While the previous volume of Detective Academy Q had aspects to it that were sub-par at best (explanation of the Q vs. A finale story), the series has been pretty consistently good in what it sets out to do with these mysteries. We also ended the last volume on a slightly more interesting note as our main characters Kyuu and Megumi got locked up in a creepy room that's almost like a jail cell beneath Dan Morihiko's old agency which is now used to teach the Q Class of the Dan Detective School. There was something of a rumor about a person having been murdered in the building before Dan himself rented or bought it, but nothing concrete was ever found out.
Unlike the last few volumes, this volume has no full story to tell and is instead a continuation from the previous story with the Mystery of the Old School Building Case, and the second story, Murder Collector Case, which begins in this volume, continues to the next volume.
Mystery of the Old School Building Case
During late noon clean-up duty Kyuu and Meg get caught into a pickle as they find out about some of the mysteries of a trapped man as they find a jail cell beneath the school. However things get serious as an infiltrator assumedly from the main villain group of this series, the criminal organization Pluto, manages to lock both of them behind a trick door and a steel door. It's unlike that anyone would ever find them there... but it's better to try than not try! As Kyuu tries to find a way out of the locked jail, things take a turn for the worse as a seemingly poisonous snake that was dropped into the room through a small jail cell feeding window by the person who locked them, manages to bite Meg's leg...
Kyuu focuses on sucking the poison out of Megumi's leg and reads the DDS notebook which contains information on what to do during different types of crises. It doesn't take long for the two of them to realize that the snake which was in the room had been dropped in by someone else in order to kill them, so the steel door must've been locked on purpose for some reason as well.
Meanwhile Kinta, Ryuu and Kazuma get notified that the two other Q Class members still haven't gone home. Thus, the trio decides to head back to DDS in order to find clues of their whereabouts. In there, there are some of the A Class members still in school who then decide to help the squad to find the missing two somewhere in the old school building. The rest of the case is basically just Ryuu and co. going over what Kyu and Megumi went through in the previous volumes as they help the two escape from the dungeon.
As there is a high possibility of Pluto targeting the members of DDS, the teacher community of the school is in uproar. How is it possible to find out the identity of the infiltrator if they've potentially hidden themselves not just with top-grade plastic surgeries, but also with peak-performance acting. A Pluto infiltrator has no problem completely becoming someone else so that no one is able to find out their true identity. A real spy.
Naturally, the DDS also investigated the basement in which Kyuu and Meg were locked in. From there, they found the notebook written with blood left behind the person who was kept in there... Kyuu theorizes that the person had managed to escape that jail cell by attacking his / her capturer. But who could've that been and why was that person kept in there? There notebook is decades old and there're signs of murder being committed that've been left behind. Apparently the original criminal had been caught, jailed and managed to reintegrate into society, but there's clearly something amiss about the mystery of the old school building:
1) Who was trapped in the dungeon and why?
2) What's the purpose of the hidden room?
One also has to wonder about the identity of the construction designer Kuzuryuu Takumi who loves making trick puzzles that create illusionary sights of things as he was he one to create that hidden door which leads to the jail cell in the basement... what could this all mean? Dan Morihiko personally decides to get to the bottom of this decades-old mystery with the help of his secretary and right hand men who teach at DDS. At the same time Ryuu seems to suspect that his caretaker - or whatever - might've had a hand in trying to kill Kyuu and Megumi.
Murder Collector Case
After couple of volumes of short to medium length stories, we're back in business with yet another long tale. The class is in session for the Q Class in the Dan Detective School. Their unnamed teacher shows the class photos of a decomposing body from a murder case. Even though everyone else is disgusted at the sight of the body, Ryu won't even flinch. Instead, just from seeing a single photo he was able to pinpoint that the victim was murdered and killed elsewhere by a semi-wealthy person. After class their principal Dan Morihiko calls for Ryuu and Megumi.
A rumor's been circling the internet at a great speed of a top-class student having snuff videos in his apartment. In other words, a video which shows a real heinous crime known as murder being committed; the death of a girl student Namie who went missing at one point. The problem here however is that the video "collector's" identity was never found out as apparently the one who found a snuff video in his apartment skipped town and disappeared in fear.
Although it may just be nothing more than a rumor, the Dan Detective School decided to butt in to investigate matters due to a missing persons report regading a girl who disappeared a month ago from a prestigious Shibusawa Institute had come in. What matters here is to find out whether or not that girl's disappearance has to do with the 'Collector'. And to do that Meg and Ryuu will be infiltrating the Shibusawa institute meant for the most genius children, and pretending to be students there. Also this case doesn't focus on Kyuu, but Ryuu, we get a nice moment in the beginning of te case in which Ryuu promises to protect Meg if someone tries to come after her life again.
