Moonlight Sonata Murder Case

This is a featured article on the Detective Conan Wiki. This article was featured on September 7, 2019

Chronology
‹ Pro Soccer Player Blackmail Case	List of Episodes	Ayumi-chan Kidnapping Case ›

Episode 11 (Int. Episode 11-12)
Information
Title:	Moonlight Sonata Murder Case
Japanese title:	ピアノソナタ「月光」殺人事件 (Piano Sonata "Gekkō" Satsujin Jiken)
Original airdate:	April 8, 1996 * September 22, 2003 (Rerun) *
Broadcast rating:	12.9%
Manga case:	#18
Season:	1
Manga source:	Volume 7: Files 2-7 (062-067)
English version
English title:	The Moonlight Sonata Murder Case
Dubbed episode:	Episode 11-12
English airdate:	June 9, 2004 (Part 1) June 10, 2004 (Part 2)
Case
Cast:	Conan Edogawa Kogoro Mouri Ran Mouri Juzo Megure Officer Tome
Case solved by:	Kogoro Mouri (via Conan)
Next Conan's Hint:	Sheet music Fluorescent paint (Rerun)
Staff
Director:	Kenji Kodama
Organizer:	Kenji Kodama Kuchiru Kazehara
Storyboard:	Kenji Kodama Kuchiru Kazehara
Episode director:	Ikuro Sato Yuji Yamaguchi
Animation director:	Masatomo Sudo Hirotoshi Takaya
Character design:	Masatomo Sudo
Voice Cast: Minami Takayama as Conan Edogawa Wakana Yamazaki as Ran Mouri Akira Kamiya as Kogoro Mouri Chafurin as Juzo Megure Shozo Iizuka as Tatsuji Kuroiwa Shigezo Sasaoka as Hideo Kawajima Ikuya Sawaki as Masato Shimizu Atsushi Ii as Kazuaki Hirata Ai Orikasa as Narumi Asai Kei Hayami as Reiko Kuroiwa Hidetoshi Nakamura as Ken Nishimoto Masuo Amada as Shuichi Murasawa Yukimasa Natori as Manager Yasuhiro Takato as Clerk Yuichi Nagashima as Police officer Yukiko Iwai as Election car Wataru Takagi as Next Conan's Hint
Music
Opening song:	Mune ga Dokidoki
Closing song:	STEP BY STEP
* 1 Hour Special

Moonlight Sonata Murder Case (ピアノソナタ「月光」殺人事件 ,Piano Sonata "Gekkō" Satsujin Jiken) is the 11th episode of Detective Conan anime.

Characters introduced

Narumi Asai
	26 years old Tsukikage island doctor

Cast

Characters
Conan Edogawa Kogoro Mouri Ran Mouri Juzo Megure Officer Tome (cameo)

Gadgets

Gadgets
Voice-Changing Bowtie Stun-Gun Wristwatch

Case

Situation

Kogoro Mouri received a strange cut-and-paste letter from a client called Keiji Asoh asking him investigate something on Tsukikage Island, in the Izu coast, which is part of the Tokyo Division, according to Megure. He then found out that the man requesting for the investigation, Keiji Asoh, has been dead for 12 years. He was a world-renowned pianist who suddenly killed his family, set his house on fire, and played Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata as his house burnt around him.

Suicide? (Past)
	Location: Keiji Asoh's house on Tsukikage Island Victim: Keiji Asoh and his family Time: 12 years ago Cause of death: Burning Keiji Asoh killed his family, set his house on fire, and played Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata as his house burnt around him.

Despite thinking the letter is a poor prank, Kogoro decides to investigate anyway and finds the island is holding elections for mayor. Two years ago, a passerby heard the Moonlight Sonata playing from the community center and discovered the body of the mayor slumped over the piano. Although he died from a heart attack, the similarity to the death of Keiji Asoh caused the islanders to think the piano has been cursed.

