The Strange Family's Request

Chronology
‹ Hot, Bitter, Sweet Soup	List of Episodes	Ran's Suspicions ›

Episode 398-399 (Int. Episode {{{int-episode}}})
Information
Title:	The Strange Family's Request
Japanese title:	奇妙な一家の依頼 (Kimyō na Ikka no Irai)
Original airdate:	May 16, 2005 (Part 1) May 23, 2005 (Part 2)
Broadcast rating:	12.7% 12.2%
Manga case:	#138
Season:	14
Manga source:	Volume 46: File 11 (479) ~ Volume 47: File 3 (482)
Case
Cast:	Conan Edogawa Kogoro Mouri Ran Mouri Shinichi Kudo Ai Haibara Juzo Megure Wataru Takagi Hiroshi Agasa The Boss Gin Vodka Vermouth
Case solved by:	Conan Edogawa Kogoro Mouri
Next Conan's Hint:	Cell phone lock (Part 1) The event from 12 years ago (Part 2)
Staff
Director:	Masato Sato
Organizer:	398 Yuzo Aoki 399 Roko Ogiwara
Storyboard:	398 Yuzo Aoki 399 Roko Ogiwara
Episode director:	398 Minoru Tozawa 399 Roko Ogiwara
Animation director:	398 Rei Masunaga 399 Hirobi Muranaka
Character design:	Kumiko Shishido (design works) Keiko Sasaki
Voice Cast: Minami Takayama as Conan Edogawa Kappei Yamaguchi as Shinichi Kudo Wakana Yamazaki as Ran Mouri Akira Kamiya as Kogoro Mouri, Goro Mori Chafurin as Juzo Megure Wataru Takagi as Wataru Takagi Kenichi Ogata as Hiroshi Agasa Megumi Hayashibara as Ai Haibara Kazuko Yanaga as Tomoko Kariya Koichi Kitamura as Daisaku Kariya Shouzou Iizuka as Tsugutaka Kariya Tetsuya Iwanaga as Eisuke Kariya Yukari Honma as Motoka Aida Tomohiro Nishimura as Shigehide Kariya Masako Isobe as Kato Shinobu Sato as Nakamura Kosuke Meguro as Phone voice Isshin Chiba as Announcer
Music
Opening song:	Hoshi no Kagayaki yo
Closing song:	June Bride ~Anata Shika Mienai~

The Strange Family's Request (奇妙な一家の依頼 ,Kimyō na Ikka no Irai) is the 398th and 399th episode of Detective Conan anime.

Cast

Characters
Conan Edogawa Kogoro Mouri Ran Mouri Shinichi Kudo (in Ran's thought/background) Ai Haibara Juzo Megure Wataru Takagi Hiroshi Agasa The boss (black figure/background) Gin (background) Vodka (background) Vermouth (background)

Case

Situation

Part 1

Ran sends a message to Shinichi's phone only to find Conan's phone has also received the message causing her to suspect Conan calling Shinichi for help on cases. A woman named Tomoko Kariya hires Kogoro to search for her cellphone which contains messages of her affair. She attempted to call her phone and someone always hangs it up. She suspects that her either her father-in-law, brother-in-law, or husband has her phone. After questioning the three, Tomoko shows up with her phone, saying that she has found it on her own and sends Kogoro away promising to pay for his time. While heading to Professor Agasa's house to tell him about Ran's suspicion of Conan being Shinichi (despite Ran suspecting Conan calling Shinichi for help on cases), Conan learns from the news that Tomoko was found dead in her car after being stabbed and bludgeoned.

Murder
	Location: Temuzu River Victim: Tomoko Kariya Age: 39 years old Cause of death: Stab wound on abdomen and blunt-force trauma Suspects: Daisaku Kariya, Shigehide Kariya, and Tsugutaka Kariya She was stabbed and then killed by a blow to the head, same as a case twelve years earlier.

Kogoro, Ran, and Conan return to the Kariya home with the police to investigate. The three have established alibis: The father was heard behind the shōji, the brother's shadow was seen by the shōji, and the husband's pipe smoking was smelt. After ruling out the man having an affair with Tomoko, the police's investigation leads them to believe the case is somehow related to a murder twelve years ago which was done by Eisuke Kariya, the third family son who disappeared after being suspected for the murder of his fiancé. The man, who Tomoko had an affair with, turns out to have an alibi. Strange things had been happening in the house lately. An old friend of Eisuke had called Tomoko, to ask about phone calls he has been getting from her cellphone. With Conan's help the police concluded that the thief, who took the phone, must have been someone who wouldn't be disturb for a long time, which is needed to figure out the password to the phone. While Conan is thinking, Ran waits for Conan to call Shinichi and when he does Ran would get the phone and talk with Shinichi.