As the duo arrives at their temporary new school the entire first chapter of the case is spent on Ryuu and Megumi trying to get used to how the class operates as no one wants to even look at them and everyone seems kind of annoying. Even the teacher is trying to pick up a fight with Ryuu by giving him a math problem meant for top university students... which Ryuu unsurprisingly immediately solves.
This showcase of pure genius from Ryuu's part continues to impress everyone in this high school. Anyway, the goal is to catch a criminal and perhaps even the rumor-spreader, so after our main duo manages to get to the best class in the school, the special "A Class", next we get to know the cast of characters for this case:
Murasaki Misato (27), English teacher, Tominaga Masashi (15), 1st year student; he apparently won the drawing lot to get in, Tooya Kuniko (15), 1st year student, Asabuki Maya (15), 1st year student, Kogure Junya (15), 1st year student and the top of the class, Oobayashi Kazuki (16), 1st year student at risk of getting dropped out; everyone thought he was the 'Collector', Shibusawa Gakuin (17), 3rd year student,
The idea of world-wide web (the internet) plays a heavy part in this case. One of the core concepts we're introduced to are "rumours" - if one does something notable, those actions will often quickly be posted on the net and start to spread as rumours.
As the 3rd year student Shibusawa introduces Ryuu into the dorm, what awaits them in Ryuu's room is a computer that's been turned on with the word "Collector" showing on it. Next thing they witness on the computer is a video clip of a man grabbing a knife and stabbing another person. However Ryuu quickly realizes that it's simply a fake video - prank by somebody on the campus. Meanwhile Megumi arrives to her dorm to notice that the next room from her has the name plate of the girl who went missing a month prior.
After settling down, Ryuu and Meg start to hunt for the person who pulled the video prank on Ryuu with the help of the DDS's pocket book's fingerprints detection set. It doesn't take long for them to track the culprit to be the top of special A Class's students, Kogure Junya. However right when they figure this out, a mystery person whom he knows invades Junya's room and attacks him. This leads to a tense situation where Junya is taken away by this attacker somewhere, and after waking up tied to a chair, the attacker takes a video camera out of their bag...
The investigation portion of the Murder Collector Case jumps between Ryuu investigating Junya's room as a scene of crime as the boy went missing, and Megumi investigating the girl who went missing, Ogura Emina, with rest of the case suspects / school students who wanted to gather to play detective and to do that everyone had gathered together to form a detective club. However that detective play party has the culprit among them: a person willing to kidnap Megumi in order to use her in the next snuff film as a "supporting character" and it's Ryuu's mission to save her.
Up until this point on the case has had quite nice tense atmosphere to it as the idea behind snuff film murders happening in school setting is really unnerving, however it's also been kind of... bland? The mysteries presented which the characters crack are either not solvable to the reader or they're just something that the reader can hand-wave off and move to the next page. It's quite odd how unnecessarily stretchy these longer cases feel in comparison to the last few volumes' short cases.
After Ryuu Amakusa manages to save Megumi, there's a problem: the other person in that snuff video room, Junya, had seemingly lost his life from being whacked on the head with a glass bottle while he was tied to a chair as Megumi was forced to watch it all unfold. The culprit realized that Megumi and Ryuu are part of DDS, and the culprit might've something to do with our criminal organization Pluto as well. It doesn't take long for the culprit to kill another person cold-blooded and show it on the Snuff Theater link that the culprit seems to post on the school's website. And the perp always focuses on the clock, as if it was telling the real time.
I like that regarding this second murder, the suspect the police have is less likely to have been the culprit as on the video the 2nd victim shows a way with her hand for the suspect to enter her room. Right before her death she'd said to Ryuu and co. that the person the police think of as the most likely suspect is definitely the "Collector". Thus, as Ryuu points out, it's unlikely for someone to let someone who they think is a blood-thirsty killer into their room.
