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- Dan Pêna
Detective Conan holds a special place in my heart for many reasons. It's one of the first series I actively got into, and the series that I bought most volumes for in my childhood, volumes which burnt down along with our family's apartment, and everything else nostalgic that was tied to it, many years ago. I just have to talk about it more because I know there are people willing to discuss about it, so I've been planning on trying to write about standout episodes in the series as well as get into some of the more highly acclaimed 'anime-original' episodes and share my thoughts about them as well. Before I can get to talking about the episode this time around, I just have to talk more in-depth about my history with the series and what it means to me.
It's been a good while, well over a decade actually, that I first started watching the animated version of this series because I used to visit shops all the time trying to find the next released volume's but the wait was just too long because the content was just so good in each and every volume, be it because of the way that the author Gosho Aoyama writes his characters or because of the crazy storytelling and plot twists that he pulled off in certain parts of the series. This is a bit cliche but Detective Conan was one of the first series that I watched on the net, if not the first, and that really was what pushed me to watch other series without me even realizing it, it was a time when I was the most into anime in general.
I used to follow the releases weekly for years in the animated format along with whatever came along the road that pulled me in, newer series such as the highly acclaimed thriller Death Note (2006), an anime adaptation of a certain visual novel named Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni (2007), Kindaichi R (2014), an anime adaptation of a novel named Subete ga F ni Naru (2015), and so on. . . I noticed that I was immersed into a certain genre; crime fiction, and it's the sub genre of soft-boiled detective fiction that I've put all my focus into the most of all. I spent years following the Umineko no Naku Koro Ni (2007) visual/sound novel series from the beginning to the end, same with the second trilogy of both the Ace Attorney and Professor Layton game series, and on top of that bunch of novels and some TV series and movies, majority of them of course crime fiction genre based. I'd love to talk about them all once more in this blog if I ever get the time to truly go in-depth about them, which I hope that I will one day.
It was that one volume that I picked up as a child that caused this... addiction, actually no, it was two volumes, because I happened to buy two of them with the price of one, but I will only talk about the one that somehow affected me the most. It was volume 35 of Detective Conan in which I saw a certain character with darker color of skin and a cool personality that was hanging around with the main character. In this volume the group witnesses gruesome murders in an island setting that is blocked from outside world (sounds all too familiar now). The captain of a ship got his head bashed in brutally and his corpse was left hanging on the side of the ship, and then another body of another character appears. A case with missing footprints on the beach, and a woman strangled to death. The way that these main cast characters went about solving the case really inspired me. They were cool and level-headed in such a tense situation as they cleverly dealt with such a coldblooded crime of the Death Island case (2001).
The character with a cool attitude whom I mentioned is called Heiji Hattori and he's part of the main cast of the entire series, and for a good while now he's been my favourite DC character as well. Last year's Detective Conan movie, The Crimson Love Letter (2017), only served to reinforce my opinion of him as Heiji and his childhood sweetheart Kazuha played key roles in that movie, and it was amazing.
So, a mention about a volume of Conan that lead up to me talking about my life history as well as my favourite character in this particular series of course leads up to me talking about a case in the series, wooo!
The Twenty Year Old Murderous Intent: The Symphony Serial Murder Case (2000)
produced by TMS Entertainment, known for their fantastic quality Lupin the Third productions, adapts a six chapter long case (which is long for DC's standards as the series is mainly about short stories) from volume 23 into a two hour special..! The episode is very special as it is actually the first episode of the 2000's of this long-running animated TV series, and the production values are at the top of the game for the series as well. The atmosphere of the case itself is great, due to the darker colors that looked fantastic in the early Detective Conan episodes, along with the effort the animation team put into the episode itself. Character dialogue, movement of the frames, everything is well produced. When we are asked about what are the best cases of the series, many DC fans, myself included, immediately point to ep 174. In fact I think one of the reasons I praise this one so much is because it is as close to a movie format canon case (case created by the original author which takes place in the actual world of DC). Now, there is more than just production values in the reasoning for why this episode is a standout.
