After getting the recap of what happened in the previous episode, this one opens with the suspects, Inspector Megure, Detective Takagi, Kogoro, Ran, and Conan gathered at the restaurant. Kogoro declares that the victim’s partner is the culprit, since he had rented the red sheep costume three weeks earlier. The partner insists it wasn’t him, but Conan points out that with him being the partner and knowing things about the restaurant, and the fact that the victim got the threatening letter after the banks were closed… Conan questions how the victim could have gotten the 50 million yen at that time of night.

At this point, Conan points out the clue he had seen in the kitchen in the previous episode. With this information, Detective Takagi and Kogoro find a hidden safe. When the safe is opened, there’s no money inside, but there is a notebook that appears to be a ledger for money. The victim’s partner ends up admitting that he and the victim were guilty of tax evasion and keeping the unreported cash in the safe. Oops! If it turns out the partner is innocent of the murder, he’s still guilty of tax evasion!

As the questioning continues, information is revealed about Ami, the girl in the couple that appeared at the beginning of this story, as well as one of the other employees. Yes, these two employees the costume and used it to threaten the victim, but they insist they didn’t get the money or kill the victim. In fact, it’s stated that one of them was knocked out after putting the costume into their vehicle, and when they woke up, the costume was gone. We see Conan get a look on his face, and then the episode suddenly jumps to the next scene, which reveals the true murderer. But with everything that comes out, Ami comes across as quite the bitch, and you kind of had to feel bad for her boyfriend.

While I have to say that this episode was a little better than last week’s, the fact that it followed an episode that really hadn’t done much for me the previous week hurt it. Again, the fact that the audience didn’t get to know the victim before he was murdered made it harder for me as a viewer to care about the case. But I was glad to see that the clue Conan found and hadn’t mentioned in the previous episode was brought up very early on in this one. At least this loose end wasn’t left hanging for long.

But there’s one thing I have to wonder about, though. When Conan knocks Kogoro out with the stun gun and uses the voice changing bowtie, he has to come out at one point as himself to do a demonstration. But when the demonstration is over, we don’t see him return to his hiding spot before speaking as Kogoro again. While we do eventually get a shot of Conan in his hiding place a little later in the scene, the lack of seeing his return before speaking made me question how he was pulling off speaking as Kogoro without being seen. I guess the writer and/or the animator thought that the audience would assume that Conan returned to his hiding spot while he was off-screen.

From the preview for the next episode, it looks like we’ll have a single episode mystery, and hopefully it’ll be more interesting than this one was.

Additional posts about Case Closed:

• Case Closed: Episode 1047 – “The Red Sheep’s Eerie Game (Part One)”

At the beginning of the episode, a young man goes to Kogoro to hire him for a job. His girlfriend (who works at the same restaurant as him) has been kidnapped. The young man received a note from “The Red Sheep,” who claims to be the kidnapper. The note tells him to meet The Red Sheep at midnight at a park, and to come alone and not to involve the police. While Kogoro thinks it’s strange the kidnapper isn’t demanding a ransom, he takes on the case. When Ran sees a picture of The Red Sheep (which is obviously someone in a costume), she feels like she’s seen the sheep before but can’t remember where.

At the park around midnight, the young man’s girlfriend runs up to him, and there’s no sign of a kidnapper anywhere. It turns out this is some kind of an online thing for girls to do to test their boyfriend’s courage. Needless to say, Kogoro is pissed that he was dragged into this stunt.

Meanwhile, both Conan and Ran are curious about The Red Sheep and they leave the house to head to the park. On their way, they encounter someone wearing The Red Sheep costume run past. When they go to where the sheep came from, they find that someone has been murdered. And not surprisingly, Conan tells Ran to call the police and an ambulance. Inspector Megure and Detective Takagi are on the case, and Kogoro ends up investigating it as well when he learns about the murder suspect wearing a red sheep costume and that the victim is the head chef of the restaurant where the couple works.

After this, the episode spends its time gathering up the potential suspects (the co-owner of the restaurant, two of the chefs, and the couple involved in the test the previous night). As they’re being questioned about alibis, Conan notices something in the kitchen that is probably a potential clue, but doesn’t mention it to the police or to Kogoro. Not only does Conan not say anything, but we don’t even hear his thoughts about this potential clue at any point in the episode. I suspect it’s somehow going to become an important clue and Conan will mention it in the next episode.

It also comes out that the head chef received a threating message on his computer from The Red Sheep, saying that they have kidnapped someone and are demanding a ransom. Conan and Ran suddenly remember The Red Sheep they saw carrying a black bag and assume the money was in that. Why didn’t they mention seeing the bag that night when the police came? Were they so surprised by what they saw that they forgot about it until the ransom was mentioned the next day? It just seems a little out of character for Conan to not mention an unusual detail like that when talking with the police.

