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I think the pacing in Bourbon arc was not well planned, and the new arc characters were introduced in a way that didn't maximize their story impact, especially in the long term. The Bourbon arc should have been about 100 chapters shorter. There was a lot of padding from Okiya's intro to Bourbon's intro. There were also some parts where the plot cases piled up almost one after another, that while totally hype from our perspective, could have been paced out with randoms without losing too much intensity. (V75-77) Bourbon also came in too late IMO. It would have really taken pressure off of him as a suspect if he did more innocent apprenticing with Kogoro, or didn't try to become Kogoro's apprentice right away but kept "coincidentally" running into him. Masumi never really felt like a viable Bourbon suspect compared to Okiya and Amuro. Kuroda should have come in earlier in my opinion to be the third/fourth suspect after Matsumoto's scar case, menaced in the background, and then played a role in Amuro trying to showdown with Okiya in the second half. (Assuming Gosho had planned Kuroda out back then.) It would have been a sort of James Black in the Vermouth arc situation again, which I thought was a fun move back then and not too overdone. I marked the Bourbon arc in the poll, but I don't know if the decline of quality in permanent. I don't really like the Akai family subplot. Until shrunken Mary and Tsutomu came in after X00 chapters, it failed to create feelings of tension or deep mystery. To compare just prior arcs, the Kir arc was a much stronger "family mystery" with a lot more emotion thanks to Eisuke, and the cellphone arc managed a pretty decent feeling of deep mystery even though it was just Conan being haunted by a sound he can't quite pin down. One of the most egregious points to me was the disconnect between how much Gosho expected people to care about Masumi's middle brother and how much people actually felt it was important. Midbro wasn't in danger or have interesting backstory to contribute, he just leeched off Masumi's character by being the real brains behind her. The meeting with Masumi in the past was also pretty underwhelming, which was sad. I really wanted that case to focus on Masumi interacting with Shinichi and Ran, especially her with Shinichi. Shuukichi and Mary also deserved more attention too since they are the new people. Shuuichi stole all the spotlight though, which was a disappointment. I think that should have been a double case, 6 chapters, to give more time for characters to show off. I don't view the Rum arc as hopeless. With shrunken Mary, Tsutomu's disappearance, and the potential for Elena reappear in the plot, there might be some stronger points coming.