"Become Fire Punch"

"You can become who you want to be." 

Hmm. Literally, I don't even know what to say. Ever so often I manage to catch up on all sorts of series but depending on whether they're an on-going serialized work, I barely ever read or watch them throughout. But there are times when I begin a series that I just can't put down due to how intriguing the story was and how well written the characters are, something like that. I spent all of yesterday going through all eight volumes of Tatsuki Fujimoto's Fire Punch horror action manga series which was released on Shounen Jump's digital platform Jump Plus and ran from 2014 to 2018.

As sort of writers ourselves we have to sometimes take a step back and look at the bigger picture. While I do spend most of my time going through detective fiction and mystery series on this blog, I have my own motivations to create fictional stories in this genre that stray away from what we know to be the norm, which is why I also follow all sorts of action shounen series as well as slice of life in hopes of finding something to move me forward with. I've been reading Fujimoto's other series, Chainsaw Man, weekly since it began and it has a great deal of atmosphere and variety to it that's quite inspirational, but I never expected this author to create anything like Fire Punch.

The story tells the tale of a man named Agni. In the prologue Agni lives with his sister in a small town. In this era, the entire world has been covered in ice and snow, and a certain religion has made its way to the surface as a legend of an ice witch who covered the world in eternal winter is being spread. This is a post-apocalyptic world in which humans live by their last breaths and are being toyed with by an army if they want to live for a few years longer. And when I mean toyed with, I mean it. Humans, especially those who are gifted with different types of Blessings (abilities) are used as literal firewood to keep the flames blowing, so that humanity can feel warmth for a few more years.

The story begins in a very odd way as Agni's sister Luna cuts off his arm. And then another arm. And another. You see, it's always the same arm as Agni and his sister are 'Blessed' with high regeneration, and they use their power for the good of the village full of elderly to feed them with human meat.

One day the army hits the streets and arrive at the town where Agni lives. It doesn't take long for the army to steal their supplies and leave, but as they're about to do that, the lower ranked soldiers inform everyone that the village is filled with cannibals. This causes a certain soldier, Doma, to use his own Blessing to light up the entire village and its citizens in fire. As Agni wakes up he notices that everyone is dead and the village is on fire - well, everyone, except for his siste Luna. Agni stays with Luna for a while as both of them burn in agony, but with the gift of regeneration they manage to survive for a while, until Luna dies and tells Agni to 'Live' for her. This causes Agni to live through a long time while being burnt. You see, Doma's flames will never extinguish until the one they burn has died. With the willpower he gained from Luna's last words, Agni decides to live for eight years while groaning on the ground and burning, until he gets somewhat used to the pain and can start to walk again. This time, his only mission is to find Doma, kill him to avenge Luna and the villagers, and then finally let himself die.

As the series gets a bit further we're introduced to other characters, such as couple of movie lovers, but literally all of these characters are absolutely insane. They're bored of life, willing to kill anyone without a shred of remorse... But! It's not just that as this series basically aside for very few instance never does what you expect it to. The characters are all handled in a way where they don't end up where you think they will, and the series goes through loops of twists and turns as it progresses. This manga is definitely bordering on a level of explicit insanity and madness from the author himself, but there is also this beautiful, human atmosphere and reasoning to the madness that I don't really recall ever seeing done in this way before, or at least not at this level, as of course there are series like Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit that also have this theme of beauty springled in a world of insanity.

A few years back I read couple volumes of this other tragic series called To You, The Immortal / To Your Eternity and when I began this series yesterday, the first chapter had that very similar air to it. It's not rare for manga to have tragic first chapters but these two kind of stood out with what they stood for; they are unnerving but not at all horror. This was the first time I really got to read anything of this series, though.
  I'm not a huge fan of gore but I have read all of these killing game series and series like Gantz, which is purely for action, gore and some fanservice. But when it comes to disgusting things, Fire Punch is surprisingly even beyond that, despite being published, somehow, on a shounen platform meant for teenagers (though it does have the explicit material warning on the covers). While I never cared about Gantz because of these things, gore, taboos, and just other unnerving plot elements are used very effectively in Fire Punch. It is in fact why I read it through in one day: I couldn't stop reading. But I don't know why. It's actually not the most interesting manga nor is it the best written one, but it did leave me with an impact about how a writer can make a series interesting by being daring and trying things others won't or can't, and it also left me with a very powerful and inspirational message that tells us that we can become who we want to be.

If you can stomach taboos and gore, Fire Punch manga is an amazing read up to a point, at least. The first half was fantastic. This is a series you want to read if you want an incredibly depressing story that isn't actually too emotional but it will create a burning feeling in the reader's heart. The second portion of the story turned into a psychological horror thriller which was just nutty. The action scenes were kind of -very- messy looking and the ending could have been crafted better regarding a certain tree plot, as it felt kind of forced, but as a whole, this series does stand out. A lot.

The White World - Detective Conan Vol. 24, F238-242

It's nearly christmas. The world is filled with a beautiful layer of white and the temperatures keep dropping. Even though it's a time for celebration, Ai Haibara saw a terrible dream that night. She, Conan, Mitsuhiko, Ayumi and Genta had left the school and were on their way to test out Dr. Agasa's new games. Under the falling snow Haibara noticed something terrifying however, a black porsche, model 356A. The favourite car of black organization's codename: 'Gin', a person who lives to do evil deeds. In her dream it didn't take long for Gin to find out Ai Haibara was the 'traitor' of the organization named 'Sherry' shrunk into the body of a small child, and after figuring that out, Gin took matters to his own hands and killed all the people associated with her. 

Lately I've been reading Detective School Q / Tantei Gakuen Q by Seimaru Amagi and Satou Fumiya due to the great things I've heard about it from other mystery addicts. It's one of those detective fiction series that juggles with an overarching story and bunch of individual cases, but what's more, it also deals with a criminal organization as the main villains of the series, just like Gosho Aoyama's Detective Conan. This overarching aspect of Tantei Gakuen Q is presented in a nice manner (as the series is quite tense), my favourite parts of the overarching story up to end of volume 8 has been the mystery of a creepy jail cell room hidden below the main school setting, even though as a fair-play mystery that story doesn't hold up as there is nothing to really solve. The main villain group in TGQ is named Pluto and its members have this weird supernatural ability to hypnotize people to even try to kill each other which seems to be their version of Detective Conan's APTX-4869. Pluto is presented as much more cartoonishly evil in comparison to the Black Organization, but one thing that I've always liked about all of these detective manga series is the use of the Shadow Man culprit who is shown but we never actually know of who it is that's doing the thinking, which is a trick often done in TGQ. This got me thinking back on what cases left me an impression with the use of the Shadow Man trope in an overarching story of Detective Conan, and the answer I found was this: Volume 24's Hotel Party Murder Case.


The case opens up with beautiful, tense art and a double-page spread depicting Haibara's dream in which Gin preys on her as she's with the rest of the detective boys during a snowy noon after school. We immediately learn that dream is going to soon become at least partly real as she and Conan wander the streets and see a black porsche that is just like Gin's. Conan decides to take precautions and calls Dr. Agasa to drive to the porsche immediately so he can wiretap it - and indeed, the car does belong to our black organization member who once again hangs around with his right-hand man Vodka.

As Conan, Haibara and Agasa track down the car to get the members' whereabouts, Conan learns through a listening device he planted that "a target is going to arrive at Haido City Hotel" at exactly 6 P.M., and the organization is going to hold a "farewell party" for the target; they will silence their target "before the police get an arrest". The person to pull this deed off is the black organization member 'Pisco', and what's more, Pisco even has the authority to use the APTX-4869 drug as a poison to kill the target if need be. This is because Gin and Vodka don't know that the drug doesn't always kill the people who take it, but sometimes - such as in the case of Conan and Haibara - the victims to the drug get de-aged by at least ten years.

After Gin finds a strand of strawberry-colored hair, it doesn't take him long to figure out that Haibara has been snooping in his car, and we get to see Gin's ability at reading ahead on what Haibara will do as he immediately finds out Conan's tracking & listening device and destroys it and then goes to inform Pisco that Sherry (Haibara) will definitely be participating the Black Funeral due to listening on Gin's and Pisco's phone call earlier. 

This case is incredibly intriguing! We begin the actual portion of the case with Conan calling inspector Megure, Takagi and co. to the large party at Haido City Hotel (by masking his voice as the caller with the voice-changing bowtie), and Conan basically challenges Pisco to try and take out the victim's life, as he already knows who the victim will be from the mere information he gained from listening in on Pisco's and Gin's conversation. I must say that in comparison, in Tantei Gakuen Q these types of realization moments (such as figuring out when someone had lied or slipped-up in their speech) are always presented as grand moments with large panels that make a point out of that realization... but not in this series. I love how casually Conan just blurts out at the middle of chapter 239 that the victim's already been pinpointed and the cops he called to protect the victim are almost at the hotel.

But things still don't work out as an oldschool murder method happens when a chandelier falls on the victim and takes his life at the moment when the lights are off in the room as they're showing a slideshow of photographs, there are even flashing lights coming out of it. At the party there are numerous participants; an university professor, pro baseball team owner, an american actress, even an auto manufacturer chairman, though Conan manages to surprisingly cleverly narrow the suspects down to seven of them by thinking of the mere color of their handkerchiefs as a handkerchief of a certain color mysteriously fell from the sky on Conan and a piece of metal from the chandelier is somehow in the rice that's being served at the party. And how in the world did Pisco make the chandelier drop in pitch-black darkness; what was the method? That piece of cloth sure is something in this case though...

  
This case is incredible to me, I couldn't stop turning the pages. The way how it moves from one thing to other and comes back together is something truly inspirational in both its simplicity and complexity. But to truly get this type of effect out of it, you have to read all of the story up to this point...
At the same time as Gin and Vodka close in on Haibara at the hotel, Conan has to find out Pisco's identity in the group from hints that point to a logical conclusion that explains the odd mystery of the handkerchief and the piece of metal in rice in a really impressive way. This case is used to really showcase the black organization to us in ways that I'm actually impressed by the author Gosho Aoyama for pulling off something that looks completely random and weird but with a slight pull of the thread, the whole thing makes perfect sense. The author can make even the simplest of things seem alien! This is actually one of the aspects I'm going to talk about when I finish Tantei Gakuen Q (as that series in contrast tends to have over-the-top answers in its cases so far).