This case has been "fine" and "alright" so far. Nowhere near as uninteresting as the previous volume and I don't see the trick being anything as bad either. The idea of a snuff film creator killer is a very interesting premise for a case as is the school setting, but those weren't really presented as well as they could've been. The case does have quite a bit of tension to when the first victim gets kidnapped and filmed when the killer smashes the glass bottle on his head, but that's also the only notable thing going for this case. As this volume doesn't have any full cases on its own, this case also continues on to volume 8. At the end of the 7th volume Kyuu arrives to the institution Ryuu & Megumi are in, which kind of made this case less appealing as this has happened in quite a few cases so far - just last volume we had the idol-themed case where Kyuu went to investigate alone with Class A's Yukihira, and at the end of the case the other Q Class members arrived to the scene to solve the case. That has also happened multiple times before. So, seeing similar type of writing being used for our main characters is kind of bland... just like this case so far. It's a long case, it's fine and it's alright, but there's just nothing really going for it at the moment. The killer might connect to Pluto in some shape or form perhaps so hopefully the ending amplifies my enjoyment... But from the mysteries we've solved of the case so far (not the murderer's identity which I still don't know about for sure), almost everything's been quite standard fare with no real flavour to it.
The story opens up with two characters. 'Maou', or the 'Devil', is shown walking through the city's bustling streets during a cold late October night, ready to soon begin with some kind of criminal event he's been planning through for years along with his group of loyal 'followers'. At the same time a high school girl with a long gray hair passes by with the intense will and intent to catch the person who killed her mother - to catch the person known as the 'Devil'.
G Senjou no Maou (The Devil on G-String) is an adult (R18 due to H-scenes) thriller and mystery visual novel produced by AKABEi SOFT2 and was first released in 2008, and now re-released in 2015 by Sekai Project. It's available for purchase on Steam for a decent price (voiceless edition is even cheaper). The story consists of four chapters and the epilogue, and multiple end-games, in other words it has something called branching storylines, but most of the game is spent just reading through the text. From the information I can gather the game had quite positive reception in Japan when it was first released, even though I see barely anyone actually ever talk about it.
Our main character (the one we play as) of this particular visual novel is Kyousuke Azai, a high school student and the adopted son of a ruthless yakuza (mafia) boss, but he for some reason has memory problems and heavy headaches. During the day our protagonist usually goes to school like normal, a school filled with quite quirky characters such as the almost too cute-looking boy Eiichi Aizawa and bunch of girls our main character gets close to, such as a diary-keeper, daughter of the schoool's owner, and a world-class ice-skater and real daughter of the protag's adoptive father. Kyosuke though was actually forcefully adopted in order for him to work under the mob as a president of of one of his adoptive father's (Gonzo Azai's) corporations to collect money that he can pay for the immense debt left behind by Kyousuke's real father, and ultimately after doing that he wants to reunite with his mother. Kyousuke is also quite a fan of classical music which mirrors the honestly beautifully atmospheric OST that this VN has.
The real story's gears kick off as a messy long-haired girl by the name of Haru Usami transfers into Kyousuke's school. Haru is the main heroine and a detective-type character with notable powers of observation and knowledge of criminal psychology and negotiations. Too bad she's absolutely awful at dealing with social situations. Haru is the character with a history against the game's primary antagonist and villain 'Maou' but she's not willing to talk about it, which cuses the game to not progress as smoothly as it perhaps could have had the characters just been more front about what's on their mind.
By the way, Haru (The Devil on G-String, 2008) reminds me of Kyoko Kirigiri (Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, 2010).
Now, while there is this sense of mystery regarding the motivations and pasts of our main cast, the main conflict the player bumps into is more psychological regarding Maou's and the protagonists actions. As Maou gets closer to Haru and our protag, the mob boss (MC's adoptive father) orders Kyousuke to catch Maou. This leads to different types of "showdowns" with with our antagonist, but there's something wrong as we always see Maou during times when Kyousuke gets memory lapses and headaches - there's even a scene in which his psychiatrist ponders about this memory problem of his, and we get some scenes about possible alter egos.
I remember when this series was called "Death Note on steroids" by certain group of people a long time ago, but it's really not, the story isn't that special by today's standards and would probably even come off as a poorly plotted if it was a light novel. The visual novel format definitely helps it. It's a fairly compact story with a small cast of characters, but at least it doesn't feel like a drag to go through. And in comparison, G-String does at least have some mysteries to ponder about, such as who this assumedly cool villain could possibly be, and what do our main characters and the yakuza have to do with him, and whatever it is that moves our characters forward?
I'm not sure if I can get behind all the writing choices in this story. I actually first played this game in around 2011 if memory serves right, but even then some of the red herrings and character writing just didn't click with me. Kind of like how I feel when reading a generic crime fiction. But hey, at least it has great music to create an entertaining atmosphere. I'd say it's a game worth playing if one wants to play a visual novel as it's a surprisingly easy read and nothing too big, but still decent enough. That's not something I can say about certain other games in this medium. As a last note, the title of the game is actually neatly symbolistic regarding what happens with our main heroine in this story.