One of the suspects shares a video from a video sharing site showing someone in The Red Sheep costume disrupting couples out on the street, and when Ran gets a closer look, she has a reaction to seeing the sheep. This jogs Conan’s memory of when he (as young Shinichi) and young Ran saw this sheep at a festival when they were in kindergarten. Conan realizes there’s a costume rental shop nearby and goes to investigate. He’s mistaken as a thief who’s been taking the red sheep costume without permission, but fortunately, Kogoro and Ran arrive in time and clear up the confusion. After Conan left, Ran realized on her own where she’d seen the costume before, and this led her and Kogoro to come to this shop.

They learn that after the red sheep costume was rented out three weeks earlier, that same costume was suddenly being stolen at night and returned the next morning. Since it kept being returned, the guy who runs the shop decided not to report it to the police. Right at the end of the episode, there’s a surprising revelation as to who it was that rented the costume three weeks earlier.

I have to be honest and say that this particular case feels like it’s been thrown together, and that it’s not up to the usual Case Closed standards. It also doesn’t help that we never got to know the victim before he was murdered, since his first and only appearance is as a corpse. Because of never getting the opportunity to know the victim in any manner before his death, it kind of made it hard for me to care about this particular case. While we get to know more about him as the restaurant employees are interviewed by the police, that’s more for the police to get information they need rather than allowing the audience to get to know the victim.

To be honest, the only reason I’m going to watch next week’s episode is so I can say that I watched it and to be able to post a write-up for my blog… because by the end of this episode, I found that I really wasn’t caring about this case or what the truth behind it is.

Additional posts about Case Closed:

• Case Closed: Episode 1046 – “The Birthday Party of Divine Punishment (Part Two)”
• Case Closed: Episode 1048 – “The Red Sheep’s Eerie Game (Part Two)”

The episode opens with a brief recap of the murder mystery at the birthday party, and then backtracks into Mary’s flashback of the day she was poisoned. After the opening credits, the episode continues with Mary’s flashback, which ends with her meeting up with Sera as her shrunken self. This part of the flashback serves as a transition back to the mystery, because we see that this last part of the flashback is also something that Sera is remembering.

Most of the rest of the episode is spent solving the murder mystery at the birthday party. While questioning the four suspects about potential motives, it’s determined that while they had grievances with the victim, none of them seemed to be murder worthy.

Later, Inspector Megure and Detective Takagi find a stain on the floor they hadn’t seen before. Thanks to a photo Sera had taken on her phone, she can prove the stain wasn’t there before the murder happened. Inspector Chiba also brings news of another potential clue. This new clue makes it look like the pastry chef is guilty instead of Ran, Sonoko, and Sera’s friend. But as more information becomes available, both Sera and Conan realize who the true culprit is, and Sera is able to help prove a couple of things with two demonstrations she puts on. I don’t want to reveal who the guilty party is, but what I will say is that their motivation for the murder was on the creepy side. As the guilty party rushes toward Conan and Sera with a chair, Ran jumps in and uses her martial arts to stop the chair from hitting her friends and to subdue the guilty party. But during the confusion, Sera grabs onto Conan to make it look like she’s concerned for him, but she’s really using this opportunity to grab his medicine container that has the antidote for the poison inside of it.

After they’re allowed to leave, Sera separates from the others and calls her mother to tell her she has the antidote. This leads to another flashback, when Sera and Mary are in London. They’re watching the Wimbledon match that Sera had recorded, and they see Conan appear on the screen. They realize he looks like the kid they met on the beach years ago, and Mary starts revealing all the information she has found on Shinichi Kudo and that she learned he had come to London recently. As Mary and Sera share information with each other, they realize that the kid they see has to be Shinichi, and that he was also shrunk down by the poison. This has to be what ultimately led Mary and Sera to come to Japan and for Sera to transfer into Ran and Sonoko’s school. As someone who has only seen what FUNimation Entertainment has licensed for Case Closed and what Crunchyroll has simulcast, I don’t know if this had ever truly been addressed earlier in the series or not. But, for me at least, I was glad to see this flashback to help fill in this gap. When I started watching Crunchyroll’s simulcast when they started streaming episodes, Sera was already introduced to the series and was already known to the other characters.

After the flashback, Sera opens the medicine container and gets an unexpected surprise. However, since she now knows that Conan has access to an antidote, I imagine Sera’s going to make it a mission to get a hold of that antidote for her mother. Unfortunately, Sera and Mary are unaware of the side effects of this antidote, so they don’t realize that it’s not going to be the solution that they think it’s going to be.

I forgot to mention that in the flashback at the beginning of the episode, Vermouth makes a mention that the poison was developed by Mary’s younger sister. If that’s true then Ai would be Sera’s cousin. Which is kind of amusing, since Sera believes that Ai is another person who was shrunk down by the poison. Sera’s right on that, of course, but Ai isn’t going to admit it. But it’s getting interesting to see just how intertwined some of the characters in this series really are.