We're getting to see the psyche of Haibara as she really battles with the thoughts of just dying away instead of allowing her close friends (Conan, DB's and Agasa, and their friends and families) get in the harm's way if  the black organization members figure out her identity. At the same time as the case of trying to figure out Pisco is going down with its own interesting overarching narrative that ties somewhat into this next thing I'll mention, Gin & Vodka are on the hunt to kill Sherry... And while she of course won't die, there is some crazy tension towards that here.

I must say that the 'kidnapping setting' and  'alcohol' used here brings me some good memories / vibes of certain spiritual tricks in Ace Attorney 6: Spirit of Justice. I've always loved when these series utilize things that only exist in their respective fictional universes to tell their story in clever ways. In the same sense I'm excited to see whether or not Tantei Gakuen Q will utilize its 'hypnotism' in similar clever ways and whether or not we'll also get these types of showdown cases where the culprits are from Pluto.


Anyway, at the beginning of this review/post I said that I like how these series present the culprits as Shadow Men. Pisco is one of my absolute favourite presentations of this trope due to the moment where he figures out that Haibara is Sherry at the Haido Hotel Party. That moment with Pisco's dumb-founded shadow look and wide-open eyes has always given me the chills. This case is also amazing in the anime as well with the top-tier soundtracks that are used for it. There's also this triple visual clue hint in this case relating to the 'mechanism' used to make the chandelier fall, the 'culprit' and the 'alibis', and when I saw that I actually laughed because I realized none of those three that were there. And I must say that the final page of this case where inspector Megure tells Shinichi that the families of the victim and the killer have disappeared to thin air and the houses burned down overnight all of a sudden really is a great ender to a story to make a point about the threat of the organization. Dang.

Tantei Gakuen Q / Detective School Q Volume 6 (F40-48) Review

Volume 5 of writer Seimaru Amagi's and illustrator Fumiya Sato's Tantei Gakuen Q series ended with the first two chapters of the "Q vs. A" storyline, in other words a story about a slightly hyped-up battle between two classes. I didn't talk about any aspects of this Q vs. A deduction battle case series in my previous volume's review as I decided to focus on all of it in this volume's review as there's a lot to talk about.
As the Qualified Class which our main characters Kyu, Ryu, Megumi, Kinta and Kazuma are a part of managed to solve the occultism case that dealt with the deceased mother of one of Kyu's high school classmate's, the Q Class headed back to the Dan Detective School where their teacher is waiting for results. You see, the Q Class is a very special class as it's taught by the legendary detective Dan Morihiko personally. Dan's goal is to find a successor to his craft as the greatest detective in Japan, and to do that he gives our students cases to solve as part of their homework. The occultism case was one such homework for the Q Class to solve. If the students directly under Morihiko aren't able to keep up with the challenges and excel in solving them, there will be a problem, which is the A Class and "swapping" of students.

The A Class in Dan Detective School are a group of geniuses themselves. Unlike the Q Class which actually consists of quite young high school individuals, the A Class consists of people like university students. When it comes to feats in the field of detective work they say that the A Class is actually above the Q Class, so it's a mystery why Dan Morihiko doesn't want to directly teach them, but alas, the main point here is to understand that if the Q Class flops a case, any of the students in that class can be swapped to A Class in place of an A Class student getting swapped to the Q Class, and there's even a possibility of any of the students falling much lower, such as to the D-class, which is the lowest class in the school. This problem of "class swapping" brings a certain theme of rivalry in the series that's been hinted at since the very early volumes of the series, I even recall that some of the A Class students were thinking on playing it foul to get to Q Class. I must say that when it comes to writing a proper overarching storyline, although the past five volumes haven't really offered anything monumental, it is very refreshing to see such proper foreshadowing and natural connection of things case after case. It feels as if we truly move forward in a living world and learn more about actually relevant stuff to the characters in a consistent manner. This is not easy to do and takes a lot of effort and skill from the authors to pull off.

Q vs. A

In Q vs. A we get re-introduced to the A Class's members as they show off their mugs and act much better than the Q Class, in fact they're 100% sure they'll be able to get to the Q Class at any point. Rumour has it that after Q Class solved the occultism case of volume 5, there's been an uproar in the teacher community. The details are not known by the students (but the reader may well assume it has to do with the villain organization Pluto) but the school's security has been increased as sort of an aftereffect of the case. As there is still a whole month until the next exam, the A Class has become impatient to get into the Q Class (which is from where Dan Morihiko chooses his successor) and thus they have an offer to make to Kyu and co.: Instead of waiting, let's settle which class is better at solving crimes right here and now!

One of the A Class members, Yukihira-san, explains that both of the classes can ask Dan Morihiko to hold an informal match after which he can enforce the changing of members between A and Q classes based on the results of the match... and it doesn't take long for Dan himself to agree to holding the match as he happens to overhear what the students were talking about, and Dan himself will give the mysteries that the classes have to solve to avoid some foul play.

The deduction battle that will decide which class is superior consists of problems that Dan himself has solved in the past. The battle's setting will take place in the Crime Scene Reproduction Room of DDS and it will be a 5 vs. 5 of the top five of both Q and A Classes battling it out (and these five from each class are pretty much the only characters we know from the school anyway). Dan had set up ten different playing cards with numbers 1 to 5 on them. The opponent for each member will be set by the same number that's on the cards. The rules are that since there are 5 members on each class, the first class to get to 3 'wins' (# of mysteries solved) will win, and under the authority of Dan Morihiko, there is a chance of class members being swapped if A Class managed to get three wins first.

Deduction Battle #1 - Kinta vs. Gouda Kyosuke
Our martial arts expert Kintarou gets the number five of hearts card to go up against the number five of spades card that Gouda, assumedly one of the greatest math experts in Japan, got. The mystery they have to solve first is about when Dan Morihiko's and his assistant's lives were in danger as the were escaping a crime syndicate that they invaded in Hong Kong. Morihiko's assistant had disguised as a chef and knew the hideout of the members of the syndicate whom they managed to escape. However, they were chased to the rooftop of a multi-story building, and with no rope or a ladder, they had little hope of escaping. On the rooftop there however were piles of lumber thick enough to walk on, but they couldn't be used to walk to the other rooftop as they were just 20 cm too short. Dan even managed to drop a piece of lumber to the roadside from the rooftop.
There is seemingly no way to really use the lumber to reach the other side of the rooftop, but Dan did manage to find a way somehow to do it.

To make the mystery easier to solve Dan prepared a miniature replica of the scene at that time, with the lumber and everything set ready.

The answer to this puzzle seems to be math based or so, as the characters showed some formula to calculate it, but I didn't bother to do that. I however had a similar idea, the idea wasn't the same but it was quite similar and depending on how heavy the lumber is (it was never quite stated), I wonder if my theory would have also helped Dan to cross to the other side.

And unsurprisingly enough, Kintarou got the L against the olympics math expert of A Class in this one.
A Class: 1, Q Class: 0.

Deduction Battle #2 - Kazuma vs. Shiramine Hayato
The pair of number fours to battle it out are the inventor Kazuma and the magician Hayato. For the second challenge Dan prepared the participants with a photograph that gets shown on a whitescreen. In this photo there's a man hanging with a rope seemingly on his neck. Dan explains that back when the photo was taken a wealthy man's wife told the detective that her husband might commit suicide. Apparently Dan had went to try and stop this man or something, but regardless, he went to check the place the man was at; a hotel, and when Dan made his way over there, the man was found hanging. Unsurprisingly enough, the crime was no suicide but a murder, and the culprit was the wife's lover apparently. The question that needs answering here is as follows: "what kind of proof is left on the scene of the crime that shows it was murder?

The reader basically has to look at the photo to come up with the answer. But the answer is just too simple, and it even has similarities with a mystery in the 3rd exam case in the earlier volumes. In that sense I guess I've gotten more experienced in the Dan Detective School since I learned from previous cases?

However, our Kazuma just isn't able to make it as his laptop doesn't start. In his effort to try to come up with the answer, Hayato just takes the lead with a quick answer to a simple question.
A Class: 2, Q Class: 0.

Deduction Battle #3 - Ryu vs. Shishido Takeshi
Shishido Takeshi is a student with a doctorate from Harvard university, but our mysterious main character Ryu Amakusa decides to take up the fight with confidence of a clear victory. Dan shows another photograph, this time from about 20 years ago, taken from a guest house of a villa. This one is quite creepy as it shows a person holding a fork and a knife while on a table filled with high-class food. It was all to set the stage up to make it seem as if this man was eating. The victim this time was a manga writer that created manga with food themes. Dan worked as a bodyguard for him as the victim was blackmailed, but on a patrol he noticed the corpse sitting as if dining on a table. The body had been rotting at the table for about 4 or 5 days before being found, but there's something odd as the food prepared by the killer was not as old as the corpse.

Dan explains that the culprit wasn't a nutjob for doing all of this, but actually quite a smart one as there's a reason why the scene of crime was left in such a bizarre state. As the Q Class is merely one step from losing the deduction battle, Ryu has to quickly solve the reason for why the scene of crime is what it is.
 The estimated time of death for the victim was on July 11th, while two days prior to that he had a meeting with editors that may have had a grudge against him.

On July 9th, three editors met up with the victim, and this is their explanation for how things went:
Suspect 1) Oomuro Ryonosuke (31) claimed that on July 9th he went to the villa to remind the victim to finish a script. The door to the villa was not locked but no matter how many times Ryonosuke knocked, there was no answer, but the smell of coffee coming from the building made the editor think he was working.
According to Ryonosuke one of the other editors, Akai, told him that he'd gone to the victim's resort on the 11th, but he heard snoring back then and assumed the victim was asleep. The third of the suspect editors, Shimizu, told Ryonosuke that he'd visited the author on the 10th and got mad that no one answered the door.
Suspect 2) Shimizu Tetsuhiko (42) claimed that he'd visited the victim on 10th. No one answered the door so he went back home. Shimizu claims that the day Oomura visited the vic was "before it started raining" on the 9th and at night. According to Tetsuhiko, Akai on the other hand visited the vic after a heavy storm as there was a huge ruckus because the breakers tripped before dinner time.
Suspect 3) Akai Hideo (28) claimed that he'd visited the vic during the morning of the 10th day. The door was unlocked but due to the loud snoring Akai felt it was obvious the suspect was sleeping. Akai also claims that he didn't know Oomura visited the vic's house on the 9th while he knew that Shimizu had come back from visiting the vic before noon on the 10th.

