Episode 221: The Client Full of Lies (Part 2)

The victim was killed with a bloody bokken. The culprit was his wife. She didn’t like that he was gambling and selling all of her things to pay off his debts, (particularly her speaker system). It’s also revealed that the beautiful lady is Shizuka, Heiji’s mother, which is VERY shocking to them for some reason. 

Best Quotes:

Officer: “Yokomizo-keiji! We found a bloody bokken!”

Yokomizo: “Miss, did your husband keep a bokken here?”

Wife: “Yes, it’s kept on that counter. My husband used to chase away salesmen.”

Reactions to Shizuka being Heiji’s Mom:

Episode 235: The Locked Wine Cellar

Mouri, for no reason, is at a wine tasting with a guy who is obsessed with himself, and three other losers: Glasses, Pinch-Face, and Long Hair Sommelier. Their host leaves for forty minutes to find his special wine bottle, but then he’s found dead in the wine cellar. His wife faints, but Conan doesn’t care. He’s more concerned about the position of the body. Conan almost kills Takagi by dropping him down a clothesline into a wine rack. This was apparently the method used by the culprit to move the body to the wine cellar. Glasses did it. He did it because the interest rate was too high on money he owed.

Best Quotes:

(Conan’s concern upon finding the body) “Why is he in such an abnormal position?”

Episode 225: The Secret of the High Sales

The Detective Boys are hired to look into a weird kid’s family's thriving restaurant business. It's thriving due to the appearance of a strange man who said he owed the old owner a favor, even though the old owner was a cranky man who never did anything for anyone. Really stupid criminal, used his savings to promote the restaurant and keep the family busy, so he could dig under the house for jewels he hid there five years ago. The detective boys solve the case entirely on their own, as Conan sulks around because the criminal is too unintelligent for him. The criminal is very happy to be apprehended in the end. Case Closed.

Best Quotes:

Ayumi (concerned about Conan): “I hope he doesn’t rebel and become a juvenile delinquent.”

Episode 229: The Murderous Pottery Class (Part 2)

We’ve learned two important things from this episode – Conan hyperventilates when he’s excited, and Ran keeps potato chips on her desk. We also have to add to Spiky Head’s appearance. His hair is somewhat between a grey Christmas tree and a porcupine. Anyway, he uses a necktie-pin-twist-locker-tape-apron-cloth that he wanted to cut up and flush down the toilet with his scissors. Megure is fooled by his set-up and is about to take away the assistant, when he and Takagi decide to reflect on how normally they would hear some strange noise, and Mouri would stop them. But they think it’ll be okay, because Mouri isn’t here this time. This is when Sonoko turns into a dinosaur cat hybrid to reveal the super convoluted trick. What gave it away was the fact that the culprit didn’t wear gloves, because he likes to feel things with his own hands. Therefore his fingerprints are on everything. Conan also critiques his methods and suggests that next time he should use a rope and gloves, so that he won’t leave clay nail marks all over the crime scene. 

Episode 219: The Gathering of the Detectives

How can an entire house be made of gold? And then shed its skin at the end? .......Everything in Detective Conan is real. This two-hour special begins with a backstory about Kaito Kid stealing a clock tower. Then we get into the main story, in which Mouri receives a letter from the shadow child abandoned by God, and two million yen. This apparently translates to Kaito Kid because “shadow” means “phantom,” and "child" is from the bible and a baby goat. Anyway, it invites him to Sunset Manor, where five other famous detectives are gathered.

First they meet Monster. She’s standing in the middle of the road, and Mouri nearly runs her over. She’s an old lady who doesn’t like smoking, and solves cases from her armchair at home. Shortly after they arrive, Mogi-san appears with his baby. He tells Mouri not to touch his baby. Once inside, they meet Sleepy Maid with Freckles. She’s completely inconsequent, and was hired by a computer screen that said it would use her. (Does she even get paid?) Next there’s the cooking detective whose only skills are solving murders and cooking. Suddenly they see a weird stain on the door, and hear the “chi chi chi” of a spray bottle. There’s a woman who appears to be cleaning the banister, but as Hakuba explains from the top of the stairs, she’s using luminol to find blood stains. Hakuba is a teen detective who has lived in London for the past few years, but came back for this. He summons his hawk, Watson. Then they go to dinner with Purple Head Demon Eyes, and he explains that he’s called them there to solve the mystery of the house.

