The episode opens with a brief recap before going into the opening credits. Considering that not a whole lot happened in the previous episode, it makes sense that the recap was brief.

After the opening credits, Wakita asks Yoko if she noticed anything else was amiss while she was at the villa. She mentions the pine trees, then explains that she overheard that there used to be 17 pine trees on the property, but that the murder victim had one taken out and transplanted it elsewhere roughly a year before the murder victim’s wife disappeared.

As this revelation is going on, we see the scene of Kogoro in the bathroom again, where he decides to send a coded message to Conan to tell him that he needs toilet paper. Conan receives the message and quickly figures out what it means, as does Wakita. But with this message, Conan realizes what the code is for the coded message Yoko had shared on her phone in the previous episode. Thanks to deciphering the code, it becomes clear who killed the murder suspect. Then again, we knew this development was coming, thanks to narration from Conan at the beginning of the previous episode.

The rest of the episode then sees primarily Wakita piecing everything together as to why the suspect killed the victim, and how it connects to the disappearance of the murder victim’s wife a couple of years earlier. But Wakita couches it as a theory he and Conan have, and they don’t have proof. However, Wakita feels confident that if Yoko talks to the police again and mentions the pine trees, they’ll find what they need in order to get the suspect to confess to their crime. It’s a little disappointing that we don’t get a scene, or even any narration, to tell the audience that the police found what they needed to and that the suspect confessed. In the end, we go through all of that and never find out if the murder suspect was brought to justice.

After the ending credits, we get a scene of Wakita talking with Conan, and it almost seems to be hinting that perhaps Wakita is realizing that there’s more to Conan than there appears on the surface. But the very last scene sees Amuro looking at a picture on his cell phone, which was taken on the recent trip at the chicken ranch, where the assistant teacher in Conan’s class had attacked Amuro. Both of these scenes focus on the fact that one of Wakita’s eyes and one of the teacher’s eyes is obscured. Both of these scenes are dropping yet another hint that one of these two could potentially be Rum from the Black Organization.

Even though this episode completely took place in Kogoro’s office (except for the final scene), the episode wasn’t quite as dry as I feared it was going to be after watching last week’s. Since this episode focused more on solving the case, time didn’t have to be spent establishing the mystery, and only doing what minimal rehashing needed to be done to remind the audience of the important aspects of the case.

It looks like there won’t be a new episode of Case Closed next week, but the following week will see another special episode for Amuro’s (Zero’s) police academy days. Since each of these episodes has focused on one of his friends from that time, the next one of these should be the last, since there’s only one friend left that hasn’t been focused on yet. There’s been a mystery storyline with this friend that has run throughout the previous three police academy episodes, so I’m curious to see how this character’s storyline will be resolved.

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