Sara Talks Anime

Valentine’s Day…is still way too far away for me to be making any meaningful comments about it. Look, it’s October, what exactly do you want me to say? Chocolate is delicious? Anyway, with an important holiday like that existing, surely Detective Conan’s gotta celebrate it, right? But how exactly will a show that focuses on murders and kidnappings and whatever other crimes a detective can investigate end up celebrating Valentine’s Day? Well, here’s your answer…

EPISODE 6: The Valentine Murder Case

Anime Original or Manga Sourced?: Anime Original

Is this my first time experiencing the story?: No, but it’s been so long since I’ve last seen the episode that the answer might as well be “yes”.

Yup, this is Detective Conan’s first ever anime original episode! While these are typically reserved nowadays for when the anime gets too close to where the manga is that they need to make up shit to keep themselves from running out of chapters to cover while keeping a buffer, another instance that anime original episodes can be seen in is if it’s close to a holiday and TMS decides that year “yup, we’re gonna have Conan and the others celebrate it!”, thus leading to the fact that this case can even exist in the first place.

Now, while this is an anime original episode, it’s also the anime’s introduction to two things: a recurring character, and another one of Conan’s gadgets. So, unfortunately, despite the issues that you’ll soon read about me having with this case, this is still ultimately a case you’d have to watch to continue understanding what all is happening in Detective Conan, even if the case itself isn’t canon.

The character that gets introduced in this episode is Sonoko Suzuki, Ran’s rich girl best friend who’s also constantly crushing on boys at this point in the series. She and Ran had ran into some guys at a café that had gotten somewhat interested in them, with one of those men even driving over to where Ran and Sonoko are!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the street, The Detective Boys and Conan are busy trying to get people to take flyers for their services…only for Conan to see what’s happening on the other side of the street and witness what is essentially Ran being voluntold on a date because Sonoko decided to accept an invitation to a Valentine’s Day party on behalf of both her and Ran. So, of course, the Conan gets jealous, especially after seeing her making chocolate.

I will also note that this small cameo is the only role that the Detective Boys play in this episode, so the fact that they’re here isn’t going to be as big of an issue as compared to Episodes 3 and 5.

Anyway, what else for the Conan to do than to sneak into the trunk of the car that the guy who’s interested in Ran uses to pick her up for that party the next day? You know, perfectly normal behavior that totally isn’t going to make him seem like a creep if anyone asks him about it later! Nope, this is just Conan being Conan! Because of course!

The car arrives at the party, and while Ran and Sonoko go outside and get to get involved with the other people there, Conan has to wait outside and watch from the window…all up until Conan sneezes too loudly, causing everyone to be made aware he’s there, and for him to get invited to join the party! Yay! 😀

And, of course, chaos ensues. While there’s a lot of great moments, I’d like to provide screenshots of my favorite moment from when Conan joined the party to show how much fun this episode kinda was.

Okay, there’s one moment that tops this. What, did you guys think that was my actual favorite moment?

Anyway, more stuff happens, eventually one of the people needs to go outside, and after a while someone goes out to see what’s happening with him, only to see his dead body. The police get called, Kogoro’s here too, and an investigation begins.

I can’t provide too many more details, however I will say that during this investigation, we learn that Agasa has made Conan a Stun-Gun Wristwatch, which basically means that he can shoot a tranquillizer needle out of his watch and knock out whoever it hits. This, alongside the Voice Changing Bowtie, are the two most frequently used gadgets that Conan has. Basically: if Kogoro’s investigating a case, there’s a pretty good chance that one or both gadgets will get used.

However, I felt like this episode focused far too much time on the development of the circumstances prior to the case and far too little time on the case itself. Now, of course this isn’t the best case that TMS has ever done, this was literally the first ever anime original case they did! However, it just…didn’t really feel like a Detective Conan case, if you understand what I mean. At the very least, it had a mystery! I don’t think I’d easily be able to say that for a future anime original episode that I’ll have to talk about eventually.

However, I’m glad that it seems like TMS has improved their anime original case game greatly, if the anime original cases that I’ve seen more recently as part of the simulcast on Crunchyroll are any indication at all of the improvement.

Previous Release Order Post: Episodes 4 and 5

Previous Anime Original Post: N/A

Next Release Order Post: Episode 7

Next Anime Original Post: Episode 14 (post date and time TBD)