Part 2

Murder (Past)
	Location: Phone-booth Victim: Motoka Aida Cause of death: Stab wound on abdomen and blunt-force trauma Suspects: Eisuke Kariya She was stabbed and then killed by a blow to the head twelve years ago. Her fiancé Eisuke disappeared and has not yet been found.

Ran begins to think about Conan's personality and ends up suspecting that Conan is Shinichi. Then another doorbell prank happened. The maids reveal that twenty years ago, Eisuke called the family, asking to let Motoka stay for the night, since she miss her train, but his father Daisaku began yell at Motoka in the phone, accusing her of being unfaithful. No one knows how he found out about it, but Daisaku is very strict about infidelity, because his wife had been unfaithful to him, which resulted in a divorce. The maids tells the police that Tsugutaka gets really upset about the doorbell pranks and of phone call prank, but strangely there is no call in the log. That get Conan thinking. He asks Ran if she had send a message. When Ran, in suspicious mode, says yes, Conan asks if she check the number before sending it. Ran says that she didn't need to check, since she was just re-sending the message she send this morning, but as she takes out her phone to and realize that she actually send a message to a completely different address, and Conan realize how Tomoko was able to find her phone. Conan reveals that the person who has the cellphone is obviously inexperienced with one. Since cellphones weren't popularized until a decade ago, the one who had the phone is Eisuke. Conan reveals that one of the three is hiding Eisuke.

People

Tomoko Kariya
	Victim (stabbed and bludgeoned) 39 years old Kogoro's client Married to Tsugutaka

Daisaku Kariya
	68 years old Kariya household head

Shigehide Kariya
	37 years old Kariya's second son Author

Tsugutaka Kariya
	42 years old Kariya's eldest son Tomoko's husband Artist

Eisuke Kariya
	Kariya's third son Missing

Motoka Aida
	Deceased (stabbed and bludgeoned) Eisuke's fiancée

Kato
	Kariya family maid

Nakamura
	Kariya family maid

Man #1
	Eisuke and Tomoko's friend

Man #2
	Tomoko's lover

Man #3
	Tomoko's lover's friend

Announcer
	Evening news announcer

Resolution

  Show spoilers »

From Conan's hints, Kogoro, Megure, and Ran are able to solve the case and unveal the culprit identity.

• The person who took Tomoko's cellphone is the third son Eisuke Kariya, who went missing after the murder of his fiance's Motoka Aida. Because cellphone only became well known during the period of ten years before the present time, Eisuke, who has been in hiding for the whole 12 year, is not well-accustomed to its function compared to his family members, thus was unable to turn it off or turn its volume down when a mail was sent to it or a call was performed. If one of the three suspects has been assisting in hiding Eisuke somewhere inside the house, then they could've had him creating an alibi for them while they went out with Tomoko to the Temuzu River and killed her.

• First, they remove the father Daisaku from the suspect list, as it is impossible to create an alibi regarding the smell of curry in advance due the maids only changed the meal from stew to curry 10 minutes before serving. Since it is necessary to leave the house at least 30 minutes in order to get to the location and commit the crime, this rules out that Daisaku's voice was pre-recorded in advance.

• Next, they deduct that Tsugutaka was unlikely to be the murderer since he took the curry into his room long after the time of murder: if he wanted to create an alibi during the time of murder, having Eisuke taking the curry into the room or taking it inside by himself after returning from the crime scene would be a more reasonable option, else if the curry was left behind he would've become the prime suspect anyway. This leave only Shigehide as the possible suspect for the crime.

The group then confront Shigehide about the fact that he has been hiding his brother inside the house.

• Shigehide's novels are unnaturally old fashioned: none of the characters in his stories use cellphone, and characters with bleached hair also rarely appear, and only as antagonists and alike, meaning that Eisuke was actually the person who wrote the novels. Additionally, since Eisuke has been hiding inside the house's attic, then he must had heard the conversation between Tomoko and her husband and used it in one of his novel.

