Volume 74

Shinobu Yuchi
	36 years old; Amateur novelist;

Tamami Mitsui
	41 years old; Amateur novelist;

	Volume 74
	Information
Release date:	December 14, 2011
Chapters:	774-784
ISBN:	ISBN 4-09-123428-5
Publisher:	Shogakukan
English release date:	April 14, 2020
English ISBN:	ISBN 1-97-470962-0
English Publisher:	Viz Media
	Featured Detective & Keyhole
; Inspector Onitsura	; Goro
	Aoyama's death & Conan side images

Chronology
‹ Volume 73	List of Chapters • List of Cases	Volume 75 ›

Volume 74 was released on December 14, 2011 in Japan.

Cast

Characters

Gadgets

Voice-Changing Bowtie

Chapters

Bomber's Request

Anime Episode 648-650: The Case of the Besieged Detective Agency

File 774 - The Book with the Unturned Pages

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People

Sumika Nihei
	39 years old Amateur novelist

Miku Sawaguri
	Deceased (wrist slit) Mystery writer Isao's younger sister

Isao Sawaguri
	37 years old Miku's older brother

Major events

Masumi shows interest in learning about Conan and Sleeping Kogoro.
Conan realizes that Masumi is female.

Target on Tape

Okiya listening in from the Kudo home.

Anime Episode 656-657: The Professor's Video Site

File 775 - Video Site

File 776 - A Vase and a Cat

File 777 - Traces of Ayumi

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People

Sister 1
	Woman 2's sister

Sister 2
	Woman 1's sister

Husband
	Woman 3's husband

Wife
	Man's wife

Father
	Connoisseur

Son
	Connoisseur

East vs. West

Anime Episode 651: Conan vs. Heiji, Deduction Battle Between the Detectives of the East and West

File 778 - Which One is the Great(er) Detective?

Heiji and Kazuha are coming to Tokyo (the purpose is unknown yet), and are expected to arrive at the Detective Agency shortly. Since Sera happens to be there, Ran tells her about Hattori, mentioning that he is often cited together with Shinichi Kudo as one of the greatest high school detectives in Japan. Sera therefore asks who is greater, a question that stumps Ran. Conan, on the other hand, says that while both are very skilled detectives, perhaps Shinichi is a bit greater. This annoys Heiji, who has been eavesdropping from outside the door, to a considerable extent, and he irrupts into the Agency to angrily yell that he is much greater than Shinichi. He then asks about the whereabouts of the “female detective that has been gathering information about Kudo recently”, and thus is introduced to Sera. He, like many others, is surprised that Sera is a girl, and comments (disrespectfully) that for a teenage girl her breasts seem to be underdeveloped. Sera is not offended by this comment, and responds that as her mother is completely free from this problem, she is sure that her chest will develop as well. Sera even asks Ran for confirmation, and the latter thinks to herself that she does not remember ever having seen Sera’s mother.

In the meantime, Kazuha is buying instant curry in a family restaurant nearby, as per her mother’s request. But someone has just died there, and she is stranded in the restaurant because “a strange foreign man” does not allow anyone to leave, prompting her to panickedly call Heiji for help. Sera learns about this and comments that the case is a good opportunity for comparing the abilities of the two detectives and seeing who is greater. Heiji is fired up by this proposal, and Conan smiles drily, and both agree to participate in this competition (of course, Conan is “only” Shinichi’s representative). They then head to the family restaurant with Sera, Ran and Kogoro, and Kazuha is there waiting for them. She details that the foreigner was the first to discover the body, speaks Japanese quite fluently and demanded the restrooms be closed temporarily. Kogoro finds him suspicious, but Megure, who has just surveyed the crime scene with Takagi, replies somewhat resignedly that the actual suspicious people are the likes of Kogoro who always break into a crime scene without permission. Kogoro is made very awkward by this comment, and so changes the topic and inquires Takagi about the cause of death. Takagi says that the deceased died of poisoning, as the candy in his mouth contained cyanide and there were more such candies in his pockets.