2020 has been a year of ups and mostly downs; movies, games, and all other type of media keep getting pushed back and even this Blogger site is being ruined with this very buggy and absolutely awful new "mobile-friendly" interface I'm using right now to write this post to see what we can possibly get out of this and what possibilities it offers to bloggers and readers. For example I can't normally return to the previous page after trying to create a post, saving a post takes more work than it should, and I can't watch posts before posting anymore because Mozilla/Chrome/etc. keep blocking these as "pop-ups", and when I manage to see the post in preview, it doesn't register where I've pressed the "Enter" button at. Absolute madness... but there might be some light at the end of the tunnel.
About today's subject though, this particular side-story series is one of the more special news (in a good way) that I've heard all year long as Gosho and the author of Zero's Tea Time (Detective Conan's Amuro Tooru's spinoff series), Takahiro Arai, announced that he's going to start working on another Detective Conan story - Wild Police Story. I've always liked Arai's art in Zero's Tea Time so I decided to peep his other works - namely Darren Shan, Arago, Les Misérables and Tenshou no Quadrable. All of these are very original and decent length stories and I'm actually impressed at how much more prolific Arai is as I thought he was a no-name author whom Shonen Sunday picked off the streets, so to speak. Regardless, Arai's better works such as Darren Shan and in my opinion his best work Les Misérables are actually his versions of novels (in other works manga adaptations), so he clearly has a certain preference on how he wants to tell his stories, and I can get behind that as Arai is able to show emotion through his paneling extremely well, which also carried well over to Zero's Tea Time.
But what I could not get behind in ZTT was the honestly rather poor script. While the stories themselves are presented nicely, they're rather empty, they have no message to tell and they rarely have any point either to exist; they're simply there to showcase Amuro's day-by-day activities in rather empty ways. Looking at Arai's earlier works, he's never done fanservice-type series like that one before either, so it's kind of odd how he chose to go for that type of style. The panels in ZTT were quite too big as well and thus they were unable to really tell any real stories. I guess Arai's biggest problem was that he isn't that good at planning chapters himself and that he's not experienced at creating short-stories, as the difference in writing quality is quite big in comparison with the longer stories he's worked on. While Gosho Aoyama (the author of DC) did supervise ZTT, he never had any that big of part in how it was created. From what I did get out of ZTT however, was that Arai really loves Detective Conan and especially Amuro Tooru as a character, as he knows all the little details that Gosho laid out about the man. I'm sure it was a big honor for Arai to get to work under Aoyama in one way or another.
In late 2019 however things took a surprising turn with the announcement of another side-story, Detective Conan: Wild Police Story. Gosho might've seen enough potential in Arai or something as he decided to take matters into his own hands and to help Arai tell a real, true side story of Detective Conan and show Arai how to craft this type of manga series that focuses on shorter stories and substance in a page. Aoyama does all the storyboards, paneling structure, sketches, for the chapters of this side series and supervises the final product as well. The difference in Arai's craft is quite immense and much closer to Detective Conan in comparison to Zero's Tea Time, and if Gosho wanted to, I'd say he could actually let Arai also work on Magic Kaito in this way if he wanted to. What makes WPS special is the fact that it's not just another Amuro story, but instead we have five very entertaining main characters in it; the squad of fresh police students of the Metropolitan Police Academy wasting their days away in the line of duty, seven years prior to the start of Detective Conan's present timeline. And four of these characters have already died in the story of DC, so this story can be quite tough to read from that front as well! The main mysteries of this series come from out main characters' pasts and motivations, which lays out a nice groundwork for the individual stories as well.
Wild Police Story's first tale, A Fight Between Equals, begins in the middle of a night as a loud noise echoes through the walled yards of the Metropolitan Police Academy. The noise is caused by punches and kicks under the beautiful sakura trees of Japan as two young men, Rei Furuya (22) and Jinpei Matsuda (22), throw hands. From the story of the original Detective Conan manga we know just how powerful Furuya is physically in his late 20's so it's actually impressing Furuya himself as well that Matsuda won't give in (we learn later on that Matsuda's pro-boxer father had taught him, so it's actually impressive how Furuya is able to go toe-to-toe with him) - while Matsuda still manages to lose a tooth in the battle, our blonde-haired Furuya also gets couple of good punches to his face and body, so much so that he can barely keep standing after the fight is over.
