This is crazy: According to Crunchyroll news, the 1000th episode of Detective Conan will be a 1-hour remake of Moonlight Sonata Murder Case, which is a case that heavily focuses on the theme of music and instruments, coincidentally just like The Murder in the Illusionary Music Hall case, which is the next big case that begins in this volume review of Tantei Gakuen Q.
Moonlight Sonata Murder Case is possibly the first big case in Detective Conan anime that most people remember. In the manga, the Moonlight Sonata Murder Case is the 18th case so it happens later on than in the anime. Anyway, this is going to be an absolute treat to any fan of detective fiction! As of February 5th, 2021, Detective Conan is at episode 996. This means that in less than a month we'll get this 1-hour special, provided that there are no reruns of older episodes that don't count towards the 1000 episode mark!
Talking about music, Mai Kuraki has sung such masterpiece songs for the series.
Detective School Q Vol. 9
Okay, now back to Tantei Gakuen Q, and it's time for a long case again. Volume 8 was a collection of compact kindasorta filler short stories along with the ending chapters of the Murder Collector case, which was a pretty decent case albeit a bit stretched out but not too much. We got introduced to another Q Class member, Tooya Kuniko, but in exchange didn't get to focus on the criminal organization Pluto. It was a decent enough volume regardless, and it ended conclusively without continuing to this one. After the short cases are again out of the way we move forward to a case that's pretty much as long as the Kamikakushi Village Murder Case of volumes 3 and 4. There are literally zero complete stories this time as the Murder Case in the Imaginary Music Hall story begins at the beginning of this volume and ends in the next volume.
It's taken me some time to even start to read this volume's story as I'm seriously not the biggest fan of these longer cases as they tend to feel unnecessarily dragged out every now and then, but let's see what Fumiya and Seimaru have in store for us this time. These do give a nice sense of variety to the series, of course.
So far the Tantei Gakuen Q has had the following long stories:
Tragedy of Kirisaki Island (Third Entrance Exams Case) (Vol 1-2),
Kamikakushi Village Murder Case (Vol. 3-4),
Murder Collector Case (vol. 7-8),
and the next one which begins immediately in this volume:
The Murder Case in the Illusionary Music Hall
The criminal organization Pluto which is known to have been destroyed in the past by our legendary detective Dan Morihiko for "a great price" is starting to move again. Although the organization's existence had been sort of hinted at through something mysterious going on with Ryu since the beginning of the series, we officially got introduced to the organization in volume 5's occultism case. There was also a quick mention of "Pluto" a bit before the occultism case. Anyway, this group aims to play no games as they truly are heinous criminals who need to be taken out. You see, Pluto consists of spies that can easily become someone else and their job is to craft so-called perfect murder plans (that always fail when our main cast is on the case) for their clients who want to erase someone from this earth permanently. They themselves don't commit the deeds, but their price for a killing plan is still enormous at half of all assets the client owns at the time of contract's fulfillment, in other words the criminals have to pay up once they have managed to successfully commit the deed without getting caught.
In the Shadow of Pluto story (Vol. 6) Dan Morihiko's right-hand man Nanami came face to face with a deadly Pluto member whom he still failed to catch in the end. This member was introduced to us as Kaori, a seemingly low-rank Pluto member with the ability to disguise and hypnotize people to do anything she orders them to do. When the culprits (Pluto's clients) get caught she simply orders them to kill themselves via hypnotism to hide the evidence they were in contact with the organization. This level of hypnotization however is a bit too over-powered of an ability. In the Q vs. A case in volume 6 Kaori fails yet another client during the 5th deduction battle portion and leaves to beg for mercy from Pluto's higher-ranked members who gave her one more chance to prove her worth by infiltrating DDS, which she assumedly did during Mystery of the Old School Building case as she locked Kyu and Megumi in a jail cell-like place where she attempted to kill the two with a poisonous snake. But we don't know whose identity she had stolen; we don't know the exact culprit who locked the cell door as she could be pretending to be anyone in the school from students to teachers.