At this point, Eisuke reveals himself and confesses to stabbing his fiancée twelve years ago after learning of her affair, though he denies of bludgeoning her to death, tipping the group off that Shigehide was actually the person who murdered Motoka and not Eisuke due to the same murder method used in the two cases, and the motive was because he was Motoka's affair partner. Because the affair took place in the family, it was discovered by Daisaku who never left the house after he was injured in the accident. The reason Tomoko was murdered in the same way was because Shigehide was trying to frame Eisuke for the crime, and the reason he had been hiding Eisuke all these years was to prevent the truth that he was actually the person who bludgeoned her to death from coming to light.

Though Shigehide demands evidence connecting him to the murders, Ran reveals how Tomoko was able to find her cellphone so easily: she repeatedly sent a mail to her own cellphone with Ran's, and used the ringtone to locate it along with Eisuke. Tomoko had set her call ringtone the same as the house's phone, while the mail ringtone is the same as the doorbell in order to always find a suitable excuse to contact with her affair partner. Since the mail ringtone is now heard by them, this means that Shigehide has been hiding the Tomoko's cellphone inside his room, along with the knife used in the murder. The reason he didn't destroy the cellphone or throw it aways is because he need to confirm that Tomoko didn't expose his secrets to any of her friends and associates.

Motive

Shigehide confesses that he murdered Tomoko because she demanded ¥10 million in exchange for not exposing him about the fact that he had been passing off Eisuke's novel as his own and had murdered Eisuke's fiance and framed him for the crime. As for Motoko's murder twelve years ago, he didn't planned to kill her and only went to check on her after hearing that she was stabbed by Eisuke, intending to take her to the hospital. However, when Motoka blasted that she actually intended to marry one of the brothers for money and threatened to drive him to misery after the ordeal she had suffered, he became enraged and killed her. He also reveals that he might had killed Eisuke long ago to cover up the crime, hasn't it for that he loves to read Eisuke's novels and has always been anticipated to read the next chapter.

Aftermath

Later that night, Ran grabs a hold of Conan's phone when he drops it in the car and checks to see the message she sent to Shinichi is there.

Trivia

• Tomoko Kariya's car is an Iris Red Pearl 2001 Honda Fit (Honda Jazz) [GD].
• This is the first case that shows Conan's soccer ball cell phone strap.
• Sometimes in this case, Conan's cell phone appeared red, and other times, grayish.

Manga to anime changes

The censored scene.

• The scene of Ran's imagination of Shinichi and his "secret girlfriend" is changed to avoid sexual content: the manga has Shinchi and the girl sleeping naked in the same bed, while the anime has him goes out to buy a snack while the girl is in the car. Both scenes featuring the girl checking out Shinichi's cellphone. Also, the anime cut out the part at the Temuzu River in which Ran, in bad mood after Kogoro keep repeating the word "cheating", screams at him that it is not cheating because (she and Shinichi) are not married.
• The "secret girlfriend"'s appearance appears to be an amalgamation of Ai Haibara (upper hair) and Vermouth (long wavy hair).
• The anime doesn't include a moment during the car ride home in the end of the case, where Ran suggest that maybe Tomoko's husband had known about his wife having an affair, since he always got in a bad mood, whenever those 'pranks' happened.