Murder? (Past)

Location: Community center piano room on Tsukikage Island Victim: Isamu Kameyama Time: 2 years ago Cause of death: Heart attack Two years ago, a passerby heard the Moonlight Sonata playing from the community center and discovered the body of the mayor slumped over the piano. Although he died from a heart attack, the similarity to the death of Keiji Asoh caused the islanders to think the piano has been cursed.

Murder

Location: Community center piano room on Tsukikage Island Victim: Hideo Kawashima Age: 56 years old Cause of death: Drowning Suspects: Masato Shimizu, Kazuaki Hirata, Shuichi Murasawa, Reiko Kuroiwa, Ken Nishimoto, and Narumi Asai Hideo Kawashima's sodden body found slumped over the cursed community piano as the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata played in the background. Water marks show the body had been dragged to the piano through a back door in the piano room which leads to the sea.

Murder

Location: Community center broadcasting room on Tsukikage Island Victim: Tatsuji Kuroiwa Age: 56 years old Cause of death: Stab wound Suspects: Masato Shimizu, Kazuaki Hirata, Shuichi Murasawa, and Ken Nishimoto Tatsuji Kuroiwa was found stabbed in the broadcasting room. The body was discovered by Ken Nishimoto soon after the second movement of the Moonlight Sonata began playing over the sound system. At the dead man's feet is sheet music inscribed in blood.

Both Reiko and Narumi were excluded from the suspect list due to that they have alibi during the time of murder. Conan manage to decode the musical notes which were from the murderer about revenge from 12 year ago.

Attempted Murder
	Location: Community center piano room on Tsukikage Island Victim: Shuichi Murasawa Age: 27 years old Injury: Blunt Force Trauma Suspects: Kazuaki Hirata When the gang returned to the city hall after the second murder, there was someone in the piano room who jumped out the window and Murasawa was found unconscious on the floor.

Murder

Location: Community center storage room on Tsukikage Island Victim: Ken Nishimoto Age: 55 years old Cause of death: Hanging Suspects: Masato Shimizu, Kazuaki Hirata, and Shuichi Murasawa Ran found Ken Nishimoto's hanged body in the storage room. At his feet was coded sheet music purporting to be his will. Although it wasn't playing, the third movement of Moonlight Sonata was recorded on the tape cassette nearby.

People

Keiji Asoh
	Deceased (burned) World-renowned pianist

Narumi Asai
	26 years old Island doctor From Tokyo

Isamu Kameyama
100px	Deceased (heart attack) Former mayor

Tatsuji Kuroiwa
	Victim (stabbed) 56 years old Current mayor

Reiko Kuroiwa
	27 years old Tatsuji's only daughter

Kazuaki Hirata
	31 years old Mayor's private secretary

Shuichi Murasawa
	Victim (beaten - injured) 27 years old Reiko's fiancé

Hideo Kawashima
	Victim (drowned) 56 years old Wealthiest man in town

Masato Shimizu
	49 years old Mayoral candidate

Ken Nishimoto
	Victim (hanged) 55 years old Unemployed

Police officer
	Tsukikage Island police officer

Kenta
	Tsukikage Island elementary school boy Narumi's patient

Mrs. Asoh
	Deceased (stabbed) Keiji's wife Housewife

Ms. Asoh
	Deceased (stabbed) Keiji's second daughter Tsukikage Island elementary girl

Resolution

  Show spoilers »

• Evidence

First murder

Victim: Hideo Kawashima

Cause of death: Drowning

Location: Piano room

Time of death: 30 minutes – 1 hour before being found

• The first movement of the Moonlight Sonata was played from a tape recorder.
• There was a sea water trail from the door to Kawashima's body and he has dirt and sand on the back of his shirt.
• Kawashima's jacket was found on the beach.
• The doors and windows of the piano room were locked from the inside.
• There were several minutes of silence at the beginning of the tape.
• The Moonlight Sonata sheet music was found, but the notes in the fourth bar were "strange".
• Conan decoded that the “strange” notes actually say: "The hellfire of hatred made you pay."

