Bryce's Blog

Things still seem to be going pretty well. Anyway, as most should know, I recently got four books from Barnes & Noble. One by one, each has been covered until only one remains. Today, I will be reviewing that title, which is called Case Closed Volume 47 by Gosho Aoyama.

As I have given a series synopsis in an earlier post, I will not go over it again.

The seemingly simple and innocent case of a missing cell phone has turned into a murder investigation, when Richard client is found dead.

However, the biggest problem Jimmy faces is that Rachel may have found solid proof that Conan and Jimmy are the same person.

A few days later, Jimmy and the junior Detective League spot Takagi entering a jewelery store and they follow him in.

Unfortunately, the peaceful day is ruined when somebody tries to rob the store, only to apparently commit suicide moments later in front of five witnesses.

Everyone thinks that the robber committed suicide, but Jimmy suspects that everything planned.

With only one suspect, Jimmy must determine whether or not he played a part in that day’s events.

Finally, Jimmy, Harley, Kazuha, and Rachel all go to see a magic show and are invited to the home of the person who had mentored the performer, as well as two others.

However, when the mentor’s wife has somebody find one of the other guests, Rachel and Kahuza, who tagged along, find that guest dead moments after a blackout.

Now, Jimmy and Harley must figure out who was murdered the victim before the police are sent on a wild goose chase.

I kind of liked this volume. The murder case that started right after the missing cell phone incident was kind of interesting. I liked that things were not too obvious and that each person. What it made interesting is that each of the three suspects has what everyone thinks are perfect. Now, perfect alibis are not new to the series, because there are a ton of cases in Detective Conan, such as a case in volume 2, which corresponds to anime episode 38 (Japanese count), and a case volume 45, though the case featured there was worse than the one in volume 2, but the fact that the suspects was not what caught my eye. Here, both Jimmy and Richard questioned the obvious flaw in the alibis of the suspects, which was that none of them were physically seen, and things still seemed pretty airtight. I am not sure about you guys, but it certainly made things a bit more interesting. I also liked how Rachel hesitated when she was about to finally have her suspicions confirmed. We all have those times when we are seeking the truth, especially when we find out that somebody we care about may be responsible for a truly evil act or were actually jerks. We want them to be innocent so badly that when we finally come across something that may prove their innocence or guilt that we are not willing to take that first, or even final, step towards the truth. However, if we do not through with it, we are not showing them concern that we should have for that individual, as stated by Professor Okabe, Akiyama’s teacher in Liar Game — Roots of A. When we doubt people, we are actually willing to learn about people and know what they went through. On the other hand, if we doubt more than we should, it could make things worse, but not as bad as if one were apathetic. I also liked how Jimmy ultimate gave her another number to use, saying that he thinks that there are things they need to say verbally. While I can figure things out through written word, there are things that I just cannot determine unless the person was talking to me on the phone, or preferably in person. After all, written word cannot reveal whether or not a person is telling the truth, like their how they verbally say it or their facial expressions tell me. It also showed that Jimmy was not trying to be a jerk to Rachel, which I would expect because of how Jimmy has been portrayed for more than 40 volumes. The robbery case was somewhat interesting as well. The case there was setup very well. Not a whole lot was obvious in the case, with only a few exceptions that gave us one suspect and that they were guilty. The thing that really surprised me was how the culprit made me, as well as the cast, think that the robber did indeed commit suicide. However, that is all that was great about that case. As for the magician murder case, that was okay. The case there was setup pretty and was somewhat interesting. However, the thing that I enjoyed the most was the humor of Harley being jealous of Kazuha’s admiration for one of the three magicians. It seems that Harley likes Kazuha just as much as Jimmy likes Rachel, because Jimmy seemed to be jealous of Rachel being with the person who inspired her to pick up karate in volume, right before the murder case happened. What made it even funnier was that Harley seemed to be more focused on Kazuha than the investigation. Since he is supposed to be just as good as Jimmy, he is supposed to be giving a lot of attention to the investigation. There were also some funny scenes within the volume, but aside from what I mentioned, the only thing that came to my mind was Jimmy and Harley helping out in the kitchen. Supposedly, jimmy has been living alone for three years, according to the first volume, but he cannot seem to slice cucumbers. Now, I am not much better than him, since I am not too sure how easy it would be for somebody like me, but considering that we do not know how he fed himself, except for the bread seen in his mouth in volume 26, which contains the last portion of the Desperate Revival arc, I would think that Jimmy cooked for himself a lot. Here, however, because he could not slice anything, I get the feeling that he did not. Outside of that, I cannot think of anything without repeating myself. The fact that none of the cases were that bad and that there were things that made this pretty decent.

Although I did like the book, there are certainly some issues. First, while the cases were certainly enjoyable, they were not as interesting as I was hoping them to be. In fact, out of all the cases, the only one that seemed to have really stood to me was the murder case that started off this volume. All the rest were a bit too obvious, though not as obvious as episode 6 of the anime. Yes, we know the only suspect in the robbery was guilty, but I could already determine how the person died. The only thing that was a mystery was how the culprit made it look like the robber jumped. That was the very thing that made that case this case was ruined because we already knew who did it. The only thing that really saved this case was the fact that the guys was not doing too much that should have attracted attention, unlike the guy in volume 45. I also was not that impressed by the magician murder. Not only was the culprit obvious, but the trick was also obviously based on some kind of illusion, made even more obvious by the fact that one of the characters said that the house was designed by the very magician who mentored the three magicians we met in this case. Of course, what I think ruined things the most about it was that all of our suspects were either magicians or an assistant to a magician. Yes, Kaito Kuroba is a magician as well, though he does not perform tricks on a stage, but the cases where he and Jimmy go head to head are interesting because we do not know what trick he is going to pull off, he can disguise himself as anybody, and most of the places he targets are not, as far as I know, designed by magicians. Here, I do not get the same kind of excitement that I get from a KID case. I guess this is why magicians are better suited to be thieves than murderers. What made the culprit obvious though was what Rachel and Kazuha said they noticed and that a blackout conveniently happened right when Rachel, Kazuha, and the culprit were in the same hallway where the body was found after the blackout. I am not too sure about you guys, but I do not think that a culprit could any more obvious in a case where all suspects have experience creating illusions. It really ruined an otherwise decent case. Another thing that I did not like was that unlike volumes 41 and 37, which were both volumes that preceded volumes containing encounters with Black Org, this did not really do anything to set the stage for the Black Org case that will occur in volumes 48 and 49, according to Detective Conan World. This really disappointed me, because I was really looking forward to this volume and seeing how things will be setup. Then again, seeing that the Black Org case does not start off volume 48, and volume 46 already revealed an important piece of information, I guess I can let it slide. While it was disappointing that the stage was not set for the next Black Org case, what really hurt the book was the fact that only one case seemed to be interesting.

Despite my disappointment and the fact that most of the cases were obvious in one way or another, the good outweighed it enough to make it a good way to kill time. I recommend that fans of detective, mystery, and crime fiction, as well as Detective Conan (Case Closed), read only the first case because that was the only good one and we find out whether or not Jimmy’s secret is revealed, and avoid the rest of the volume, unless one has time to kill. As for everyone else, I would recommend skipping this because the cases that are obvious will probably not make this series look too good.

What are your thoughts on Case Closed Volume 47? Do you agree or disagree with my views? Do you have anything to add? Feel free to comment.