Tricky Business

Ah Why Why Ah Tell me why you hold me

"Why" (Color) 

Serializations of novels or short stories have become quite rare globally, but the format is still quite viable in Japan, with many novels/short story collections still being serialized first before they are actually published as books. Or in some cases, stories remain in serialized form. Ooyama Seiichirou is an author who specializes in the short story format, and nearly the entirety of his creative output is serialized in magazines in both physical and digital formats first before they get a book release. I have for example discusses his series like Watson-ryoku/The Watson Force, Alibi-kuzushi Uketamawarimasu/The Clockmaker Detective and Akai Hakubutsukan/The Red Museum, which are classic examples of Ooyama first publishing four or five stories in magazines first, before they are collected as one book, occasionally with Ooyama adding one original story for the book release. However, if you take a look at his (Japanese) Wikipedia, you'll notice some of the stories he's been serializing have not seen a collected release yet. For example, in the past I have reviewed a short story in a series where an actor specializing in villain roles turns out to be a gifted amateur detective, and while Ooyama has already released enough stories in this series to fill a volume, it has not seen a book release yet.

The same holds for the series I am discussing today: Wayama Yawa no 5W1H Jikenbo ("Wayama Yawa's 5W1H Casebook") consist of five stories Ooyama wrote between 2022 and 2023 for the magazine Shousetsu Tripper. The fifth story was in fact also announced in as the "final" story in the serialization, making this a finished story, but even now in 2026, there's no sign of a collected release being considered. And that's a shame, for the five stories have been very entertaining! As the title of the series suggests, each story in this series is centered around the five Ws (Who, what, where, when, why) and the one H (how). The series detective is the titular Wayama Yawa, a young, petite woman in her early twenties, who is absolutely fantastic at her work, with the catch being... that she's working somewhere else every time. For Wayama has nothing but admiration for all the kinds of work to be found in our modern society, so she tries out something each time (and always masters the profession in seconds). Each story follows new characters as they get entangled in mysterious incidents (sometimes criminal, sometimes not), with Wayama somehow getting involved too because of whatever new job she's doing now, and of course solving the case in an instant.

In a way, this series reminds me a bit of Awasaka Tsumao's A Aiichirou series: there, the titular amateur detective isn't the focal character either, as each short story focuses on a different cast, and then Aiichirou happens to get involved too, either in his role as travelling photographer, or because he happens to have found a different job for a period. 

Oh, in case you are wondering what the illustration is featured in this review? It is an illustration that accompanies the title page of the first story of this series as featured in the magazine Shousetsu Tripper, though I don't think it is specifically related to Wayama Yawa no 5W1H Jikenbo. At least, I'm pretty sure Wayama doesn't look like that, and none of the other stories have such illustrations.

The first story, Dochira ga Saki ni Shinda ka? ("Who Died First?"), opens in the hospital, where Futagawa Eisuke, director of Futagawa Funerals, drawing his final breath. Present are his wife Tomiko, his nephew Takashi and his wife, and Nagadate Michio, the corporate solicitor. Not present is Eisuke's younger brother/father of Takashi, Yuusuke. Nagadate is surprised Yuusuke isn't present at his brother's deathbed, but Takashi explains he hasn't managed to reach his father at home. Eisuke and Yuusuke never got along and indeed, before their wealthy father died, he wrote a will that put all of his fortune in a trust: Eisuke and Yuusuke would only inherit his money once they were both respectively 62 and 60 years old, to ensure they wouldn't try to kill each other in order to inherit everything. The two brothers therefore started avoiding each other for many decades, wtith Eisuke becoming a succesful funeral director, while Yuusuke remained an unsuccesful painter. Some years ago, their father's inheritance was finally released, but the brothers remained estranged. The day after Eisuke's death, Yuusuke still can't be reached at home, so Nagadate and Takashi drive to Yuusuke's remote home to check up on him, but there they find... Yuusuke dead in the bath tub. It appears Yuusuke too died yesterday, though the coroner can't determine a specific time of death. However, Nagadate instantly realizes the order of the death of the brothers will become a matter of great importance to Takashi due to Eisuke's will, in which he bequeaths one quarter of his tremendous wealth to Yuusuke and the remainder to his wife Tomiko. If Eisuke died before Yuusuke did, that quarter of his inheritance will first go to Yuusuke, and because of his death, then go to Takashi. However, if Yuusuke died first, Tomiko will inherit everything from her husband, while Takashi will only inherit from his not really well-to-do father. The moment Nagadate tells his new employee Wayama Waya about this conundrum however, she senses they have to work fast to prevent a murder from happening...

This story poses a very interesting problem, and in a rather devious way poses a double problem: the title in English ends up focusing on the "Who?", but of course, from the set-up you'll also see the problem presented is very much about "When?". One thing I have to say about this story that holds for all five stories is that these stories are very short, so it's hard to write a lot about them without giving too much away. I really like this story though! Ooyama actually adds this extra mystery at the end by having Wayama declare she sees a potential murder coming, so that leaves the reader with the question of which of the two brothers died first and also the question of who Wayama thinks is going to be murdered and why. There's some very cleverly hidden misdirection in this short tale, and while I don't always like unanswered questions in mysteries, this one has one I can live with very easily, as it really adds an ironic twist to the theme of the tale.

The second story, Doko de Orita no ka? ("Where Did She Get Off?"), a lawyer Shinpei is trying to locate a potential witness who can prove his client is innocent of a robbery. The problem however is that this witness can't be found, even though in theory, locating the person should be easy: according to the client, at the time of the crime, he ran into a woman dressed in ancient garments, like she had just come from the  Heian period. However, despite the police's best efforts, they can't find the woman nor any other witnesses who saw her that day. Until Shinpei discusses the case with his cousin Yuuna, a college student. It turns out that when Yuuna took the bus back home after her exam yesterday, that woman was already on the bus. Yuuna dozed off and woke up just before her own stop, by which time the woman had already gotten off. Yuuna and Shinpei decide to locate the woman and try to interview the bus driver who drove that bus yesterday, but it just so happens yesterday was that driver's last day before the start of his extended leave today after decades of being dedicated to his job. The new driver has not seen the woman in question unfortunately. This leaves Yuuna and Shinpei getting on and off at every stop between the university and the stop near Yuuna's home to see if they can find any clue leading to the woman, but then the new bus driver, a young woman called Wayama Yawa, has a suggestion for them... A relatively innocent story with no real crime as the main mystery, which adds some variety. There's some funny circular reasoning going regarding the woman: the reason the woman was dressed in very traditional garments is likely related to the bus stop where she got off: do you have to deduce why the woman was dressed the way she was and from there deduce where she got off, or do you have to deduce where she got off, and based on that location deduce why she was dressed like that? It's a bit of both of course. While the woman being dressed like that is a bit strange, I think there's one main hint given in the story that allows for a natural, intuitive guess why she's dressed like that. I am more of a fan of the clues that allow the reader to guess at what stop she got off and why, as that is a multi-layered one that also cleverly includes Wayama herself in the mystery.