Furuya Rei (22)
However this very first scene of the story isn't just about two men clashing, it's also about their ideals. Matsuda wants to pummel Furuya because he wants to get in Furuya's way of becoming a police officer - as Furuya claims that he has a goal which motivates him to absolutely become a police officer, Matsuda actually hates that. He hates Furuya's "childish infatuation towards the police" - so why does Matsuda himself want to become an officer? Arai and Gosho draw this clash of ideals and Matsuda's crazy face really well. It brings so many questions, and makes me really happy as there's actually some form of substance to get from these pages in comparison to Zero's Tea Time.
The story immediately moves on to another character, as I mentioned there are five main characters in this story about police academy, so this time we focus on one of the more recently introduced characters in Detective Conan, Hiromitsu Morofushi (22). As it's in the middle of the night at 2 AM, Morofushi happens to have a nightmare of something horrifying, possibly even real - in this dream of his Morofushi was but a young child hiding in a closet, from where he witnesses the brutal stabbing of a man and a woman, possibly his own family. The perpetrator - presented as Shadow Man - then gets up while holding his bloody knife after doing the killings and heads away, but then scares child Morofushi by peeping through the very closet door where he was hiding. But luckily the ringing door bell wakes the man up and he goes to see the beaten-up Furuya (whom Morofushi calls by the nickname "Zero") laying on the floor and leaning towards the wall. I like how Morofushi immediately knows who it was that Furuya was battling by telling the man to get along with his opponent.
The next morning the academy students have lined up and we get a clear view on our main squad: the Onizuka Class; the students taught by instructor Hachizo Onizuka (48). As Onizuka gets interested in the smuggy Matsuda's and gloomy Furuya's battle scars, the trusty class rep Wataru Date (22) makes up a story to save the two the bother of getting to fight with their teacher, but in exchange he forces everyone to run a rather long extra round.
The final member of our main squad is Kenji Hagiwara (22), a sort of lecherous type who seems to get easily along with people by striking up conversations.
We get a lot of insight into our five protagonists in the very first chapter, from their personal introductions and personalities to a snippet of their pasts from teacher Onizuka. Furuya has unprecedented scores when he got into the academy, but his flaw is getting into fights with everyone for all sorts of reasons, from his personal motivations to his hair color. Morofushi has a great sense of justice and his brother is actually a great detective of the Nagano prefecture (aha!) but he's held back by a severe trauma of what happened to his parents (the nightmare). Date, who academically is only behind Furuya in the school, has fantastic leadership skills but is heavily held back by whatever caused his own father to resign from the police force. Hagiwara on the other hand has great skills in communication but his personality causes him to waste his time going after girls. And lastly, Matsuda has specialist knowledge and practical abilities of putting things apart and together, but he's completely insolent and unable to work in a team.
The first story focuses on everyone, but the main focus is on Matsuda and his weird antagonistic perspective towards police. The way the character types of our five protagonists are told here is pretty genius as we see them through character dialogue, flashbacks and just seeing how they all act. Matsuda himself is quite the joker and I can assume that this story makes him even more popular in the Detective Conan community. I'm somewhat impressed by how well the story is crafted from character-writing standpoint as it's a normal 20-page chapter. You can tell how much Gosho had a part in this by looking at the paneling, art and the fact that relevant stuff is actually going on in the background, the stuff Gosho uses to make his chapters quite eventful. A lot of stuff happens, we even get to see the squad in the class. And talking about class, the first chapter ends off with some class with Matsuda literally telling the police to go f*ck off!
The second chapter, Outrageous Behavior, continues from where the last one left off as Furuya investigates what possibly could have caused Matsuda to become so hostile towards the idea of police. In his quest to find information, Furuya comes across an article talking about a case where a murder suspect, pro-boxer Jotaro Matsuda, had been arrested under the suspicion of murder. It turns out that Matsuda's father had been innocently arrested as he came across two men having a conflict on his way home from the gym. Matsuda's father wanted no place in the fight, what with a title match coming soon, but it just so happens that one of the men who took part in that quarrel wound up beaten to death and eyewitness statements just happened to put Matsuda's father to the spotlight at the time of the crime.
Although the real culprit was found later, Matsuda's father's life never went back normal, and one bad thing after another started happening to him. To forget about the pain he quit being a boxer and started drowning himself in alcohol. He became a "mere shadow of his former self" thanks to the justice sytem failing him, and this is the story of why Matsuda's so hard towards the police. No one really knows what goes in his mind as he still wants to become a cop - this particular character is truly a mysterious contradiction.
As Furuya heads towards the shooting track where teacher Onizuka is training the class, Morofushi stays behind at the computer room and investigates his own story from the past that the news call the "Nagano Family Bloodbath Case" that he holds immense hatred towards to. Considering Morofushi's fate in the Detective Conan universe, it's kind of... melancholic, everything about this man. I hope he gets some kind of closure in WPS.
