Anime Review: Case Closed Episodes 124 & 125
Things seem to be progressing very nicely, huh?
Back near the end of 2013, I decided to cover the first seven episodes of FUNimation’s fifth season to finish out the year, as well as reach a case that was somewhat important earlier than I would have.
With only 6 (7, according to FUNimation’s count) episodes remaining in the dub, it looks like I fulfilled my goal.
Today, I will be reviewing Case Closed episodes 124 & 125 (Detective Conan episode 118).
As I have given a series synopsis in an earlier post, I will not go over it again.
Jimmy, Richard, and Rachel are in Osaka for some sight seeing, or so two of the trio think, because Jimmy thinks that Harley actually wanted help with something.
However, when a corpse falls on the car the group, now with one more additional member, are riding in, Jimmy and Harley find themselves in the middle of a case serial murder where a connection between the victims have yet to be found.
Now, Jimmy and Harley, as well as Osaka police, must find the one responsible before any more bodies appear.
I got to say, I really enjoyed this case. The case was set up quite and not very much was obvious. In fact, I too thought that the guy with criminal past that was introduced in this episode was the one responsible. Compared to other episodes, things seem to be going uphill in terms of quality. However, seeing as this case comes from manga, just like the previous case, the one that deserves all the praise is Gosho Aoyama. I cannot really think of many cases from him in this season set that I found to be dull, especially now. Speaking of the manga, this case was fairly faithful to its manga counterpart with few, if any, changes or omissions, at least on Japan’s side of things. Everything I saw in this case also happened in the manga, especially the beginning with two law enforcement officials talking about the serial murder case before the Jimmy and Harley get involved. This good, seeing this case does have some importance to the series. First thing of importance is Kazuha, Harley’s love interest, considering that they both get jealous a few times throughout the series, just like Jimmy and Rachel, makes her official debut. Now, while this is not something important to finding the antidote to APTX 4869 and/or Black Org, unless Kazuha unexpectedly ends up being the boss, it is kind of important because from this point onward, at least as far as I can remember, she appears in practically every case involving both Jimmy and Harley, except for the confrontation with Vermouth, the only known living Black Org member that knows Haibara is former member Shiho Miyano and Conan Edogawa is actually Jimmy Kudo, since I doubt that Bourbon, the most recent Black Org member to be introduced has found that out yet, though she did appear in a flashback in the manga version of that case. The other thing of importance here is that one of the suspects in this case is a former member of Black Org, and almost a test subject for APTX 4869, according to what Haibara said in a case in volume 35 of the manga, which corresponds to anime episodes 289 and 290 (Japanese count), according to Detective Conan World. Unfortunately, this not a Black Org case and the suspect does not seem to have anything Jimmy would find important, seeing as he was not killed off like Akemi Miyano was earlier in the manga. There were also some funny scenes present in this case. The funniest was when Kazuha made her first appearance. When Kazuha speaks up she says, “You’re Kudo, isn’t that right?” This made me think, like Jimmy, that Kazuha knew that Conan was Jimmy. However, what made me laugh was that we find out that Kazuha was talking to Rachel, not Jimmy, and called her a seductress. I guess she really has made her claim on Harley, if she thinks that Rachel is trying to steal him, because she thought Rachel was Jimmy. The thing that I liked the most though was Harley confronting the true culprit. After Harley reveals his deduction and that the culprit shamed his profession, the culprit tried to commit suicide, but Harley saved his life, despite the fact that the culprit refused help, saying that he believed in the law and the culprit should have found a way to reopen the case, since he cared about it so much, instead acting on his own and betraying the badge. It seemed like a really powerful and emotional moment, because I felt that Harley’s feelings were genuine in that moment and that he was good person. He is somebody that I would want as a friend, if he were real, because too many people out there in our society are hypocrites. This just makes the whole case seem much better than the other ones, not just because it was interesting. The fact that we are introduced to person that will later be revealed to be a former member of Black Org, even though they may not have important information, and the fact that the Harley’s scene with the culprit seemed to be powerful made this one of the best cases I have seen.