This time around Kaori is back to make a special offer to a client: the higher ups of Pluto want something else than half of all the soon-to-be perp's assets. We don't know what this thing that they want is, but the culprit's reaction shows us that it's no laughing matter, but of course he / she still agrees to give it to the organization rather than the police getting their hands on it. This inclusion of Pluto here gives us an intriguing premise for the long story that's about to begin.
The beginning
Surprisingly the comedic ending of volume 8's last case actually continues on to this case as Megumi, Yukihira and our new female member in Q Class, Kuniko, apologize to Kyuu and Kinta for not coming to help them at the girls-only high school. Meg and co. forgot about going there after they caught the groper pervert on a train. Kazuma's also having problems of his own as the time limit for creating a new computer game is fast approaching, if he won't manage to finish it in time, his sponsor's will dip out of the project.
Class is starting at Dan Detective School as a new client, Gotoda Manabu (24) visits the teachers (including the new teacher Hongou Natsumi who is a serious man with scars; Natsumi had been away for half a year due to injuries he got from a 'battle', but is now back teaching the DDS because the school needed reinforcements because of the sudden resurgence of the criminal organization Pluto). Gotoda's in a pickle as his teacher had received a threatening letter two weeks prior. The letter was sent to his teacher's villa who in turn is a famous violinist by the name of Yuge Masaomi. The letter basically claims that the 'sensei's violin' belongs to the person who sent the threatening letter; no one else is allowed to get their hands on it, and if someone tries, they'll apparently be killed or something.
The handwriting on the threatening letter however is easy to pinpoint towards the right person as they weren't playing it safe when they wrote it - the writer is the first student of Yuge Masaomi, Houshou Mitsuru, one of the most talented violinists around and considered Yuge-sensei's heir, but there's a problem as Mitsuru actually committed a suicide half a year ago..
Now, the problem at hand is that the great violinist Yuge Masaomi believes that Mituru has come back from the underworld to take her revenge and get what belongs to her. You see, Yuge is sickly so he's planning on passing on his legendary violin 'Testa di Drago' (means 'The Dragon's Head') to one of his pupils. But things have taken such a long time to develop as he's worried about whether or not something unexpected will happen, like an infight for the violin...
This violinist case is then given to our main characters in the Qualified Class of DDS. Dan Morihiko gives the class a brief rundown over the case, but there's also something unexpected to it: the case is also related to a 'genius artist' named Kuzuryuu Takumi, who is the person who's connected with the school building where the Q Class is being taught at (the building is also Dan Morihiko's old detective agency). Kuzuryuu was the person who apparently a long time ago crafted the school building along with secret trick doors that hid a jail cell where Kyu and Megumi were trapped in, in The Secret of the Old School Building case which took place in volumes 6 and 7 of this manga series. Kuzuryuu's motivations for crafting the trick doors are still unknown, but we do get some hints towards what kind of person Kuzuryuu was: a versatile genius artist and an engineer who loved collecting stuff and write lyrics to songs. Kuzuryuu is known in Japan for creating trick art and creating 9 great violins. Kuzuryuu's known to never create anything beyond number '9', apparently, if I got this correctly, Kuzuryuu is called a genius artist but only created 9 pieces of art in his life or something (interestingly enough our protagonist's name Kyuu also mean '9').
After Dan Morihiko sets the Q Class's missions (with Kazuma staying behind at the school...), it's time to head to the 'Fantasia House' where Yuge lives. The case cast this time includes the pupils of Yuge Masaomi: Gotoda Manabu, Shirase Mayumi, Kirishima Sonata (the arrogant character), Murasame Shion, as well as Fukuoka Kazuya (a music critic), Tachiki Arisa (maid), and Shiba Asae (instrument collector). All of them are after Yuge-sensei's Testa di Drago violin, but there's a chance that the violin won't be given to anyone as the visiting music critic (who is also a close friend of Yuge) has offered to keep the violin safe until a suitable heir appears. On other hand, the instrument collector has also offered 700 million yen to get her hands on the violin... since the original heir Houshou Mitsuru's death, the violin's fate is unclear. Also, there's something off about Ryu as Kyu and Megumi were supposed to be the ones to investigate, Ryu decides to arrive to the scene later on as well.