After that, Dan Morihiko says from what's been said so far he'd managed to narrow the culprit down to one, as well as the "reason" why the culprit left the crime scene in such a weird condition. Dan gives one of the investigators a hint: the full course on the table is missing the "salad". Before Ryu starts his explanation, we get to hear a hint from Kyu towards the truth of this mystery: "The victim doesn't eat food". 

Now, while I get what the author wanted to do, the answer to this case kind of doesn't make sense in that it's just not necessary or that there'd be any actual point to this. The author doesn't seem to be aware of microbes and basic stuff like that when it comes to cooking food or any piece of food in general, but I guess that doesn't matter... A very iffy solution to the most interesting mystery so far in this deduction battle. Actually, "that place" would still be empty now and it should still raise questions... and I'm not sure if this action from the perp even fixed any problems at all. Actually I'm not sure if it even matters if some of the food "couldn't be used" in that other place.

Obviously Ryu wins this match however to tip the scales.

A Class: 2, Q Class: 1

Deduction Battle #4: Minami Megumi vs. Saburoumaru
Megumi gets a head-to-head battle with her old classmate. Dan Morihiko shows the two a photo of a message that reads as follows: "Tomorrow on the 12th at 8PM come to the Maruyama Teater's Stage". The paper it read on was torn to pieces. The victim in this case was a member of a drama group that died when an illumination lamp fell on him on the stage. However, before dying, he managed to rip the sheet of paper into pieces while trying to move the ~100kg heavy lamp.

It's easy to see that the victim ripped the paper to leave a dying message to the finders in desperation. The suspects were narrowed down to three women, Ooki Nae (28), Mizuki Kyouko (22), and Nakakura Reiko (31), and funnily enough all three of them were dating the vic. A few days prior to his death the victim however broke up with all three of them as he found a rich lady to marry. That's basically all there is to the case. Dan gives Megumi and Saburoumaru a hint to solve the mystery: It's not a hard-to-decipher code.... for Japanese people, that is. It's a kanji-based mystery as I assumed in the first place. I guess it's also not even meant to be solved as it requires to move the ripped pieces of paper around to create a certain kanji to pinpoint the culprit.

Anyway, of course Megumi won't lose this one as Kyuu, the main character, has yet to throw down with his deduction battle. Kyuu's battle is also of course the climax of this miniarc.

A Class: 2, Q Class: 2

Deduction Battle #5: Kyuu vs. Yukihira Sakurako (Main Case of the Volume)

Yukihira from A Class is a hard one to battle as she's said to have been a detective since she was a young child, but how well will she fare against our main character? This final deduction battle to solve includes a photograph of a young woman who worked as a companion for an event. She was found dead in the room she was lodging the morning this event took place. The thing here is, however, that Dan Detective School actually doesn't know if this case was a murder or not, as they were asked to solve the case just yesterday. The client this time is the younger sister of the victim who wanted DDS to continue the investigation since apparently the official papers claim she died a "sudden death". The sister believes that it's definitely a murder as her sister had gotten a threatening letter trying to force the victim to resign from being the role of an actress.
The reason why the police concluded that it was not a murder despite this kind of letter, was because the victim was found in a locked room. The room the victim stayed in was like a prison cell: no furniture, locked with a small barred window that was open but the iron bars would make it impossible for a person to get through.

This case is thus a perfect locked-room murder. The victim's cause of death was suffocation and she was addicted to sleeping pills, so the police concluded that the vic's cause of death must be an overdose of sleeping pills.

But all of a sudden the school bells start to ring and Dan Morihiko tells the students that the deduction battle is over as he has some business to attend to. In other words the deduction battle ended in a draw of two wins for both classes. However, we learn that the Dan Morihiko who held the deduction battle was actually Dan's assistant Nanami disguised as him. Nanami's goal was to see how the classes have evolved and what Kyu and Yukihira will do with this final, unresolved locked-room case that gets left hanging in the open.

Well then, Kyu decides to look at some photos of the victim and pack his bags to head to the Karuizawa Film Festival where the crime scene is. This is the first actual solo Kyu case since the beginning of the series. Thing is though, Yukihara from A Class also heads there in order to finish the final battle with Kyu.

This deduction battle's idea is to basically solve the murder case live on the scene where he meets the victim's sister who has an emotional plea for Kyuu & Yukihira of DDS: "Please find the criminal who killed my older sister!"
 While the first four deduction battles were condensed into just mere two chapters, this one takes place for the next four chapters after those, in other words the fourth deduction battle with its four-chapter-length "Q vs. A Overtime" case is as long as the Murder in Spirit Summoning occultism case, and this case also has some supposed supernatural themes to it as everyone believes that the victim, Sumika, was killed by the curse of Hikawa Misuzu who was yet another campaign girl who'd died in an accident as well, three months prior. According to the event manager Eijirou, Misuzu was a popular actress who was supposed to play in the leading role in a movie. Misuzu and the movie group were staying in a hotel and on the second night there, the group heard Misuzu screaming and found her deceased in the dry riverbed of the outdoor hot spring where she'd hit her head on the rocks.

The suspects in Q vs. A Overtime are as follows:
Tachigawa Momoko (17), she dropped out of high school to participate in the event,
Takamura Nagisa (18), comes from a rich family from abroad,
Yamasaki Nazumi (20), according to the victim Nazumi is lying about being 20, and is actually 22,
Ooi Eijirou (26), he's the event manager who organizes everything.

The Second Victim
It's nighttime. As the client of Kyuu and Yukihira, Reika Kurita, seemed to be stressed earlier during the day, the duo decide to head outside to check up on her through a window. Before reaching the room, they notice that one of the caged windows to Campaign Girls rooms has its lights on in the middle of the night. It doesn't take long for Kyuu to realize that it's the room of their client, who's in a similar setting as her deceased sister was: a locked room. The moment building up to Kyuu's and Yukihira's realization that Reika might be dead at the end of chapter 40 is quite nicely crafted. While it's not that special, the panel layout just seemed nice enough to point out. Anyway, the duo manage to help the second victim survive when Yukihira starts CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation for unconscious people who don't breathe, where one breathes in other's mouth and "massages" their heart by pushing the ribcage portion of the chest) as an emergency procedure. 

There are quite a few odd things about this case. As Kyuu and Yukihira along with Momoko Tachigawa decide to break the locked door to the room where the unconscious Reika was in, an unknown person in a weird Godzilla-costume decides to help them break in. This reminds me that Detective Conan also has cases in it with a certain Godzilla-like mascot in the culprit role. Furthermore, Kyuu explains there was a weird smell of burned plastic in Reika's room, and another one of the suspects, Yamasaki Natsumi, explains that she gave Reika the strongest allergy medicine she had, but they weren't poisoned or anything. These random things help flesh out the case a bit more, but I personally felt that they were kind of... not that interesting additions.

The Explanation...
This fifth and final case of the Q vs. A storyline is quite likely the worst case in the series so far. Not only is the setting and the cast of characters uninteresting to begin with, the explanation to this case is awful. And what makes that worse is the fact that there's a false conclusion to this case explained by Yukihira, and while that answer was not that great by any stretch of the imagination, it was at least serviceable unlike the real answer to this case which is some hard bollocks. Not long ago I reviewed the A Cursed Mask Coldly Laughs episode of Detective Conan which had an absolutely fantastic locked-room trick. The murder scene setting of this Tantei Gakuen Q case was very similar so I did have an idea of the answer maybe being similar. There are quite a few similarities to the murder method between these two stories, indeed, however, where the trick in "A Cursed Mask Coldly Laughs" absolutely shines, this one completely flops. It's illogical, and it's complete nonsense. Slight SPOILER: Just because it doesn't have air in it, doesn't mean it's not incredibly heavy, and it also doesn't mean the murder weapon would ever fit in the room, or out of it that way. It's a nonsensical trick and the murder method aspect of it was even dumber. The author even went a step further and never explained the object that Yukihira and Kyuu found (the murder weapon), which is weird as even if they had explained it, it wouldn't be the only conclusion to make (I wouldn't even think of something like this..). I thought the culprit had just stuffed the ventilator system instead with a bag or something. That would have made a lot more sense. Also I have to point out that the culprit and their story in this case was just cringeworthy. The quality took a complete left turn from the occultism case of the previous volume - a case with same length of chapters, but that one case was pretty decent with a cool twist, while this one was complete garbage.


Regardless, this case is where we get to learn more about A Class's Yukihira. As she and Kyuu investigate the case of the deceased sister of Reika, they get to learn about another death prior to that. As the investigation deepens, Yukihira decides to show off her DDS badge to people she questions. This is one of the aspects of this story that make it slightly more interesting as we see the culprit actually pay attention to her being a DDS member. The Q Class also showed off their DDS badges in the Kamikakushi Village Murder Case, but afterwards they got shouted down by their teacher Dan Morihiko himself as they should never expose themselves as detectives that are after the perpetrators, as the criminals could start to chase them down instead for doing so. As Kyuu does not showcase his DDS badge in this case but Yukihira does, it gives us a great example of why they should not show off these badges to anyone as the assumed culprit does start to spy on Yukihira after learning of the badge, and this act from her leads her to getting kidnapped and almost losing her life.

For the most part Yukihira is kind of an uninteresting character to focus on (as we've yet to focus even on the main characters; on Ryuu or Kazuma or even Kinta), as we only know of her as an A Class student who wants to become the heir to Dan Morihiko as the next greatest detective in Japan. But as the case deepens and we get to learn of her connections to Dan Morihiko, my interest towards following her and worry about whether or not she gets whacked by the culprit got a bit more serious. You see, Yukihira is actually the niece of Dan Morihiko. But she did not become a member of the legendary Dan Detective School through connections, but through hard work, as Dan himself wouldn't allow her to become a detective due to the work being so dangerous. She looks up to her uncle which caused her to solve numerous cases, even back when she was in elementary school age.

