Megure's Sealed Secret
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| Episode 217-218 (Int. Episode {{{int-episode}}}) | |
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| Title: | Megure's Sealed Secret |
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| Original airdate: | December 11, 2000 (Part 1) December 18, 2000 (Part 2) |
| Season: | 9 |
| Cast: | Conan Edogawa Inspector Megure Kiyonaga Matsumoto |
| Case solved by: | Conan Edogawa Inspector Megure |
Contents
Characters introduced
Cast
Plot
Part 1
The episode starts with a lady in a phone booth at night. While she is calling, a man dragging a club comes up from behind her and knocks her out with the club.
The next scene shows Mouri Ran and Sonoko shopping for a sweater as Sonoko wants to buy Kyogoku. Kogoro Mouri and Conan leave the girls to do their shopping and while crossing the street Mouri notices a good looking girl coming out of a phone booth. Conan notices that she left a ball-point pen in the booth so Mouri grabs and goes to give it to her. As Mouri touches her she tackles him to the ground and Inspector Megure, Wataru Takagi and two other police officers come out and jump on Mouri without realizing that it is Mouri.
After they find out it is Mouri they all go to a pasta shop and explain the case to Mouri. It is also shown that the lady who attacked Mouri was Miwako Sato, posing as a decoy. They show him pictures of the 3 different victims (Ryoko Mizutani, Hitomi Endou, and Michiko Ishiguro - the girl from the first scene): all of them are young women with bleached hair, fashionable clothes, and deep tans, and according to their testimonies the man attacking them was around 150 cms tall.
Sonoko arrives to the pasta shop right then and identifies the victims as Ganguro, girls who change their looks to look fashionable and exotic. After being unable to figure out a relation between the victims other than their looks, Mouri brings up a case about a string of female high-school students being hit by cars, which happened 20 years ago. Inspector Megure looks shocked, stands up and says they should get back to the investigation.
As Inspector Megure is about to leave he tells Sato and Takagi that they should start at the beginning. Then Conan spots something similar to the 3 victims and Sonoko: apparently they all are wearing rather fashionable jewelry pieces that are given as a gift in a particular shop if you spend 10,00 yen or more there. Megure approaches her, checks on the jewels Sonoko's wearing and compares them to the photos: all of the girls are at least one piece of the jewelry set (Sonoko has them all due to having purchased lots of stuff there).
Sonoko then calls Ran to ask where she is. She says she's in a parking lot and then she screams in terror because she has just found another victim. Said victim is a 20 year old girl named Tae Aizawa, who used to work at the same store: again, a very young woman with bleached hair, tanned skin, and wearing the special jewelry gifts.
The victim's boyfriend arrives to the crime scene. His name is Noriyuki Shirakawa, he works as a cook in the convenience store owned by his dad, and had asked Aizawa to meet up with him so they'd reunite with his dad. Some possible suspects gather in the scene: Shirakawa's father Haruyuki (who opposed to him and Tae's relationship), the waitress Yuri Konnou who also was a friend of Shirakawa Jr., and a guard named Sadakane who used to work for another convenience store, whom Shirakawa Sr. accuses of being the killer to ruin the store's reputation. He then also tells his son to get a new girlfriend, one "with a clean slate"; Yuri Konnou then explains that Aizawa was related to another case a year ago: she accidentally hit a young boy named Akira Sakurai with her car in the parking garage and killed him, thus she renounced to her job.
Among the investigation questions, Shirakawa freaks out when his father is mentioned as a possible suspect for the case in general. He snaps and tells the police "You are all useless" in horror and frustration. Upon hearing Shirakawa's words, Megure goes into a shocked state and remembers a very young woman saying the same phrase in tears... as well as saying "Why are you suprised? I said I was going to play Decoy." Then the woman 's face in his memories is shown again, except she's bleeding profusely and she says "Guess... it didn't go as smoothly as in the movies." Megure drops to his knee and looks like he has a headache; he says it's nothing when Kogoro and Satou show concern, and Yuri offers apologirs before taking Shirakawa away, but Conan suspects something.
Conan then brings up other points. First, only Mizutani and Ishiguro could offer reliable descriptions, since Endo was attacked from behind and couldn't see who attacked her. Second: the girls weren't wearing much, even though it was freezing and at night. Sato says she will wear the decoy she wore before and exit her car, in case she can do more. Inspector Megure then shouts "Didn't I say no more decoys!?" Superintendant Matsumoto arrives and asks if it's "that case" from before. Megure denies it and Conan thinks something is strange with Inspector Megure...
Part 2
After asking Mouri if she can borrow his keys, Sonoko is putting bags in the car and then goes searching for the restroom, unaware that she's being watched over by the culprit who, for an unknown reason, decides to follow her as she goes to the restroom in order to punish her...
The investigation continues, and when the policemen accidentally drop Aizawa's shoe and cannot put it back on since it doesn't fit her foot, Conan deduces that the killer took her shoes away to hide how he was tracking and attacking girls with similar shoes. Since all of the girls attacked were gyarus, he also deduces that she was using platform boots. Sato hears this and says that a year ago, in the incident that took the life of little Akira Sakurai, Aizawa was supposedly wearing similar boots; the boy's parents told this to the judge and said that was the reason why Aizawa didn't step properly on the brake and ended up hitting him. Megure sends out Takagi to find more info about the accident, and then tells the others to seek for the culprit who is still not too far from them.