Second murder

Victim: Tatsuji Kuroiwa

Cause of death: Stabbed to death

Location: Broadcasting room

Time of death: 5 minutes and 30 seconds before being found

G A G A E E C♯ D F B♭ A E D♯ F D♯ F E A B A A C♯ B♭ B B♭ A B♭ C A
"You realize it don't you? You're next." ("Wakatteru na? Tsugi ha omae no ban da.")

• The second movement of the Moonlight Sonata was played.
• Nishimoto discovered the body.
• The tape has 5 minutes and 30 seconds lead in silence.
• Music notes written with the victim's blood were found.
• Conan decoded the music notes: "You realize it don't you? You're next."

Third murder

Victim: Ken Nishimoto

Cause of death: Hanging

Location: Storage room

Time of death: 30 minutes before being found

• The third movement of the Moonlight Sonata was set to play.
• Sheet music that looked liked a suicide note was found under his feet. The decoded note said he regretted killing Kawashima and Kuroiwa and that he didn't want people to find out the wrongdoing they did years ago.
• There was no chair or anything to stand on, so Nishimoto couldn't hang himself.
• No one would bother writing a suicide note in code.

Other incriminating evidence

• The dusty piano in the city hall was tuned perfectly.
• After the first murder, there was someone outside the piano room whom Conan and Kogoro failed to catch.
• When the gang returned to the city hall after the second murder, there was someone in the piano room who jumped out the window and Murasawa was found unconscious on the floor.
• After the third murder, Conan returned to the piano room and found a tuning hammer for the piano.
• Under the piano was a secret drawer with cocaine in it.
• Upon looking at the pictures of the crime scene where Kuroiwa was murdered, there was a button with its red light on near the victim's neck.
• Conan found that Hirata has powder-like substance under his sleeves and his left hand was bandaged. He also had lots of foreign money with him.
• Keiji Asoh left sheet music in his safe to which it read: "To my son, Seiji". Asoh had a son who became ill when he was a child and had to be hospitalized, meaning he was NOT killed in the incident that took the lives of the Asoh family.

• Conclusion

The person who knocked out Murasawa in the piano room was Kazuaki Hirata. The bandage on his left hand was the result of smashing the window when he was trying to escape. He was also the one that Kogoro and Conan chased outside the piano room. The piano room was his meeting place with Kawashima when doing business: dealing drugs. He was using the piano's secret compartment as a hiding place for cocaine he got from overseas to which he exchanged later for large sums of money. The reason why he was always talking about the cursed piano was because he wanted to keep everyone in the town away from it. Murasawa saw the drugs that he had left in there earlier so he hit him. Still, he was unrelated to the murders because he wouldn't have related the piano to the crimes.

In the second murder, they found that he had been dead for only a few minutes but when Conan fell on the code of blood, it didn't smear when it takes 25-30 minutes for human blood to dry. It was just a trick that the killer used to manipulate the time of death of the victim. Upon looking at the pictures, there was a button that was lighted near Kuroiwa's neck. But after the body was moved, the light was turned off. This was actually the reverse button. While the police weren't looking, the killer turned off the light. The killer used the reverse side (the blank side that didn't have the song), which played for over 30 min and then it reversed. That was when the 5 minutes and 30 seconds of gap played before the music started.

In the third murder, the killer didn't have the time to put a chair or desk at Nishimoto's feet because he had to escape in time. The killer was probably male because the murders required a lot of physical strength.

The purpose of drowning Kawashima was to send the forensic examiner back to Tokyo, because it was impossible to do an autopsy on the island. The tape in the second murder was a setup so the killer could create an alibi.

Conan deduced that the killer was Narumi Asai and that she was, in fact, Asoh's aforementioned son, Seiji Asoh. Asai was probably the surname of the family that adopted him. After graduation, he came to the island as a female doctor. The pronunciation of his name was not written on his diploma, nor the medical license, because if they checked his history, they would have found out that he was a man: the kanji forming Asoh's name could be read as either "Seiji" (a male-only name) or "Narumi" (a female-only name): coupled with Asoh's feminine features and rather girlish voice, it let him masquerade as a female doctor rather well, plus falsifying the times of death and manipulating the crime scenes. He also stayed all night so that they'd make him last for questioning, keeping the "disguise" intact.

