Man, I really replicated the “11 year old Sara watching Detective Conan” experience today. Why? Well, when I checked the Detective Conan simulcast page on Crunchyroll today, I saw this.
Now, as I didn’t know what all on this was messed up, and I didn’t want to select an episode only to find out that the videos got messed up as well, I dragged my parents’ Funimation era DVDs with their Americanized branding, older video masters, theme songs that fade out early, and lack of the joke card out of retirement to watch this episode on my family’s TV, just to ensure the episode I was watching is the episode I was supposed to watch.
After watching the episode, I decided to pull up the episode that was being reported as being up next, just to see if the metadata I was seeing was providing the actual reality, or if this is just a front-end issue. The result?
Yeah…I’m just a bit annoyed that my abundance of caution turned out to be for nothing because the actual video content wasn’t changed. So, as a punishment for myself for not checking this before taking my parents’ Funimation DVDs out of retirement, you guys are getting no images of the actual episode except for that “episode 17” thumbnail. After all, I had told myself that because I needed to use the DVD, I wouldn’t do images except for those needed to explain my lack of images, so I’m sticking to that. The episode images should reappear starting next week, though, so don’t be too sad that they’re not here this week!
Alright, that’s enough yapping of technical issues on Crunchyroll’s side from me. Sorry, that’s just a topic that I appear to be really passionate about as of late. Let’s get into the actual episode.
EPISODE 16: The Antique Collector Murder
Anime Original or Manga Sourced?: Manga sourced, Chapters 52 through 55
Is this my first time experiencing this story?: No
…yes. You’re reading that correctly. This one episode adapts four manga chapters. As a result, there were some scenes in the case that were changed in some form or omitted entirely to squeeze the whole case into one episode. While this isn’t the first case to do this, this is a more in-depth case than the other cases that were four chapters adapted in one episode, and this could’ve very easily been the very first two-part case in the entire series if TMS didn’t decide to try and keep all of this case in one episode. Personally, I feel like the insistence on keeping the whole case in one episode (and making cuts or changes in the case) didn’t work in the benefit of the case here. I’ll get more into the changes that were made from the manga once we get to the end of my discussion of what happened in the episode.
Anyway, the episode begins with Kogoro declaring to the resident of a house that his wife has, in fact, been cheating on him with another man. We also get to see the outside of the residence, where it turns out that Kogoro had promised Conan and Ran that he’d take them out to eat, only to stop by here first. While Kogoro provides enough information just to prove that his wife’s been cheating, he doesn’t know the identity of who she’s cheating on him with. Not like that matters, because there’s a guest at the door. The person Kogoro was talking to first calls for someone else to get it…before remembering he sent the housekeepers out to keep his wife busy while he was talking with Kogoro, so he goes to greet the guest and lead them to the cottage.
While waiting for the client to return, we hear the phone ringing for three separate phone calls. One of the calls rings a good number of times before stopping, being during the time when the client left. The other two calls were made two hours or so later and ring once before stopping. Kogoro goes off to look for the client, and ends up running into the housekeepers and the wife. While Kogoro accidentally outs that he got hired by the husband (and the wife tries to hire him), one of the housekeepers had gone to the cottage…and had found the dead body of the client.
The police get called, and thus investigation begins. I’m not going to go too far into details about the investigation itself, but I will say that one of the things that Conan does during the investigation is sniff the suspects because he smelled something familiar on one of the suspects. However, Conan ultimately realizes something that causes him to find out exactly who the culprit is, using his wristwatch to knock out Kogoro and deliver the deduction.
While the culprit admits they did it, they also run at Kogoro with a sword and does a minimal attack, mistaking Kogoro not flinching as him not being scared instead of him being asleep. As we find out in the post-credits scene, however, Kogoro doesn’t take the three millimeter cut he got all that well…
Okay, let’s talk about the changes between the manga case and the anime case. A full list for changes from manga to anime for this case can be found here, but please note that if you haven’t read the manga and/or watched the anime prior to this point, you will get spoiled.
Specifically, I’d like to talk about a removal and a change that I think were the most egregious. For the removal, I’m talking about Conan pointing out where the culprit had to have escaped after committing the murder. I feel like that should have been an important detail to try and keep intact. As for the change, considering I brought it up earlier, Conan smelling the culprits until he found two that smelled of the same perfume.
Yes, it’s silly, and everything suggests that it should be alibi-worthy, but it’s not as solid of an alibi compared to what the manga did. There, they find out that one of the culprits lied about having seen a movie, with their affair partner coming out shortly afterward with the information of the affair. In the manga version, I feel like there were more grounds for the alibi to be treated as reputable.
Honestly, I think this case could’ve been improved if it was a two-part case instead of trying to squeeze the entirety of the case into one episode. I don’t think it’s big enough of a case to justify an extended episode, hence the two-part case instead. At the very least, maybe Conan could finally point out the back gate and determine the affair through more than just sniffing perfume. Sorry if it feels like I’m getting hung up on that, but that just feels like one of the sillier non-plot breaking changes that TMS made at this point in the series.
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