The ending of Q vs. A has yet another person get hypnotized to stab the culprit after the culprit gets caught. Pluto is apparently a criminal organization that creates murder methods for people for a set price, and they basically have members that are capable of hypnotizing anyone to do dirty deeds for them. At the end of this case the culprit gets stabbed by a person hypnotized by a masked Pluto member, and the Pluto member gets face to face with Dan Morihiko's right hand man, Nanami Kotaro. This showdown leads to a single chapter case called the Shadow of Pluto.

Shadow of Pluto Case
As the end of Q vs. A led up to Nanami vs. a member of the criminal organization Pluto, ffor couple of pages we actually get to see some real action in this chapter as Nanami battles against the woman who utilizes deadly knives. Nanami seemingly uses the same DDS gadgets as the DDS students, except with perfection as he is capable of throwing down against an armed opponent simply with the DDS wristwatch on his side.
I must note that the combat drawn by the artist Sato Fumiya is not that great in this chapter. It looks very stiff and out of place, it's not fluid so it's hard to tell what's happening exactly.

While the beginning focuses on Nanami trying to cath a member of Pluto but of course ultimately fails at that task, the middle portion of this chapter is meant to work as transitional story for our Q Class to move forward from the previous case. The last stretch of the chapter is about Dan Morihiko questioning the culprits of Volume 5's Occultism case as Pluto has become very active lately and they, along with the Q vs. A case's culprit, had hired Pluto to help them kill their victims by creating so-called perfect plans. What's more, apparently in the past Dan Morihiko himself had paid a "great sacrifice" to destroy Pluto...

The members of this criminal organization are experts at mimicking others. They use advanced disguises and plastic surgeries to infiltrate any organization, including the police. I notice that Dan Morihiko's right hand man Nanami is especially skilled at disguising and playing others. Oh, and just like that they also infiltrated the Occultism case as apparently the assistant of the victim in the case of the previous volume was most likely just another Pluto member. But there is a way to tell them apart as all Pluto members have a symbol of the organization carved somewhere on them.

Kinta's Case
The next two chapters of volume 6 have to do with one of our main characters, Kintarou Touyama. In the previous chapter Dan Morihiko went to the police department to ask the police to cooperate with DDS against Pluto. The person he went to talk to was the superintendent of the department, who is in fact Kinta's father. While Dan talks with the superintendent, the scene moves elsewhere, to a building construction site where Kinta works at. This setting and focus on Kinta is a very nice surprise and quite rare to see in these detective fiction series. It brings this much needed new air to the whole story.

At the construction site there are workers who will turn out to be suspects, of course. There's Kinta's alcoholic construction partner or something Nakajima Yoshio (62), their butt-licking boss Shinoda Hitoshi (56), Kurihara Misao (28) who got her position a s a designer with her good looks that attract jealousy and hate, Kizaki Masao (27) who's an ex-stuntman with a bad right leg, and the freelance writer Kuwata Yoshihiko (28) who seems rather angry at the construction happening.

At the other side of the river there's another building that has its construction halted due to citizen protesting against it happening. It's a multi-story building to which Kinta was asked to work at once they get the O.K. to continue constructing. As the evening hits, Nakajima Yoshio goes missing along with two 30kg bags of cement. On top of the unfinished construction building across the river, a flashlight could be seen. Kinta notices a person sitting on top of the construction crane. Then, the person seemingly starts to wave good bye signals to everyone with the flashlight, and then the person seemingly fell down. As Kinta runs to check out the place he notices the missing Nakajima Yoshio on the ground with blood coming from the back of his head.

This case is average. The trick is as usually pretty daring but it's clearly a quick basic story for Kinta to solve. I doubt the culprit would actually have pulled any of that off and I have to wonder about what happened to those 2x30kg missing sacks and rest of the characters that were supposed to gather around the next morning. This story feels kind of underdevelped.. the motive doesn't fit this setting.
After Kinta cracks the case, we move to the headquarters of Pluto where the woman, revealed to be Kaori, who Nanami fought is bowing in front of another person who is assumedly a very higher ranked member of the organization who Kaori calls Sir Caron. We also learn that there are still ranks above Caron in the org, called the "above". As Kaori failed her last mission and let the murderer escape without killing them, Caron gives her one more chance: infiltrate the Dan Detective School.

Secret of the old school building case
Dan Morihiko meets up with a yakuza-lookalike man named Hongou Natsumi to ask him to teach at DDS once more. It's been about half a year since Hongou was there, and the reason for this is his inclusion in an accident. Hongou sports two large scars, one on his right cheek and one on his left, and many scars on his hands and wristwatch as proof of fighting against armed opponents. He's quite interesting looking character in comparison to most characters from this manga, and one of the first things we learn of him is that he has a skill of walking without making sounds. Apparently Hongou was in the same class as Dan's right hand man Nanami back in detective school.
We also learn if another teacher named Maki coming back to DDS to teach the forensic medicine class.
Hongou heads straight to the DDS to personally teach the Q Class, but we soon learn just how little he things of our main characters. He's a very serious teacher who doesn't listen to nonsense. After Kintarou talks behind Hongou's back, the teacher decides to order the Q Class to clean the old school building which was Dan Morihiko's old working place.

Even though the person in charge of cleaning the old school building was Kintarou, as he has work he decides to ask (or more like force) the cleaning duty on Kyuu for the day. Luckily enough Megumi wants to help Kyuu with the cleaning, so it's no problem.

On their cleaning duty Kyuu and Meg run to two mysterious doors that have no place for lock or no way to open them, yet there is definitely some kind of empty space in between. The design of the school is done by a person named Kuzuryuu Takumi according to old blueprints of the school building. Although it's not mentioned who this designer was, the reader can tell that there should be something important about this name. Furthermore according to rumors from Dan, this school used to be the murder scene of a very brutal crime.

It doesn't take Kyuu that long to figure out how to get into the basement of the building through the hidden door. In the basement there's a very strong-looking steel door with a small window to the other side. It looks as if from a movie where top-security prisoners are given food through a steel door that can't be broken.
Alas, Kyuu and Meg still manage to gather the courage to open the steel door, and beyond that is a stinking room yet another door that leads to a small room with a wooden chair, desk, dish fragments, and a blanket on the floor which was used as a bed by someone. In the room there are hints of a person been writing on a handmade diary with their own blood. The diary is messy / burnt down, but there are some sentences visible on it, saying: "I'll kill him - I'll definitely get out of here - I'll kill"...

As the volume finally reaches its conclusion we get to see a Pluto member as a shadow man with a damaged wristwatch much like the teacher Hongou was wearing and the symbol of Pluto on the wrist, lock the strong steel door and pour something through the small metal window that's guarding the jail cell-like room in which Kyuu and Meg are in right at the moment. As Kyuu realizes that the door is locked and no one is ever going to come help them as the trick door to the steel door in the basement must also be locked (as even if they shout for help, no one's going to come help them as their voice won't reach above ground), and Dan Morihiko himself couldn't even figure the trick out, things are getting more serious by the seconds. But when Kyuu and Meg notice a large poisonous snake in the room and Meg gets bit by it despite Kyuu's best intentions at trying to kill the snake, it's clear that time is running out for both of them. How will the duo escape this hopeless situation?

 Condensed Review of Volume 6

We've reached the end of volume 6, and if we overlap the first four deduction battle mysteries from previous volume over here (as they're part of the Q vs. A story), this is the most packed volume of this series so far with the numerous mysteries it offers to the reader ... but quality-wise, it's also the worst. Out of the six chapters of Q vs. A storyline (two of which were in Volume 5, but I digress), Kinta's deduction  battle was a fine little trick based on figuring out what could be possible through the visual medium which creating manga offers to the reader and the writer. Kazuma's battle was whatever, honestly I can't even remember it as it was simple and quick. Ryu's deduction battle was the most interesting short case of this volume due to being horrifying with this very cold atmosphere, but the answer to "why the table was filled with full course dishes and the victim was placed on the table as if he was dining" just felt irrelevant. It was the longest of the first four deduction battle mysteries, and while the atmosphere of the case was neat, the mystery aspect itself felt somewhat pointless and forced. Minami's deduction battle isn't that great, sadly. It has to do with understanding japanese and bothering to try to create and rip the paper pieces in real life, which I doubt anyone is going to do, and even with that it's apparently an easy trick for native Japanese speakers.
The first four deduction battle cases had two alright mysteries to solve in Kinta's and Ryuu's bouts, however.... ultimately those were from the last volume of this series, not from volume 6. Even though the storyline overlaps over to this volume, it won't raise my opinion of this particular booklet as the first case in this volume was horrendous.

Q vs. A's overtime case told us a four-chapter story in which Kyuu went head to head against Yukihira from Class A. The setting had to do with idols, there were four suspects, and... it just was not interesting in the slightest to go through. Near the end we get to see a false solution that felt kind of meh but still serviceable enough, but when we got around to the real explanation of this mystery, that's when I realized we had the absolute worst case of Tantei Gakuen Q so far on our hands.

The Shadow of Pluto was a transitional chapter to let the reader learn that the Dan Detective School will cooperate with the police force - in which Kinta's father works at - to destroy this heinous criminal organization which sells murder plans and hypnotizes people.

Kinta's Case was a kind of solid and quick filler story as it had to do with a death in a construction site, which is a cool setting, but the answer to that one felt kind of random in multiple ways and I believe the story could have been fleshed out more with certain concepts that were introduced but never really properly handled with. Even though I somehow got the culprit right anyway by guessing I just didn't feel any sort of satisfaction from doing so.

The volume ended with the first two chapters of The Secret of the Old School Building case in which the DDS reinforces themselves by re-hiring Hongou Natsumi, a serious teacher who'd been away for half a year due to suffering injuries from a mysterious battle. Kyuu and Meg get themselves in trouble by finding a jail cell in the basement of the Dan Detective School where they get locked into by a member of Pluto organization who'd infiltrated the school. There are no notable mysteries to solve or anything in this particular case as the characters figure everything out before the mysteries are even properly presented to us, but it does have some nice tension and foreshadowing towards the future of the main storyline which has to do with the battle of DDS vs. Pluto.