As for Murasawa, he was an admirer of the late Asoh and he was the one who kept the donated piano in tune just like that night.

As Conan-through-Kogoro explained all of this, suddenly the police came in and said that Seiji/Narumi had escaped. While they were looking for him, the community center building suddenly went up in flames: it turns out Seiji, who had realized that he had been found out, locked himself inside and set it on fire, intending to die like his father.

Conan, carrying Asoh's last music sheets with his message for the then-young Seiji, managed to slip in and told Seiji, who was sitting at the piano, to keep on living. Seiji confirmed that he was the young boy who escaped his family's murder, plus everything that Conan-through-Kogoro had already said (explained below in "Motive"). When Seiji was done, Conan insisted that he should escape and live; Seiji refused, however, saying that he was already too bloodstained. Then, he grabbed Conan and threw him through the window, saving his life. Afterwards, he played one last music code message in the burning flames: "Thank you, little detective".

Suicide
	Location: Community center piano room on Tsukikage Island Victim: Seiji Asoh Age: 26 years old Cause of death: Burning Seiji then committed suicide by dying like his father. Conan failed to stop him, but he played one last music code message in the burning flames: "Thank you, little detective".

• Motive

Seiji's motive dated back when his father, the pianist Keiji Asoh, and his family was murdered. Kawashima, Nishimoto, Kuroiwa, and Kameyama used Asoh's international concerts as a front for their international drug trade. When Asoh stated that he wouldn't cooperate any longer, they got scared that their secret might be exposed, so they locked the family in their home and set it on fire, . This was all written in the sheet music that he left behind in the safe as his confession to his remaining son. Seiji was hospitalized in Tokyo at the time of the murder, and later was adopted by a friend of the Asoh family.

Seiji went back to the island, under his "Narumi" disguise, because he never believed the official "Keiji Asoh killed his family and himself" version and wanted to find out the truth. As said above, when he told Kameyama that he was Asoh's son, the late mayor was terrified and told him everything an then had a fatal heart attack. Seiji played the Moonlight Sonata that his father loved so much upon seeing the mayor dead, and ultimately that gave him the idea of taking justice in his own hands.

After Seiji's death and the end of the case, Conan and Ran talked about him. They wondered why did Seiji summon Kogoro when he knew how risky that would be for his plan, and Conan speculated that it wasn't just a challenge - that deep down, Seiji wanted Kogoro to stop him.

Rerun

The episode was rerun on September 22, 2003. It was unchanged except for the addition of a footage of Gosho Aoyama talking at the beginning. It's also the first rerun aired on TV.

Translation changes

Anime

• The names of the characters and places in the Funimation Dub are:

• Keiji Asoh - Casper Austin
• Narumi Asai (former name Seiji) - Nadia Adams (former name Simon Austin)
• Isamu Kameyama - Kirkpatrick
• Tatsuji Kuroiwa - Theodore Kinsella
• Reiko Kuroiwa - Rene Kinsella
• Kazuaki Hirata - Kevin Hadley
• Shuichi Murasawa - Steven Mulholland
• Hideo Kawashima - Henry Kavanagh
• Masato Shimizu - Matthew Schumacher
• Ken Nishimoto - Ken Nicholson
• Tsukikage Island - Moonlight Island (The Viz Media translation of the manga gives another alternate name Moon Shadow Island)

• Other changes:

• At the end when it says "Thank you little detective", Nadia will actually say it at the end.

Manga to anime changes

• Reiko Kuroiwa wears a coat over her dress on the day of interrogation.
• In the anime, the detail about Nishimoto being a close friend of Asoh is omitted.
• The skeletal corpses of Asoh's wife and daughter aren't depicted in the anime, being changed to the moment after they're murdered and in the flames.

Remake version

A remake version was aired on March 6, 2021 and March 13, 2021 as the 1000th and 1001st episode. It retold the same story with some scene being removed and altered.

