The episode opens with a woman returning to her apartment and thinking there’s a burglar inside. She grabs a golf club in the umbrella stand by the front door and brings it down onto the intruder’s head.

After the opening credits, we see that Dr. Agasa has taken the Detective Boys (minus Ai, and it’s never explained why she’s gone) to see a friend who has chameleons. As they leave Agasa’s friend’s apartment, they hear a scream. They go to where they heard the scream, and Conan bangs on the door. The woman answers and says she thinks she killed her boyfriend. Once again, this is one of those mysteries where Conan just happens to be at the right place at the right time to stumble upon the case.

Detectives Takagi and Sato arrive on the scene, and from what they’ve gathered from interviews with both Mai (the girlfriend) and Riko (Mai’s friend), as well as what evidence they’ve found, it appears it was an unfortunate accident. The setup is that Riko and Mai’s boyfriend were throwing a surprise birthday party for Mai, and when Mai entered the darkened apartment, the hallway light wouldn’t turn on, so she grabbed the golf club to stop the intruder. But some of the Detective Boys see things under a couch and become curious, and one of the items they find ends up revealing that Riko was dating Mai’s boyfriend behind her back and that she was the one behind the surprise party for Mai.

This happens right around the time of the commercial break, but it just seemed too early for the mystery to be solved. Conan seemed to think so as well, because he starts looking quite thoughtful. A doll on a shelf catches his eye, for one thing. And then, when Genta has problems figuring out which light switch goes with the bathroom and turns off lights in the living room area, they spend enough time in the dark that their vision become accustomed to the darkness. With these two things, as well as reviewing the security camera footage again, Conan realizes the truth. He does something to confirm his suspicions about the doll, and then has Dr. Agasa stand in front of him to mouth the words Conan says with the bowtie in Agasa’s voice.

I really can’t go into any more detail here, because I’d be wandering into major spoiler territory. After watching this episode, though, I thought it was an OK anime-exclusive story. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t necessarily great, either. Unfortunately, it relies on the trope of Conan being at the right place at the right time in order to be involved in the investigation, and it’s a story including the Detective Boys that excludes Ai without any explanation. This is especially puzzling, since Dr. Agasa, who Ai lives with, plays an important role in the episode. As they were leaving Agasa’s friend’s apartment, one of the kids could have made a comment about it being too bad that Ai missed out on seeing the chameleons. I just get frustrated sometimes when Ai gets overlooked in these anime-exclusive stories and her existence isn’t ever acknowledged.

Next week’s episode is going to be a multiple part episode that features Shinichi’s parents. It’ll be nice to see them again, especially since it seems like this multiple-parter is a story that comes from the original manga source material. That gives me hope that it’s going to be a story that I’ll enjoy watching.

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