In Nani wo Takurandeiru no Ka? ("What Has He Planned?"), the narrator is a former test driver who lost his job after gamble problems, but his skills allowed him to secure a very unique job: a transporter. Transport objects or persons from A to B and he's paid enough to accept the fact that some of these jobs aren't always safe. This time, he's asked to drive a wealthy hotel owner called Kureta Kouzou and one of his possessions from Tokyo to Karuizawa. The object in question is the Cretan Cat, a figure dating from the fifteenth century which is said to bring fortune to those who cherish it, and misfortune to those who don't treat it well. It has changed owners during the last few centuries, and has been the possession of some of very succesful people indeed. Kureta had purchased the Cretan Cat for a pittance after its previous owner died, but now two people are after the Cat: the nephew of the previous owner who sold the Cat to Kureta not knowing its true worth, and a high-ranking police official who might even use the power of the police to get his hands on the Cat in order to climb to the top. The driver and Kureta are joined by a hired bodyguard... a young small woman called Wayama. While the driver first thinks this must be a bad joke, he soon learns the woman is indeed suitable for the job, so the three drive off in a car especially prepared by Kureta, racing to Karuizawa via local roads. They get ambushed along the way, but Wayama not only finds a way out, she also immediately deduces which oppenent is behind the operation. 

Again, while this is a short stories, it's cool to see Ooyama use Wayama in all kinds of scenarios, this time in a more action-oriented story. There's of course a kind of hard-boiled atmosphere at play in this story with the first-person narration and a McGuffin in the form of the Cretan Cat, which again is very unique compared to the "everyday life mystery"-esque setup of the previous story. This story spends quite some time on the set-up of explaining who the narrator is and the backstory of the Cretan Cat, so by the time we get to the ambush, there are really not that many pages left to really develop the mystery. Guessing the mastermind behind the ambush is thus not very difficult simply because of the small scale of the story, though I like the motive behind the ambush: it's not simply greed that drives the culprit, but something more unexpected, despite it being fairly hinted at. Of course, that is the main problem of the story as proven by the title, but because most of the story is more focused on the who and how of the ambush, the question of why/what the goal was doesn't pop up until relatively late.

Naze Mainichi Ippon Dake Kau no Ka? ("Why Does She Buy Just One A Day?") is a variant on the famous real-life story of mystery author Wakatake Nanami: she worked at a bookshop when she was in university, and every Saturday a man would appear with twenty 50-yen coins, exchange those coins for a 1000-yen bill and leave again. She never figured out why that man did that, and her story has become the topic of two anthologies with both professional and amateur detectives providing a possible solution to her problem, and other writers have also utilized variations on this problem, like Ooyama here. The narrator works at Trico Mart, a convenience store and due to a lack of employees, often ends up working a shift all alone. For the last few weeks, a woman has been coming to the story every single weekday morning at forty-past-seven to buy one thing: a pencil priced at 95 yen. It is the only thing she buys every time she comes. The question of why has been weighing on the narrator's mind for some time, so he brings it up to the manager, but he has no idea either. The manager does bring good news: he has hired a new employee, a young woman called Wayama Yawa. When the narrator starts "training" Wayama the following day, he soon realizes she's a very fast learner. When he happens to mention the story of the pencil-buying woman, she asks him to guess why the woman would be doing that. The answer he arrives at, and the answer Wayama arrives at however are quite different. While the set-up is basically simply an inverted version of the 50-yen coin problem, I really like the problem presented. The narrator's main theory is actually quite interesting. Obviously, his one will end up wrong, so it's supposed to be a false theory, but I wonder how many people would have arrived at this one: his theory is built on a certain characteristic that is apparently present in convenience store registers, but I wasn't aware of that! The Wayama theory is of course far more interesting: the first part of her theory is pretty easily guessed, but the "jump" to the latter of her theory is a bit more difficult. Mystery fans might guess this "jump" rather easily as it is a trope that's sometimes seen in mystery fiction, but I think an extra hint to guide the step from the first half to the second half just a bit more cleaner, as making that connection is a bit more difficult without knowledge of that trope. Still, I think it's one of the better stories of the series.

The final story is Kyouki wa Douyatte Idou Shita no Ka? ("How Was The Murder Weapon Moved?") is set on the "Labyrinth", a so-called event train consisting of three carriages. The first and third carriage are normal carriages for passengers, but the second carriage has been completely stripped from its seats and instead, walls have been placed in the carriage to create a labyrinth, challenging passengers to find their way from the first carriage to the third or vice-versa. They change the layout of the labyrinth periodically, providing train fans even more reason to take this train frequently. It's the first time Hirokawa Daisuke is travelling all alone (knowing his parents wouldn't like this) and he's been having the time of his life. He recognizes one of his fellow passengers as Ootsuki Shinichi, the famous puzzle designer who also designed the labyrinth in this train. When the train conductor, a young woman in her twenties, announces someone has thrown paint on one of the walls of the labyrinth and that therefore she asks passengers to not use the labyrinth anymore, Daisuke is relieved he already explored the labyrinth. He dozes off. When he later wakes up, the conductor is here again, checking up on Ootsuki, who is sleeping in the seat in front of Daisuke. Or least, it appeared he was sleeping, but Wayama soon discovers Ootsuki is in fact dead, and the syringe cap lying on the floor seems to suggest a certain method of death. Then a passenger from the third carriage makes his way through the labyrinth, telling Wayama he found a syringe underneath his seat. The police soon discover that syringe was indeed used to give Ootsuki a lethal injection. However, an examination of the security camera in the labyrinth carriage show only Wayama made her way through the labyrinth between the time Ootsuki was last seen alive and then found dead, so how did the murderer move the syringe from the first carriage to the third carriage?