The Gentleman Thief of Victorian era England & The Indian Rebellion of 1857

Things develop in the course of work. I woke up one night when The Great Train Robbery was almost completed, and thought that what the book's really about is repression, and that's what the whole Victorian period means. And the idea of criminals going against society made them the least repressed. That's what the book is about, and this came totally after the fact. At the time, I was just writing a story.
- Michael Crichton on The Great Train Robbery (1975)

On the busy streets of London during the Victorian era of Britain (1837-1901), the poor and the rich walked next to each other. The immense amount of lower class people living in terrible conditions and upper class of men and women living in great conditions was what mainly split the country into fifty-fifty halves of people from two different social classes, but around that time also the amount of middle-class families appearing started to get more frequent as England became the world's richest country; be it because of oil, metal manufacturing or early stages of rapid technological development. A whopping 10% of all work for women was about housework such as working as maids in massive manors or in hotels for tourists. The mindset of that era was still such that females, regardless of their position at work, are supposedly dumber and weaker than men. Women did not have exactly disastrous living spaces and many of them were raised in caring homes where they would sometimes stay living even as adults, due to the massive sizes of the manors owned by the upper class families. However women were still thought as possessions after marriage, and never something that men would claim would have been interesting to talk to. The problem the parents of females faced was that even if their daughters were well-educated, it was technically all for naught as there was a very heavy stigma at place towards ladies doing any other work than being the "rulers of the house."

You see, if the daughters from rich families were to start working, they would lose status. There were many jobs available for women from knitting to being a nurse or an accountant (even if women were commonly not thought to be smart or useful), however any accepted work for women was believed to be for the lower class. Women were boring. Men and dogs were men's best friends. Because of this very common mindset the educated women had a very monotonous style and were raised on learning the attitude of how ladies should act, which they did instead of yet starting to fight against the stigma that had been in place for centuries. Because of the pressure of being forced to do nothing, the girls of the rich houses that were not allowed to do menial things were said to go crazy, bending in agony, even losing their sense of sight, hearing, smell, and so on. All things considered, it was absolutely necessary for women to get married during the Victorian era, however, if they were married then the money they made would according to the law belong to the husbands, even though women's rights had been improved a bit.

However there was a group of women that broke the stigma, did things that ladies were never expected to do or acted in ways that ladies would never have been expected to act. In other words they acted in ways that made men feel that they were interesting and alive, and just entertaining to be around with. Those were the prostitutes of the Victorian era. It is known that prostitutes used to be everywhere in England back then and they dressed up in any way imaginable so that it would be hard to tell superficially what they were about. Rather than simply being only seen in pubs, streets, bordels and so on, the so-called high-grade women who sold themselves would act as keepers of beautiful hotels, visit theaters all the time or practice horse riding. There were multiple ways to lure rich people to paying for their services from physical acts to psychological manipulation of making the men need the women, they are after all, much more interesting that the ladies men were used to. However girls as young as twelve and even younger were forced to act in mature ways and were known to sell themselves and live with adult boyfriends that worked as thieves. Some of these men thieves even got by only with what the young girls were making via prostitution or re-selling stolen clothes and such. 

After year 1930, as the Liverpool-Manchester railway, the first really notable train railway in the world, was built, the amount of people enjoying the adventures on the rails exploded in popularity. You see, before trains were created, the average traveling time using horse omnibuses and other popular ways to move from place to place was very long. Long-distance traveling with good vehicles moved at around 10 km/h. Average speed for trains was about 70 km/h. The more train stations were being built, the better they looked with very stylistic curvy glass windows and nice atmosphere. Railways were being built at such rapid rates that barely anyone could keep up, however they, along with detailed depictions of crimes, public executions and obviously the interest of the ravaging Jack the Ripper in 1888, were constantly the talk of day and things that you could read about. Train stations due to being such a huge thing, a dream method for people to travel elsewhere, meant much also religiously in the Victorian era as many started to think of these stations as sort of addictive chapels of sort. The higher class people spent years on business trips and the visitors to London grew exponentially, with about 10% increase in population each year. Middle of the Victorian era was also really the start of when we started to actually make ID's of people so that they could be identified.

The pre-Victorian era had of course already split people into different social classes and the gambling and cheating nature of the men and spending nature of women as well as masses using certain styles of clothing were at their peak along with the crime rates in the 1860's. It was so bad that there had to be many guards and officers at any give point in time at train stations and on the streets since children would steal from elderly, women would steal clothes from children, many clever tricks were built to keep stealing wallets from unsuspecting people, and a rather enormous amount of small groups of different levels of criminals existed in the society; some downright loathing the ones who use violence and mug bypassers. The amount of street gangs peaked in 1862-1863 so much so that in 1863 England had the most amount of people being hanged since 1838 because of new street laws being put into place in order to try to tone down the amount of ruthless crimes being done against people, especially cases happened during evenings. The human right problems according to the law were pretty complex during this era as well because, as mentioned already, everything the women that were in marriage would gain by working, would belong to their husbands, and women were still not allowed to own property, also, in that logic the law mentioned that the husbands have to take burden of the crimes of their wives - such as printing fraudulent money. Women used men in many different ways to their own benefit and also worked alone or together with them in order to rob people by being distractions, and so on. However in the 1850's you couldn't get death sentences anymore for even the biggest robberies; they were saved for murderers. I believe the reason for that was partly the knowledge of people getting framed for crimes they did not commit.

Poster of the film adaptation.
Directed by Crichton himself.

Michael Crichton's historical crime novel The Great Train Robbery (1975) takes us back to this magical era as a small group of people planned and acted to do one of the more influential crimes in history. The novel tells a fictionalized version of a real life story that happened in 1855 as a gentleman thief known by names such as "Edward Pierce" and "Mr. Smith" masterminded a robbery that began to be known as "The Crime of the Century" and "The Most Sensational Modern Deed."

As Edward Pierce, a rich, professional gentleman thief, learns of the placements of four different keys that go on two different safes, he, along with Robert Agar, a professional picklocker, Barlow, a thug with a large scar on his face, Miss Miriam, a mysterious woman, and the small-sized man Clean Willy, known to as the best snakesman in England, decide to plan almost a year to steal a 12 000 pound gold shipments that are meant to be sent as payment for British soldiers. In current day's economy, the gold would be over 100 000 pounds in worth.

The story takes us through the time when Edward Pierce first learns during a party that the trains traveling from London to Crimean Fort carry two different safes that carry over 10 000 pounds worth of gold. The safes were made by the most famous safe creator company in the world at that time, and each of those safes consist of two "impossible-to-pick" locks. It doesn't take long for Pierce to learnt that the four keys are in three different places; two hanging on the necks of high-ranked employees and two keys in a safe at a train station guarded by policemen and guards. All four of those keys needed to be waxed and replicated. The first part of the story focuses on getting the keys and setting up the Victorian England to the reader, as it is important to explain why they simply needed the keys as there were no explosives at that point in time. "The key is the heart of the whole job."

The second part of the story focuses on the theft itself, taking place on a running train full of twists and turns as Pierce does stunts that most gentleman thieves in fictional series do, such as smuggling people, showing his smarts and traveling on the roof of a moving train with no safety measurements in order to go pick a lock of a closed door from the outside. The presentation of Edward Pierce is really like what you'd expect from a genius gentleman thief nowadays.

The third part of the story deals with the after effects of the robbery, how it affected everything and how it went unseen due to much heavier events that affected Britain in various ways. The biggest reason for the lack of press pressure during the court case of Edward Pierce, Agar and others is the Indian Rebellion which was filled with injustice and killing intent and the rebellion happened when the court case of the gold robbery happened, taking most media attention to the rebel's actions instead. Note that because this post talks mostly about historical events surrounding the main event that happened in the book, much like the book itself, I'll be talking about the rebellion which the book also did talk about and I feel that it is worth talking and thinking about, however you can skip it if you are not interested in learning about it. The review continues after the hellish Indian Rebellion overview.
What I write next is what I have understood of the Indian Rebellion. It is quite interesting to think about but might hurt someone with strong religious beliefs, regardless of what they believe in.


The Indian Rebellion

In 1857 England had 34 000 european soldiers and 250 000 Indian sepoy soldiers in India. Europeans that invaded india had by then already put out certain local religious beliefs and acts such as burning the widows of dead men alive and ritual murders. So the Indians were not happy and were already feeling as if they were being insulted.

A certain event happened in which the English started using new rifles, the Enfield rifles, that had cartridges that were covered in heavy grease as they came straight from the factory. The cartridges worked in a way that you had to bite it to get the powder out. The Indians soon realized/claimed that Englishmen were using pig and cow grease on the cartridges and that it was all a secret ploy to contaminate the Indian people and make them break the caste laws.

Even though the English officials worked quickly to make it so that the cartridges would have no grease on them as they come from the factory, and they would make the Indians oil them up with vegetable oil, by then it was already too late.

This caused the Indian Rebellion to happen against the richest country in the world, England. The most famous episode of the Indian Rebellion happened in Cawnpore, a city of 150 000 people. In Cawnpore 1000 English people, including 300 women and children, had to be under fire for 18 days. The style of living there "insulted all human rights" but soon after the Rebellion had started, the people tried to live as normally as they could. The soldiers drank and ate, the children played around the cannons, and even one marriage was said to have been held in the midst of constant 24/7 rifle and cannon shooting between the English and the Indian.

However as the days stretched on, the food started running out. Men got only one meal a day and soon they had to eat their horses. Women had to get rid of their underwears for the cannon firing, and water was only found outside of the camp. Whoever went to get it, was instantly shot down. The day temperatures reached 60 celsius and many died from the sun.

In the 12th of June 1857 the other building of the two camps went up in flames. All the medicine was lost. But the Englishmen did not give up.

In the 25th of June 1857 the sepoy soldiers announced ceasefire which the English agreed to. The English people were to go to boats that would take them to Allahab, a city 150 kilometers away.

