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.
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.
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| 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!
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.
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| Matsuda Jinpei (22) |
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.
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| 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.
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.
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| Date Wataru (22) |
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.
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| 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.
Got around to reading this series finally! It was... surprisingly okay? We only learned bits and pieces about who was connected to whom throughout the main series, spread across many years, and I had like completely forgotten who Hagiwara was for example, so it was nice seeing it presented as one story now, with even a minor mystery plot.
ReplyDeleteThe two volume release is just waaaay overpriced though. They are not only more expensive than regular Conan volumes, but half the page count of each volume is covered solely by the omake pages with Aoyama's storyboards/mini-interview with Aoyama. It would've been much better as a slightly more expensive, slightly bulkier single volume without all those storyboards :/
Yeah it's much better than Zero's Tea Time and I hope Arai uses this Aoyama-style more for series like this rather than the more superficial style he's used on ZTT (that emotional style worked exceptionally well for his Les Misérables adaptation but not for these series that need more substance per page).
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