The house was built by Karasuma Renya, a dark shadowy figure with ravens. When people were celebrating his death at ninety-nine, two guys showed up at the house and gave everybody weed, and they all killed each other. But rumor has it that a treasure still exists somewhere in the house. Mogi has some issues the entire time, like ripping the mask off of Purple Head Demon Eyes, revealing a speaker forehead phone cassette tape. He also does a really realistic impression of somebody dying of cyanide poisoning just before the cook-tective actually dies in that way. Then they go check the cars, which have all been blown up, including Baby. And the bridge to the manor has also apparently been burned down. This leaves them stranded at the manor, until they realize that the maid’s car parked out back wasn’t destroyed. They toss coins to decide who will take the car to see if the bridge is really broken. It is. And then the maid’s car blows up into a fire-ball of flame and disappears into the chasm below, apparently taking Monster away with it.

Meanwhile, back at the house, Luminol Lady is knocking out Ran and the maid in the bathroom. She leaves, smiling maniacally, only to walk into Hakuba, who’s pointing a gun at her. He accuses her of not wanting to be near the exploding maid’s car, and therefore is the murderer. Then she shoots him. (Don’t worry. It’s just ketchup, which apparently looks real on a CCTV camera.) Mouri and Mogi return, and find Hakuba “dead.” Then they run upstairs to the office where they find Luminol Lady poisoned by a needle that came out of the doorknob. So then Mogi points his gun at Mouri, saying he must be the culprit because it’s only them left. He shoots him with ketchup, and then lights a cigarette, and fakes his death through cyanide poisoning. (Remember, he’s really good at it.)

Conan then takes the opportunity to send a very cryptic message to the culprit. He tells them to come to the entry and face him. It is then that you see the culprit as Anokata, in a dark room, surrounded by TV screens, from which he can watch the entire house. He then leaves via the trap door, dropping like a ninja into the hallway, and running to the front entry, where Conan is waiting for him…..or her. Because the point of faking all these ketchup deaths was to lure out Monster.

Monster wants to find the treasure in the house, which her father could never find, because he was killed during the Karasuma Renya incident. Conan does some fancy riddle solving, involving a bloody piano, playing cards, and breaking a clock. The clock is pure gold, and as it falls to the floor, it causes a chain reaction, in which the house begins to shed its exoskeleton, revealing its true golden form. Watson summoned a helicopter, saving them all from the golden mountain villa of death. But it’s not over, for as they are flying over the mountains, suddenly Monster shoves open the door of the helicopter and hops out. She is followed by Mouri, who opens up his hang glider to save her, because he’s actually Kaito Kid in disguise. Thus ends the Gathering of the Detectives. Side note: Heiji was supposed to attend, but he couldn’t make it because his mother called and said he had exams. 

Best Quotes:

Mogi: “It took me five years to earn my baby.”

Episode 218: Megure's Sealed Secret (Part 2)

Megure’s wife was a delinquent in the past. She despised the police and insisted on being a decoy. That’s his sealed secret. Anyway, Sonoko has to go to the car to put something away, so she borrows Mouri’s keys, and due to a bad driver parking too close to the passenger side, she has to enter on the driver’s side. This turns out to be deadly because she is then followed by the psycho-battered-baseball-bat-bearing-platform-boot-bludgeoner, whose son was hit by a car and died because the woman was wearing the wrong kind of footwear for driving, so braking took longer. This causes him to chase Sonoko all over the department store in the dark, smashing things. Sato thinks that the smashing sound is from a fish tank in a pet store, but Megure knows better. He knows that it’s Go stones. He arrives just in time to be hit in the head, saving Sonoko, but reopening his old wound that he hides beneath his hat, from when his wife was a delinquent. The culprit, who was the security guard at the department store, cries glow-in-the-dark glue tears when he’s told that Sonoko is just a high schooler, and not a “platform boot-wearing demon.”

Best Quotes:

Culprit (the motive): “I just wanted that woman to apologize…..to wear proper shoes, and apologize to my son in heaven.”

Episode 233: The Evidence that Didn't Disappear (Part 1)

Dr. Agasa’s friend’s son invites everyone over to his house to take stuff, because his job is forcing him to move to England. His whole family is obsessed with dogs and mystery authors. Other people invited to take stuff are three dog breeders: Professor Plum, Mrs. White, and Miss Scarlett, who says all she wants is a really ugly vase, and she’s going to take whatever she wants. While they’re there, they meet three dogs: Arthur, Christie, and Doyle. Arthur likes Christie, but if they had babies, they’d be worthless. And there was also another dog, Conan, who died. While they’re there, Doyle goes missing. At first they think he’s been incinerated, but Conan deduces that he’s hidden somewhere in the house. Then they go on a long search, and find a mysterious third blue cushion. Also Haibara spends the entire episode making morbid, frightening remarks about everything because she’s been sulking about the bus hijacking case. She especially frightens everybody when she goes on a minute-long tirade about Marie Antoinette’s dog, Thisbe, who drowned himself in a river after she was executed. This causes Agasa’s friend’s son to say, “She’s a strange girl, isn’t she?” Anyway, Conan tells her to relax, because apparently, as a detective, he can sense the Black Organization’s blood-thirst, but this is a complete lie, because we all know that he accuses any person dressed in black as being one of “them.”

