Volume 30
| ‹ Volume 29 | List of Chapters • List of Cases | Volume 31 › |
| Volume 30 | |||
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| Release date: | December 18, 2000 | ||
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| Chapters: | 296-306 | ||
| ISBN: | ISBN 4-09-125500-0 | ||
| Publisher: | Shogakukan | ||
| English release date: | July 21, 2009 | ||
| English ISBN: | ISBN 1-4215-2198-9 | ||
| English Publisher: | Viz Media | ||
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Volume 30 was released on December 18, 2000 in Japan.
Contents
Cast
Gadgets
Chapters
Police Escort Murder Case
File 296 - Straight Ball Match
The day after Conan and Hattori solve the case involving Ray Curtis, Kogoro, Ran and Conan leave Osaka for Tokyo, and Hattori and Kazuha accompany them to the train station. There, Ran calls Shinichi to tell him that she got a shirt signed by Curtis, and Shinichi (i.e. Conan with the voice-changing bowtie) thanks her and entrusts it to her before his return. After this exchange, Shinichi says that he has to go, as “he has other things to deal with”, but Ran asks him to wait, simultaneously recalling that Sonoko once said “Ran, do you not want to know what Shinichi feels about you?”. Kazuha, knowing what Ran is about to do, encourages her to say it; Ran hesitantly starts the question, but is unable to finish because her train (the Shinkansen) arrives at the station at that moment, and Ran is held back by its noise and sheer speed. Shinichi, seeing that Ran is no longer saying anything, bades farewell to her and hangs up, leaving a blushing Ran and an unsatisfied Kazuha, who grabs the phone from Ran and shouts “wait, she is not done yet!” into it, obviously to no avail. Hattori wonders why she is making so much noise, so Kazuha tells him about Ran’s call, which prompts Hattori to mock Shinichi by saying that maybe he hung up because he was afraid to answer the question. He proceeds to call Shinichi “weak and cowardly”, and Conan, who is listening, smiles dryly.
Since the Shinkansen will only stop in Osaka for a few minutes, Kogoro, Ran and Conan have no time to waste, and board quickly. Kazuha, who wants to see Ran and Shinichi together very badly, pounds the window beside Ran from outside the train and shouts that she needs to keep throwing straight balls (i.e. to keep asking Shinichi directly about whether he likes her), and Ran fakes a smile to show that she has understood (and Conan is blushing and slightly annoyed by Kazuha’s insistence).
Just a few seconds later, Ran hears another reference to baseball; a man passing by them murmurs “no, I cannot throw straight balls, I must throw breaking balls and see her reaction to them”. It turns out that the man is no other than Takagi, and he is, with Sato, on a mission of escorting a drug dealer (named Senzo Ogura) back to Tokyo, where he will be interrogated and hopefully divulge information so that the police can round up the whole criminal syndicate. As she explains this to Conan and company, Sato looks at Ogura, who is sitting beside her, expectantly, but Ogura remains emotionless and tells her dully that he wants coffee. Sato thus sends Takagi to buy coffee, and while he checks if he has any change in the wallet, a ticket to a magic show falls out. Sato is surprised that Takagi likes such things, and the latter explains that Yumi, who had a spare ticket, asked him to go. This is actually a lie, or more precisely a plot to test whether Sato likes Takagi: Yumi told him that when the right opportunity came, Takagi needed to mention to Sato in a casual manner that Yumi and he were going to see a magic show together. Then, by observing Sato's reaction, he would be able to know the answer to the question; for example, Sato’s facial expression changing dramatically for the worse means that she likes him (this conversation thus explains Takagi’s murmurs earlier on; “throwing a breaking ball” corresponds to him figuring out in an indirect way about Sato’s feelings (or the lack thereof) towards him).
Takagi continues to say that he did not want to go, but Yumi was persistent; Sato interjects at this moment and cheerfully encourages him to go, and adds that if Takagi learns a new trick, he needs to show it to her. Since this is everything that Sato says regarding the subject, Takagi concludes that she is not jealous at all and thus does not like him; he thus goes to the vending machine looking defeated.
The train is now near Mount Fuji (which is on the border of Shizuoka and Yamanashi Prefectures, which are much closer to Tokyo than to Osaka). Conan and company notice a train attendant talking to Takagi and Sato in a serious manner, and thus suspect that something is wrong. It turns out that a passenger has found an explosive in a toilet. Sato rushes there to investigate, and is relieved when she discovers that it is only a nasty prank; but this is not the end of her troubles. Now that only one police officer is with him, Ogura begins thinking of a way to escape. After noticing some sort of signal from a passer-by, Ogura tells Takagi that he needs to go to the toilet urgently, to which Takagi reluctantly agrees. The two therefore head to a toilet nearby, and Takagi takes one of the handcuffs off Ogura and puts it on himself so that Ogura is able to urinate. Several minutes after Ogura’s entry, Takagi asks him impatiently whether he is done, and Ogura grins and tells Takagi that the police will never be able to obtain any information from him, for he will soon turn into a speechless bird. Takagi, taking this as a sign that Ogura is somehow committing suicide, opens the door and is astounded by the sight of Ogura having stabbed himself in the belly, with a huge amount of blood around the area and pain written on his face. Not knowing what to do in this sudden turn of events, he tries to communicate with Sato by phone, but the train happens to be in the middle of a long tunnel, and there is no signal. Knowing that he cannot let Ogura die like this, Takagi has no choice but to free himself, handcuff Ogura to the toilet rail instead and run to Sato to explain the situation. Conan, who is on her side, overhears Takagi’s words and rushes to the toilet with the two police officers. Upon their arrival, they find Ogura dead and a bloody knife beside his inanimate body.
