The games people with too much money and not enough sense play, even when their lives are on the line.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Gosho Aoyama
Translation/Adaptation: Tetsuichiro Miyaki
What They Say
Serena’s eccentric uncle has a new plan to catch the elusive Kaito Kid, baiting the master thief with a pair of priceless high-heeled shoes. The Kid is one step ahead, but with Conan on his heels he’ll have to toe the line! Meanwhile, danger lurks in Conan’s own backyard. While the diminutive detective tries to crack a code found on a series of paper airplanes, he’s matched deduction for deduction by the mysterious man renting Jimmy Kudo’s long-vacated house. Is Subaru Okiya the mild-mannered engineering student he claims to be, or is he hiding a dark secret?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Oh look, the Kaito Kid is back.
This game of cat and mouse that Serena’s uncle has been playing with the flamboyant thief is a frustrating affair. I don’t care how incompetent the cops are, by now they would have caught this guy and all his accomplices. Especially since his tricks of the trade are all highly mechanical in nature. Exhibited once again outside, the bait this time is a pair of shoes with large amethysts. Kaito steps in and snatches one, but has to return a second time to grab the other.
Conan is correct to guess that a wire trick is somehow being used, but my problem lies in the guards. The dude was RIGHT THERE, why not grab him? I think Jirokichi doesn’t actually want the thief caught, he just wants him humiliated. However, the Kaito Kid isn’t as innocent as he appears. At one point he points a gun (modified to shoot business cards) at Conan’s head in the middle of a crowd and not a single person notices it! There’s a sinister edge to the master thief, and I have no doubt that if Conan was his teenage self this would have resulted in a fist-fight. The obliviousness of the crowd and lackluster police are what bothers me in this scenario.
The middle story focuses on yet another aborted camping trip by the junior detectives. Once again the kids are witnesses to murder most foul, but the execution of the crime is both ingenious and highly dubious. The whole situation requires a precise set of circumstances for the murder to come across as an accidental death. So precise is the set up the crime didn’t occur the first two attempts! Hey, she would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for those meddling kids.
The paper airplane mystery is the best of the bunch, even of the logic of the paper airplanes being in code makes absolutely no sense. He wants to be saved but fears for his family? Like his kidnapper wasn’t going to notice the balcony full of paper airplanes? Or the press or neighbors? The saving grace of that broken logic is that shortly before the victim of the crime succumbs to his dehydration he starts tossing money out the window. Rachel helps locate and save the man in time, which reveals a nice side of Conan/Jimmy that we rarely see and adds a level of humanity to the situation that this series rarely touched upon.
What makes that case interesting is that Jimmy’s place is being rented by a grad student. (I missed a few volumes, so I missed the introduction of this guy.) There are hints that this very smart and attractive guy might be a new member of the Men in Black, but there are no hints that Conan might suspect him yet. He did have the good sense to have all personal traces of his life cleaned out of his place before someone else moved in. Now there’s a tantalizing mystery that isn’t being touched upon this volume.
This volume ends with the beginning of a new case which has a personal connection to Azusa, the waitress at the place several characters frequent. It also feels grounded in a way none of the other cases in this volume does, but the book ends in the middle of that case to pick up at the start of volume 62.
In Summary
Revenge, vengeance, and payback… via convoluted means. The best stories Case Closed often tell are the ones that go for suspense and race against the clock, and unfortunately, this volume goes for spectacle and complex clues which rely more on luck than logic. Conan is blissfully unaware of just how much danger he is in during at least two of these cases, which doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence for the shrunk detective. At least two of these cases feel lackluster, bringing little new and treading overly familiar territory for the sixty-plus volume series. However, hints of a new challenger and a dangerous new foe keep the reader waiting to see which case will pull them front and center.
Content Grade: B –
Art Grade: A –
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: B +
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: January 10th, 2017
MSRP: $9.99