underwhelming.

The final full story in this volume is KID VS Amuro Tooru, which has the phantom thief targeting the Robanov (not Romanov) tiara The Queen's Bang, which is currently featured in a local exhibition. At the museum, Ran, Sonoko and Conan also run into Amuro and Azusa, who have a day off from cafe Poirot because of renovations. Sonoko's great uncle Jiroukichi and Inspector Nakamura are of course ready for KID's attack, but Public Security is also present at the venue, because in a few days, Selisabeth, Queen of Ingram, will be visiting Japan in three days, and one of the stops in her schedule is this exhibition. Public Security fears the Queen may change her plans if the tiara is stolen, which would upset security plans, so they want to be sure the Queen's Bang will be safe. Meanwhile, Conan is allowed to stay as the notorious "KID Killer", as is Amuro, the number one disciple of the Sleeping Kogorou (self-proclaimed). The tiara is held inside a stand with a cover and if anyone touches the stand while the security system is on, the whole ceiling comes falling down to crush the thief. At the announced time, a white mist suddenly appears in the room where the tiara is kept, which turns out to be white pain in mist form. Even though their sights is obstructed for a moment, everyone is sure nobody could've approached the stand with the tiara. Conan himself checks the stand, but when he opens it, he finds it completely empty! How could KID have made his way in the mist to steal the tiara?

We have seen this type of KID story more than once, so this tale never manages to truly surprise the reader. It's a well-constructed impossible heist story, but there's honestly really little to differentiate it at a plotting level from KID VS Kyougoku Makoto, Sera Masami or Koumei. Like always, we know KID has disguised himself as one of three members in the cast, adding a whodunnit element to the story, and we also have to figure out how KID managed to steal the tiara. While the core idea behind how KID managed to spirit the tiara away is really, really simple, I like how Aoyama plotted the clewing for this hesist, and also how he hid the simple solution from the reader with misdirection. The idea is so easy to figure out if it had been used "as is", but Aoyama knows just how much misdirection to use to fool the reader, without overdoing and leaving enough clues. There's also misdirection concerning which of the three suspects is actually KID, and while I don't think it's really hard to guess which of them is actually KID, the misdirection (the main red herring) is pretty clever and the type of clues I have come to love of Conan. So I dont think this is an exceptional KID story, but certainly not a bad one and easily the best story of the volume. The volume ends with the first two chapters of  The Case Memos Left by Date, which is about an old case Takagi's mentor Date worked on the week before he died, but which apparently was still on-going one year later. Not really an exciting story up until now, but perhaps the last chapter(s?) can turn things around.

Like I mentioned at the start of the post: even before reading this volume, I knew I didn't need to have high expectations of volume 101 of Detective Conan, because the previous volume had been a clear high point in the series, which is basically always followed by a few slower stories. In that sense, this volume didn't "disappoint" me, because I knew what was coming and even the fact there's not a single murder in this volume doesn't surprise me. The three stories (and partial fourth story) would have been okay additions in any "regular" volume, but having three of these one after another does feel a bit too slow for me personally, so I hope we'll be out of the "expected story dip" by the next volume, which is scheduled for a ... winter release. Sigh. I guess it will release after the home video release of Detective Conan: The Bride of Halloween... I guess I should watch a few anime originals again soon...

Original Japanese title(s): 青山剛昌 『名探偵コナン』第101巻