The author, Gosho Aoyama, has a certain structure in the type of cases he writes. Theft or murder, the setting being in an island or a town, the tropes he utilizes, and so on, they all change from case to case along with the constant change of the overarching characters that the cases revolve around. Two examples would be: the Nagano police department cases are more about being hard-boiled in style, while Heiji Hattori cases usually have the 'supernatural' tag on them, so cases happen in enclosed spaces as soft-boiled mysteries (golden age-styled cases).
The Twenty Year Old Murderous Intent: The Symphony Serial Murder Case is the latter as it is a prime example of just how good Heiji Hattori cases are (it's crazy how they used a great case with Heiji to celebrate the 2000's!), I think this is by far one of the best cases for an episode I have seen. There are many cases and storylines that can rival and perhaps even surpass it, but definitely not many episodic cases that hold a candle to it because of the movie-like format. For the case, the supernatural elements are switched around a bit, instead of supposed monsters attacking people, we deal with a mysterious thief, but not one named Kaito.
The story:*BANG, BANG* right off the bat, multiple shots can be seen and heard at a forest area. It's nighttime. A radio is playing in a car as a body falls to the deep sea from a mountain. "Four shots to the chest." The victim is known as Kanou Saizou, Organizer of the Shadows, and the people who killed him? His very own underlings. One of the underlings say that he had to be silenced because they had killed a bank assistant during the group's latest robbery, and because of that the boss, Kanou Saizou, was about to sing like the birds to the cops. Now, the three underlings have a problem at hand as they are still on the run and majority of the dough is marked by the police. The stolen money has to be hidden for the promised day of when it can be used, but where?
And then, 20 years go by and the prologue ends as 'chapter one' begins.
Mouri Ran, one of the main characters, asks her father, the great detective Sleeping Kogoro, to bring a 'record' to a certain place due to a newspaper announcement created by a person named Masaru Furukawa. The first ten people who bring a very special item, something almost everyone had in a previous era in Japan but almost no one has anymore, to the docks where ships are sent off, get a price where they are invited to a thee days and two nights lasting trip to Ogasawara on S. S. Symphony. After thinking about it for a second, Edogawa Conan, our protagonist, tells Ran and Kogoro that what they probably should bring with them to that place is not a 'record' but an old paper bill. And he was right as masses of people bring other items but can't get in but they did. What awaits our main characters is a large cruiser with a slew of people.
Now because Conan is a kid, the personnel technically allow 11 people to board the ship aside from there only being the promised 10 spots. A huge cruiser for 11 people... Suspicious! What's more suspicious is that the organizer of the event, Masaru Furukawa, is nowhere to be seen, in fact the ship's workers have never even seen the guy as he had reserved the ship over the phone.
The characters on the ship are of wide variety. Aside from Conan, Ran and Kogoro, there's ex-superintendent Toji Samezaki (62) from the Homicide Department, he's one of the people Kogoro knew when he used to work for the Metropolitan police force. Samezaki had retired two years ago and he claims to be on he cruiser trip because it's a 'very special day.'
For the rest of the passengers we have:
Teruyoshi Kameda (45) who is an almost bald overweight man that carries a seal mark that bears the letters 'Furukawa' in kanji. He meets up with a person named Korehisa Kanie (46) who shows him a key, and then they go to drink together to the bar.
Then we have a glasses guy Minoru Ebina (46) whom the ex-superintended seems to recognize from somewhere, as well as 'an old man who had boarded but then left to get something' and then had come back and went to take a nap, bothering him is not allowed. The old man's face is not shown so you can try to guess what kinds of tricks Gosho is doing with him.
S.S. Symphony is presented in a really beautiful way in the episode, be it during day or dark night. There's a scene where Ran goes to the front deck under the orange skies and shouts "I'M THE KING OF THE WORLD!" which is one of the more memorable scenes of the case as it's a Titanic reference, and the scene looks miraculous.
As well as the last few passengers:
Sadao Kujirai (50) is another passenger, but he's more talkative than the rest.
Nagisa Isogai (27) a woman with a pendant who talks about the sea hiding dead bodies as she had lost her father to the seas.
And of course there is certain other detective on the ship.
