We just had a single episode murder mystery last week, and now we have a single episode murder mystery again this time. The frustrating thing to me is that Kogoro and Conan become involved in this case the exact same way they did last week. The two of them are walking down the street and they come across Megure and Takagi at the murder scene and insert themselves into the investigation. When Megure sees them, he asks, incredulously, “You again?” I found myself thinking, “I feel you, bro.” Yes, this is a common way for Conan and Kogoro to become involved in a case, but to have this exact same setup two episodes in a row was a little frustrating. It just highlighted just how unoriginal this setup really is in this series.
The murder victim this time is a mystery novelist named Shintaro Tawake. He was shot in the stomach while sleeping in a room with north-facing windows (this bit about the direction the windows is facing is an important fact for the investigation). They find the shotgun that killed him discarded at the scene, and Conan notices a blood splatter on a window with closed curtains… but the curtains are not stained. This makes Conan wonder why the culprit would have closed the curtains after the murder, especially after learning that the property across the way is unoccupied.
We are then introduced to Tawake’s four assistants: Naoya Akaike, Miyuki Degawa, Ryunosuke Bito, and Haruo Chigasaki. It’s quickly revealed that Tawake had taken these four on as “apprentices,” but was really using them as ghostwriters with promises of helping them make their debut later. Which means all four of them had a motive for killing Tawake. Of the four, Akaike has an alibi for the time of the murder, while the other three don’t. With these four suspects being mystery writers themselves, it was interesting to see what theories they could come up with. That at least made these suspects a little more interesting to watch than the usual murder case suspects.
Of course, Conan starts piecing everything together, especially after gaining entrance to the unoccupied property right across from Tawake’s. And the mystery is solved thanks to Conan claiming that Kogoro wanted to demonstrate how the murder happened, and then using the usual watch dart and voice changing bowtie trick to reveal the truth of the murder.
Overall, this wasn’t bad for a single episode murder mystery, but I’m still frustrated by the fact that the writers utilized the exact same method for getting Kogoro and Conan involved in the murder investigation two episodes in a row. I’ve definitely seen worse Case Closed episodes.
The preview of the next episodes shows us that the Detective Boys are going to be involved. Hoo boy. The Detective Boys episodes tend to be among my least favorite in the series, so I’m hoping for the best but I’m also anticipating the worst. Hopefully the episode will come across better than the preview portrays it.
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