| Volume 52
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| Information
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| Release date:
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January 16, 2006
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| Chapters:
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533-543
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| ISBN:
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ISBN 4-09-120026-5
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| Publisher:
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Shogakukan
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| English release date:
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October 14, 2014
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| English ISBN:
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ISBN 978-1-4215-6508-8
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| English Publisher:
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Viz Media
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| Featured Detective & Keyhole
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| Aoyama's death & Conan side images
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Volume 52 was released on January 16, 2006 in Japan.
Cast
Gadgets
Chapters
Star Blade Case
File 533 - Suspicious Action!?
File 534 - Connection Sneak Peek
Bungo Tatei wants to kill himself and have his friend Joji Narukawa accused of actually murdering him, in order to avenge his girlfriend Ami's death, caused more or less by Narukawa. Though, Conan and co stop him from doing so, and explain him the truth.
People
Fake Wedding Case
File 535 - Wedding Hall Panic
File 536 - The Uninvited Guest
File 537 - Wedding Battle
The culprit is Masateru Taira.
People
Overturned Belongings Case
File 538 - Out of Ordinary Room
File 539 - Upside Down Mystery
File 540 - The Thing He Wanted to Hide
The culprit is Toshihisa Manda.
People
Sonoko's Handkerchief Case
Characters introduced
File 541 - Sonoko's Red Handkerchief
Sonoko takes Ran and Conan to a maple forest in the mountains of Gunma Prefecture which was used to film a well-received romantic TV series. In one scene of this series, the lead actor (who starred as a soldier) tied a red handkerchief to a tree branch and told his lover implicitly to reunite with him there after years apart. This prompted a large number of fans to go to the forest and tie red handkerchieves to trees themselves. They soon become ubiquitous in some parts of the forest, meaning that Sonoko's scheme to imitate the series (by tying a red handkerchief herself and sending a message to Makoto) and lure Makoto out for a romantic rendezvous will not work (as he will not be able to tell Sonoko's handkerchieves from all the other ones).
The three visitors encounter a man who claims to be part of the TV series crew. He explains that he was the one who gave the scriptwriter the idea of including a scene of tying a red handkerchief to a tree in this forest, because he had spotted one while searching for a place to film. Due to this, as the series became popular and fans called TV stations with enquires about where the scene was shot etc., he was tasked to respond to such enquires and requests. He further says that that day he has been asked by a fan to find the exact location of the tree with the original red handkerchief (i.e. the one that inspired the scene). He has found the tree but has forgotten the telephone number of the fan, because of which he asks Ran and Sonoko to leave a message for the fan in the guestbook of the inn where the fan is staying and to sign the message 'Hozumi' in katakana. Ran and Sonoko agree and set off for the inn to leave the message; the latter thus forgets to tie her handkerchief. She later realizes this and returns to the forest with Conan and Ran, and they discover that Hozumi has been stabbed and is dead. They also discover the notebook of Hozumi, which is on the forest floor some distance from his body, and there is a bloodstain on the date April 1st.
File 542 - Name in Katakana
Conan discovers that Hozumi was killed within the last thirty minutes and finds dirt in his nails. He also senses that a number of people are around watching him, Ran and Sonoko but cannot figure out who they are (he later asked the police about this, but they were not even aware of the existence of those people and only found an empty tent in the forest).
Detective Yamamura arrives after Ran calls the police; he turns out to be a fan of the TV series (he started watching upon his grandmother's recommendation). After being informed of what happened, Yamamura makes some nonsense deductions and then decides to head to the inn where the fan entrusting Hozumi to find the tree stays in so as to obtain further clues. After being shown a list of the inn's guests, Conan and Yamamura are able to narrow the suspects down to three people, who are named Isamu Okuma, Tatsuzo Watanuki and Hans Berkeley. Yamamura's questioning of them does not yield much useful information, and all three claim that they do not know the TV series in question at all. Meanwhile, one of Yamamura's subordinates informs him that there is nobody in the TV series crew named Hozumi. Yamamura takes a close look at the list of crew members and complains that the dates on it are messed up. This unintentional hint allows Conan to understand the bloodstain on April 1st and he heads into the forest alone. He finds a tree to which a single handkerchief is tied, murmurs that Hozumi must have dug something up before meeting the culprit and finds the skeleton of a human head beneath the forest floor.