The day turns night and everyone is enjoying their dinner. As the employee's of S.S. Symphony are asked about the 'quiet old man' who was resting in his room, they answer that his name is... Kanou Saizou...!
The very person, the mastermind behind the 400 million yen robbery, on the ship? The ex-superintendent freaks out and shows that he has a hidden motive. Kogoro and him decide to infiltrate the room appointed for 'Kanou Saizou,' which by the way has a nice addition to it when the ship's employee with the room key is shaking due to fear from opening the door, but in the end it's almost like no one's even been in the room at all when they go in. Strange. Was the old guy not resting all day?
At the same time as the infiltration happens, we can see Teryoshi Kameda, the almost-bald guy, get a letter and go to the engine room of the cruiser. There he meets his final moments as a gun appears on the screen and its trigger gets pulled.
The room next to 'Kanou Saizou's' opens up and we see the detective person whom was mentioned earlier. Heiji Hattori, our protagonist's rival and best friend, is on the cruiser as well!
Kogoro tells Heiji about Kanou Saizou from when he was still in the force himself. Saizou is known as an organizor of the shadows, a phantom schemer. The organizor of flawless plans where he easily escaped police forces. But then 20 years ago someone died during a robbery and the phantom schemer disappeared.
Heiji himself had gotten on the ship due to the very same Masaru Furukawa-named person sending him a letter with 100 000 yen in it. Heiji had come, but only to return the cash as his moral code says not to accept cash for a case.
As the race against the clock goes on and the intensity changes tiers, Kogoro and ex-superintendend Samezaki running all over the ship trying to track Kanou Saizou down, the rest of the cruiser's guests decide to play poker.
And then the clock hits midnight and time runs out. The statute of limitations has been crossed.
Immediately at 12:08, a gunshot! Not even time for a breather as the pacing of the story is so damn good. All the time there is something going down. The flag of S. S. Symphony is on fire on the deck, and there is a paper bill with writing on it saying 'My phantom shall rise from the dead with the help of Poseidon.' The paper bill has been stuck to a chair on the deck with a large knife.
Seeing the paper bill's text, Kujirai, one of the passengersm freaks out and an explosion happens on the deck! And a burning body is found. After the burning has ended, the others assume it's Kanie, the bald-looking guy due to his clothes. There are some mentions about rigor mortis's effect during burning as well as well as a certain plot twist about the dead body.
In the end I've spoken a bit too much and don't want to spoil people about the greatness of this episode. As the time has passed and I've become more experienced about the tropes and cliches of detective fiction, rewatching this for about the 5th time has surprisingly enough been much more impressive than I thought it would. Gosho's style of pacing is frankly what everyone else should aim for. There are countless series where nothing exactly is happening in the episodes, but the fans only like them because the events that happen in them are standouts, such as decapitation, because 'gore is cool,' this case is far from light due to burning corpses and all the other elements in it, but it really reinforces my notion of Gosho's ability to condense information and write perfectly paced stories that do something new, for example it's a surprise that the statute of limitations is shown supposedly 'running out' only 25 minutes into the one-and-half hour episode. Also Heiji tends to get hurt alot in the series, this case is no exception. It helps to make the cases more personal. In this one Heiji gets attacked and goes missing, the watcher is left to wonder what in the world happened to him, and aside from Heiji, the one-off cast-only characters are mostly entertaining to watch as well due to each of them having a role to play in the story, and none of them overstay their welcome at all unlike in certain other mystery anime series (such as Subete, I just have to say it, sorry. The side characters in that were abysmally irrelevant).
There are some nice references in the case to Hercule Poirot's Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie, a famous ship case (probably the most known case on a ship ever), but honestly, I think The Twenty Year Old Murder Intent: The Symphony Serial Murders by Gosho Aoyama has surpassed even the great Christie, and there are not many other writers to talk about when it comes to great cruiser cases in detective fiction. The pacing of the events, something new happening one after another, great presentation and use of characters in the same format as Christie (in the Golden Age style), well rounded plot twists after plot twists, and great handling of the smallest details from the strong beginning up until the climactic ending moment... It really is an amazing episode from so many standpoints, and as I said, by far one of the best episodic cases ever created, and that's a line hard to reach.
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