The evacuation started in June 27th, 1857 at morning. The English moved onto 40 different river boats as they were surrounded by sepoy soldiers. When the last English people were on the boats, the Indian boat men instantly hopped off the boats and the sepoy soldiers started firing at the boats that were moving on low waters. The river filled with dead bodies as the Indian horsemen rode on the low waters and killed all the men with their scabbards.

All the English women and children were kept in a clay building where they were kept in deadly heat until in July 15th 1857 professional Indian butchers entered the building and gutted them and cut them all to pieces as they were alive.


That's the condensed version of the "Indian Rebellion" of 1857. 
Of course this led to the Brits wanting revenge and even New York Times was agitated as the news were demanding that the corpses of all the rebels will have to be hanged on the trees and buildings of Cawnpore. The British soldiers shot Indians out of cannons, mutilated them and pillaged entire towns, killing many more civilians than the Indians had as they put down all the rebels, however, we have to understand that the Victorian era was very strong on religious beliefs, thinking the Indians were devils for doing what they did for their reasons, while the Indians couldn't understand the British. There was nothing else left other than a hellish spiral of hatred and fear.

Back to the review now.
Crimes done by very handsome, clever, courageous and calculating male criminals that seem rich, dress well and act in appreciating manner towards everyone, especially ladies, is a fairly known character type in modern fiction. Kaito Kid known from Magic Kaito and Detective Conan series is one of these jewel stealing gentleman thieves, as is the famous Lupin III from an anime series of the same name, and the most notoriously known fictional gentleman thief Arsene Lupin by Maurice Leblanc of course counts as one of those types as well. Edward Pierce seems to be one of the original big-shot gentleman thieves, even though Britain was known to have many thieves who dressed well and did scams, mugging, creating false money, you name it. Actually the main reason for posting this review now is that it's Kaito Kid's birthday, which is June 21st.

M.C.'s The Great Train Robbery focuses on the events that took place a year prior, during and after The Great Gold Robbery which took place in 15th of May 1855 was a rather grand piece of news for how it was pulled off and done, even if the media attention few years later during the court case had diminished.

Now for my thoughts it was quite an inspirational piece of work, almost everything about it from the way the robbery was presented to chapter formats and the writing style was what I could also be using for a historical-type series, thus I could consider this book inspirational and I actually felt interested to learn more, knowing that it's based on a real story amped my interest towards paying attention to what was being said, which is why I'm so interested in writing about the Victorian era in this post. The story flows very well despite being rather non-linear, for example it begins with explaining what the culprits said after they were caught, and doesn't feel like there's too much information although it does info-dump all the time for important reasons, to get the reader to understand what happened and is about to happen in the story, such as understanding methods of why there had to be alarms on coffins because people were afraid of being put under the mud post-death as there was heavy fear towards being announced dead as they were alive, the world was just that different back in the day and it would be very hard to understand and immerse to the story if the author did not stop once in a while to explain the situation.  

The Eternal Flame of Alchemy (2011)

I remember it as if it was yesterday. I visited my uncle's shack on July 20th, 1969. It was a beautiful, fresh nighttime as we played a game of give and take with a small group of people. I was occasionally looking at the stars as my eyes followed the most beautiful princess on this earth that I ever saw. My uncle was an alchemist, an experienced glass blower who claimed to have found out the recipe on how to create gold. Others with their own dark secrets gathered around and practiced glass blowing under him. They all wanted to be the best, or so I assumed, but not me. I visited him for another reason. As time passed, we turned into a group of people that regularly gathered at my uncle's place. It was our own little cult. Ours, and hers. Angelika's... I still see her in my dreams. She was the girlfriend of my uncle, over decade younger than him. And I slept with her on that faithful day when I was a lad who didn't understand anything about the world. But it wasn't just me, but everyone else who were there as well. And my uncle knew about it....
The radio was on as Apollo 11 reached its destination. Neil Armstrong took his first step on that massive satellite which circles around this world. It was that little game we played which foreshadowed the day when Angelika would go missing.   
- My interpretation on how Thomas Hartman saw his past in The Eternal Flame of Alchemy


For over half a year I haven't really read through a single full novel, but every now and then I've spent some time reading a page or two of The Eternal Flame of Alchemy (Alkemins Eviga Eld, 2011) by Swedish crime fiction writer Anna Jansson. Just couple of days ago I was halfway in this book that I've spent like a year trying to get through, but as the sunny days were fantastic enough for me to stay in the park up til' late evening, I decided to grind through. This is the 12th story in the detective inspector Maria Wern book series.

The Eternal Flame of Alchemy's prologue first takes us back to those days when a glass blower by the name of Justus Hartman and his apprentices were together with him and his young nephew Thomas Hartman. Justus's girlfriend Angelika is the key element tying everything in this story. One day, Angelika goes missing, and then winds up back at Justus's place but soon after she dies. Story then moves decades forward to a time when Thomas Hartman, the boss of our main character inspector Maria Wern, learns that his uncle Justus had gone missing from a hospital. Justus had lost both of his legs in an accident some decades ago and was moving on a wheelchair. But even that was left behind in the hospital.

As Thomas Hartman and Maria Wern do basic police officer work in Gotland while trying to find the whereabouts of Thomas's missing uncle, they wind up to a situation where a corpse is found inside a glass box in a pool of water inside a hotel. Thomas sees this glass box and realizes that it contains one of the apprentices of Justus Hartman from decades ago. Thomas gets a heart attack from this sudden realization and is taken to a hospital, which is when rest of the story shifts focus to following Maria Wern as the lead character. Soon after the first murder Maria gets to see other bodies pop up everywhere in different way, hanged on a large steel gate with the corpse's hands up as if it was flying, or get to witness a man get shot right before reaching the finish line as the first in goal, in a horse race. It's a serial murder case that they've got on their hands now. And all of these victims were connected to Justus Hartman. At the same time as the bodies start to wind up, rumours start spreading about a woman who is identical to the deceased Angelika walking around the place, asking about these victims.
 
 Near the end of this story Maria quite randomly learns that the murders follow a certain pattern, taken from one of the basic ideas of alchemy. Has Angelika been resurrected and is the culprit trying to create something? The reader also gets to follow the aged and legless Justus Hartman as he wakes up in a cage where he's been stuffed into by the culprit of the story. He's kept in the cage for the entire duration of the story and is forced to follow the deaths of his old apprentices. But why?


This is the first book from Anna Jansson that I've read, and it started pretty well. The story felt well enough crafted and even had a bit of this intriguing classic atmosphere to it as a group of people gathered around to talk about supernatural stuff relating to alchemy in the late 1960's. But as the story soon jumped to the present time of 2000's, some of the atmosphere was quickly lost. Regardless, the story kept my interest for the first 100 or so pages as we got introduced to the story and its characters, but after that it became really hard to keep reading which was why I haven't talked about novels in a while. It was a snoozefest with plotlines that didn't feel relevant or were simply uninteresting. The main story itself was handled very mediocrily and by the time the end of the book hit, I was appalled. There were concepts in this story that had interesting premises, but none of those were handled properly. Even though we get to follow Justus Hartman while he's caged up, those chapter have clearly been written in to fill the pages. Justus's presence in the hands of the culprit were filler chapters that had no bearing on the plot or the story, and even in the end, what comes of Justus, is very disappointing as there was no proper substance to anything that is supposed to hit the reader.

There are couple of reasons why the ending is supposed to have tension or is even supposed to have couple of twists to it, but they're awful. The culprit's identity isn't a surprise in the slightest and the build-up and realization to it are very poorly crafted and a bit random. It's not something that the reader can logically pinpoint, but it is obvious. I can't believe the author thought that those would be something of a plot twists.
At the end there's supposed to be tension to the story as well, but it all just feels random, as if the author just went "well, let's just end this" and quickly created couple of chapters to end the story in a way where it could have ended 100 or 200 pages ago. The reason for this feeling I get is the lack of substance and inserted filler-chapters that I mentioned before. I'm very disappointed in how some of these characters ended up in, and in general the whole story clearly didn't really move any of our main cast of characters in this particular Gotland's Police Department anywhere as characters.

As this is the 12th installment in this Maria Wern book series, I kind of expected much better storytelling. The first half did show hints of professionalism, but the second was a complete flop in so many ways. The characters were uninteresting as hell and their stories were terrible. The story has a lot of focus on the officers in the same department as Maria Wern, and there're cringeworthy plotlines regarding love and relationships with them that also lead nowhere. The way how the main story is presented is really bland. I've read another review about this story praising the false leads and the way the culprit was hidden until the end, but those praises ring very hollow to me. That same review I read also brings up some obvious flaws in this story's plot: how in the world did the culprit do everything in public spots so that no one saw anything? That's ridiculous. Literally hundreds of people should have seen the culprit in act. Furthermore, there is no human strong enough to just pull adult males however many meters up a large steel gate or move a massive glass box and an adult male in it...let alone this culprit. The more I think about this story, the less sense it makes in many ways. Illogical and cheap.

 I still have one more book left from this author that I might be willing to check just to give her the benefit of the doubt, but I'm definitely not enthusiastic about reading another work that's potentially similar to this one.

Mystery Train - Detective Conan Vol. 78, F818-824

"Apparently, Heaven is siding with us..."

- Okiya Subaru  

I recently finished overviewing and talking about the very introductory cases of the three main suspects of the Bourbon story arc in Detective Conan and decided that while I'm not going to go over the entire series volume by volume in the same manner I'm doing with Tantei Gakuen Q series right now, I will however talk about cases I found memorable in the manga such as the Furinkazan Murder Case. And what better way to start with than talking about Conan's version of the golden age classic Murder on the Orient Express, Mystery Train.

The Bourbon arc is very long, spanning chapters 622 to 898 that were created within many years in real life time by author Gosho Aoyama, and the first half of it frankly had barely anything to do with the main storyline during the time between the introductions of Okiya Subaru and Masumi Sera. Although there were couple neat cases regarding it soon after Okiya's introduction. Anyway, after Masumi gets introduced the story starts to move again as there are a lot of intriguing cases regarding relevant characters and the main storyline, and this time I've decided to begin with a case from post-Masumi introduction era of this series: the Mystery Train arc which reveals us the identity of our big baddie of the arc, Bourbon. I still remember back when this arc came out weekly just how much it was being hyped, and I've re-read the case quite a few times after it as well. Some people were going absolutely mental. The author Gosho Aoyama even drew promotional artwork as a nod to the original Murder on Orient Express movie promos. Honestly though, this case might just be the most multi-layered that Detective Conan has ever gotten with the amount of different key characters with their own allegiances that are on board.