Episode 193: The Desperate Revival - The Promised Place

Ooba-san will always have 100 answers for all of Shinichi’s 100 stupid questions, except for…. “Pink Pearl.” He deduces that Ooba-san is the culprit because the light from the elevator revealed that the girl’s earrings were pink, when in the dim lighting, they were nothing more than grey orbs. Shinichi is also suffering some heart attacks while solving the case. Haibara meets him in the bathroom later, and does not seem to care that Shinichi is grasping the mirror, and writhing in pain. She’s more concerned about timing how long he can last before he turns back into Conan. He returns to Ran, who goes through multiple personality changes while she comes to terms with Shinichi’s second abandonment. This includes shouting at Conan that she didn’t want to hear what Shinichi had to say, crying, laughing, asking him to stay for dessert, eating at least five ice cream sundaes, and passive aggressively passing judgment on Shinichi’s character. Mouri has to wait in the car for several hours. Also, the reason why Shinichi wanted to take Ran to this fancy restaurant, which she thinks is show-offy, especially if he wasn’t going to tell her anything important, is because it’s the same place his father proposed to his mother……The Legendary Couple.

Best Quotes:

Megure (summarizing the events of the case): “So, the revenge inherited from the father was solved by the second generation. Ironic, isn’t it, Kudou?”

Episode 232: The Falling from the Condo Case

An evil drug salesman is killed by Araide-sensei’s evil twin. The victim died because he thought a flower salesman was trying to kill him, and ran to use his balcony escape trick, in which he hops ten feet to the next building’s rooftop. Instead he slipped over the edge, and his sandal grew wings and flew to the other building. The moral of the story is: Don’t sell drugs, even if you need money to pay off bad investments, and don’t steal them from your university. And if you want to get away with murder, don’t check your watch constantly, and make suspicious phone calls, and don’t be the only suspect, and don’t sweat because you’ve just moved furniture around. 

Episode 184: The Cursed Mask Laughs Coldly

This is a long one, but it is SO worth it. 10/10 Detective Conan episode. A must watch, truly. Enjoy!

Mouri is going to be in a car accident charity. On the way there, he drives recklessly in the snow, and almost runs over a tree that fell in the road. It tells him to go home or he’ll regret it. When he gets there, he meets the other charity people: Katagiri Masanori – the photographer who travels across the world to take pictures of beautiful sceneries, Matsudaira Mamoru – the homerun king, and Nagara Haruka – the Yuki Onna and super popular tarot prophet. (As opposed to the super unpopular one). They look upon the enormous mask mansion, while Zelda music plays in the background, wondering which of the two front doors they should choose. As if on cue with their thoughts, the doors on the west side of the mansion ease open, and a pretty maid steps out. Just as they are deciding to go through those doors, the east side of the house opens, and an identical maid steps out. Speaking in unison they tell them that only those who sleep on the east side of the house can enter through the east doors, and only those sleeping on the west side of the house can enter through the west doors, and if anyone breaks these rules, they will be cursed by the masks.

Mouri, Ran, and Conan go in the east side of the house, while the other three enter in the west. The maid proceeds to take them to the mask room, which is essentially a room filled with really frightening masks, including the 200 cursed masks made by some Spanish guy. This is when you meet the rest of the suspects: Suou Beniko – president of the Mahogany Promotions. Former pop star, Inaba Kazuyo – a secret writer, and Aikawa Touya – A rock star in the middle of a world tour. They have dinner, and discuss the people they know who have died in car accidents, including rock star’s mother and Katagiri’s wife.