File 297 - The Open Closed Room
Takagi informs Megure about the death of Ogura, and is blasted by him, as Megure is absolutely infuriated by their grave mistake. Before hanging up, Megure orders him and Sato to not let anyone approach the toilet before the train reaches Tokyo (so that the coroners and forensic officers that Megure will take along to the train station can inspect it and examine the body within), but they are not able to accomplish this much easier task either, as Conan already has sneaked into the crime scene. He finds the knife beside the body pointing in a strange direction, and the coagulation of only some of the blood in the toilet. From these two clues, Sato deduces that Ogura has been murdered by someone else. She hypothesizes that the murderer, as prepration, planted the “explosive” in a toilet and hid a fake knife (which only has a handle and a part of the blade, and no tip) and a bag of blood with anticoagulants (without it, the blood would coagulate and become unusable by Ogura) in another one (the two toilets had to be the nearest and the second nearest to Ogura). Then, this person waited for the police to be notified of the “explosive”; this would distract one of them for some time. Now that only one police officer would be with Ogura, a message to Ogura could be transmitted with much more ease, and this message, whatever form it took, told Ogura to go to the toilet with the fake knife and the bag of blood in it. Once inside, Ogura could use them to fake a suicide, and the police officer accompanying Ogura, unsure of what to do, would leave him alone in order to look for his (or her) partner (due to the lack of signals in the tunnel; Sato believes that this is a part of the murderer’s plan as well). This would then give the murderer plenty of time to enter the toilet, kill Ogura, destroy any evidence and flee.
Takagi agrees with Sato’s deduction, but points out that transmitting the message “go to that toilet, there are a few things that I have hidden in it, you can find them in…” is a rather cumbersome task. Sato replies that the message could have been as short as “go to the toilet” because of two reasons. The first is that between the two toilets near Ogura (one in front of him and the other behind him), one had just been searched by Sato, and thus could not be the toilet that the murderer had in mind. And the second is that the message did not have to explicitly say “look for this in there” (or anything to this effect) in order for Ogura to know that something was hidden in the toilet; instinct would suffice.
Therefore, the major problem for Sato and Takagi at this point is that they do not know who communicated with Ogura and how this person did so. Conan knows the answer to the first question: he carefully made observations of the people passing by Takagi and Ogura after Sato had left. Thus, thanks to him, Sato and Takagi are able to quickly find three suspects, who are named Tatsuro Iwakuni, Norio Tokuyama and Akira Akashi respectively (all of them boarded the train in Osaka and bought the things specified below in (a shop of) Osaka’s train station). According to Conan and Iwakuni’s recollections, Akashi and Iwakuni were both holding a newspaper during their passage, and Tokuyama was holding a bottle of canned coffee when he passed and reading a newspaper on his seat. Sako asks them to take all four items to her; they comply, and Sato and Conan start studying them. Sato does not seem to find anything valuable, and Conan is also stuck initially; however, he eventually is able to notice something important.
Meanwhile, Takagi explains the situation to the suspects; they all conclude that the police do not have a good reason to suspect them, and all are vehement in their refusal to keep cooperating once the train reaches Tokyo (this will happen in approximately ten minutes). Sato and Takagi, knowing that there is little time left, become quite dismayed, but Conan, after learning that Kogoro, in Osaka’s train station, bought canned coffee, cigarettes, a newspaper about sports (this was the one bought by Akashi) and a newspaper specializing in horse racing (this was the one bought by Iwakuni), becomes confident that he has all the information needed to solve the case.
File 298 - Time Trap
People
Major events
- Takagi wants to go on a date with Sato, via tickets to a show that Yumi gave him, but will he get up the courage?
- Shinichi calls Ran! Also, Takagi wants to take Sato on a date.
- Sato and Takagi's budding romance is explored.
Sunset Mansion Case
Characters introduced
File 299 - The Meeting
Kogoro has been invited to a detective meeting by an unknown assailant who sends him money. There are six detectives there excluding Conan. They are in a house where a massacre happened years ago. One of the detectives are killed and they are stranded in the mansion as the bridge has been cut and the cars have been burned. It also appears that the unknown assailant is using the name Kaitou Kid.
File 300 - Tragedy
That mansion once belonged to Renya Karasuma, the billionaire who mysteriously died forty years ago. That name seems to trigger the guests attention.
