Kogoro Mouri
| Kogoro Mouri | |
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| |
| Japanese name: | 毛利 小五郎 (Mouri Kogorou) |
|---|---|
| English name: | Richard Moore |
| Age: | 43 |
| Gender: | Male |
| Relatives: | Ran Mouri (daughter) Eri Kisaki (wife) |
| Nicknames: | Sleeping Kogoro The Sleeping Sleuth |
| First appearance: | Manga: Chapter 2 (mentioned in ch. 1) Anime: Episode 1 |
| Appearances: | Chapters: 613 Chapters: 2 Episodes: 752 Episodes: 3 Movies: 29 Episodes: 1 OVAs: 15 Specials: 15 Openings: 46 Closings: 11 |
| Cases solved: | 400+ (via Conan), 4 (on his own) |
| Keyhole number: | Volume 3 |
| Japanese voice: | Akira Kamiya (Ep. 1~548) Rikiya Koyama (Ep. 553~) |
| English voice: | R. Bruce Elliott |
| Drama actor: | Takanori Jinnai |
Kogoro Mouri (毛利 小五郎 Mouri Kogorou) is one of the main characters of the manga and anime. He is a private detective and the father of Ran Mouri.
Background
Kogoro is a private investigator,[1] but he prefers to laze around all day. Kogoro attended Teitan High School, the same high school as Ran and Shinichi, along with Eri, Yukiko Fujimine, and actress Ruri Ujou[2]. He then graduated to Beika University, where he was the ace of the Judo team, though he was highly vulnerable to stage fright.[3] He is also an excellent marksman.[4]
Kogoro's daughter, Ran Mouri, is also the daughter of Eri Kisaki, who is now living separately after an argument ten years prior.[5] Despite constantly feigning disinterest in her, Kogoro still has feelings for his wife—he has even asked her to move back in with him, but she pretends not to hear him because she is not "ready" yet,[6] though she still has feelings for him as well. These are expressed through jealousy when he comments on other girls' looks.
After Shinichi had been shrunk by an accidental effect of a mysterious poison and was forced to adopt the identity of Conan Edogawa, Hiroshi Agasa concluded that Shinichi couldn't openly continue any investigation without attracting undue attention by the Black Organization. To maintain his cover, he suggested Shinichi to move in with Kogoro and use him as a front. When Kogoro's conclusions during one of their first investigations became so dilettantish that the cause became hopeless, Conan used his soccer skilld to kick an ashtray to knock him out. Kogoro unconsciously (and conveniently) adopted a reclining pose, and Conan used his Voice Changer, imitating Kogoro's voice, to present his conclusions and the identity of the true murderer; this earned Kogoro the title "Sleeping Kogoro" and the reputation as a master detective. (Later, Conan would employ his Stun-Gun Wristwatch to knock out Kogoro instead.)[7]
Personality
Kogoro can easily become infatuated with beautiful women. His dream woman is pop idol Yoko Okino, and he never misses her television shows.[8][9] Because of his behavior around attractive woman, he often embarrasses his daughter Ran Mouri, and while it is not the reason why his wife left him, it is the reason why she hasn't come back.
While he is never outright called an alcoholic, Kogoro has a tendency to get intoxicated at social events, and Shinichi/Conan makes sarcastic remarks about him spending money on alcohol. In the anime, his office is littered with empty beer cans,[10] and he keeps a well-stocked liquor shelf. Kogoro is also a heavy smoker, and is usually seen with a cigarette in his mouth. His hobbies include mahjong and gambling on horse racing and keirin.
In the Japanese version, due to his name Kogoro Mori he is often mistaken for the famous astronaut Mamoru Mohri when he introduces himself, because they both are in the news frequently, of Japanese decent, and have the same last name. In the English version when Kogoro introduces himself he is often mistaken for "oh, that famous astronaut," as well. In the English version it is possible he is also confused with Patrick Moore.
In the US version, Kogoro Mouri says that he is forty-three, in opposed to being thirty-seven in the Japanese version. It is unknown if Eva's age remains the same since they had attended school together, and if not, if it'll affect the Princess Pageant storyline that occurred twenty years ago, making her in her twenties when she participated instead of a teenager.
Kogoro suffers from a mild acrophobia (fear of heights) and is quite uncomfortable in high settings, such as skyscrapers, when he has the chance to see how high up he is.
Detective Skills
Throughout most of the series, Kogoro is depicted as a pretty incompetent detective, often missing obvious clues and jumping to the wrong conclusions, though several of these conclusions were shared by other people on the scene. However, Kogoro does follow the proper police procedures, asks questions, and (with a little help from Conan) follows leads quite well. Despite his ineptness, he had been a prominent police officer under Inspector Juzo Megure ten years prior to the start of the series[11] He is shown to have left the police force after events addressed in the second movie, The Fourteenth Target.[11]
Thanks to Conan's undercover help in solving numerous cases, Kogoro reputation as a detective grows quickly.[12] He hardly remembers the solutions of any cases because Conan knocks him out with tranquillizer darts so that he can announce the solution to the case while hidden, using a device that allows him to imitate Kogoro's voice as a proxy. However, Kogoro never seems to wonder about this fact and often boasts about his merits. Because of this, he has become nicknamed the Sleeping Kogoro (眠りの小五郎 Nemuri no Kogorou). Jugo Yokomizo often mistakenly calls him Smoking Kogoro (煙の小五郎 Kemuri no Kogorou) because of his heavy smoking habits.
In later stories, there are times when Kogoro is actually able to solve crime cases without (or little) help from Conan, especially when people he knows or cares about are involved; it appears that, while he can connect the dots just fine, he can't actually find them as quickly as Conan does. The first of these events takes place during a trip to a hot spring, where one of his old college friends is murdered. Kogoro is actually so disturbed and determined to find the killer on his own that Conan cannot bring himself to drug him, limiting himself to surreptitiously drawing attention to the necessary clues.[13]
Despite his frequent moronic analyses, Kogoro is actually pretty smart when he applies himself. He is even able to completely solve a crime himself in the ninth movie, Strategy Above the Depths, due to the fact that the culprit Minako resembles Eri, and Conan applauds him mentally for his success.
Because of his (or rather, Conan's) tendency to coincidentally come across a crime scene, Inspector Megure is often referred to Kogoro as a shinigami (death god).
Name Origin
The name "Kogoro Mouri" came from two mystery-related sources. "Kogoro" came from "Kogoro Akechi", the detective created by Edogawa Rampo, while Mouri came from Maurice Leblanc. Coincidentally, his drama actor, Takanori Jinnai, has played Kogoro Akechi in many TV movies.
The kanji for "Mouri" (毛利) comes from daimyo Mouri Motonari.
See also
References
- ^ Detective Conan, Volume 1, File 1.
- ^ Manga Volume 37
- ^ Detective Conan Volume 9, File 6.
- ^ Movie 2: The Fourteenth Target.
- ^ Movie 2: The Fourteenth Target.
- ^ Detective Conan Volume 17.
- ^ Manga Chapter 009: An Unfortunate Misunderstanding
- ^ Detective Conan Volume 3, File 6.
- ^ Such behaviors can be seen consistently from Detective Conan Volume 1, File 6, to Detective Conan Volume 52, File9.
- ^ Detective Conan, Volume 1, File 2.
- ^ a b Movie 2: The Fourteenth Target
- ^ He first rises to fame in Detective Conan Volume 4.
- ^ Detective Conan Volume 9, Files 4-6.