Anyway, the police academy members are all trained with shooting of course, and this chapter showcases the Onizuka class training with a revolver called Sakura, apparently the official weapon, a five-round gun, used by the Japanese police. While Furuya gets almost all shots with perfect scores, we get to learn a bit about this neat little information from the teach as he tells the class that there's this one genius shooter who got full points in his first shooting test; a guy who shot 20 bullets into the bulls-eye. Teacher Onizuka happens to refer to our mustached main character Mouri Kogoro with this, of course.
While the rest of the Onizuka class seem to do fine with shooting as well, Matsuda happens to be left behind as he misses all of his shots. Thinking that the gun is rigged he immediately pulls all the parts of it apart to check it out - apparently, according to Matsuda's childhood friend Hagiwara, another one of Matsuda's quite quirky habits is taking things apart. Which is why he's become specialist with all sort of mechanics, even the structure of bombs.
Matsuda's action of pulling the gun apart forces teacher Onizuka to suspend the shooting practice, but there's a problem here as one bullet goes missing. Onizuka naturally suspects Matsuda but its disappearance doesn't seem to be caused by him. Things take an even more serious turn as teacher Onizuka goes to show constructors the place to fix around the roof of the academy, but as he does so, the teach happens to fall down as the floor beneath a constructor gets destroyed and Onizuka tries to grab the constructor. In doing that the lifeline rope holding the constructor however goes over the teacher's neck and both of them are left standing - it's time to save the teach from getting hanged to death.
Chapter three, Of One Heart and Mind, again continues from where the previous one left off as teacher Onizuka needs to be saved for the constructor's lifeline is going to hang him dead. The plan here makes good use of teamwork of all five of our main characters to get to the goal. Date and Morofushi work as the support who lift the unconscious construction worker so that his weight, which is on the lifeline, won't kill the teacher. Matsuda has to put together the gun he pulled apart, and is apparently able to do that in "one round", which is apparently about "three minutes". Matsuda claims that he could've put a normal gun back in 30 seconds but as the gun was broken to begin with, he needs to fix it to be usable so that the one bullet they have will hit the rope and cut it down in the first shot. Hagiwara's job on the other hand is finding the missing bullet itself from the person who stole it, so he gets to play the detective of this part.
Matsuda Jinpei (22)
After pulling off the heroic deed of saving teacher Onizuka with teamwork, Matsuda and Amuro decide to talk together a bit on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Police Academy. This portion of the chapter focuses on the motivations of Matsuda and Furuya, and both of them are quite original, true to their characters for sure. This little talk made them get much more close to each other, so we're offered a bit of nice character development here as well. Matsuda's motivation is quite crazy, to be honest!
The fourth chapter, With Fortitude and Vigor, begins with the Onizuka class cleaning up the yard of Metropolitan Police Academy. Matsuda and Furuya already got quite close since the end of the previous tale despite this story starting with them pummeling the crap out of each other. It's quite funny how the girls try to hit on the boys here, they're quite interested in Furuya as well (for being a foreigner with blonde hair and tanned skin). This chapter focuses more on Wataru Date, the class rep and squad leader. As the girls and guys in the academy keep judging Furuya by his looks, Wataru happens to be always around the corner to give them a bit of lesson to never do that as it's a bit racist. Now, as Hagiwara questions if Date is actually in love with Furuya for always standing up for him, we learn that Date actually has a girlfriend, Natalie, whom Date promises to introduce the other four friends he has in the Onizuka squad soon enough.
The next morning our squad practices a bit of a certain Japanese arrest technique as martial arts, and Date happens to be the strongest person over this side of the fence as he beats literally everyone. As Date keeps battling the other students, Morofushi learns of a bike shop in which a person with the same kind of tattoo as his parents' killer was seen, so that's a nice bit of foreshadowing towards his story. After the fights are over, we get to see a bit of Date's past in which he saw his father die when he was young, and he also gives the other four a pep talk about how no one except the strongest is able to "enforce justice".
Interestingly enough the other students that talk with a toothpick in their mouth disgust Date, even though he's seen always having one in his mouth in Detective Conan's flashbacks.
Chapter five, Learning From History, starts up as Morofushi
heads up to Furuya's room and tells him that him, Matsuda and Hagiwara are heading out. Furuya stays behind but forgets to ask them for some toothpaste - the three of them have already left by the time he remembers. As Furuya decides to head out himself to go to the convenience store, he meets up with Date.