On the other hand, Sonoko is very happy to see that in the karate tournament that Makoto is participating in, the commentator presents him as someone who has not lost in all his 400 matches despite only having 18 years old.
File 543 - Superman
Conan tells Ran on phone that Agasa is going to pick him up and uses the call to give instructions on how to get to the tree with the original handkerchief (this is aimed at the culprit, whom Conan deduces to be Tatsuzo Watanuki and who can hear the phone call). Watanuki arrives there soon after and Conan confronts him and begins his deduction. It turns out that Watanuki once murdered someone and buried the body under a tree in the maple forest. In order to find the body later (for relocation in case that someone grows suspicious), he marked the the burial spot by tying a red handkerchief to a tree branch. The red color would hide it from passerbys as people normally would visit this remote forest only in autumn, when there is plenty of red leaves. But since that handkerchief ended up inspiring the popular series and a lot of people subsequently tied red handkerchiefs nearby, it became impossible for Watanuki to find his handkerchief and tree. So he contacted Hozumi and paid him to find his tree for him. Hozumi did, but he also found the body. Hozumi thus tried to blackmail Watanuki, and this got him killed. He was stabbed twice because Watanuki noticed that he was not immediately dead after the first and left something on his notebook. Watanuki then left the killing scene with the notebook, but since he failed to understand the dying message, he thought that there was nothing valuable in the notebook and thus threw it away. Conan also notes that since the TV series crew did not want Watanuki's handkerchief to be filmed (having two handkerchieves in one scene would be weird), there would be a distance between the filming place and Watanuki's tree, which is why Watanuki could not quickly find it after killing Hozumi at their meeting place (which is a rock that appears in the scene) , before he could reveal the location of the tree. Finally, Conan says that he knows that Watanuki is the culprit even if he has not come because the dying message "April 1st" means his surname.
Watanuki does not deny any of these; instead, he summons his henchmen (previously hidden behind various trees) to kill Conan, who is unprepared for such a large crowd and initially planned to stun Watanuki by using his wristwatch. Ran, who is worried about Conan, arrives with Sonoko and the three begin fighting with Watanuki's subordinates. They are soon overpowered, and Sonoko shouts "Makoto, please help". Makoto then suddenly appears and, since his martial abilities are superior to Ran's, is able to bring the situation under control together with Ran. By the time Yamamura arrives to arrest the criminals, they have all been beaten up and are unconscious. Later, it is revealed that the buried body belonged to one of the lieutenants of a criminal organization that Watanuki is also affliated with; he was killed as the two both vied for leadership and Watanuki wanted to eliminate a competitor.
On the car back to Tokyo (driven by Agasa), Makoto explains that he is also a fan of the series. Therefore he was able to partially understand Sonoko's message. The part that he did not get is when he is supposed to reunite with Sonoko. As a result he set up a camp in the forest and plans to wait until that day comes (this sign of dedication greatly pleased Sonoko). In the last panels, Makoto is reminded of the karate tournament that he abandoned upon seeing Sonoko's message, and he asks Agasa to drive to the airport (despite having been disqualified) so that he can see whether the champion is better than him or not.
People
Trivia
- The title for each chapter are worded as the following in Case Closed:
- File 533 - Suspicious Behavior
- File 534 - The Fateful Premiere
- File 535 - Panic at the Wedding Hall
- File 536 - The Uninvited Guest
- File 537 - Wedding Battle
- File 538 - The Topsy-Turvy Room
- File 539 - The Upside-Down Mystery
- File 540 - What He Wanted To Hide
- File 541 - Serena's Red Handkerchief
- File 542 - A Name in Katakana
- File 543 - Superman
Cover in other countries
Spain (Spanish, Volumen 2)
See also