As Kinta and teacher Hongou Natsumi are heading towards Yuge's house on Hongou's car, a strong typhoon hits the streets. At the same time a Shadow Man is looking at the clock, paying attention as the 5 p.m. Yuge Masaomi's solo violin play will soon begin in the sound-proof music hall. The Shadow Man monologues to himself about how musicians are sinful and stuff like that. This perp seems to call himself the 'Maestro from Hell'. At 5 p.m. Yuge starts to play 'The Demon's Banquet' with the dragon violin, Testa di Drago. The song seemingly has a soul-sucking and powerful punch to it.
Now, things get mysterious as Shirase Mayumi never arrived to see the solo-play of Yuge, and during the middle of the play, Kirishima Sonata started to sweat and quickly ran away. Ryuu, Kyuu and Megumi start hearing strange loud noises that apparently came from Shirasu-san's room along with a very strong stereo noise. The door opens up easily with a key but there's a large vase blocking it from being fully opened, and deeper in the room is the corpse of Shirasu on the floor with a knife through her throat and vase pieces all over her. The time of discovery of the corpse at 5:35 p.m. is also taken into account in this case as the corpse is very fresh, seemingly she was killed only recently, at the same time as the loud noise. The anime version also kept this scene quite bloody. It doesn't take long for Kyuu and co. to figure out that the murder is an inside-job from the lack of muddy footprints on the crime scene despite there being a heavy rain outside.
This current case ties directly to the 'suicide' of Houshou Mitsuru half a year prior. Although everyone says she's dead, the truth is that her body is yet to be found. Half a year ago her room was found, filled with blood that reached to the balcony and outside. The police suspected that she'd cut her own wrists and jumped to the sea.
Hongou, Kinta and Gotoda are still on their way to the manor where the murder happened but as someone had used explosives to cause an earthquake on the road that goes in and out from the mansion. In this case we get some back and forth communication on the phone between the Q Class that's on the crime scene and out of it, which is pretty neat, I guess.
Food Poisoning & Drug Addiction
Another corpse appears. While the first murder included a crime with a locked door and windows open, with a knife through the victim's throat and stuff like that, the second murder this time around has to do with cyanide poisoning on the salad dressing. The problem here is that some of the diners had already eaten the dressing during dinner, so who could have poisoned it in-between?
From here, it doesn't take long for the 3rd murder to also surface. Kinta and Hongou finally arrive at the mansion but Gotoda falls down a cliff as if he was pushed by someone. But Gotoda doesn't die there, but instead, the other pupil Kirishima is found dead in his room with a syringe needle seemingly causing his death alongside a death will on his computer, claiming that Kirishima killed the two others as the Underworld Maestro and then he decided to take his own life 'to end the deadly music' (as someone always calls them and plays a violin music on the phone to them).
This case is made more interesting as we move towards the ending. Ryuu notices a person with the symbol of Pluto tattooed on their body. We finally get something more about Ryuu and his inclusion in the main storyline of the series. And his connection with Pluto seems to be quite strong, directly related to his family tree.
I will say that this case is on-and-off for me so far but I can see the ending potentially helping it. Pinpointing the exact culprit logically seems kind of impossible so far so I hope the answers won't disappoint as there is that one obvious person running around. The idea and the themes surrounding the story could be more interesting. It's an over a volume long case that deals with three murders and a slight sub-plot with Pluto (who has again sold a murder plan to the culprit). The volume ends with an unknown Pluto member basically hyping up that not even DDS members will be able to see what the ending of this case will bring forth to us. I'm actually really interested in seeing the end of this kind of average-feeling but mostly properly crafted case, so I guess the bait hype works. I guess the identity of the culprit might be better hidden than I gave credit for, but I'll give a fair rating to this case in the next volume review.
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