That evening, they hang out in the mask room and play billiards, and Conan beats Ran at chess. They think they’re going to have a really good night when suddenly the doors open, and the identical maid twins enter once more, speaking hollowly through the room, unanimous voices blending together as one, ghostly tone. “We actually have to lock the doors at midnight exactly. The masks like to walk around and kill people at night if we don’t close the doors.” In the middle of the night, Conan receives a call, and a creepy voice on the other end of the line informs them that the curse of the masks is going to strike. They go running around in the house and get one of the creepy maids to unlock the mask room door, only to discover that all of the 200 cursed masks are missing. This is when they hear a thud and shout, and they go running to Suou’s room. They find the door locked, so they break the glass and put a 6 year old in to find out if she’s okay. She’s been stabbed, and the bed and room are covered with the 200 masks. Because the only way into the room is either through the locked door or the bolted sealed door that’s been sealed for many years, they deduced that the only people who could have committed the crime were those on the west side of the house, meaning everyone except for Mouri, Ran, Conan, and the rock star. Therefore the rock star is the culprit.

He killed her because she killed the photographer’s wife, and blamed it on his mother, who then died. The way in which he killed her is very interesting. It involves connecting a bit of stretchy string to a knife, and then connecting each of the 200 masks behind the knife, through the air vent above the door. Takagi then demonstrates how once you’ve created a pile of knife and masks, you can pull on the stretchy string from the other side of the air vent, and the pile becomes a caterpillar-esque monster that whips dangerously around the room until taut. It interestingly points directly to where the victim’s neck would be if she slept like a board in the dead center of her bed, on her back, facing the ceiling, without moving, 3.5 meters from the door. By inserting something like a ruler, you can then force the masked monster knife to plunge forward the necessary 10 more centimeters, and kill the person. Lastly, the murderer would cut the stretchy string and pull it back through the vent, sending the masks showering about the room.

So remember: knife, string, masks, ruler, scissors. Please get an adult to help you with this project.

Episode 192: The Desperate Revival- The Returned Shinichi

Shinichi gets to go back to school with Ran, and Ran comes to pick him up. She rings the doorbell eight million times. Haibara then sneaks into his house to tell him that he’s too cocky, and that she’s not going to take apotoxin antidote until she’s observed the effect it has on him. They run into the detective boys on the way to school, and Shinichi accidentally calls Ran, “Ran-neechan.” Then you get to meet his classmates, (see screenshot below). They’re interesting. That night, Shinichi takes Ran out to dinner at a specific restaurant, at a specific table, where they remind the staff members of “that legendary couple.” He spends the entire dinner telling her about Sherlock Holmes rather than confessing his love for her. He’s saved from having to do this by a scream. Then everybody in the restaurant decides to talk very loudly about how there was a gun, and a murder, and a body, etc…etc…until Ran tells him to just go and solve the case. Ooba-san shot his soon to be father in law while kissing his girlfriend in an elevator. Shinichi arrives on the scene, and immediately knows that That Person did it.   

Best Quotes:

Shinichi: (Because Ooba-san touched his girlfriend’s right earring with his left hand) “Wouldn’t it be easier to just use your right hand? Of course, if something was holding down your right hand…I can understand.”

Ooba-san: “SO WHAT, YOU’RE SAYING I HELD A GUN IN MY RIGHT HAND!?

Shinichi: “A gun? I never said anything about a gun. Were you holding one?”

Bonus: These are Shinichi's classmates. We like their eyebrows. Such sweet smiles...

#7 in the Couples Series: Mouri and Eri!

This one might be a bit controversial since technically they've split up, but, like Ran, I like to believe that with the right circumstances and efforts they could rekindle the flame because I think they both still love each other the most. Mouri is flighty, but deep down I think Eri is always his number one. So, here they are getting along and sharing the paper.

I had a lot of fun coming up with headlines for Beika. Azusa submitted the Cafe Poirot ad...

Also, here's a close up of the paper. Just ignore my scribble scrabble blob hands...

Episode 183: A Dangerous Recipe (A.K.A. A Dangerous Receipt)

The detective boys are at a mall, playing video games. Then they get soft serve ice cream. And while they’re eating their ice cream, they decide to play a stupid game, in which they steal people’s receipts and try to guess what they’re having for dinner, based on what’s written on them. They read a receipt with a bunch of really normal things on it, but because one of the items was chlorine, Conan thinks that they might be a psycho mole dumpling maker. Somehow, in a really strange way, Conan and the detective boys deduce where he lives, and follow him back to his house, where they wait outside until he walks by. They follow him to a street where he tries to feed a dog some of his mole dumplings. Basically he’s a crazy person, and is trying to kill the dog because it barks at him too much whenever he tries to walk down his favorite street. When Conan stops him, he pulls out a Lucius Malfoy worthy retractable knife baton, and tries to kill Conan, while the entire neighborhood just stands around and does nothing to help. 