File 301 - Murder
File 302 - Sting
People
Genta's Shadow Case
File 303 - Genta's Misfortune
Genta has been acting weird at school lately. He is hiding under his futon at home, and doesn't eat his lunch instead of racing to finish first which is worrying his teacher Kobayashi. When he leaves school, Genta climbs over the wall and runs, like he is trying to lose someone. When the Detective Boys confront him, he tells them someone is trying to kill him. Earlier, he had heard the sound of someone's footsteps keeping pace with him in a tunnel. Later he was pushed off a bridge, and a burning car hurtled towards him. As he was telling the Detective Boys this, they reached a place outside a store where Genta likes to play a Yaiba Game machine. A large bolt falls nearby, barely alerting the Detective Boys in time to avoid part of the store's "BAKER" sign hurtling to the ground. Conan examines the support cable, and determines it had been deliberately cut and someone was indeed after Genta's life. They go to a burger restaurant and Genta reveals the man he thinks is trying to kill him is the purse snatcher the police are after. Genta had seen the man sometime earlier, before he was a wanted burglar, but had forgotten where it was. Genta does remember a golden haired man was with him when he saw the thief. Genta also explains that he went to a crime scene where the snatcher struck five days ago and saw his golden-haired witness in the crowd. He took the witness to the police and told them the story, but the witness denied seeing the thief. Genta later gets a mysterious phone call: "If you tell anyone that you saw me, I will kill you!! You, your family, and everybody that you know!"
Genta tries to recall where he saw the thief. He remembers the witness sitting beside him, but doesn't remember the thief sitting down. Genta was sleepy at the time. The things he remembers about the thief are that he was holding a cigarette in his left hand, meaning he is left handed. He was also wearing a tee-shirt with a skull and the numbers 202 in digital clock-like numerals. Genta notices one of the customers at the burger place has a similar tee-shirt, only with the numbers 1999 instead. Conan asks the man where he got his shirt, and the man tells him it is from the Bones clothing store. The Detective Boys run to find the place, but unfortunately the criminal had followed them into the restaurant and overheard everything.
At the shop, the salesperson explains that they sold a variety of shirts like that with different text such as "Escape", "Help", and "1999" because of the doomsday prediction in 2000, but none that say 202. The salesperson doesn't remember anyone unusual either. Genta does remember a few more details about the thief though. The thief was reading a newspaper, the place allowed smoking, and Genta never took his eyes off of him meaning it was a place where it wouldn't be unusual to watch someone without making them uncomfortable. From those clues, Conan realizes the answer.
File 304 - Genta's Trap
Conan says Genta saw the murderer in a glasses’ shop. Indeed, the murderer didn’t react at all and didn’t notice Genta was looking at him, since he had taken off his glasses to have them cleaned, and couldn’t see anything without it. Genta says he’s never been in a glasses’ shop in his whole life, and Conan answers he happens to fail at deductions sometimes, though he whispers something into Genta’s ear, while the killer is observing them further back. As Genta still tells Conan he’s made a mistake again, Conan sighs powerlessly and asks Genta to warn his friends if anything ever comes back to his mind. Walking back home on their way, Mitsuhiko, Genta and Ayumi talk about the case again and Genta buys himself some ice cream. He suddenly realises something when wiping the ice on his cheek. Then Genta spots France’s three-color flag above a French restaurant, and asks Ayumi if she isn’t reminded of something when thinking about the blue, white and red colours. Ayumi thinks about Conan’s usual outfit but Genta suggests Conan can’t be the killer, and recalls those three coulours with something spinning amidst. As Mitsuhiko and Ayumi leave Genta alone to go home, the latter is being followed by the murderer, and becomes aware of the truth when looking at his reflection in the mirror of a shopwindow. He rushes to a place located at the sixth floor of a train station’s building, and hardly manages to slip into the lift.
People
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| Kamiyo Someda | |
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Pottery Class Case
File 305 - On the Bottom...
Ran, Sonoko, and Conan attend a pottery class. Sonoko wants to make pottery for Makoto, while Ran wants to make some for Shinichi. They meet the workshop's two apprentices, Motoo Mino and Kikuyo Kasama, along with the workshop's owner and Motoo's father-in-law, Muneyuki Mino, who is amazed at Ran and Conan having met the renowned potter Kikuemon (vol. 16). Some time after, Motoo is found strangled to death with a necktie in a closet.
File 306 - Surrounded by Hints
Conan knows who the culprit is, to the point of confronting the culprit when they're all alone, but still has no evidence. He tries to find evidence to prove it was him.
People
Cover in other countries
See also
| Volumes of the Manga | ||
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| Volume 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30 • 31 • 32 • 33 • 34 • 35 • 36 • 37 • 38 • 39 • 40 • 41 • 42 • 43 • 44 • 45 • 46 • 47 • 48 • 49 • 50 • 51 • 52 • 53 • 54 • 55 • 56 • 57 • 58 • 59 • 60 • 61 • 62 • 63 • 64 • 65 • 66 • 67 • 68 • 69 • 70 • 71 • 72 • 73 • 74 • 75 • 76 • 77 • 78 • 79 • 80 • 81 • 82 • 83 • 84 • 85 • 86 • 87 • 88 • 89 • 90 • 91 • 92 • 93 • 94 • 95 • 96 • 97 • 98 • 99 • 100 • 101 • 102 • 103 • 104 • 105 • 106 • 107 |