While the first episode of this two-parter focused on establishing the mystery, the mystery felt like it was the secondary focus of this episode. It almost felt like this mystery existed for the purpose of being able to provide more backstory for Mary and Sera, as well as to make Sera aware of the existence of the antidote. After watching Part Two, I walked away from it with Sera and Mary’s backstory leaving a much stronger impression. The murder mystery in this two-part episode wasn’t bad, but in the end, it’s overshadowed by the backstory.

Additional posts about Case Closed:

• Case Closed: Episode 1045 – “The Birthday Party of Divine Punishment (Part One)”
• Case Closed: Episode 1047 – “The Red Sheep’s Eerie Game (Part One)”

Ran, Sonoko, and Sera are talking with a friend at a bookstore, and it turns out she’s the younger sister of a famous model. The sisters’ birthdays are right next to each other, so they celebrate their birthdays together, and Ran, Sonoko, and Sera have been invited to the sisters’ party. Ran asks about bringing Conan, since Kogoro has a meeting to go to at the same time, which would leave Conan at home by himself. The friend says it’s fine to bring him.

At the party, we learn that Conan has a cold sore, which is making it hard for him to talk. He has brought medication with him, and when he opens the box, he realizes that he still has the spare antidote that Ai gave him for the class trip. Sera notices this pill that looks different from the others and asks Conan about it. Flustered, he slams the box shut and claims that it’s nothing important. Sera thinks it’s important, and she slyly calls her mother. Her mother works out that it’s likely the antidote and wants Sera to try to get a hold of it.

Meanwhile, Ran and her friends are introduced to the friend’s sister, and Ran asks for her autograph. The permanent marker the model has doesn’t work because it dried out, so her sister hands her a working one. After this, we are introduced to a man who is a hair and makeup artist who works with the model. It turns out that even though he’s married, he hits on both the model and her sister. I liked Sera’s face when she referred to him as a “scumbag.” Ran and Sonoko were also unimpressed with him.

We also meet a young pastry chef, who went to school with the model. It turns out he made the birthday cake that’s to be served later that evening. The hair and makeup artist looks down at and sneers at the pastry chef. After hearing about the hair and makeup artist and seeing him in action, I knew that he was going to be the victim for this mystery.

Sure enough, I was right. As the guests are served the birthday cake while a slideshow is presented in the darkened room, the hair and makeup artist suddenly collapses. Shortly after, someone drops a bottle of wine nearby. When the lights come back up, the hair and makeup artist is collapsed on the floor, with the characters for “divine punishment” written on his forehead with a permanent marker. When Inspector Megure and Detective Takagi arrive, they determine the victim was poisoned after eating the cake.

Thanks to various observations, both Conan and Sera narrow the list of potential suspects down to four: the model, the model’s sister, the model’s manager, and the pastry chef. Sera has to verbalize the information, though, since Conan can be hard to understand because of his cold sore. As the four potential suspects are questioned, it’s really looking as if the writers are making it appear that the model’s sister is guilty (since she’s the only one who currently has a working permanent marker in her possession). Personally, I find this to be “too easy” of an answer, and I suspect that there’s going to be some kind of twist in the next episode that will show the sister’s innocence. But as of right now, I don’t have any real thoughts as to who the real culprit is or how they pulled off the crime.

While the questioning is going on, Sera’s mother calls and asks if Sera has gotten her hands on the antidote. Sera tells her about the case that’s going on and that she doesn’t have time to deal with that now. This transitions to a scene of Mary (Sera’s mother), remembering when she was poisoned by the Black Organization.

When the episode opened and I saw Sera with Ran and Sonoko, I knew this was going to be a canon storyline from the manga. Sera never seems to appear in what I would consider a “filler” episode, so that’s why I always go into an episode thinking it’s a canon storyline from the manga when Sera shows up. And seeing Mary’s flashback reinforces the idea that this a canon story from the manga. As a viewer, I was glad to finally see the backstory for how Mary was forced to take the poison. This flashback is a little on the sad side, though, because of what happens leading up to the poisoning. The episode actually ends with this flashback, rather than with the current mystery.

Obviously, next week’s episode is going to focus on the murder mystery, and with the pacing of the story, I expect that the mystery will be solved in the next episode. I’m curious to see who the guilty party is and how they committed the crime, but I’m also curious to see how Conan’s cold sore will continue to affect his ability to speak. Will Sera actually be the one to solve this case, or at least be the one to verbalize the deduction? And are we going to see more of Mary, or see Sera try to find a way to get the antidote away from Conan?