Hagiwara Kenji (22)
We get to learn more of Date's past: his father was a "head patrol officer at a small neighborhood police station". Even though he appeared weak and frail, Date always looked up to his father. One day many years prior Date had asked his father why he always has a toothpick in his mouth to which his father explained that it makes him seem tougher: it makes him look strong.
One day when Date and his father went to a convenience store, an agitated man with a bloody shirt and a wooden sword came crashing in and started demanding money from everyone - as there was only one robber, Date trusted in his father to take care of business, but instead what happened was what shocked him the most: his father started kneeling on the floor, begging for the robber to spare him and his son.
Wanting his father to take care of the criminal with pride and honor, the yound Date then started agitating the criminal by announcing that his father is a cop. This action caused the criminal to start beating his father with the wooden sword, again and again. Date's father ended up being hospitalized for a year and due to the severity of his injuries, he had to quit the force for good.
This flashback is quite serious and I'd love to see it animated. What makes Date quite interesting is that he doesn't blame himself, but instead blames his father for not catching the perp, not being "strong enough to enforce justice". But history repeats itself once more. As Date and Furuya head to the convenience store, two men armed with weapons also arrive to the shop.
At the same time the three other of our main characters arrive at the bike shop as Morofushi wants to find the guy with a goblet tattoo, for he might've murdered his parents.
But Morofushi hasn't really revealed the information about the Nagano Bloodbath Murder Case to the others, and he himself is so traumatized he can't even speak, so we get to see Matsuda and Hagiwara take part in this investigation.
At the shop with Date and Furuya, the two armed robbers are collecting everyone's smartphones. While Date is eager to just take care of the criminals, Furuya notices that there's something off about it all - the robbers haven't taken cash from the register. They're not even trying to flee. The chapter ends with bunch of more robbers arriving to the scene, even one of the employee's is part of the thug group. How will out main characters handle this predicament where they stand no fighting chance?
Chapter six, Without Preserve, starts up as the thugs have roped and tied the mouths of every customer in the convenience shop. Furuya immediately cuts off the cable that ties Date's hands with the frictional heat caused by Date's shoelaces. The problem here is that the robbers are going after big money: waiting for an ATM refill to steal the ATM itself. But as the robbers aren't hiding their faces, they're definitely planning to put a bullet to the head of everyone in the shop.
With the help of a morse code, all five of our main characters manage to deal with the situation pretty effectively. Matsuda, Morofushi and Hagiwara managed to pull off quite a hilarious scene here. It's a neat short story, but I must say, the ending of this story is hella awesome once more, and quite emotional as well, with Hagiwara explaining Date the true meaning of his father's actions and Date finally accepting to let his girlfriend meet up with his father. Not to mention he finally picks up that toothpick with pride.
Chapter seven, Gentle Yet Firm, starts a story that focuses bit on Hagiwara, but it begins with a joint date with the girls from another class of the Police Academy. Although Date himself already has a girlfriend, he took up the offer to join the joint date to get to drink some free alcohol. Anyway, while Hagiwara - the person to arrange the joint date - hasn't yet arrived to the scene, we get to see how our four other characters act towards females and how they're perceived as. Everyone's having the time of their life.
As Hagiwara - the actual womanizer of the squad - arrives, he tells a rather elaborate story for coming late. Regardless, the boys and girls then spend rest of the night at Karaoke before heading back. On the way to the Police Academy at night, Morofushi gets shocked at a similarity a little bypassing girl has to a deceased girl from the past - potentially his sister... Morofushi has the most messed up story out of the bunch for sure.
The next day, a white Mazda RX-7 FD3S arrives at the academy; driving it is none other than teacher Onizuka. We learn that the car type has an interesting history behind it and that it's Hagiwara's favourite car, but it's not owned by the teacher but instead was something that was left behind by a deceased senior police detective whom Onizuka used to know. Four years prior, the daughter of the senior detective announced Onizuka that she'll become a cop as well, and Onizuka plans to give the car to her when she does.
Interestingly enough this is the backstory of where Furuya inherited the car from perhaps? Or at least the ideology to use this same type? I could swear the daughter of the deceased fighter is Sato, as well.
Date Wataru (22)
Next up we get to see the Police Academy students practice heavy equipment training, as in running around with shields and other heavy police equipment. During the training we get to learn that Hagiwara used to live in a car repair shop. In their childhood, Matsuda also used to visit the shop and actually pull apart and remodel cars himself, then after he got tired with cars he started learning more about more dangerous objects, such as bombs. Hagiwara's family's car repair shop did well enough to expand, but ended up going bankrupt regardless. So even though Hagiwara wants to construct machines and stuff, he ended up becoming an officer as "the police never go bankrupt". It's an interesting thought, but makes sense as Hagiwara's goal seems to be just to live his life without pressure.