Trivia

The code as laid out on an 88 key grand piano keyboard.

• This is the first 1-hour episode.
• The keyboard code presented in this case is usable despite minor errors made by the animation staff.
• The piano song in the case is Piano Sonata No. 14 in C♯ minor "Quasi una fantasia" (Beethoven) by Ludwig van Beethoven.

BGM listing

#	Song Title	Romaji	Translation	OST
1	胸がドキドキ	Mune ga Dokidoki	The Pounding of My Heart	Mune ga Dokidoki
2	("Moonlight Sonata" First Movement)
3	("Moonlight Sonata" First Movement)
4	(Unreleased BGM 1)
5	(Unreleased Sound Effect/BGM)
6	("Moonlight Sonata" First Movement)
7	悪のテーマ （パート２）	Aku no Tēma (Pāto 2)	Theme of Evil (Part 2)	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 2
8	事件現場 （オリジナルver.）	Jiken Genba (Orijinaru ver.)	Scene of the Case (Original ver.)	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 2
9	事件現場 （謎ver.）	Jiken Genba (Nazo ver.)	Scene of the Case (Mystery ver.)	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 2
10	(Unreleased BGM 1)
11	("Moonlight Sonata" Second Movement)
12	事件現場 （オリジナルver.）	Jiken Genba (Orijinaru ver.)	Scene of the Case (Original ver.)	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 2
13	犯人のアジト （いよいよver.）	Hannin no Ajito (Iyoiyo ver.)	The Culprit's Hideout (More and More ver.)	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 2
14	緊迫	Kinpaku	Tension	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 2
15	脅迫 （パート２）	Kyōhaku (Pāto 2)	Threat (Part 2)	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 2
16	コナンのテーマ	Konan no Tēma	Conan's Theme	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 1
17	事件現場 （オリジナルver.）	Jiken Genba (Orijinaru ver.)	Scene of the Case (Original ver.)	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 2
18	犯人のアジト	Hannin no Ajito	The Culprit's Hideout	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 1
19	沈む夕陽	Shizumu Yūhi	Depressing Sunset	Detective Conan Original Soundtrack 1
20	("Moonlight Sonata" First Movement)
21	(Unreleased Sound Effect/BGM)
22	STEP BY STEP	STEP BY STEP	STEP BY STEP	STEP BY STEP

In other languages

Language	Title	Translation
Bahasa Melayu	Dendam di Sebalik Sonata yang Menyinari Malam	Revenge behind the Sonata under Moonlight
Arabic	سمفونية ضوء القمر	Moonlight Sonata
Basque	Hilketa Beethovenen Ilargiarte Argitan
Catalan (Catalan dub)	El cas de l'assassinat de la sonata "Clar de lluna"	The Moonlight Sonata Murder Case
Catalan (Valencian dub)	Els assassinats de la sonata "Clar de Lluna"	The Moonlight Sonata's Murders
Chinese	钢琴奏鸣曲“月光”杀人事件	Piano Sonata "The Moonlight" Murder Case
French	Sonate pour un crime au clair de lune	A Sonata For a Crime Under the Moonlight
Galician	Os asasinatos da Sonata ao Luar	The Moonlight Sonata's Murders
German	Mord bei Mondschein	Murder in the Moonlight
Italian	Il caso della sonata al chiaro di luna	The Moonlight Sonata Case
Korean	월광 소나타	Moonlight Sonata
Polish	Morderstwa z „Sonatą Księżycową” w tle	Murders with "The Moonlight Sonata" in the background
Portuguese	Sonata ao Luar	Moonlight Sonata
Spanish (Castilian dub)	Sonata a la luz de la luna	Sonata under the Moonlight
Spanish (American dub)	Asesinato a la luz de la luna	Murder under moon light
Thai	คดีฆาตกรรมเปียโนโซนาต้า แสงจันทร์	The Moonlight Sonata Piano Murder Case
Vietnamese	Vụ án bản Sonata ánh trăng	The Moonlight Sonata Case

See also

• Season 1