Additional posts about Case Closed:

• Case Closed: Episode 1044 – “The Deadly Pork Soup Signal”
• Case Closed: Episode 1046 – “The Birthday Party of Divine Punishment (Part Two)”

The episode opens with Kogoro and Conan walking down the street, and Kogoro mentioning that Megure has commented about how often the two of them just happen to come across their police investigations. And guess what? Just then, Kogoro and Conan come across an investigation.

This time, a woman has been murdered inside her apartment. Takagi and Chiba are investigating, and they fill Kogoro and Conan in on what they’ve found so far, which includes three sets of fingerprints that don’t belong to the victim. First, they talk to the woman’s boyfriend, whose fingerprints were found at the murder scene. It turns out he has an alibi for the time of the murder. However, the boyfriend mentions that his girlfriend’s boss has been making advances on her that she’s been rejecting and he suggests checking the boss out.

So Takagi, Chiba, Kogoro, and Conan visit the victim’s boss, and it turns out his fingerprints were also at the crime scene. From the moment they begin questioning this man, he just came across with a vibe that I just didn’t trust him. This became especially true after he was being so flippant with the police and accusing them of needing to spend time on more important matters like investigating particular pieces of evidence at the scene. He was so specific, it was like he knew more than he should have. It turns out that this evidence wasn’t there, and they press the boss for his alibi. He gives one, then tells them to go talk to his wife so she can confirm it.

When they visit his wife and start questioning her, Conan notices that her reactions aren’t normal and that she keeps looking at a particular statue. He picks up on the fact that there’s a microphone attached, and he texts Takagi and Chiba to let them know. Also, Conan notices a particular piece of art hanging on the wall and the date that’s on it. Takagi tries letting the wife know that they know the room is bugged without letting the husband know, and she tries to use the ingredients she’s using for a pork soup to tell them something important. The husband appears at that time and shoos Takagi, Chiba, Kogoro, and Conan away. But before they leave, Conan leaves a “good luck charm” with the wife.

I really can’t go into any more detail because it’ll provide direct spoilers for the episode. However, I do have one gripe about how Conan reveals the truth to Takagi and Chiba. He uses the stun dart and bowtie trick while in the backseat of a moving car, and I have a hard time believing that neither Takagi nor Chiba noticed anything going on in the back. I had a hard time using my “willing suspension of disbelief” for this scene.

This was an OK one-episode murder mystery. While I’ve seen stronger ones, I’ve also seen weaker ones as well. Like I said, my main issue was how the stun dart and bowtie trick were utilized in this episode. If it wasn’t for that, I probably would have a little better opinion of this episode.

Additional posts about Case Closed:

• Case Closed: Episode 1043 – “The Figure of Revenge”
• Case Closed: Episode 1045 – “The Birthday Party of Divine Punishment (Part One)”

The episode opens with a group of four people who are part of a club that designs figures. When it’s said that the Detective Boys are coming over to visit, one of the members (Shirahashi) becomes upset because the group is trying to finish their designs before the deadline for an upcoming contest. It turns out that Shirahashi has a lot on the line if he wins the contest and they’re cutting it close to the deadline. So when the Detective Boys first appear, Shirahashi is quite rude to them. The kids are taken to a nearby living room and shown a display of Masked Yaiba figures.

Leading up to the crime, Conan manages to overhear a couple of important conversations. One is of Shirahashi talking on the phone with someone he’s made a deal with. The other is between two of the other members of the club, who reference another member named Yuri who had killed herself a year earlier.

As the group is taking a break (except Shirahashi, because he wants to work on his design uninterrupted), the power goes out and explosions are heard in the studio. Shirahashi is trapped inside the room, and when the police come, they find he has died from smoke inhalation. When Shirahashi was introduced and was portrayed as being a jerk, I knew right away that he was going to be the victim of the crime.

The rest of the episode sees Conan wandering around and picking up pieces of information while the police are conducting their investigation. When it seems like the police have figured out who the guilty party is, Dr. Agasa comes at Conan’s request and thanks to the bowtie trick, Conan uses Agasa to reveal the last piece of information needed to truly reveal who was guilty of the crime.

Unfortunately, if I go into any more detail, I run the risk of giving away spoilers. Ultimately, this was an OK episode for a one-episode murder mystery, although Genta got on my nerves a little. Sometimes, it seems like the writers of the anime like to depict Genta as a kid with little to no common sense, and they used this portrayal a couple of times in this episode. And once again, this was a story featuring the Detective Boys where Ai wasn’t involved, and her absence wasn’t acknowledged. It seems like that, most of the time, the writers of the non-canon filler episodes that feature the Detective Boys forget that Ai even exists. Oh well.

Next week is another one-episode mystery, and hopefully it’ll be stronger than this one. “The Figure of Revenge” wasn’t a bad episode, per se, but it wasn’t quite as strong as it could have been.

Additional posts about Case Closed:

• Case Closed: Episode 1042 – “Police Academy Arc Wild Police Story CASE. Hagiwara Kenji”