Bryce's Blog

Because of the fact that I finished the books I received from Barnes & Noble, I decided to keep continuing to review the episodes of Detective Conan (Case Closed). Today, I will be reviewing Detective Conan (Case Closed) episode 6.

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

Valentine’s season is afoot but the Junior Detective League does not care, as they are trying to pass out fliers. However, Jimmy is more interested in what Rachel and Serena are up to now. While Serena is daydreaming about one of the guys that approached her and Rachel one time, one of those boys asks Rachel on a date to a Valentine’s party, which makes Jimmy jealous. On the day of the party, Rachel, Serena, and, unknown them, Jimmy attend and think that things are going to peaceful, though Jimmy keeps hoping that Rachel will reject the guy who invited her. However, during dessert time, one of the party members turns up dead outside with some chocolate found next to his body. The prime suspect is the one the victim truly loved, but another member had a motive. Now, Jimmy must find the guilty party before the possibly wrong suspect is taken away.

I am not too sure about this episode. It is not necessarily my favorite, but there are things that I liked. For example, neither Jimmy nor Rachel have ever confessed to each other, as far as I am going say, but Jimmy’s jealousy over a guy asking Rachel out on a date certainly says otherwise. People are like that in real life. If there is somebody who they have strong feelings for, they will most likely become jealous when somebody takes them. I guess that is why they say that a person has to make the first move. On the other hand, people are stupid creatures. Women who have a guy they like want that guy to pick up on her hints and confess to her. At the same time, men do not pick up on such signals right away, especially if the women is some complete stranger or somebody they know well. Men are generally afraid of rejection towards confessing their feelings, but it cannot be hidden completely. For this reason, they should not be all that surprised when somebody else takes their person of interest, but the fact that they become jealous says otherwise. In my view, the party with the strong feeling must confess. If it is the woman, just say it because the man will not realize how one feels. If it is the man, the woman may realize but she would want to hear out, even if she is quite observant. Of course, Rachel’s reaction to Serena replying for her does show her feelings toward Jimmy, even though he heard it when he moved in to Rachel’s in episode 2. I guess that is one of the unanswered questions that still remain in the series to this day. Serena was quite funny in this episode too, but is not one of the funniest parts of the episode. One of the most funniest I find though happens at other point. The guy that invited Rachel tries to make his move to kiss her and mistakenly grabs Jimmy hands, saying he was waiting for so long. He then kisses Jimmy on the lips and realizes that he kissed another guy instead of Rachel. Kissing a kid is not that bothersome but the fact that both Jimmy and the other guy were grossed out was funny. Outside of the funny parts though, the only thing that seemed interesting was that Jimmy received a new gadget in this episode, so does not need to worry about how to knock people out. Also, considering this is the second time Jimmy used Richard’s voice was a bit more believable, since there would be no reason to run a sound check to get the voice right, like I complained in my review of episode 3. The fact that Jimmy received a new gadget and the funny parts of the episode certainly are some good points.

Although the episode was funny, I cannot really say that this was a great episode. First, this was the first filler episode in the series, which is confirmed by MagicBox. While fillers are not necessarily all bad, especially since the manga has plenty of cases that people consider filler, the anime filler episodes just are not that interesting all the time. In fact, there are only a few anime filler episodes I really enjoyed. This one, however, is not one of them. The method of how the victim died was just too obvious, as was the fact of what did not kill him. When we see the chocolate at the scene, we do get led to think that was the cause of death. However, when Jimmy points out that somebody gave the victim a cigarette, Meguire and Richard do not notice the filter was not attached, which we do. I doubt that a cigarette would have its filter removed if a person smoked cigarettes with a filter, like they thought. Another strange thing, which was pointed out by Jimmy, but is obvious early on is that a little boy was scolded by his mother about eating sweets because he got too many cavities, but later gave him cake. Unfortunately, that reveals the method that the culprit employed. If that was not bad enough, the method also makes the culprit obvious. For as many times I complained about culprits being obvious on my blog, this one absolutely takes first place. I can easily deal with culprits being obvious, no matter how much I do not like it, but when even the method is obvious and makes the culprit obvious, I cannot really call that a mystery anymore, unless the storyline focused on dramatic irony, which Detective Conan does not really focus on with the exception that the audience knows Jimmy and Conan are the same person. The fact that too much was obvious puts a huge damper on the mystery aspect of the show, even when the funny scenes are taken into account.

Considering that there was absolutely no mystery here, I do not think that this was worth the time to watch, unless one wants to know how Jimmy got one of his gadgets in the anime or want a few laughs. I would recommend this to fans of the Detective Conan (Case Closed) anime that do not know how Jimmy got one of his most used gadgets and possibly those who enjoy the manga too. For fans of detective, mystery, and crime fiction, I really recommend skipping this episode because too much was obvious. For everyone else, I do not think that this would be a good episode to start out with as either an introduction to the series or to detective, mystery, and crime fiction.

What are your thoughts on Case Closed episode 6? Do you agree or disagree with my views? Do you have anything to add? Feel free to comment.