An impossible crime as our last story, and one in a rather fanciful setting too! Having worked on the English translation of Ayatsuji Yukito's The Labyrinth House Murders, I of course have a soft spot for labyrinths and I can't conceal my slight disappointment at the realization  Kyouki wa Douyatte Idou Shita no Ka? didn't feature a map of the labyrinth even if it's not directly needed to solve the mystery. This story is slightly longer than most of the other stories, so it has some more room for fake solutions, which is always appreciated. I think this case actually has one of the more outlandish tricks used in Ooyama's books (who is usually fairly realistic, and focuses more on the logic needed to solve the problem), so that actually came as a pleasant surprise, and it really helps sell the unique location. Still, it wouldn't be an Ooyama if the trail leading to the solution wasn't mostly built around logical deductions based on the crime scene and the actions taking by the people involved: a lot of theorizing is done on the reason why the syringe was moved to the third carriage after killing Ootsuki in the first place, and it serves as a first step towards the solution, which is clever, though it immediately points at one single character as the culprit, so it's a bit of a double-edged sword.

By now, you should know that I thoroughly enjoyed this series by Ooyama, and it's such a shame it hasn't been collected yet as a volume, as it can be difficult to obtain the stories now, as you can only find them in the magazines where they were serialized. I really like how unlike a lot of Ooyama's other series, we don't have a series detective (or "detective enabler", in the case of Watson-ryoku) who gets involved in most of their cases because of their profession/expertise (police detectives, alibi-cracking expert, locked room expert): Wayama can be in any role, and her stories can be about anything, from an impossible crime to a relatively cute story about where someone got off the bus and within these five stories, we already got a wide variety of characters, settings and problems. It would be so cool to see this series continued in the future...

Original Japanese title(s): 大山誠一郎　「どちらが先に死んだのか？」/「どこで降りたのか？」/「何を企んでいるのか？」/「なぜ毎日一本だけ買うのか？」/「凶器はどうやって移動したのか？」

The Men Without Faces

"Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nipponichi.."

"Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!" 

Yep, two Conan reviews in succession!

Earlier this week, I reviewed the newest Detective Conan film Fallen Angel of the Highway. The Detective Conan films always release in the second/third week of April, just before the holiday season Golden Week starts there, making it an annual event. Which is why the publisher also times the release of a new volume of the comic in the same week the manga releases, and author Aoyama Goushou also tries to include stories with the main characters of that year's film in that volume. This all requires some timing with serialization and book releases, which is why... apparently it's been a YEAR since the last Detective Conan volume was released. Of course, the times we had a new volume every three, four months are long gone, but I had completely forgotten the most recent volume until last week had in fact been volume 107, which was released along-side the April 2025 film One-Eyed Flashback. Fortunately, volume 107 didn't end with half-way a case, so Detective Conan 108 opens with a brand-new story: An Encounter With the Past. Conan and the Detective Boys run into FBI agent Andre Camel, who after the events of volume 100 was forced to change his identity.  The man now known as "Andou Rekiya" jogs frequently, and just as he and the children are talking, they hear a shot from a nearby apartment building, followed by a knife thrown out of a window. They all hurry to the flat in question, where they find a man already knocking on the door. However, there's no answer and they eventually have to find the landlord to open the door for them. Inside they find the inhabitant of the flat dead, having apparently shot herself through the head with a pistol. It appears she had relations with three male hosts, who had all been called to her flat at that time. At first sight, it appears the woman committed suicide and wanted to have that image haunt the three men in her life, but Conan and Camel soon find indications that suggest the woman had hit her head fatally first, and that the gunshot was used to mask her wound. Furthermore, sushi chef Wakita appears with a sushi delivery made for two persons, suggesting the victim had in fact only invited one of her male friends here, who would be the likely suspect for the murder. But if it was murder, what about the gunshot Conan and the children heard and the knife being thrown out of the flat which was locked from the inside?

This is a pretty run-of-the-mill impossible crime in Detective Conan, where author Aoyama strings a few simple tricks together to create a seemingly impossible situation. The individual parts are usually not that memorable, and even taken everything together, every aspect of the impossible crime feels a bit too seperate from the rest with little synergy, so it's hard to really think of this as a great locked room mystery simply based on its mechanical features. The story is made more interesting with the underlying storyline, which is having Camel run into Wakita, who was revealed in previous volumes to be a disguised Rum, second-in-command of the Black Organization.  The reason why Camel has to hide his true identity is because he and Rum recognize each other, but now the two men happen to gather in the same flat, and they both immediately sense danger. So while Conan, the police and Camel are trying to solve the murder, Rum/Wakita is also trying to determine what the connection is between Camel and Conan, making it more difficult for Conan to solve the case the way he always does.

This story connects directly to Where The Chaos Ends: the police investigation ends and all the witnesses are free to go their own way. Wakita/Rum commands his underlings to kidnap Camel, but just before that happens, Camel is stopped by another resident of the apartment building. Camel is mistaken to be a friend of one of the residents there, who is playing very loud music. The neighbors on both sides happen to be game streamers and the loud music is interrupting their livestreams, so they want Camel to tell the man to stop. It happens Camel and the man in question just quarreled once in front of the building, but they go up to the flat, but there's no answer despite their knocking. The landlord opens the door again, but finds it locked with the door chain. Camel and Conan spot the man hanging in the back of the room, so Camel breaks the chain and rushes to the man, but it's too late: the man apparently hung himself from a pull-up bar. Hints scattered around the flat however make Conan and Camel suspect the man was murdered inside a locked room, and by one of his two neighbors nonetheless, but both claim to have an alibi as they were live-streaming games and interacting with their viewers.

This is just hilarious. So there's a locked room-murder in a flat, Conan solves it, the police is just ready to leave and then ANOTHER locked-room murder happens in another flat in the same building, with the landlord being asked to unlock the door both times? This is insane!