Episode 175: The Man Who Was Killed Four Times

A famous actor has been killed. Yumiko hits him on the head with an urn when he comes into her dressing room and harasses her. So she confesses to the murder. Then Haruyuki confesses to the murder because the actor went to his room after regaining consciousness to harass him too. And Haruyuki hit him on the head with an urn as well. Finally he went to Katsumata’s room to harass him, and he also hit him on the head with an urn, and confesses to the crime. But it was actually his wife, who killed him with stomach medicine. (No urns were harmed in the making of this episode.) 

Episode 227: The Battle Game Trap (Part 2)

The murderer was the thirty-year old game reporter because his sister was going blind due to lack of vitamin A, because she had to work a lot, to pay off her boyfriend, Unemployed’s, debts. But really his disgusting gum wrapper cigarette needle trick was thwarted by a 100 yen coin with his fingerprint on it, because he was gripping it so tightly, as this would be the last game he ever played. None of that matters in the end though, when Jodie-sensei says goodbye to them, and says, “Bye Bye, Cool Guy….”

AND THEN THERE WERE NO MERMAIDS

(Episodes 222, 223 and 224)

Heiji drags everyone to Mermaid Island because he got a letter from "Celery," saying she was going to be eaten by mermaids. When they arrive, Celery is gone, and it happens to be the day of the Mermaid Festival. The festival is really boring. It honors the immortal elder, who is somewhere between 80 and 200 years old. When they ask her great granddaughter, Kimie, what happens at the festival, she says that her grandma comes out and calls out numbers to show who is going to win the immortal arrows. That’s pretty much it.

While they’re hanging around the elder’s house, they meet Toshimi and Tan Man. They’re dating, but only because his family wants him to, even though his parents are dead. He’s really in love with Kimie, but she won’t leave the island. They also meet Naoko, who is a childhood friend of Kimie and Celery. 

That night, at the festival, Kazuha wins an arrow along with Toshimi and Naoko. But when they go to the mermaid falls to commemorate the arrow-winning, Toshimi isn’t there, but instead Benzou – a man in his fifties who looks unhealthy – has her numbers. As they are looking at the beautiful waterfall, they realize Toshimi is hanging from it.

The next day, they have a funeral for her, so it’s lucky that Heiji and Kazuha brought their school uniforms. After the funeral, Kazuha and Ran go out on the deck, and see Naoko strung up in a net with fish scales and footprints that lead out to the sea. This might be a good time to mention why it’s the mermaid legend.

Apparently the elder ate mermaid meat in order to gain eternal youth, and three years ago the warehouse burnt down, and they found a body inside that was only a torso and head. So they buried it in the woods, making the mermaid’s grave. So now, apparently, the mermaids are angry at anyone who has an arrow...? This doesn’t really make sense because it’s not the true answer. Anyway, then Heiji and Conan ask Kimie to bring them back to her house to show them the registry of people who have won arrows in the past, and Conan notices Haibara’s true name on the list. But too bad, the most recent registry is gone because Benzou stole it. He also stole Celery's arrow from last year, which he sold for one million yen, which apparently he can do because he’s her father.

Then Ran and Kazuha see a creepy woman staring at them from the bushes, who looks a lot like Celery. She runs to the warehouse and gets burnt up dead. But when they identify her remains, they find from dental records that it’s actually Kimie. Conan starts a deduction show with Mouri the following day, while Heiji, Kazuha, and the police go to look for Benzou in the woods. Heiji and Kazuha get sidetracked by incense coming from the mermaid grave, which Heiji destroys, and then he falls over a cliff. They hang off of the cliff together for a while. Kazuha tries to make him drop her by stabbing him with her arrow, but it doesn’t work.

Meanwhile Conan explains that the killer can only be the 130-year old grandmother, who is actually her great granddaughter in disguise. Kimie had to kill all of her childhood friends because they killed her mother, who was in disguise as her grandmother in order to keep the legend of the mermaid alive. She faked Celery's dental records as her own in order to trick everybody into thinking she was dead. And then she disguised herself as the elder. Her make-up skills are really good because they were all film students in the past and made a film called, “The Legend of the Nuns.”

Heiji arrives last minute, somehow having escaped from the cliff with Kazuha, in order to tell them that all the older people on the island already knew that Kimie was pretending to be the elder, but didn’t say anything even after the murders started happening. On the way home, Heiji tells Kazuha that his wound has already healed, and shows them his left hand. And for some reason Kazuha can’t remember that she stabbed his right hand.