Case Closed: Episode 975 – “The Secret of the Search for His Wife”
I was pleasantly surprised to see that a new episode of Case Closed was available on Crunchyroll.
The episode begins with a man standing outside with flyers. He’s looking for his wife who has been missing for three days, but hardly anyone is giving him the time of day. That is, until Ran and Conan come along. When Ran looks at the picture on the flyer and recognizes her as an employee at a florist shop. Ran and Conan take this man to see Kogoro, who at first is trying not to take the case. But after some prodding from Ran, he decides to take it on.
Conan ends up tagging along with Kogoro as he goes to interview the neighbors. The neighbors on the same side of the street as the man’s house only reveal that the wife was excited for a dinner date she had coming up with her husband. But when they question the neighbors in the houses behind the man’s house, they start hearing some things that make it sound like the husband and wife had been arguing, and the words that were being said sounded like the husband was going to murder the wife. As I watched, I thought this didn’t sound good for the husband, but I had some nagging doubts… this just seemed too easy.
When Kogoro and Conan return to the man’s house, they find the police there. Apparently, they received an anonymous tip that the husband murdered the wife and buried her in the backyard. The police dig in the yard and find the wife’s body. While this certainly looked damning, I still thought something felt a little off about this. There was no way a Case Closed mystery would end up being so cut and dried.
Thanks to the picture on the flyer and Conan’s inquisitive nature, Conan uncovers that, yes, this mystery was not as cut and dried as it would seem. The true killer is exposed, and the motive for this person to kill the victim was ridiculous. When the husband gets pissed and picks up a shovel to attack her, I could understand his frustration, especially since the motive wasn’t something worth killing someone over, but I knew that wouldn’t be a wise thing for him to do. Fortunately, Inspector Megure was able to get him to stand down.
Overall, it was a decent mystery for a single episode story. While I’ve seen better, I’ve also seen a lot worse.
But I don’t know if we’re getting another episode next week, since there was no preview for the next episode or any of the other things that usually show up at the end of the episode. Case Closed went on hiatus without any fanfare, and then came back without any fanfare, so I have no idea how often new episodes will be airing in the coming months. All I can do is just keep checking every Saturday morning to see if Crunchyroll has added a new episode.