It's a murder in the same building... and mystery-wise, it's also very similar to the first story, with the murderer stringing variations of a few relatively simple, often-seen tricks to accomplish the locked room. While the idea of live-streams acting as an alibi is interesting, I feel too little is done with it, with little of the potential offered by this concept explored in depth. Had this story been written ten years ago, I am sure Aoyama would have managed to explore the game-live-stream-as-part-of-a-mystery concept in more depth, but with health and scheduling issues, it seems Aoyama for the last few years have relied on much simpler mystery plots, instead focusing more on the character relationship developments needed to advance the overall storyline. Here we have the same deal, as it turns out the assistant-teacher of the class of Conan and the Detective Boys, Wakasa has also arrived at the scene, bringing her in close contact with sushi chef Wakita/Rum. As revealed in earlier volumes, Wakasa too is actually Asaka, a former bodyguard in disguise, and she has a beef with Rum: her run-in with Wakita immediately confirms her suspicions about his true identity, while he too finally manages to confirm for himself who Wakasa truly is. Thus the reader is treated to a battle being played beneath the water surface, as Rum has identified both Asaka and Camel, and they have identified him: how are they going to get out of this situation? The story ends with a somewhat odd solution chapter, where Conan confirms for himself that Wakita is Rum in disguise: while this was already explicitly revealed to the reader, we now learn how Conan managed to figure that out based on the hints that have been laid throughout the series every since the character of Wakita was introduced in the series. It feels a but superfluous, because the reader already knew this fact, but I do like some of the hints.

The Secret Hidden in the Photograph at first seems disconnected from the previous storyline and starts with Ran, Sonoko, Conan and Sera Masumi visiting a hotel for high tea. Just as Sera parks her motorcycle at the hotel, a sleazy man praises her motorcycle and asks if they ever met. Ran and Sonoko immediately suspect the man's hitting on Sera, but both Sera and the man truly seem to have some recollection of each other, but they are not sure from what. At the hotel, Sonoko and Ran notices a famous actor and an influential politician are also present, though "incognito". Conan deduces that the man who spoke to Sera is in fact a journalist. Sera realizes she saw him at the hotel bombing case she was involved in: the journalist had taken a picture of the crowd, including Sera and her "little sister" Mary. Sera needs "convince" the journalist to delete the picture so she rushes to his hotel room, just as he returns with his girlfriend following him. He says he forgot his phone so he pops in the room, with all the others waiting outside, but when he doesn't reappear even after ten minutes, they peek inside, only to find the journalist with his head bashed in, with no other person in the hotel room! The actor and politician also appear at the door because of the ruckus, and it is soon revealed both men were being blackmailed by the journalist with compromising pictures, giving both men a motive for the murder, but if either of them did it, how did they escape the room while Sera and the others were waiting outside the door?

Again a story where the underlying plot, the threat of having the crowd picture that also includes Mary and Sera being published, is more interesting than the actual mystery: the solution to the locked-room mystery includes trite elements that we haven't seen used with such little originality in this series since the very first volumes. Meanwhile, the "first half" of what the culprit did to pull off this crime hinges on him counting on something the victim would do that seems very unreliable. Explaining what the culprit did in the most simple terms also results in a very silly sentence that you wouldn't expect to be used as in a mystery story: not that it is a very sure way to actually achieve what the murderer wanted though... 

The volume ends with the first chapter of Memories of a Ring, in which Ran, her father and Conan are relaxing at a hotel with hot springs which by sheer coincidence is also visited by Kanagawa Prefectural Police Mobile Unit squad leader Hagiwara Chihaya and her friend, and also by Inspector Yokomizo (Chihaya and Yokomizo being the focal characters of the film Fallen Angel of the Highway). There's also a group of women there, who used to be in the same school club. When one of them looses her ring, the others help looking for it, but then one of the friends is found murdered. Unfortunately, fans who read the collected volumes will have to wait until autumn, as that's when volume 109 is scheduled. Oh well, at least it's not 2027...

Detective Conan volume 108 sadly enough doesn't manage to break the mold of the stories of the last few years: with Aoyama not being able to publish weekly chapters consistently anymore, most of the stories end up being forced to include some element that is connected to the greater storyline just to keep things going, and evident from the quality of the more recent years, Aoyama has trouble juggling that with cool short mystery stories with original or memorable tricks. While I am interested in seeing how the greater mystery unfolds with all these cool characters, I can't deny I really miss having stories I vividly remember because of what cool tricks they used, or because it had a great whodunnit plot. I'll always be reading this series and be there when it ends, but I can't deny I really miss the better mystery stories of yore.

Original Japanese title(s):  青山剛昌『名探偵コナン』第108巻

The Destructive Angel

We may have lost our wings with which we flew up so high

But now, even now, I can feel your true mystical tide.

"We Were Angels" (Kageyama Hironobu) 

Surprisingly, the title of this year's Detective Conan film doesn't do that thing where you have to read a kanji combination as an English word. I wonder why they didn't have you read the combination that means "Fallen Angel" as "Lucifer", or why they didn't use the kanji combination meaning "highway" and have you read it as the English word... 

On the suggestion of high school student Sera Masumi, Ran, her father, Sonoko, Conan, the Detective Boys and Dr. Agasa are going to visit a motorcycle exhibition held in Yokohama. Dr. Agasa and the Detective Boys visit Yokohama one day early and go out to see the stars at night in the mountains, but they witness a pitch-black motorcycle speeding through the mountains, with a.... headless rider. The following day, the rest of the entourage take the highway from Tokyo to Yokohama, when they too witness a black motorcyle (with a rider with a black helmet) chasing after a couple on another motorcycle on the highway. The couple can't shake off their pursuer and crash horribly on the highway. The black motorcyclist is chased by Hagiwara Chihaya, squad leader of the mobile unit of the Kanagawa Prefectural Police and while she comes close to nabbing the mysterious cyclist, a traffic incident allows the rider to escape. The motorcyclist appears more often both in Yokohama and Tokyo, chasing after certain people on bikes and making them crash, and the police investigation soon assigns the name "Lucifer" to the suspect. At the motorcycle exhibition, Sera is conducting an investigation of her own, as she's looking for a missing friend. Meanwhile, the police unveils the Angel, a newly developed police motorcycle with built-in AI features that provide balancing and control assistance, allowing for the police to move faster and safer. Conan and the Detective Boys soon realize the "ghostly headless rider" and Lucifer all drove motorcycles that demonstrated capabilities eerily similar to the Angel, but how did "Lucifer" get hold of this technology and what is their goal in the 2026 Detective Conan film Fallen Angel of the Highway?

Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway is the 29th(!) animated feature length film in the long-running series Detective Conan originally created by Aoyama Goushou. Starting in 1997, a new Detective Conan film, with a completely new story not featured in the original comic, has been released in the theaters practically every year (COVID messed up the schedule...) and now we're at installment 29. The scriptwriter for this film is mystery author Ookura Takahiro, who wrote 2017's The Crimson Love Letter (probably my favorite of the "modern" films), The Fist of Blue Sapphire (2019), Bride of Halloween (2022) and The Million-Dollar Pentagram (2024), alternating years with the other film scriptwriter Sakurai Takehiro (so he was responsible for last year's One-Eyed Flashback). As have been the trend since about ten years, these films have become highly character-drama focused films, with specific characters from the manga becoming the main characters of the film. What is important to note is that while the manga creator Aoyama Goushou doesn't write these films, he does provide ideas to them, and the films, especially nowadays, all feature backstories, reveals and character relationship developments that are then incorporated back into the manga. This means that these films basically expect you to be more-or-less up-to-date about the characters in each film, and vice-versa, the manga eventually also expects you to have seen these films as certain character-related details are only explained in the film. Fortunately, Detective Conan: The Fallen Angel of the Highway doesn't require that much homework: Chihaya, first appearing in the collected volumes in 2022, hasn't been featured in that many stories yet, and while her plot relevance is also dependent on the fact she's the older sister of a character who has already died in the line of duty by the time this series starts, basically just knowing that is enough to get into the film. The other focal character, Inspector Yokomizo of the Kanagawa police, doesn't have that much of a backstory anyway.

So I'm explicitly naming Chihaya and Inspector Yokomizo now, because unfortunately, it is clear this film, as it is now, was not the film envisioned when the film first went into production. This is due to the tragic death of the voice actresss Tanaka Atsuko, who originally played Chihaya. Tanaka is best known for her role as Kusanagi Motoko in the legendary Ghost in the Shell, and it just so happens that Inspector Yokomizo is voiced by... Ootsuka Akio, the voice actor of Batou, Kusanagi's right-hand man in Ghost in the Shell. Casting Tanaka in the role of a squad leader, and having her team up with a grumpy middle-aged second-in-command with a soft spot for her voiced by Ootsuka is of course no coincidence and it is clear from everything, Chihaya and Yokomizo in Conan were supposed to mirror Kusunagi and Batou (with their voice actors), the same this series did with Amuro and Char from Mobile Suit Gundam in the characters of Amuro and Akai, who were also voiced by their original voice actors. However, Tanaka passed away in 2024 and ultimately, it was decided Sawashiro Miyuki would take over the role of Chihaya. And as good as Sawashiro does the role in Fallen Angel of the Highway, one can't help but feel this film would have been so much funnier if we could have heard Tanaka and Ootsuka taking on roles close to their famous Ghost in the Shell characters, but in a rom-com setting. That layer is now completely gone and what's left are just thoughts of "What if...".

But even without the voice actor issue playing, I think Fallen Angel of the Highway had some difficult obstacles to deal with. Picking Chihaya as the main character already limits the kind of mystery this film could bring, as she's not a homicide detective (which would give endless possibilities), but a traffic police officer, with her trademark being her police motorcycle, so of course this film would be about motorcycles and chases and all of that. The fact there haven't been that many Chihaya stories also meant a lot of the film is used to firmly introduce her and the characters related to her. This results in a film that feels much slower than the average Detective Conan film and also one that has a very small cast of film-original characters. Ultimately, the mystery of who the mysterious motorcyclist Lucifer is and how they got to use a motorcyle similar to the prototype Angel is just too small-scale to really make an impression, as the focus is very clearly more on casting the spotlight on the focal characters and see *how* they react to the events that transpire in this film, rather than focusing on the process of solving the case. It doesn't help most of the crimes feel... less "deliberate" than actual murder. Sure, intentionally chasing after someone on a motorcycle and making them crash is nothing less than an attempt at killing them, but it still feels different from someone actually stabbing the victim with a knife, or something like that. For me personally, the threat of the culprit felt not as serious as probably intended, so I had trouble getting really invested in the mystery and the solving of the case.

Of course, a lot of the more recent Conan films have relatively simple mystery plots, but they usually throw enough explosions at me to still leave me satisfied as I leave the theater, but it seems they also dialed down the action this year. Perhaps it's because a lot of the set pieces revolved around chases in cars or motorcycles, but there weren't really grand ones this time (compared to previous years) and even "Conan or one of his allies figure out a clever trick to turn a literally explosive situation around" scene in the climax seemed very subdued and less... "oh, that's a clever way to get out of that tight spot" compared to previous entries. Perhaps the setting of Yokohama didn't help much either: of course, if you want to feature Chihaya, you'll have to set the story in Kanagawa, and mainly Yokohama, but visually, it's not like it's that different from Tokyo, while in previous years we had Hokkaido, the mountains of Nagano, the sea, Singapore, an amusement park....

So I can't say I'm a huge fan of Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway. This is partially because it couldn't be what it originally set out to be due to unfortunate circumstances, but looking solely at the mystery and the spectacle I expect of a Conan film, I found this year's entry a bit lacking. If you're really into the characters featured in this film (Chihaya, Yokomizo, Chihaya's brother and his bestie), you'll probably find some cool character drama developments here, but otherwise I think it's my least favorite Conan film until now written by Ookura. As always, the film's credits are followed by a short teaser that confirm there's a new Conan film coming next year around the same time that give a hint as to what the film'll be about. The little shown at least has a lot of potential,so I'll be in the theaters next year too of course, especially as it's the thirtieth film then!

Original Japanese title(s):  『名探偵コナン　ハイウエイの堕天使』

The Corpse That Wasn't There

"It's me, Kaiba. And this time, you don't stand a *ghost* of a chance."

"Yu-Gi-Oh!"  