Presently, the foreigner in question shows up, and he turns out to be Andre Camel. Heiji again speaks without thinking first and asks incredulously and contemptuously why Conan would know such a “vicious-looking” foreigner. Conan thus informs him that Camel is an FBI agent (Sera finds this very interesting) on vacation, and Camel explains that he is there because (like Kazuha’s mother) he loves the curry prepared by the restaurant. Then, after Megure begrudgingly grants Kogoro’s request to see it, Camel takes the detectives to the crime scene. The deceased, whose identity is still unclear, is sitting on the flush toilet of a compartment, and Camel was in the one two compartments away. Camel thinks that the man committed suicide, as the man said that he should take personal responsibility for poisoning “Abe-chan”, moaned for a while and grew silent. Camel adds that he considered the possibility of murder, but found it unlikely because the deceased came to the restaurant alone, because when Camel rushed to the deceased’s compartment he saw nobody other than the deceased’s body, and because he only heard one voice talking from the beginning to the end (so maybe the deceased was on the phone telling another person that he felt guilty for having killed someone?). Camel also recalls that the deceased had a Kansai accent.

As Camel finishes what he has to say, he notices Sera, whom he finds vaguely familiar. As for Heiji and Conan, they immediately begin case-solving. Conan admits that he has no idea what is going on, and that until the police obtains clues about the poisoning of Abe, he cannot do much. Heiji turns exultant as he hears this admission, and reveals (to an unnerved Conan) that he already knows that the case is a murder framed as a suicide and that the murderer is still in the restaurant.

File 779 - Abe-chan

Conan desperately wants to learn why Heiji knows what he knows, and Heiji yells that it is because he is a better detective than Shinichi is. After forcing Conan to say the same for several times, Heiji is satisfied and he discloses that since the deceased spoke with a Kansai accent, Camel misunderstood him. He was not in fact talking about him having poisoned “Abe-chan”, but about the person he was talking to having poisoned “Abe-chan”. Actually, even the “Abe-chan” part was a misinterpretation, and “Abe” is not a person, because there is a Kansai word meaning candy whose pronunciation is similar to “Abe-chan”. In summary, Heiji says, the murderer told his to-be victim to come meet him in the restaurant (they did not sit at the same table), summoned him to the restroom and poisoned him there without talking. Afterwards, the murderer would throw the victim’s phone into the flush toilet to complicate identification and remove sensitive phone calls, and with this the murder would conclude. Megure, who has been listening to the deduction as well, knows that thanks to Camel the murderer is still in the restaurant. He therefore orders Takagi to filter out likely suspects, based on the knowledge that the murderer should be a man around 40 years old (the deceased referred to the person he was talking to as “childhood friend” and he was a man in his forties).

Since his deduction is widely accepted, Heiji proclaims to have gotten a head start, and is confident that he will solve the case with ease (since the murderer is likely to be from Kansai just like him). This annoys Conan profoundly, but as he can find no flaw in Heiji’s deduction Conan can do nothing but stare at Heiji with disdain while Heiji pats his head. Meanwhile, Camel reports his circumstances to James and Jodie, and attaches to the message a photo of Sera (taken secretly). Jodie sees the picture and murmurs “a boy?”

Let us go back to the case. Takagi has found three customers fitting the description and without a valid alibi. Heiji volunteers to question them, and Megure (again) has to reluctantly accept something he does not like, this time because someone from Kansai might extract more information than he can. The suspects are called Rakutoshi Sugai, Tooru (alternatively romanized as Tōru or Toru) Akamasu and Sanpei Toujou respectively, and they all claim to be from Tokyo, and all are sweating because they have just ordered something very spicy (rice with curry, ramen and mapo tofu respectively; see note below). After the questioning, Megure and Takagi ask expectantly whether Heiji has found any clue, but Heiji has no insight to share with them except “I have noticed that they all ordered a spicy dish”. This leaves the two officers in disbelief.

As he mentions the word “dish”, Heiji and Conan realize that they have not had lunch yet, prompting Kazuha to call them to join her, Ran and Kogoro to eat. Heiji, instead of accepting the invitation, blasts them for not paying attention to the case. Kogoro dismisses his complaints by saying that each of them has ordered one of the main dishes of the three suspects for “investigation purposes”, also he concedes that they have not yet noticed anything special. Conan stares at the dishes for a while and is suddenly enlightened by something. He thus asks Kogoro what else was ordered by the suspects, and learns soon that both Sugai and Akamasu ordered coffee and cake, and that Toujou ordered a platter of fruits. With this piece of extra information, Conan is now confident that he knows the whole story, and Sera watches him smile confidently from behind, thinking to herself that Shinichi has won the competition.

Note: mapo tofu is a spicy Chinese dish whose main ingredients include tofu (i.e. bean curd), fermented black beans and meat, typically beef.