After discussing some more details, Takagi returns. Conan and Ran see that Sonoko isn't with them. Ran mentions that Sonoko was supposed to go to the car and then to the restroom, and then Conan realizes that Sonoko was wearing platform boots... like all the victims. Ran calls Sonoko to her cellphone, and Sonoko says she's looking for a safe way out since the lights are out. She then gets scared since it looks like she's being followed, and as she turns, the culprit is right in front of her and she starts screaming.
Sonoko manages to avoid the culprit's pipe and throws her phone at him, revealing his face. She tries running downstairs, with the man being horrified since she saw him clearly. Conan says that the killer saw Sonoko with Mouri's keys and mistook her for the driver, hence why he's chasing her now. Sonoko's phone lands near a purikura machine located near a restaurant in the tenth floor, so they deduce Sonoko and the killer are not too far away from it. Megure takes active part in commanding the police, and both Matsumoto and Mouri notice how pumped up he is.
Sonoko runs aimlessly in the tenth floor, nd when she's about to reach the gates she trips over her boots and falls to the ground, unable to escape as the killer approaches her. Ran and the police find her phone on the stairs and deduce she's in the apartment store as no one has seen her in the restaurants. Meanwhile, the maddened killer starts ranting about how all the fashionable girls are bitches in sheep's clothing who should be all killed. Sonoko screams again and this time Ran, Conan, Megure and Co. hear her; they also hear the sound of several things falling, Go stones among them, which allow them to see she's on the fourth floor.
Sonoko again avoid being hit by the culprit, who still rants about how he only wanted to teach her a lesson, but after seeing his face, he had to kill her. Cornered again, Sonoko cowers as he tries to hit her directly... and then Megure shows up. He takes the hit for her amd gets struck in the head, but the blow is softened by his hat so he bleeds badly but isn't fatally injured.
The bleeding but still conscious Megure asks the man if hurting others feels good. The he lectures the culprit, calling him out on how he thinks he's following justice and revenge, yet aide of killing Aizawa he has only harmed innocent girls who had nothing to do with the incident that robbed him of his son, thus acting only out of petty rage and will to harm others. The man falls to his knees, saying that he started by wanting for "that woman" (Aizawa) to wear "decent" shoes and apologize to his son in Heaven, and breaks down in tears. Ran arrives and comforts Sonoko, then Satou and Conan come in and see Megure injured but he insists it's nothing.
Later on at the hospital, Matsumoto reveals a case in the past explaining why Megure was so anxious and refused to use a decoy, as well as the origin of a big scar that he covers with his omnipresent hat... the case that Mouri and Matsumoto himself were speaking about. 20 years ago, a man was attacking school-aged girls with long skirts after having been bullied into insanity by delinquent schoolgirls (whose trademark in Japan is the use of long school skirts); he started by trying to convince the girls to stop said behavior, but then he became increasingly violent and killed at least one of them by running her over with his car.
After the girls from the area stopped wearing said long skirts, the crimes stopped; but a while later, a young delinquent schoolgirl willingly went to the police and said she wanted to become a decoy, since her best friend had been the first victim and she wanted the culprit to be caught. She was very rebellious and insisted to do what she wanted in these regards, and the local police had its hands full with other cases, so Matsumoto assigned the rookie Megure as her bodyguard...
One rainy night, the culprit tried to run the decoy girl and Megure over with his car. Megure managed to save the girl, but both of them were still badly injured... specially the girl, who took the brunt of the impact despite Megure's efforts. He still managed to identify the culprit's car, leading to his capture.
Ran and Sonoko are moved to tears, thinking that the decoy girl actually died. Matsumoto laughs and says he never said she perished... and then a dark-haired woman shows up. As she and Matsumoto make small talk, Conan notices that she has a rather big scar on her forehead; then they hear Megure's voice asking for the help of someone Midori, and the woman replies to his call. They deduce that the decoy girl and Megure's wife are the same person.
People
Resolution
Extra
- In Part 1 the scene where Ran screams is a part of Closing 37.
- Also the part where Megure drops to his knee is also in Closing 37
- Both episodes were remastered on the 15th and 22th of January, respectivly.
- Except for Sonoko, all of the women attacked by the culprit have dark skin and bleached hair. They were members of a Japanese subculture known as Gyaru, in which young women rebel against the very conservative Japanese society by bleaching their hair, adquiring deep tans, and more often than not behaving like fashionable wild party girls without much concern for the future. Such a subgroup and its equivalents are viewed in contempt by lots of Japanese people, who accuse them of being selfish, materialistic and shallow. This is seen in Shirakawa senior's words about Shirakawa Jr. dating a "girl without a clean state", and how everyone comments that the girls were wearing skimpy clothes in the freezing winter.
- Kogoro doesn't seem to be very aware about the Gyarus, as he only comments that "the girls looked like they were living in the jungle or something" (alluding to their unnatural tans), and adds that "they just don't look like normal Japanese people". Then Sonoko correctly identifies the girls as part of the Gyarus, referring to them by their more popular nickname "ganguro". Satou adds that Endou, the second victim, is actually a "yamanba", a Gyaru/ganguro with specially dark skin.
- A parallel is made between the Gyaru girls and young female delinquent schoolgirls, known as Sukeban (girl delinquents). Said school girls are identified by, among other things, wearing their school skirts much longer than usual. Like the Gyaru group, they were very hated by Japanese society, to the point of being denounced in the eighties as "omens of downfall" due to their rebellious and arrogant attitude. Midori Megure and her deceased best friend were sukeban.
