Chekhov MacGuffin

He is now. Ugh, wish I could change my vote to Chikara. Maybe I just need to open a new poll every 6 months.

http://conan-face-maker.com/maker/ This is an official Conan website that lets you design case suspects using Gosho's art. There is some sort of promotional going on where you can enter your character into a contest to be a suspect in a case. Go through each tab to pick a feature. If you click on the red bar in each tab, you can adjust the angle, position, and size of various features so they fit the face. If you want to translate the instructions and enter your character, be my guest, but I mostly just want to see the insanity you all some up with. Here's mine. Background character to the max: Tried to come up with a unique combo not seen in manga:

I'm not convinced by this "dokkun" SFX means BO theory. I did some admittedly quick flipping, and saw that same sound effect being used for several heavy heartbeat moments; such as the APTX revert feeling. My current take is that it is Gosho's sound effect of choice for heavy heartbeats, and "dokkun" gets used for a variety of heavy heartbeat scenarios including BO scares. Thus, I have zero reason right now to believe it means just BO sense and not "heartpounding moment" in general. I am not convinced her reaction to Rumi was a BO scare versus a regular one. When Haibara has the BO feeling, she usually mentions it. She hasn't. I think it's fair to wait and see if she mentions it again because Haibara has delayed talking about the feelings before. That said, I don't think Ai's character growth re. overcoming fear of the Org is such that she would be inclined to side with Rumi right away if her BO-dar went off.

Not sure if BO smell or just reacting to mal-intent. Haibara has reacted to general mal-intent in a few previous cases, but has never claimed it was the BO smell and been incorrect about it. My point of reference is that her reaction was muted in this latest case when Rumi did the "LetS StAb aYumI toGetheR, HeehEEHee" culprit distraction gambit. The scenario was pretty much 1 to 1 with Okiya on Ikkaku rock, yet Ai didn't have nearly the same degree of feeling.

Well, going back to what I said before, I think you were holding certain assumptions to be true that are currently not supported one way or the other, and you were getting called out for that. Two of ones I noticed is that you insisted several times that disguise was involved, and that Amanda's bodyguard was effective and certain to be a major obstacle for Amanda's killer. That's why in the story version I came up with on the spot above, I purposefully presented a viable option where disguise was not necessary and the bodyguard was easily dealt with.

It would super uncharacteristic of Gosho to mess up on a scene like this where the clue is simple, front and center. That bottom right blob, whatever it is, is definitely something real and intended. It may not be attached to the shogi piece - there could be 2 items in her pocket, but I honestly think it's all one thing because usually Gosho doesn't over-complicate things.

That's a fine interpretation of events. But as I said several replies up, that is but one version of many potential stories that could be told. Here's one I came up with just now. Amanda is a Kohji fan, so she wanted to watch him play the American chess tournament. She checked into the hotel where the tournament was taking place in a room adjacent to Kohji's, maybe even one of those family rooms which has an adjoining door. Perhaps the killer, let's assume Rum because why not, it's his arc, stayed in the hotel as a chess competitor because the BO figured that Kohji would draw Amanda out. Rum could move without much scrutiny because as a chess player, he was scheduled and expected to be there. He doesn't even need a disguise if he knows how to exploit a time to act in where he can move without scrutiny. So sometime during the tourni, Rum sleeping-drugged the bodyguard with the intent to frame him/her, duplicated the Amanda's room key card, made sure the coast was clear, and went to Amanda's room to kill her. Unfortuntly Kohji next door heard something amiss and poked his head in, thus necessitating his murder. That part didn't go well and Kohji had time to leave a dying message. Maybe Rum got distracted for a bit because his eye got poked. Regardless Rum vanished back into the tournament like nothing happened (he could call in Vermouth to disguise as him while he relays her moves) and the bodyguard was left as the main suspect, so they took pictures/grabbed clues desperately in hopes their name would be cleared and revenge for Kohji and Amanda would be had one day and then ran for it. The end.