File 780 - The Magical Food

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Takagi reports that Chiba has just figured out that the victim is called Kengo Shibamiya, an employee of a construction company based in Saitama (Shibamiya himself, however, is indeed from Kansai). The CEO of the company, who liked candies a lot, was poisoned in the exact same fashion a month ago, and Shibamiya was the first one to discover his boss’s body. Neither Heiji nor Conan is paying attention to this piece of information, as the former is busy yelling at the three suspects (and trying to intimidate them into admitting guilt) and the latter is pretending to be on a phone call with Shinichi. He ends the inexistent conversation with “ok, I will repeat your deduction to everyone else” and hangs up, which terrifies Heiji for obvious reasons and disappoints Ran (as she wants to talk to Shinichi). Conan begins the deduction by saying that one of the suspects is a Kansai-jin (i.e. person from Kansai) in disguise, and that he can be exposed by a “magical dish”. Heiji tries to disrupt Conan, demanding to know how Conan knows anything about his region, and is stunned when Conan replies that he is just repeating what Shinichi has told him. Conan continues to mock Heiji, saying that Shinichi is overtaking Heiji by scoring a home run. Combined with the quite punchable (and comical) expression on Conan’s face at this moment, Heiji feels humiliated and is irate, but he has no way of firing back.

The restaurant soon finishes preparing the “magical dish” - miso soup, and delivers it to the suspects, the police, the detectives and the three girls. Everyone except for Heiji, Kazuha and Akamasu comments that it is excessively salty, and those three remark that the soup is too spicy. It turns out that Kansai-jin use the same word (辛い) for “salty” and “spicy”, while in Tokyo “辛い” is only used for “spicy” and “塩っぱい” is used to describe saltiness (the usage of “辛い” in Tokyo is more “correct”, as the character “辛” is from Chinese, where it can mean “spicy” but never “salty”). Therefore, Tooru Akamasu is the Kansai-jin in disguise. Akamasu defends himself by claiming that he said “辛い” under the influence of Heiji and Kazuha’s complaints, but Conan says that the misuse was not a coincidence. For example, Akamasu talks about “Tokyo dialect”, a word that real Tokyoites do not use; he thinks that a term used in Tokyo to refer to “fruits” actually refers to “desserts” such as cake; and finally he becomes angry when Conan tries to talk with a Kansai accent but (deliberately) does it poorly (getting upset in such situations, Conan claims, is an important characteristic of Kansai-jin).

Conan proceeds to say since Camel was in the restroom with him during the murder, Akamasu had to flee as soon as possible, and thus did not wash his hands and could not rid himself of the poison remaining there. This was obviously a priority for Akamasu, which is why, when the restroom became inaccessible, he decided to order ramen (then, by pretending to have accidentally spilled soup on his clothes, he could very reasonably ask a waiter (or waitress) to bring him paper napkins). This theory is supported by the fact that Akamasu used his left hand to smoke despite being right-handed (as shown by the position of the chopsticks on his ramen bowl); using the right hand, which is presumably used to handle the poison, would have been too risky, as smoking involves the part of the cigarette making contact with fingers entering the mouth. Conan wraps his deduction up by saying that since it is clear that Akamasu has not yet disposed of the used napkins properly, the police will easily find them, and then a quick test will confirm his guilt. This piece of evidence crushes Akamasu’s defenses and he surrenders.

The case is thus over, and it is now Conan’s turn to be exultant. Heiji, of course, is irritated, but this turns to happiness when Sera announces that the detectives have tied in the competition. Conan points out indignantly that Shinichi solved the case, but Sera argues that if Heiji had not reconstructed the last words of Shibamiya accurately, Shinichi would probably still be stuck. Kogoro agrees with Sera, but remarks that since Shinichi only relied on Conan to supply information, he is after all slightly greater. Conan voices support for this statement excitedly, which prompts Heiji to threaten to reveal his identity. Heiji also suggests angrily that points should be deducted from Shinichi for his horrible Kansai accent. Ran watches the two detectives fight and thinks to herself that Heiji has taken the competition too seriously.

On the other hand, Camel leaves the restaurant and joins James and Jodie, who are waiting for him in a car. He mentions that the motive is that Akamasu feared that Shibamiya would expose his misdeeds (i.e. his murder of their boss) to the police (this is consistent with the conversation in the restroom where Shibamiya said that even if they were childhood friends, he could not excuse Akamasu for killing (the boss) by poisoning the candy). The topic of the conversation then shifts to “the girl in the photo” (i.e. Sera). Like Camel, Jodie thinks that the face is somewhat familiar; on the contrary, James says that he does not know her, although with a glimpse of the photo he already knows Sera’s gender (much to Jodie and Camel’s surprise).