Mystery Train ["All Aboard!"] continues from the ending of the last case in the previous volume and starts this rather special story in the latter half of the Bourbon story arc of the Detective Conan manga that gathers a great amount of relevant characters into one setting, a moving high-speed train in which a murder happens.

Gin, Vodka and Vermouth from the villain group Black Organization catch a whiff of Sherry through the intel they gained from Bourbon's research. Sherry's real identity is Miyano Shiho who, to escape the Black Organization like a thousand chapters ago in this series, decided to take her own life with a drug she created from the data left behind by her parents... but things didn't go the way she thought as instead of dying, her body shrunk from the effects of the drug and she managed to escape. She found herself in Dr. Agasa's place after looking for Shinichi whom she realized must've shrunk as well, and eventually she became one of our main characters under the alias of Ai Haibara.

Bourbon is hailed as the greatest intel collector in the ranks of the Black Organization. At this point of the arc we don't yet know how he does it, but it's clear that this type of foe is very formidable and intelligent. Up to this point in the story Bourbon's mission has been to try and locate where Sherry had disappeared to, send the information of her whereabouts to the organization and kidnap or eliminate her. The previous volume ended with Haibara being forced to take on the form of the adult Miyano Shiho / Sherry with an antidote that temporarily can return victims of the de-aging drug APTX-4869 to their previous state, to help herself and the Detective Boys; Genta, Mitsuhiko and Ayumi, to escape a dangerous situation.

However Sherry was caught on tape during the case, and the information about her whereabouts was leaked to the black organization by Bourbon. On her finger, Sherry had a ring. An emblem seal which tells everyone that she will be entering a once-in-a-year tour on a Mystery Train known as The Bell Tree Express which has an unknown destination...


As the Black Organization members learn of Sherry boarding the train, they immediately start to theorize that she's been living in the Gunma mountains in secret, waiting to escape from the Kanto region by using the train. The organization members; Vermouth and Gin in particular, agree that the train is one of the most suitable places to eliminate Sherry in as it's a moving steel fortress with no way out. They can find her and she won't be able to escape... however, Vermouth herself has mixed feelings about this all as during the two mysteries on the night of a full moon case, Conan had defeated her before she escaped, and she acknowledged her defeat and let Haibara stay alive. This time, however, she can't do anything about it and just has to try to kill Sherry regardless of letting her live before as, according to Vermouth, "she's (Haibara) the only one that can't be allowed to exist in this world."

It's most likely not going to be a surprise to anyone that the great detective Mouri Kogoro (in this case Kogoro sports mustache eerily similar to Hercule Poirot) is also boarding the Bell Tree Express. The train is a steam locomotive powered by a powerful new diesel engine. Along with Kogoro, however, there is a huge amount of relevant overarching characters that get on the train, everyone with their own personal reasons.

The Bell Tree Express' Mystery Train tour participants
Sonoko Suzuki along with her best friend Ran Mouri have arranged first-class seats on the train as recently Kaito Kid had announced he'd be taking on Sonoko's uncle Jirokichi once again on the train in a month's time when the train gets a special run as a jewel exhibit. In fact, Jirokichi owns the damn train. So, before Kaito Kid arrives on the train to steal gems that will be on the first-class train carriages. Sonoko wanted to plant a love letter for Kid on the first-class ahead of time. 
At the same time, our tomboy detective Masumi Sera also makes her appearance on the train, claiming that it's only natural for a detective to ride a Mystery Train. 
Along with Kogoro, the detective boys; Mitsuhiko, Genta, Ayumi, Ai and Conan of course also board the ship, with Ai Haibara herself of course playing a key role in this miniarc as other mysterious characters find themselves on the train. For example, Kogoro Mouri's new "detective apprentice" Amuro Tooru, along with the mysterious "Scar Akai" (who has been walking around crime scenes in this arc up til' now), being one of them. What's more, apparently the university graduate mystery fan Okiya Subaru is also on board with a mysterious woman while the black organization's shadow looms over the train.

Aside from the overarching characters, there is also the case cast:
Car 8 case-only participants (First-Class car)
Andou Satoru (Cabin C, Age 41) boards the train with a heavy gold-frame for a picture on his back. However, apparently the drawing itself is nothing more than counterfeit. Rest of the passengers also carry hidden objects with them
Noto Taisaku (Cabin A, Age 52) and Idenami Mari (Cabin E, Age 33), along with Komino Natsue (Cabin D, Age 75) & her helper Sumitomo Hiroka (Cabin D, Age 37) being the rest of the participants on the train. But of course, there's also the train conductor...
Car 7 case-only participants
Murobsahi Etsuto (Cabin B, Age 39) had arranged his usual room in the first-class car 8 but it was changed to car 7 as the room was accidentally double-booked. In fact, the room was first reserved by none other than Mouri Poirou himself. I
There are also other carriages to the train, of course. For example Agasa and our five Detective Boys are in Car 6.

As everyone is all aboard the train, we get an explaination that the destination of the train is very easy to pinpoint - it's Nagoya. However, the name Mystery Train actually comes from the deduction quiz that's held on-board as the train moves non-stop towards the terminal station. The Mystery Train tour is known for creating an incident after choosing a random 'culprit' and a random 'victim'. Rest of the passengers will then become detectives to figure out the culprit's identity before the train reaches its destination.

 After a knock on the door Dr. Agasa and Conan open the door to their room to notice a sealed letter that's been left on the floor. The letter congratulates them - the five detective boys - for being chosen to play the role of the 'detective'. In 10 minutes an incident will occur in Cabin B of Car 7. The letter invites the DB's to start their investigation towards the matter but Conan finds it a bit odd that seemingly not every passenger becomes a 'detective' this time.

As the Detective Boys head to Cabin B of Bell Tree Express's Car 7, the moment they open the door, a man shouts at them to not come in as he gets shot by a person wearing a hoodie and face mask, and using a gun with a silencer. As the shooter leaves, the Detective Boys head after the culprit... it's feeling more and more like a game of tag instead of a real mystery. Anyway, the Detective Boys manage to lose the perp after chasing after him - he might've escaped into one of the private rooms of the car. An employee of the Express then tells them that the kids should head back to their room as the deduction quiz will be announced via the speakers in each room in an hour. Conan gets a shiver from potentially having seen a real murder and decides to head back to the room where the man was shot. At the same time Haibara's sixth sense picks up dangerous signals as 'Scar Akai' comes out of one of the rooms in Car 8.

Things get very odd at this time as the door Conan opens up to check up on the corpse actually has Masumi, Sonoko and Ran in it, spending some tea time together. Conan wonders what's up as he should've head to Car 7, but has somehow ended up in Car 8. As the DB leave Car 8 to try to go back to Car 7, Agasa comes out of his room to ask them how they'd do on the deduction quiz. This brings about the first core mystery of this case which is very entertaining: The kids had moved just one carriage from Car 8, yet they ended up in Car 6. While the high-speed train was in motion, Car 7 where the man was shot, went missing!?

Mystery Train [Tunnel] progresses on from the previous chapter's mystery of where the seventh Car of The Bell Tree Express could've gone missing. The Detective Boys are informed that to get information about what goes down in each of the different cars, it'd be wise to ask the conductors as there is one positioned in each. Each conductor will sit in the rearmost part of a car, looking over who goes in and who out. However, the conductors will move when one rings a bell that calls for them to come to the room from which the bell was rang. In this chapter we get explanations towards the missing car mystery along with fleshing out the train itself a bit. There is some tension regarding Masumi being curious about Haibara, and Scar Akai spying on them all.

As Kogoro and the case cast notice that the fields outside are burning, the Detective Boys and the girl trio or Masumi, Sonoko and Ran learn that the real deduction battle is truly yet to even be held, and after learning this they head to Car 8. At the same time bunch of different mysteries start to take place: a conductor visits a room whose resident didn't call for him, another room contains a person talking on the phone about the ruckus outside his room, the third room's guest asks the conductor to do something about a weird noise in her room.

In Car 8, the previously apparently fake-shot man is found in a room with a chain lock on. After breaking the chain, Masumi and Conan see that the man is actually dead, with a gunshot right through his temple being what most likely took his life. 

Mystery Train [First Class] goes over the mystery of the murder. A locked-room murder with a man who assumedly did a suicide with a gun that had a silencer attached onto it is quickly exposed as a real murder, but the answer to how this was pulled off and by whom is still up in air. In this case we don't really get to see Conan's thoughts or anything as there's something mysterious going up with him as well as he gets a text message from someone which shocks him and makes him shout at the Detective Boys for not going back to their room. Haibara notices that there's something off about Conan, and she's also been feeling a powerful ominous aura on the train that's more than something one or two organization members can cause her to feel with her sixth sense...  which only gets more powerful as Scar Akai passes her, at the same time as Ran and Sonoko realize that Amuro Tooru has also gotten on the Bell Tree Express apparently due to a successful bid on the net, and furthermore at the same time as Okiya Subaru is also shown on the train, looking at Amuro and co. ... and Subaru is in the same room with a mysterious woman who seemingly likes to text about something a lot. Regarding the case cast we also learn that they all knew each other beforehand, and they'd always arranged the same rooms for themselves on every Mystery Train tour.

While the Black Organization agreed to let Bourbon and Vermouth either kidnap or kill Sherry, in this chapter we get to learn that Gin and Vodka are also trying to take her down. Everyone wants a piece of that pie and to make Nagoya the Final Destination for Sherry.