As our main characters run around with heavy equipment, a man dressed up in black seems to show interest towards Hagiwara and Matsuda. Later on during Motorcycles technical skills training Hagiwara is shown fixing up a bike (we learn that he's quite good at mechanics, but not as quick with his hands as Matsuda is). After seeing Hagiwara's feats and apparently from hearing the rumors about him and Matsuda, the man in black appears to ask both of them whether they'd be interested in joining the Bomb Disposal Unit of the Riot Squad. Matsuda naturally instantly agrees with his own aggressive way, but Hagiwara asks for time to think before answering.
Elsewhere, as Morofushi is walking out the academy with quite a serious face, Date seems to pay attention to him. Morofushi heads straight for the nearby motorcycle repair shop to look for clues towards the person with a goblet tattoo. At the same time Hagiwara ponders about the bomb disposal unit offer while remembering the downfall his successfull father took with his shop: everything is going so smoothly for Hagiwara and Matsuda that it could all just be a "gateway to failure".
Chapter eight, Pride Comes Before the Fall, has Matsuda head to the white car kept in the garage by teacher Onizuka, as Onizuka asked Matsuda to fix and wash the thing. We get to see Matsuda and Hagiwara talk a bit about the dangers of joining the Bomb Disposal Unit as well.
At a motorcycle repair shop, Morofushi is looking for clues on the person with a goblet tattoo. Date joins him as well. The duo meet up with a man they saved at the convenience store robbery incident and learn of a person named Irie who apparently has the tattoo. Irie's a reserved blacksmith who doesn't really enjoy having photos of himself taken.
Another incident however happens nearby as a truck with a fainted driver keeps driving forward while pulling a car stuck to it forward. We get to see our main characters then do crazy stuff with the white car that Matsuda was supposed to fix (and did fix in record time, for whatever that fixin' ended up being worth..). They completely wreck the vehicle.
Morofushi Hiromitsu (22)
Chapter nine, With Lightning speed, continues the truck chase in which a truck driver is unconscious and the truck pulls with it a car that has its bumper stuck to the back of the truck. Hagiwara does a ridiculous car stunt by flipping the car he's driving to its side and throwing a police siren on the road. The car then jumps on the siren, and Matsuda and Furuya jump down from above the car that the truck is pulling.
Things take an even more ridiculous turn as the road the truck is driving happens to be a dead-end bridge on top of city streets. And holy moly, this is insane! With the word of Matsuda in his mind, Hagiwara and Furuya make the truck and the white Mazda literally fly. That was a pretty good action scene. This portion of the story concludes in a happy manner and I'm sure this is where Hagiwara came to conclusion of joining the Bomb Disposal Unit with Matsuda, as he himself says: "I guess htting the 'accelerator' once in a while isn't such a bad idea".
That concludes all the stories up to the current chapter that have been released. I'll definitely keep reading this series and hope for more series like this to come in the future from Detective Conan. I wasn't really planning on making any type of volume reviews or anything of this when I first heard of it but I want to spread the word to anyone who wants to know more of Detective Conan and its characters and I can definitely recommend this series. I'm not sure if anyone else thinks this, but this is actually kind of crazy, isn't it? That we get to see this type of fleshing out of the story and its cast? I never thought we'd see a Detective Conan side-story with five main characters, that's for damn sure. To see actual character growth and their journey from pretty much the beginning, going through the academy classes, hardships and seeing their characters get fleshed out, it's an experience for sure. And now that I think about it, there's a lot of tension regarding the Morofushi family, isn't there?
If one wants to get a taste of Arai at his best, I suggest anyone to also read his adaptation of Les Misérables as it's quite frankly incredible. Anyway, Arai is great at his own game and he can be a fantastic mangaka for DC-related content if he wants to put in more effort from script side of things as well. I hope WPS gets an anime adaptation after we have volumes out to promote it considering how side-stories and spinoff series aren't usually this important to a main story. Or at least I hope we get special episodes akin to TMS's Magic Kaito.
Kyuu focuses on sucking the poison out of Megumi's leg and reads the DDS notebook which contains information on what to do during different types of crises. It doesn't take long for the two of them to realize that the snake which was in the room had been dropped in by someone else in order to kill them, so the steel door must've been locked on purpose for some reason as well. 