So I met Norizuki twice in my life, and the first time something funny happened (though Norizuki probably didn't realize it), though the Mephisto editor-in-chief sure did and he was a huge help to me...

Norizuki Rintarou's series about the adventures of the fictional writer/amateur detective Norizuki Rintarou and his father Inspector Norizuki finally gets a new volume later this month in the form of Norizuki Rintarou no Fukaku, which also has the English title The Unawareness of Norizuki Rintarou on the cover. The contents of the four-story-volume was recently announced and it turns out I already read half of the stories included. While the final story is an original tale written especially for the volume, I have already reviewed the first two stories in the book: Higisha Shibou ni Yori ("Due to the Death of the Suspect") and Shinritekikashi Ari ("Stigmatized Property") were both originally written as part of guess-the-culprit anthology projects, where the first part of the story would be published and then readers would have time to write in their solutions, before the second half of the story would be published. I read these stories when the volumes collecting these stories were published and enjoyed both of them as fair-play stories where we get to see Norizuki's logic-based puzzles in their full glory. 

The title of the third story included in the volume Norizuki Rintarou no Fukaku however didn't sound familiar to me at first, until I looked it up and learned I actually had the story already in my possession. The story had been written as part of an anthology project running in the magazine Mephisto titled The Finishing Stroke, fousing on stories with final lines that turn things around. I think I did know Norizuki had written something for this anthology project, but I hadn't quite realized it had in fact been a story starring Rintarou. While there's a dedicated The Finishing Stroke book release, which collects this story too among others, I happen to have the Mephisto issue where Norizuki's Tsugi wa Anta no Ban da yo ("You're Next!") was originally published, so I decided to read it (I am not aware of any (major) differences between the original publication and the collected version).

Pater Norizuki is investigating a rather kooky case and as always, he ends up discussing the case with filius Rintarou to see if the writer has some ideas. Komiyama Michiyo, an elderly, wealthy woman was found murdered in her own home: the woman ran several succesful businesses and was always staying in hotels during weekdays for all her business obligations, though she made it a rule to return home for the weekend: she was discovered dead on a Monday. While at first it seems like a robbery ending in death, the fact the murderer actually managed to switch off the security cameras and evade all the cameras in the neigborhood seems to suggest the "thief" had very detailed knowledge about the victim's house, its security measures and thus would have known the busy woman was seldom at home during the week: so why would a genuine thief would have picked the weekend, when the woman was always at home? This alone would just make for an ordinary case, but things took a weird turn when Suzumura Shigeki, an office employee who has made it a habit to jog in the evening after work, made a report about having found the body of a dead woman in the park he always visits: an elderly woman had died recently there due to dehydration, and it was at that same spot he saw an elderly woman collapsed on the ground. At first he thought it was another case of dehydration and tried to wake the woman up, but she was clearly dead and her arms had been tied with zip ties, indicating a crime. As he was out jogging, he didn't have his phone with him and had to report from the nearest public phone. When he and a patrolman returned to the park however, they found no trace of the woman, though it was clear someone had been lying at the place Suzumura saw the body. When he described the face of the woman however, it turned out to be the face of...Komiyama Michiyo, a woman who was already dead by then!

The spooky story reminds in a way of the classic, award-winning An Urban Legend Puzzle in this same series and indeed, while this story does not feature an actual, well-known urban legend/ghost story, the story does start as a genuine scary story, told as the experience of an "unnamed" office worker (Suzumura) who dreams of jogging at night and then running into a ghostly face of a woman and later, Suzumura testifies he'd been seeing that woman in his dreams long before he stumbled the dead body in the park. But ghosts and prophetic dreams can't be real....right? Of course, this is an experiment in logical deduction as are all of the Rintarou short stories and indeed, Rintarou does offer a very logical solution to what happened. As many of the Rintarou stories go (especially those with Rintarou and his father just discussing a case as armchair detectives), the story's cleverness lies in how the story is presented to the reader in terms of how every element is connected, and Rintarou then using clever questions to steer the reader (and his father) towards a subversion of the original presentation, showing how everything had been connected in a different manner in reality. This is also executed satisfactorily in this tale, and while some elements do feel a bit too familiar if you've read a healthy amount of the Rintarou short stories, Tsugi wa Anta no Ban da yo is a pretty solid entry in the series.

It's not a very long story, so there's not much more I can talk about without giving away too much. Looking at the already available three stories that will be included in the upcoming Norizuki Rintarou no Fukaku volume though, I think these were all really solid short mystery tales, with of course the first two being pure guess-the-culprit puzzles seperated in a "problem" and "solution" part, while Tsugi wa Anta no Ban da yo is a bit more open, but feels more unique with its ghost story set-up . I do have to admit that now that I have read three of the four stories, it's likely I won't be picking up a copy of Norizuki Rintarou no Fukaku right away on release just to read that one final original story.. Oh well, I'm sure I'll get to it eventually.

Original Japanese title(s): 法月綸太郎「次はあんたの番だよ」 

The Problem of the Red Rose

"There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it."

"A Study in Scarlet" 

Unsurprisingly, I have quite a few mystery books that have red as the main color on the cover. I wonder what color is the rarest though. Something like purple?

Terada Satoshi is a young detective assigned to the prestigious homicide division of the Metropolitan Police Department with a bright future awaiting him.... until he foolishly left confidential files at the house of a suspect during a house search. The woman living with the suspect posted the files online, making a laughing stock of the police, questioning their capabilities of actually conducting a criminal investigation. Terada wasn't a scapegoat, but the actual person who made the grave mistake of course, so he was severely punished for the deed: he was removed from the homicide division and effectively demoted by his assignment to the Red Museum. Following the example of the Black Museum of Scotland Yard, the MPD has its own Red Museum, where files and evidence concerning cases of which the statute of limitations have already passed are stored in the archives beneath the old brick mansion in Mitaka, Tokyo. His pride couldn't have been hurt worse, as gone are the days of investigating serious crimes, and left are just boxes filled with old evidence waiting for Terada to stick a nice label with a QR code on them so they can be registered into a database. The same old, day after day after day. 