BGM listing

Part 1

#	Song Title	Romaji	Translation	OST
1	星のかがやきよ	Hoshi no Kagayaki yo	The Brilliance of the Stars	Hoshi no Kagayaki yo
2	ワインをのんで	Wain o Nonde	Drinking Wine	Detective Conan "The Fourteenth Target" Original Soundtrack
3	陽気な仲間	Yōki na Nakama	Cheerful Friends	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 4 ~Isoge! Shōnen Tanteidan~
4	(Unreleased BGM 15)
5	のんびり気分	Nonbiri Kibun	Carefree Feeling	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 1
6	西の名探偵	Nishi no Meitantei	The Great Detective of the West	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 3
7	西の名探偵	Nishi no Meitantei	The Great Detective of the West	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 3
8	西の名探偵	Nishi no Meitantei	The Great Detective of the West	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 3
9	事件解決 （意気揚々ver.）	Jiken Kaiketsu (Ikiyōyō ver.)	Case Resolution (Triumphant ver.)	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 2
10	何かが起きる…	Nanika ga Okiru...	Something Happened...	Detective Conan "The Fourteenth Target" Original Soundtrack
11	事件現場 （謎ver.）	Jiken Genba (Nazo ver.)	Scene of the Case (Mystery ver.)	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 2
12	事件解明 （オリジナルver.）	Jiken Kaimei (Orijinaru ver.)	Case Clarification (Original ver.)	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 2
13	コナンの直感	Konan no Chokkan	Conan's Intuition	Detective Conan "Countdown to Heaven" Original Soundtrack
14	悪のテーマ （パート２）	Aku no Tēma (Pāto 2)	Theme of Evil (Part 2)	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 2
15	Need not to know.	Need not to know.	Need not to know.	Detective Conan "Captured in Her Eyes" Original Soundtrack
16	推理 （オリジナルver.）	Suiri (Orijinaru ver.)	Deduction (Original ver.)	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 2
17	ジューンブライド～あなたしか見えない～	Jūn Buraido ~Anata Shika Mienai~	June Bride ~Only You I See~	June Bride ~Anata Shika Mienai~

Part 2

#	Song Title	Romaji	Translation	OST
1	星のかがやきよ	Hoshi no Kagayaki yo	The Brilliance of the Stars	Hoshi no Kagayaki yo
2	コナン推理	Konan Suiri	Conan's Deduction	Detective Conan "Countdown to Heaven" Original Soundtrack
3	推理 （オリジナルver.）	Suiri (Orijinaru ver.)	Deduction (Original ver.)	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 2
4	犯人（スナイパー）の正体	Hannin (Sunaipā) no Shōtai	The Culprit's (Sniper's) Identity	Detective Conan "Captured in Her Eyes" Original Soundtrack
5	迷路	Meiro	Labyrinth	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 4 ~Isoge! Shōnen Tanteidan~
6	陰謀	Inbō	Conspiracy	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 3
7	忍び寄る影	Shinobiyoru Kage	Creeping Shadow	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 3
8	カギを探せ！	Kagi o Sagase!	Search for the Key!	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 4 ~Isoge! Shōnen Tanteidan~
9	捜査会議	Sōsa Kaigi	Investigation Meeting	Detective Conan "Countdown to Heaven" Original Soundtrack
10	夜の探索	Yoru no Tansaku	Night Search	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 4 ~Isoge! Shōnen Tanteidan~
11	小さな巨人	Chiisana Kyojin	A Small Great Person	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 1
12	緊迫	Kinpaku	Tension	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 2
13	小さな巨人	Chiisana Kyojin	A Small Great Person	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 1
14	推理 （オリジナルver.）	Suiri (Orijinaru ver.)	Deduction (Original ver.)	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 2
15	Need not to know.	Need not to know.	Need not to know.	Detective Conan "Captured in Her Eyes" Original Soundtrack
16	ジャック・ザ・リッパーの生い立ち	Jakku・Za・Rippā no Oitachi	Jack the Ripper's Upbringing	Detective Conan "The Phantom of Baker Street" Original Soundtrack
17	コナン組曲－Captured In Her Eyes	Konan Kumikyoku - Captured in Her Eyes	Conan Suite - Captured in Her Eyes	Detective Conan "Captured in Her Eyes" Original Soundtrack
18	それいけコナン （哀愁ヴァージョン）	Soreike Konan (Aishū Vājon)	Let's Go Conan (Sorrow Version)	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 1
19	ジューンブライド～あなたしか見えない～	Jūn Buraido ~Anata Shika Mienai~	June Bride ~Only You I See~	June Bride ~Anata Shika Mienai~
20	驚愕の真実	Kyōgaku no Shinjitsu	Surprising Truth	Detective Conan "Captured in Her Eyes" Original Soundtrack

In other languages

Language	Title	Translation
Arabic	حادثة وفاة غريبة	A Strange Death Incident
Catalan (Catalan dub)	La petició d'una família estranya	The strange family's request
Catalan (Valencian dub)	La petició d'una família estranya	The strange family's request
German	Die Anfrage einer seltsamen Familie	The strange family's request
Italian	La strana famiglia	The Strange Family
Vietnamese	Yêu cầu kì lạ của một gia đình
Thai	การจ้างวานจากครอบครัวพิลึก	The Weird Family's Commission

See also

• Season 14