Time to let a some other sleuths take the spotlight!
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Gosho Aoyama
Translation/Adaptation: Tetsuichiro Miyaki
What They Say
Murder on the Slopes
A reporter is found dead just before an interview with the Junior Detective League. Conan is determined to close the case…but with his teacher watching, he has to do it without letting on that he’s smarter than the average first grader!Then flash back to one of Jimmy’s first cases! When a death takes place at a ski resort, everyone believes a legendary ghost has struck again. But two middle schoolers think otherwise: young Jimmy Kudo and young Harley Hartwell! Which boy genius will solve the mystery first?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
One of my largest complaints about Case Closed is that it often falls into the same problems that long running detective or crime series usually encounter. The sleuth is always the smartest one in the room, the bad guys are always committing the crimes right in front of the detective, and rarely does anyone screw up. Thankfully the mold breaks slightly for this volume, where Conan isn’t the only one solving the crimes and we find out that he wasn’t always so good at this detective business.
The first case in this volume is a typical one for this series, with the added benefit of a surprise ending. Conan and the Moores are out having dinner at a new cafe, only to run into some familiar members of the police force. A singles mixer turns into relationship trouble for officers Takagi and Sato, but while they are bickering they end up involved in a kidnapping case. It’s rare that crimes are actually prevented in this series, and it was nice to see a few different faces figure things out on their own. Takagi even beats Conan to an important conclusion and ends up being the hero of the day. It’s refreshing change from the usual for Conan.
The middle of this volume features a case which once again brings into stark relief the trouble that Conan has acting like a kid. I tend to forget that Conan is supposed to be in a six or seven year old body. Add to that he’s palling around with a couple of other kids and you can only imagine the awkwardness. (That expression on the first page of this volume, I’m shocked he hasn’t gone mad keeping up the ruse.)
The junior detective league gets an offer to be subjects of a magazine interview and the kids are excited at the potential of fame. Obviously, Conan and Anita are less than thrilled, but go along with it anyway. They stumble into a murder, proving once again that anyone who comes in contact with Conan has a 50/50 chance of ending up dead. The only interesting part of the case is Conan trying to portion out information for the kids to present without drawing more unwanted attention from his suspicious teacher. In the end, Conan had little to worry about because she’s just as dense as most of the adults in this series. Moving on…
The final case is the most interesting of the group, for many reasons. Conan and Harley are reminiscing over the phone about a case that they both worked on back in junior high. Conan, or rather Jimmy, wasn’t the teenage super sleuth that he became known as later. Both him and Harley were still honing their skills. The case they end up working is a murder, which looked like a suicide, on a ski lift. Harley figures out about half of the clues while Conan solves the other half. But neither are directly on the case. Instead, a private detective named Katashina is working the scene. He’s not the only detective working things out either, Mr. Kudo just happens to be around as well. We don’t get to see Jimmy’s father in this story much, and it’s funny to see the adults standing back and watching the kids figure things out on their own.
We don’t find out the murderer’s identity or how the criminal committed the crime before the volume ends, which gives me time to ponder what went down on my own before the next volume comes out.
In Summary
Fifty volumes deep into Case Closed and it still has a few surprises in store for readers. Perhaps the biggest surprise being that Viz hasn’t dropped this long running series! It’s nice to see Conan beaten to the punch on a modern day case, and we get a look back at a time when he was still learning the ropes. We still have the conclusion of this flashback to look forward to in the next volume, but I’d like to see more cases from back before Jimmy became entangled in the Men in Black. It’s fun to see how he evolved in his crime fighting abilities, and to see him receiving hints rather than giving them for a change.
Content Grade: B +
Art Grade: A –
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: B +
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: April 8th, 2014
MSRP: $9.99
