Mischievous Scientist

Once we were a race of beings roaming the universe on the search for answers and knowledge, but only found more questions and misery. Eons have passed before the first member of our people realised that there was a deeper structured process behind the common reality we were able to see and live. 

"Mystery of Time and Space"

A non-fiction book for a change!

While Detective Conan is at the core a fair-play mystery manga, it remains a series that also has a lot of unrealistic elements that are a part of the series identity: the core premise of high school student detective Kudo Shinichi being turned into a child due to an experimental drug is of course the prime example, but because the rom-com and action genres are also a fundamental part of Conan, we also see characters sometimes pull off things that would be completely impossible in a "realistic" setting, and if their feats were part of the mysteries, it'd definitely feel unfair, but usually, these superhuman scenes only occur after the core mystery has been solved. That said. sometimes it's fun to think a bit more about these superhuman feats. Kuusou Kagaku Dokuhon ("The Fictional Science Reader") is a long-running series by Yanagida Rikao that explores the science in anime/manga/tokusatsu/games etcetera. Can our current knowledge of science explain how a certain scene in an anime played out? Or how much strength would be needed for someone to pull off that one memorable scene? Earlier this year, Yanagida released a special crossover volume with Detective Conan: Meitantei Conan Kuusou Kagaku Dokuhon ("Detective Conan: The Fictional Science Reader" 2024) looks at the long-running mystery manga with a wink, exploring questions like "How does the drug that shrunk Conan's body work?", "How many murder cases *does* Conan encounter on average?" and "How hard can Ran kick people?".

Many years ago, I wrote a short piece about how I wanted to see more reference/guidebooks on established mystery series: I referred to a Conan guide among others, that had short summaries for each case, including a focus on the important clues/trick/murder weapon, and a Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney guide that had timelines for each case, showing what everyone was doing at what time. I haven't seen many interesting guides released since then, sadly enough. But while Detective Conan: Meitantei Conan Kuusou Kagaku Dokuhon isn't exactly what I was talking about at the time, I think this was a pretty funny book for fans of the series, though not really for general mystery fans.

In the book, Yanagida explores several memorable scenes and pivotal moments from the Detective Conan series, focusing specifically on the manga until volume 105. He then uses science to muse about these scenes: a funny example is from one of the earliest chapters in the series, when Ran kicks a kidnapper and he flies a few meters until he lands on the ground. Obviously, it would be impossible in real-life for her to kick a grown adult so far: if she *could* be so strong, it'd mean other people in this world could also be so strong and use their strength to pull off what appear to be "impossible" crimes for us. But as I mentioned earlier, Ran's "super strength" (and that of other characters) is only seen after the core mystery plot has been resolved, so it's not really jarring, as you can easily see this is just "comics reality". Which is why it's so funny when Yanagida starts calculating how much force it'd require for Ran to kick that man the way she did, and ending up with the conclusion she has the kick strength of nearly 600 kickboxers.

There are some other interesting statistical analyses that are more mystery-related. It turns out that over the course of the first 105 volumes, there were "just" 202 murder cases,  a number which surprised me a bit, but I guess with the anime and other media around, you just get the idea there are more. As in-universe, not even a full year has passed since the first volume, Yanagida then uses that to compare Conan's "murder encounter" rate to that of the average Japanese civilian and to that of homicide detectives in Tokyo, which... of course makes it too clear Conan is really a death magnet. And if you count all the non-murder (but criminal) cases, it turns out Conan even averages over 1 incident per day. Something you kinda expect when reading the series of course, but it's more amusing by seeing the scientific support for the gut feeling. Life in Beika City is also shown to be a real dystopia, considering the murder rate in one single city...

Other funny musings are about the efficiency of Conan's tranquilizer wristwatch and his other gadgets like his turbo skateboard and ball-dispensing belt, the speed required for Kyougoku Makoto to dodge a shotgun shot at point-blank range, how painful would it really be to have a bag full of gold fall on you from a meter or ten (spoiler: very painful). Most of the scenes picked will be very familiar to Conan fans, and seeing them "nitpicked" like this is more than entertaining.

But as I said, this is really just for Conan fans, and not for mystery fans in general. But! I was thinking, it would be cool if there was a mystery-focused volume of Kuusou Kagaku Dokuhon, just not focusing on one specific IP, but exploring several famous mystery novels. Sure, it'd be full of spoilers, but imagine Yanagida going over the science behind the locked room murder trick in Honjin Satsujin Jiken/The Honjin Murders or all of those Kitayama Takekuni locked room murders. Going over the physics behind physical locked room tricks would of course be the major attraction, but I could also imagine a shorter column going over how poisons are shown to work in the novels and checking whether they really work like that. 

Anyway, Meitantei Conan Kuusou Kagaku Dokuhon is a fun coffee table-type of book for Detective Conan fans, with just the right about of "seriousness" about silly subjects. Because it's mostly about really specific scenes, I can't recommend it to anyone else, but it does show a lot of potential for a more "general mystery" entry in this series, and I hope that in the future, such a volume will be released!

Original Japanese title(s): 柳田理科雄『名探偵コナン空想科学読本』