Detective Conan Episode ONE (2016) - Part Two

The Journey through Tropical Land

| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | 

Inside one of the amusement park's towers, Ran is looking outside through binoculars as Shinichi brings her Coca Cola; this is one of the more known scenes of the series as well (Watch Movie 4: Captured in Her Eyes). Afterwards Ran and Shinichi run out as Shinichi starts counting down to zero and water starts to come out of ground in circles around them as Detective Conan opening 4: Unmei no Roulette Mawashite starts playing as Ran and Shinichi spend time in Tropical Land. The scenery is really cool, lovely and all the stuff about the really creepy looking mascots is really hilarious, like Ran running to hug one of them and a pink mascot grabbing Shinichi.
But most importantly I bet that everyone who watches this scene will get a sharp cold feel of nostalgia from listening to Zard and watching it all unfold.

Then Gin and Vodka, the two men in black, now reach Tropical Land to do business with the company president and also potentially get rid of laid out traps.

Shinichi and Ran then go to a roller coaster, the Mystery Coaster, line like they did in the original as Shinichi keeps talking about Holmes and about how Holmes can immediately identify traits from people by merely touching their hands; Shinichi playfully claims to demonstrate this by grabbing the hand of a woman who's in line to the roller coaster with her friends and saying that the woman is a part of a gymnastics team merely from the blisters on her hands, however Shinichi quickly confesses that he just saw unique bruises around her thighs that come from working with uneven horizontal bars as the wind was blowing up the woman's skirt. Then two other people come, a man with a woman all over him, and asks Shinichi and Ran to leave the other two women alone. The man and woman then kiss and Shinichi dreams of kissing with Ran until it's time to go travel the Mystery Coaster.

Gin and Vodka arrive to the scene and Shinichi just keeps talking with Ran about Holmes until she gets pissed off and tells Shinichi to shut up as she just wanted to enjoy the trip. After boarding the coaster Ran says that she just wanted to enjoy Tropical Land with Shinichi and that Shinichi doesn't understand her feelings, but then quickly says that she was joking about it and Shinichi gets all flustered. It's pretty funny to see Ran tell Shinichi that he won't get far as a detective if he falls to something like that., even though the part of looking forward to the trip was true.

Ran and Shinichi enjoy themselves on the roller coaster as Gin and Vodka are on the back seats of the same roller coaster while looking at the company president with binoculars; wondering if there are any traps. Gin sends a message to Chianti and Korn, two assassins of the organization, that there's no need to assassinate the CEO. As Chinti is leaving but Korn doesn't, she wonders if Korn just wants to ride the roller coaster, to which Korn starts, ridicilously enough, blushing.

On the roller coaster a drop of salty water suddenly drops on Shinichi's face while they're inside a tunnel and then bunch of other water start to get splashed all over the place and everyone wonders what's going on - this scene is somewhat censored from the manga as its one of the bloodiest cases in Detective Conan - then Shinichi looks backwards and Gin and Vodka look forward and they get to see a fountain of blood flowing from the neck of a person who's with a screaming woman next to her as the blood splurts even on Ran's face, and what's more, the victim is missing his head entirely.

After making their stop, the police and ambulance arrive and the corpse is taken out the roller coaster. As Gin and Vodka are about to leave claiming the victim got into an unlucky accident, Shinichi stops them and tells everyone that it was most definitely a murder and that one of the seven who rode the same coaster ride is the murderer. The men in black say that they're not staying around but inspector Megure appears, saying that he's happy Kudo Shinichi is on the scene to make the case easier, and then everyone else - including Gin and Vodka - get shaken up that a detective prodigy is there.
As the police inspect the crime scene, there is no signs of an accident or malfunction anywhere and the amount of damage clearly doesn't suggest suicide, however, the murder method is still unknown. Then due to Shinichi's suggestion, Megure let's everyone else except the 7 who rode on the Mystery Coaster leave the scene.

As Megure excludes Ran and Shinichi from the suspect list for the moment, there are five suspects who could have killed the victim on that coaster ride. The victim this time was the man who was making out with the woman earlier, which caused Shinichi to dream about kissing Ran. This moment is kind of interesting because it doesn't tell use the exact names of the suspects but instead we just call them by Friend A, Friend B, Lover C, and the Men in Black D and E. I think Gosho didn't want to reveal anyone's names because then he would have been forced to make the police identify Gin's and Vodka's real names, and things would have turned nasty if they tried to do that.
Note: this is the first time Shinichi meets Gin and Vodka.