Mystery Train [Junction] has Kogoro bring up a very good point: as everyone on the Bell Tree Express is a hardcore mystery fan, the victim, Murobashi, could've easily made it seem like a murder even if it actually was a suicide, but of course that's not the case here... in this case, it seems that there is some kind of reason why the culprit wanted the victim move back to Car 8, as Kogoro had reserved the car he usually spent time in during Mystery Train tours. Kogoro's actions made it so that the victim was moved in Car 7. The fake deduction quiz that Conan and co. took part in was used to lure the culprit back in Car 8 for some mysterious reason, and there is also a problem of one of the train attendatns' uniforms having gone missing as well.

Of the whole train, only Car 8 was created by a huge fan of Christie's Orient Express who was also Jirokichi's acquaintance. The Bell Tree Express was finished five years prior and most of the family of the car's creator died in a large fire, a month before the Mystery Train first started moving. The only living legacy of that deceased family left is the elderly lady in Room D of the carriage.
The fire that took the magnate's family occurred during his birthday party. His whole family along with twelve other party attendees lost their lives that day. It's very possible that every case character that boards the train right now are survivors of that massive fire...


This chapter is mostly about gathering information from the people who were staying in the same car as the victim. The information is actually a bit technical with multiple aspects to it, so making notes of what went on and where would be a good start. Luckily Gosho made it easier to memorize things by just naming the rooms with single letters. Kogoro on the other hand gives us a quick false solution to this case regarding Car 8's conductor supposedly letting everyone in the victim's room through a secret mechanism, and to fire bullets into the victim's body one shot per person... and reading that got a chuckle out of me. Conan and Masumi even point out about Kogoro just ripping off Orient Express's scenario.

Things take a more serious turn as Haibara gets a message which reads: "Are you ready? -Vermouth". After this, she decides to get up and leave - forever. In her pockets Haibara has the antidotes meant to help one temporarily turn back into an adult from the effects of the APTX-4869 drug. As Haibara she also listens to the recording her mother left behind for her. This portion of the chapter where we learn that the drug was thought to be a miracle called the silver bullet, is very well created by the author Gosho Aoyama and gave me chills. At the end of the chapter Subaru Okiya just waltzes into the room where Haibara is hiding in and orders her to come over to "our area", but Haibara decides that she can't be killed while looking like a child and makes her escape.

At the same time Kogoro, Conan and Masumi ask all of the suspects relating to a fire from five years ago that have boarded the Bell Tree Express to run a lap around the corridor. The reason for this was because they might've seen the culprit run away back in the first chapter of this case. There might be some similarities to pinpoint about their running styles-

The rest of this chapter have to do with different overarching characters running around in the corridor and spying on each other. You can tell that there's a lot going down in the backgrounds. It's actually pretty impressive to look at. It ends with Masumi going face to face with Scar Akai and the revelation that Masumi is the sister of Shuichi Akai.

Mystery Train [Interception] gets us closer to the truth of the murder case. Scar Akai takes Masumi out with an electric tranquilizer while Conan has gathered everyone to listen to the explanation of what's going down with the murder case. Ran is looking for Haibara. The explanation for the locked room murder is simple in its own right but honestly, I like it as it takes use of the visual medium which a story told in this comic book format is. The trick doesn't feel cheap at all here. The answer to who the culprit is and how it was all pulled off is quite impressive in its technicality. I honestly still don't completely understand all of it but the core aspects are clear in what the culprit wanted to pull off and why during the trick and why that person simply has to be the culprit.
The chapter ends with Scar Akai throwing a suitcase out of the train's window as our main character's mother Yukiko Kudo faces off with this mysterious person.

Mystery Train [Releasing Smoke] There's this fight between lions on the train as Yukiko goes face to face with Vermouth in a battle of wits which she seemingly loses, but before that we get this very intriguing exchange about our good guys having found a weak spot in Vermouth's defenses, and Yukiko even brings up Itakura Suguru, the CG Creator who perished a very long time ago during the Vermouth story arc. Basically, Vermouth had ordered a software from this special visual effects creator Suguru, and gotten very angry at him regarding the software once. I never even realized how Vermouth's and Yukiko's acting work is so closely connected to Suguru, which is a direct connection to why and how Vermouth found the man... Anyway, the battle of wits between Yukiko (Conan and co.) and Vermouth (BO and co.) is a great addition to the climax of this arc as it has to do with predicting how Haibara will react to her surroundings. Both sides are basically reading ahead of each other, and the goal for the good guys is to save Haibara. Oh, I never even realized that this case foreshadowed a certain object used in a trick during the Raiha Pass incident...!

 Regarding the murder case, while the previous chapter basically told us the murderer and the method, this chapter continues to reinforce those facts by making it absolutely clear why the murderer is who he is and how everything that seemed as if they were coincidences could have been pulled off perfectly. The motivation of the culprit isn't surprising but it does have a nice connection to the train itself.

As the case comes to a close, Car 8 starts to fill with smoke from pre-positioned gas tanks (that were shown in the beginning of this case) which the Black Organization members, Bourbon and Vermouth, had arranged in every corner of the car. The plan is to literally smoke Sherry out by faking fire on the train, and then take hold of her. It's pretty effective as even the murderer is running for their life from the fear of fire (which was ironically the motive for the murder as well). Though that action from the culprit and rest of the case cast is actually pointed out in this case - the fire that took so many lives which they survived from five years prior had made all of them into pyrophobics, and Vermouth used that against them with the plan of creating fake smoke and alarming the passengers through a proxy - through the true identity of Code Name: Bourbon.

While rest of the passengers leave from Car 8 to Cars 1-5, Sherry will do the complete opposite in order to make the Black Organization not be alarmed of her connection with the Detective Boys. She wants the organization thing that she's been all alone all this time. At the end of the chapter Sherry is seen running towards the room where the victim of the murder case is but she's stopped by a shadowy figure looming behind her saying: "As expected of Hell Angel's daughter... you look very much alike. Pleased to meet you.... Bourbon... That's my codename."

Mystery Train [Final Destination] wraps up this pretty intense story. I'm literally sweating in the middle of the night from re-reading this case again. While it's not on the list of my favourite all-time Conan cases or anything, it's still very impressive in its own right for being a solid collection of everything.
The battle of wits between Conan's and Black Organization's sides is intense and we get to learn quite a bit about Bourbon's character and motivations in this one. As Bourbon asks Sherry to head over to the storage carriage beyond Car 8 of Bell Tree Express, we get an announcement that there's one hour left until the train arrives its destination. Sonoko's uncle Jirokichi along with the Aichi-prefecture's top police force officials are all on the train station waiting to catch the culprit who murdered someone on Jirokichi's train. However, this is when we get the revelation that Gin and Vodka of the Black Organization have filled the train with explosives that will go off the moment the train arrives. But as they're all big shots, they're bound to think the explosives were meant to be an attempt on their lives instead of someone else's. This scene is pretty funny as Gin tells Vodka how he doesn't even care if Vermouth or Bourbon get caught up in the explosion, and apparently Vermouth herself had also taken more C4 explosives for a plan of her own...

On the train again, Bourbon is forcing Sherry to go into the storage hold room. As she does that, Bourbon will destroy the link between the two cars with an explosive. The train will keep going, but the storage hold where Sherry is in will stop and will thus be an easy way for the organization members to pick her up. Bourbon intends to knock her out and take her to the organization alive, but Sherry points out that the storage room is filled to brim of explosives prepared there by Vermouth to take her life at any cost. Bourbon then tells Sherry to step back from the storage hold, but she decides not to do that and instead holes herself in the carriage full of explosives. Bourbon then notices a weird shadow behind him, and thinks it's Vermouth yet points a pistol at the shadow. However, when a hand grenade rolls over his feet he quickly backs away. Ultimately it all ends up in a situation in which an explosion from the grenade forces the storage hold to break off the train, and the hold itself then turns to ashes from a massive explosion from the C4 prepared in it by Vermouth.

The Mystery Train case ends with Bourbon escaping the scene while thinking about the mysterious silhouette he saw. After The Bell Tree Express reaches its final destination, Vermouth confirms with Gin that the hold in which Sherry was, indeed must've taken her life, however... immediately afterwards the detective boys - Haibara included - make their appearance to reveal the reader and Vermouth one of the most insane twists that this series has to offer in general. The final page of this case contains a lot of foreshadowing towards the future: Bourbon will be investigating all the details of Akai's death during Raiha Pass incident and will begin his investigations from square one so we're far from over yet with this arc (final chapter of Mystery Train takes place in Filer 824 while Bourbon arc itself ends in File 898), while Masumi ponders through what went down in the train. The last panel shows the university graduate student Subaru Okiya opening his eyes to reveal his true identity.


Last rites

Bell Tree Express: Mystery Train offers a great balance of good character writing, future mysteries integrated into a well-paced case that however doesn't have to do with the main storyline itself unlike the previous main story-heavy cases or the next big portion of this story arc, which is the Scarlet Series that ends the Bourbon arc portion of Detective Conan. There's something quite epic about this train case and the implications of its main story heavy portions. I don't think that this case really does anything wrong and it's actually the only one of its kind in this series to begin with (being one of the rare train cases), consisting of seven chapters filled to the brim with content and multi-layered writing even from our protagonist himself. The case literally begins with the mystery of a disappearing train car and continues on to the mystery of a locked room murder at the same time as the Black Organization closes in on Sherry and a slew of other characters begin to move. There's a really huge deal of subtle foreshadowing in this one but it doesn't feel overwhelming, you can definitely figure it out. None of the explanations here felt cheap or unrealistic as it was all properly foreshadowed right down to the bigger twists that happened towards the end. Focusing on character realizations and visual hints are the key elements to pay attention to here.

While it's also not on my top list of Black Organization showdown cases, the battle of wits against BO; Vermouth - Bourbon - Gin & Vodka, was really entertaining in this one as there are numerous different groups trying to outwit each other. Everyone reads ahead and the next person goes even further beyond... it's something that could've very easily become a complete mess in the hands of another, less experienced author.

I've noticed that the author Gosho Aoyama puts a great deal of effort into making each of the main storyline -heavy cases have different settings to them, which is pretty neat. This one being Aoyama's version of the legendary Murder on Orient Express as well as the first climax of the Bourbon story arc is very clever and makes the experience more memorable. Anyway, I don't think I've ever seen a case in a series like this with this type of juggling over overarching story-relevant characters along with case-only characters. It's like weighs on a scale balancing each other out.