Creative Staff
Story/Art: Gosho Aoyama
Translation/Adaptation: Tetsuichiro Miyaki
What They Say
Dead Calm
A relaxing fishing trip in a quiet bay turns into a case for the Junior Detective League when a vacationer is murdered. Conan knows how to bait the killer, but will he have what it takes to reel him in?
Then a baseball star is stabbed to death and left by the side of a road. But the prime suspect has a rock-solid alibi: he was with Conan, Rachel and Detective Moore the whole time!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With each volume of Case Closed released I like to try to find a unifying theme if there’s no overarching plot chapter going on. I dub this volume the ‘beyond the grave’ volume, for the cases which lead off and close out the book.
This volume picks up in the middle of the last case from volume 44. Conan and palls were trying to get to the bottom of the high school haunting, always refreshing change of pace from the murder whodunits that make up the bulk of mysteries in this series. The consequences for finding the perpetrator are non-existent, and the overall subject is melancholic. The real Dr. Araide brings up a good point about his long gone impostor, adding another melancholic twist to the case.
The next two cases fall into the ‘Conan is the worst sort of bad luck’ trap. The Junior Detective League head out for a day of sea fishing with Dr. Agasa and have to save a fisherman’s life from an murder attempt. The case resolves in a surprisingly upbeat way, which is unusual for this series and somewhat unrealistic. (How many people would be able to forgive a friend who intentionally tried to kill them?) The leaps in logic weren’t too bad, although I’m sure most people would have just assumed the fisherman had suffered a heart attack.
The next case is the exact opposite in tone, where a star baseball player is murdered right before an interview with Detective Moore. For once Conan doesn’t resort to using the sleeping Moore trick to solve the case, for which I am grateful. Although it’s another case where the clues are vague, at least the lead suspect was acting appropriately suspicious for a change.
The final case of the volume is another outing for the Junior Detective League, this time to an observatory to watch the stars. When they arrive they stumble on a cold case where none of the would be strangers visiting the observatory actually are. Someone, presumably the man whose skeletal corpse was found on the hillside, starts leaving absurdly obscure clues about who the murderer was. The volume ends just as the potential culprit outs himself, but the resolution will have to wait.
In Summary
This volume of Case Closed returns to a plethora of murders, both new and cold. There’s just enough breaking from the mold to keep the formula from becoming too stale, although Conan displays his usual superhuman deductions as if it were simple child’s play. There are a few nods and hints at the ongoing story arc with the men in black, reminding the reader that Conan’s enemies are never out-of-mind even when out of sight.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: A –
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: B +
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: January 8th, 2013
MSRP: $9.99