The Red Museum is headed by Hiiro Saeko, an attractive woman but rather emotionally detached, and often referred to as the Snow Woman. Hiiro's rank is superintendent and she's supposed to be in the elite 'career path' within the police, so Terada suspects she must have really messed up too in the past to be stuck here despite her career history, staring at dead cases all day. However, soon after Terada's assignment to the Red Museum, Hiiro orders Terada to look into an old unsolved case they are registering into the database. Once he reports his findings to her, Hiiro manages to solve the case and identify the culprit decades after the murder happened! It turns out that while the Red Museum is storing away old cases, Hiiro doesn't consider all cases dead, and she goes over every case they register, solved or not, to see if she can uncover the real truth. In Ooyama Seiichirou's short story collection Akai Hakubutsukan ("The Red Museum", 2015), we follow Hiiro and Terada as they tackle five cases from the past... and the present.

In 2016, Akai Hakubutsukan had a live-action adaptation, which I reviewed back then. It was a feature-length special, adaptating multiple stories and in the end, I wasn't too impressed because it felt a bit chaotic. But on the other hand, I am a huge fan of Ooyama Seiichirou, which is partially connected to the fact I love short mystery stories, and Ooyama's a master in that form. As I have read most of Ooyama's work already (yes, I know I haven't written the review for the second Watson-ryoku yet...), it was just a matter of time I would get started on the Red Museum series. Actually, besides the television special, I had actually already read one of the stories collected in this first volume of the series, but for some reason it appears I never reviewed it, as I can't find a review of it on my blog. But as the third volume of the series released a few months ago, I knew it was time to finally get properly started on this series.

Pan no Minoshirokin ("Ransom for Bread") is the opening story. It was originally titled Akai Hakubutsukan ("The Red Museum") and is also about twice as long as all the other stories, so it was basically a pilot which was later extended into a full series. As such, it spends relatively much time explaining how Terada came to work at the Red Museum, his first impressions of the cold head of the museum, his meeting with the two other staff members of the museum and portraying Terada as someone who really is proud of having been in the homicide division, looking down at Hiiro as someone who probably has never conducted any real investigation herself and only being in a managerial role. Things of course change with this first case. Terada is sent to transfer evidence from the Shinagawa Police Station to the Red Museum for filing: the evidence is from a case that occured in 1999, when the director of the big bread supplier Nakajima Bread was murdered. Someone had been tampering with products of the company, introducing nails into the bread, which of course led to a huge drop in sales. The blackmailer then sent a letter to the director, demanding for a fortune if he wanted it to stop. The director was to bring the money in a suitcase by car, and he'd be contacted via his phone installed in his car. The police was of course not to be involved, but they were secretly informed and a police detective was hiding in the car's trunk, which allowed him to communicate with the director and maintain radio contact with the supporting detectives. The director was led to an abandoned manor in the forest. When he didn't appear after a while, the detective in the trunk sent supporting detectives in the house as he too entered the building, but they only found the suitcase with money in the house, and the director gone. While they did find an underground passage leading away from the house, they couldn't understand why the money had been left behind. Later, the director's dead body was found elsewhere, making this a murder case. The police soon suspected the ransom money had just been a ruse, an excuse to camouflage the real goal of murdering the director, but the person with the best motive for doing so had an iron-clad alibi and the case was left unsolved.

For some reason I thought this had been adapted as part of the first television adaptation, but I guess they only did the introductionary part and not the actual mystery. Which is a shame, as this is a great opening story. In a way, it reminds me a lot of the short story Y no Yuukai ("The Kidnapping of Y"), the last story in Ooyama's debut book Alphabet Puzzlers. It too deals with a case set in the past, an abduction case (a child in Y no Yuukai, the director who disappears from the house in this story), someone is ordered to drive around in a car as they are directed to deliver ransom money and the money ending up not being retrieved by the culprit, leading to speculations to their real goal. The mechanics behind the case and the way they are solved are completley different though. Pan no Minoshirokin cleverly disguises the main driving dynamics of its plot as a different kind of mystery, hiding the true solution behind a well-designed veil of deceit. Once you recognize the mystery for what it really is, everything falls nicely in place, showing the tight plotting Ooyama is known for. If there's one thing I would fault the story for, it's that it doesn't make as clever use of the series' premise as some of the other stories in the same collection: while the conclusion might feel more impactful because the story took place ago in the past, a lot of how the main mystery would've been solved, would have been the same whether the story had been told real-time (i.e. in 1999) or as it is now, as an account of something that happed long ago. I feel other stories, like the second and the last one in this volume, utilize the concept of these all being old cases to better effect.

Fukushuu Nikki ("Diary of Revenge") is Ooyama's take on a device seen in both Nicholas Blake's The Beast Must Die and Norizuki Rintarou's Yoriko no Tame ni ("For Yoriko"), being about the diary of someone planning to commit murder out of revenge. In fact, these three stories, written by different people at different times, form a kind of series: the diary of Yoriko no Tame ni starts the day after the diary in The Beast Must Die ends, and Fukushuu Nikki´s diary starts after Yoriko no Tame ni's diary ends! The diary in question is of Takami Kyouichi, a student who vows revenge for the death of his ex-girlfriend Maiko. The two had broken up some months ago, but one day, he suddenly got a call from Maiko who wanted to see him. When he went to her place, her body was found lying in the garden outside of her apartment building, having apparently leapt to her death from her balcony, but Kyouchi suspects there's more behind her death and based on evidence found in her apartment and the fact she had been pregnant when she died, he theorizes Maiko had been murdered by her current boyfriend, who wanted to get rid of her and the baby the easy way. Kyouichi feverishly starts to look for clues to identify this boyfriend so he can kill him, detailing his thinking process in his diary. After he managed to execute his plan, his diary was removed during a burglary in his apartment building and the diary was sent to the police, who of course wanted to have a talk with him: he died in a car crash while running away. 

Both Terada and Hiiro read through the diary, which seems like an open-and-shut case as the murderer confessed to every detail, from motive to how he planned the murder, in his diary, but to Terada's surprise, Hiiro seems dubious about the "truth" behind this case, as she notes a few strange discrepancies within the diary's account. The result is an excellently plotted tale of mystery, where Ooyama managed to plant so many clues and foreshadowing in a surprisingly short diary: the diary hides an intricately designed plot that, despite the diary's short length, allows for clever red herrings, multiple solutions and a neat conclusion to it all. I actually recently did go through The Beast Must Die in anticipation of this story, but I liked the clewing in this story so much better and the way the plot is constructed so much better, being much closer to the type of mystery I like (Ellery Queen-like plotting).  