Although I did like case, there are some issues. First, it looks like FUNimation disregarded my wish. When I first reviewed the season 4 set on Amazon, I said that I would still support the release, while hoping that an issue that came up in episode 96 (Japanese count) did not happen again. However, they yet again literally split an extended length episode into multiple parts, while clearly showing that it was supposed to be one by showing scenes from both episodes of the case. I cannot believe FUNimation thought that was a good idea, especially after I had already complained about this kind of problem with the fourth season. Not only is FUNimation still releasing extended length episodes that have literally been split, but they are still, at the time this set was originally released, claiming that these episodes have been unedited and uncut. Unfortunately, like episode 96 (Japanese count), when they rereleased the fifth season, they still did not bother fixing this issue, because the iTunes listing for the fifth season also lists this episode as two separate episodes. Really? FUNimation Do you expect to stay in business when you do not listen to fans? True, FUNimation may have been made to do certain things when they licensed this from Japan, but seeing as three extended length episodes of other season sets were released as intended, I doubt releasing two of them as literally six episodes was part of that deal. Then again, seeing as this was not the worst thing about this release, I will label this just slightly below a major issue. Incidentally, the worst thing I found wrong with this episode is that the epilogue was removed. In the Japanese version, which I had to find fansubs for because I do not think I can trust FUNimation’s Japanese track, after the credits finish rolling, we see Jimmy, Kazuha, and Rachel in an ambulance with Harley, whom the three are worried about, and Kazuha wants Harley to wake up and the EMT says that he is not sure if Harley would be alright, when asked. After that Harley says that something in reference to the case that happened in episodes 77 and 78 (Japanese count on both), where Jimmy revealed that the Moonlight Sonata Murder Case did affect him, before he says that he is sleepy. Not only did this happen in the Japanese version, but it also occurred in the manga. However, after the credits in FUNimation’s release, this scene is not shown at all. In the past, FUNimation has been good about including the epilogue of most cases, especially in episodes that came earlier in this set. I guess FUNimation does not really care about pleasing Detective Conan fans any more, because even the version streaming on their site omits this scene, bringing up a thing to watch the next video instead, which along with a question posted to the Save Case Closed forums, which I can now answer properly, leads me to believe the newer releases of the fifth season set also have this flaw. While there is one part of this scene that makes me want to overlook this issue, because it ruined the whole feel of things and made me wish Harley did die, I cannot because I have to take into account the fact that the fifth season, like its predecessor, was advertised as being unedited and uncut. If season sets are advertised to be unedited and uncut, all episodes must be uncut and epilogues like this must be retain, not utterly removed for no apparent reason. I do not care where the edits and/or cuts came from. The only thing this does is makes people who bought this feel cheated. Congratulations FUNimation, you have not only gave me a reason to not repurchase any of the episodes I would have been willing to buy again, but also gave me a good reason to put any future season sets that may come, if you decide to ever release episode 124+ (Japanese count), on the lowest priority for any kind of list of desired titles, since Viz has been treating the manga version of this series much better than you have the anime version. Other than that, the only other things I noticed were the same minor issues from the fourth season set. While there were only two things wrong with this episode, the thing that really hurt this episode was the fact that it came in a set that was advertised as unedited and uncut, which made those two items issues to begin with.
Despite the nice things about this episode, the unedited and uncut advertisement made this a waste of time. I recommend that fans of Detective Conan (Case Closed) to avoid the dubbed version of this case at all costs and either go read the manga version or watch this in Japanese, preferably not FUNimation’s Japanese track. As for fans of detective, mystery, and crime fiction and everyone else, the case was decent enough to watch and the false advertisement of being unedited and uncut probably will not make it as bad as it does for fans of Detective Conan.
What are your thoughts on Case Closed episodes 124 & 125? Were you as disappointed as I was with FUNimation’s release? Did you not mind the continued false advertising? Feel free to comment.