The main problem with anyone else except the Lover killing the victim is that the Safety Guard must have been on so no one could move around, of course if the men in black tried to, they might have been able to pull something off as well as they sat behind the victim. Then Gin appears next to Megure and Shinichi and tells them that they don't have "time to stick around while you play detective." Gin's icy gaze shocks Shinichi; it's almost as if the man in black has killed countless people in the past without feeling anything.

The police then pull a bloody knife from the Lover's (Aiko's her name) purse but she claims it wasn't her. Vodka claims it's obvious that she did it and that now it should all be settled but everyone is  suspicious because the killer got caught too easily, then as Gin and Vodka try to leave, Megure asks everyone to hand their ID's for safety measure and things almost get bad with Gin about to pull a weapon on inspector Megure who comes to take the men in black's ID's, but Shinichi stops them as he has an announcement to make: The Lover is not the killer. The true killer is one of the victim's female friends that sat far in the front instead. After all, there's no way a person's head would be cut off cleanly with a mere knife and especially with a woman's strength. There's also a lot of suspicion in the knife being found in the Lover's bag when she could have easily gotten rid of the evidence beforehand.  Instead the knife was put in the Lover's bag beforehand. It's clear that the knife was not used for the murder but a steel wire and the roller coaster's speed was used instead. Shinichi demonstrates how the murder was done by showing how its possible to prepare a way to slide from the safety guard, how it's possible to use a hook and coaster rails and a noose to rip off the victim's head while doing it all in a pitch-dark tunnel; and unlike for anyone else, the friend is familiar with gymnastics so it's most definitely possible for her unlike for anyone else to pull off the crime. Shinichi also showcases his eye for details as the friend is missing the necklace she had before they entered the roller coaster. The necklace most likely being the place where she had hid the wire.

As Shinichi keeps presenting evidence the other friend of the victim appears and claims that one of the Men in Black could have easily pulled the crime off as well, as they sat right behind the victim, however, although Shinichi agrees that the two men seem very suspicious, the two of them tried to push to leave the scene even with the police present, making them even more suspicious. It all comes down to the fact that the killer knew that the victim was about to die, which is why they teared up and started to cry; the salty water which flew from the front horizontally to Shinichi's face could only have come from the friend of the victim, Hitomi. Hitomi explains that the victim, Kishida, and her were dating and loved each other before either of them had even met the other friend or the victims current lover, Aiko, but then he dumped her all of a sudden. So that's why she planned to murder him on a roller coaster as that's where some of her fondest memories of the victim are, such as that being a place for their first date and the murder weapon being the necklace she'd gotten from him, and of course even the reason why she put the knife in Aiko's bag was to frame her for stealing her loved one. The culprit is so mad at the lover that she throws her bag at her but the chubby inspector Chiba punches it out of the way. The case ends with Hitomi crying on the ground and Shinichi narrating: "Later, a large quantity of sleeping medicine was found in Hitomi's purse. It seems that after the murder she planned to follow Kishida-san in death by committing suicide. Two hours later, the necklace used in the murder was also located in the tunnel. The thread had been, as I had thought, swapped out for piano wire... and most of the pearls had scattered. The ones left basked in the setting sun, giving off a faint light. Almost as if they shed a long trail of tears."

As Shinichi and Ran leave the crime scene with the culprit caught, Ran keeps sobbing and thinks how crazy it is that Shinichi doesn't feel anything about a murder like that. The reason why he doesn't is because he's faced many cases with torn-up bodies in the past. Shinichi also does a pretty crappy job at calming Ran down but then he sees the two Men in Black and runs away. Ran's shoelaces stop her from going after him and Ran suddenly gets a horrible feeling, as if that she's never going to see Shinichi again.

While the first part of the special focused on introducing characters and a lot of set-up for the next parts, this second part of Episode ONE is definitely more focused on character moments with Shinichi and Ran finally visiting the Tropical Land amusement park, and it's also focused on giving an even more entertainingly presented quick case to the watcher compared to the Sewa mansion case in the first part.


Click to continue to the final part of my Episode ONE overview.