Shi ga Kyouhansha wo Wakatsu made ("Till Death Do The Conspirators Part") is about a murder exchange, a trope very dear to Norizuki Rintarou, so these two stories do make it feel like Ooyama had him in mind while working on this book. Terada is out driving when he becomes witness to a tragic incident involving a truck hitting a car. The lone driver of the car is hit fatally, but in his dying words, he makes a confession to Terada. Twenty-five years ago, he was involved in a murder exchange: he wanted to kill somebody, but he'd become the main suspect, so he swapped his murder with someone else, allowing both of them to obtain perfect alibis for 'their' murders. While the man manages to explain they committed the murders one week after another, Terada unfortunately couldn't make out the names the dying man was trying to convey and by the time the emergency services arrived, the man had already passed away. The man is easily identified by his wife and his driver's license and so Terada and Hiiro start looking into a death that occurred twenty-five years ago in his circle, for which he would've been a suspect if not for a perfect alibi. They learn his wealthy uncle had been murdered, supporting the claim of the murder exchange and leading to the next question: who killed the uncle and who was the person they ordered a hit on?

This was the main plot of the (first) live-action special, but whereas I remember nothing about the plot from the special, I think it is a great story here. The story certainly starts out in an open manner: you know there have been two murders twenty-five years ago, one being on the rich uncle, but Terada's investigations into murders in the same time window lead to two possible candidates, where someone was murdered and there had been an obvious suspect in the possession of a perfect alibi. Here the fact this series is about cases set long in the past helps develop the mystery, as what makes this mystery hard to solve is the fact you can hardly expect someone to remember what they did on a certain day at a certain time twenty-five years ago, and how are you going to prove that? So it's neigh impossible to prove either of those suspects committed the uncle murder, and yet... Hiiro is not the type to give up easily and despite these setbacks, she boldly proposes a theory that proves with whom the traffic accident victim swapped his murders and how the other murder was committed. At this point of the series, Terada is still hoping he can one day return to the homicide division and as he was the one to hear the dying man's last words, he also wants to show Hiiro he's a better investigator than she'll ever be due to his hands-on experience, but of course, we all know who's better at this...

Honoo ("Flames") is a relatively short story and the one I know I had read before, but for some reason I never wrote a review for it. Hiiro draws Terada's attention to an essay written by a photographer, whose family died in a fire: when she was in elementary school, she had gone off on a school trip, only to return an orphan. It was only later she heard the horrible truth: her aunt (sister of her mother) was going to stay at their home for a day because she and her boyfriend had a horrible breakup and they needed to talk things over to calm things down. Her mother, pregnant with a sibling, and her father had also been present. A fire broke out and the burnt bodies of her father, her mother and her aunt were found in the ruins. It turned out that all three of them had been poisoned before they were consumed by the fire, leading to the conclusion the jilted boyfriend killed everyone after their chat went wrong. The case was never solved, but Hiiro seems quite interested in the account of the now-adult photographer about her childhood. As said, this story is relatively short and features few characters, making it a bit easy to guess how everything falls into place eventually, but it is a neatly constructed mystery, with a lot of subtle clewing. This is the second time I read the story, but it only made me realize how well the story is written, as so many little passages and comments take on a completely different meaning once you know the truth.

Shi ni Itaru Toi ("A Question Unto Death") has a great premise: the Red Museum is asked to release the files and evidence on the death of a man found near the Tamagawa River twenty-six years ago to the homicide division of the MPD, as the exact same murder has occured: from the location of the body to the location of the wound, down to the fact a blood sample of an unknown person (the culprit?) was left on the clothes of the victim. The police fear the same murderer has striked again and thus need the old files to compare, and Hiiro of course hands over the files, as she too recognizes the eerie similarities between the cases. However, Hiiro is then approached by an old friend in Internal Affairs, who wants Hiiro on the case too: because the new body is too similar to how the body was discovered twenty-six years ago and there's no reason why the original murderer would go such lengths to replicate their own crime, he suspects the new murderer might be just a copycat, and more importantly, a copycat with precise knowledge of the police investigation twenty-six years ago, as the new murder also mirrors the old murder in ways not reported in the media and only known to people involved in the investigation. Hiiro accepts the task and starts investigating both the murders in the past and the present, while the homicide investigation too tries to find a connection between the two cases, focusing on the blood samples found at both crime scenes.

And as I am writing this, I learn there was actually a second adaptation of this series, and that second installment was based on this last story. This story introduces an interesting way to have Hiiro involved in an on-going investigation while also keeping her firmly tied to the work of the Red Museum. The mystery basically revolves around the matter of why the two murders are nearly identical down to every point: if it was the original murderer coming back again after twenty-six years, why would they mirror their own crime down to such detail, even down to something that obviously hadn't been planned originally (the bloodstain left on the victim)? On the other hand, if it's someone copying the murder, how did they get hold of such details and once again, what is the goal in mimicking an old unsolved crime, especially as it wasn't even a high-profile crime (i.e. not the type of murder to attract copycat killers in the first place)? The answer Ooyama has prepared for this question is fantastic: he provides the murderer with an incredibly original motive for this mystery to occur, and while it does require one character to be not quite sane for this story to work, the payoff is great, with a twist that will take the reader by surprise, not only because it's so unexpected, but alo because it's surprisingly well-clewed despite of the out-of-left-field-ness. This is the kind of surprise I'm reading detective stories for!

Akai Hakubutsukan shows once again why Ooyama is so well appreciated as a master of the short mystery story. All the stories except for the pilot/first story are pretty short in page length, but he always manages to pack the plots full with clues and foreshadowing that lead to surprising twists, all the while without telegraphing the solutions too much. I think the series works best when it makes actual use of the fact we're investigating old cases now, with limited options to doing reinvestigations. As I mentioned before, the third volume was released late 2025, but given how much I liked this first volume, I think catching up won't take long.

Original Japanese title(s): 大山誠一郎『赤い博物館』:「パンの身代金」/「復讐日記」/「死が共犯者を分かつまで」/「炎」/「死に至る問い」