I don't know who is saying only one of those two is consistent, because it wasn't me. Based on the website's testimony and the BO's MO, I do think Haneda Kohji's murder was either unplanned or planned but badly botched. In past BO cases that were part of the current timeline, the drug was a tool of last resort. Gin only dosed Shinichi at Tropical Land because a gunshot might have attracted nearby police. Gin approved Pisco's use of the drug if it was needed, but the main version of the plan was to drop a chandelier on the target's head and make it look like an accident. If the drug was used seventeen years ago when there was presumably even less data to support its efficacy than there is currently, that suggests circumstances were not ideal for Kohji's killer - assuming they were BO (and so far only BO have used the drug to kill). Second, we lack a motive for Kohji's murder. Based on what Conan said, Amanda Hughes could have been a target because of her standing and connections to American law enforcement. Her murder was executed "cleanly" (exact method is unknown) which suggests prior intent and planning. All we know about Haneda Kohji now is that he was a shogi champion who many people thought could obtain all seven titles, and was decent at chess too apparently. Prior victims of the BO tend to be political inconveniences, spies, related to operatives, accomplices, or tools related to the research programs. Kohji doesn't seem to fall into any of those categories (for now), except that Amanda was his fan, which doesn't seem like a good reason to kill him on its own. If there isn't an obvious motive, then it becomes logical to assume that his murder was premeditated because it was convenient (e.g. to get him out of the way somehow) or it was not premeditated at all and he was killed because of an unexpected circumstance at the crime scene (e.g. he became a witness). Either way, the execution was messy, which is uncharacteristic for the BO and probably relates to Rum's screw-up. Finally, looking at the big picture, in regular non-arc cases by Gosho, a messy crime scene where a dying message is left is by the victim is usually indicative of the murderer not being done cleanly, one that went wrong halfway, or one that was unplanned. Cases like this include The Antique Collector Murder Case, Alpine Hut in the Snowy Mountain Murder Case, Megure's Sealed Secret (Sonoko's close call specifically), The Secret Rushed Omission, The Lay Down and Wash Your Face Case, The Shadow Approaching Haibara's Secret (state of crime scene hut), and Taii's Owner Attack case (Kind of, no dying message but is a spur of the moment attack that resulted in damages to a table. My best guess is that some member of the Black Organization murdered Haneda - because he is on the poisoned-with-APTX list - but that was not an intended or desirable method. Currently I am more inclined to think that Kohji's murder was not planned, rather than it being planned for convenience, but that is mostly based on my hunches about the evidence and my general observation that everyone but Gin seems to like killing the fewest people possible on missions. I can't really say one way or the other.

About the pocket item Rumi has, it sure looks like a a shogi piece, but the other part on the bottom right is weird. How about it's a shogi piece that caught a bullet like the SatoxTakagi's first kiss case's Mahjong piece? By the way, Rumi's pocket item speculation has been added to the Rumi page, so if you have any good ideas, please take a screenshot and add them to the gallery.

@gg1998, you are asking some very specific questions of @MeiTanteixX we don't have the information to answer. Right now we are in the "nice story" stage of making inferences about the plot because we have some info, but not enough specifics to rule things out. The best we can do is come up with simple ideas that are consistent with the evidence. @MeiTanteixX's version of events is quite reasonable and pretty consistent with what we know, although it is hardly the only reasonable tale that can be spun. You should at least be able to acknowledge that much. @gg1998, in my opinion you are premature in most of your arguments. You jump to conclusions like "Rum posed as someone very close to Amanda to get the access to her and circumventing Asaka" and think "Rum was able to easily dodge Asaka but wasn't so lucky with Haneda's murder" is illogical, but you haven't really justified any of that with evidence from the storyline that we know. We simply don't know who was where at what times and thus who was defended and who was undefended when things went down. The evidence of a good argument is that it constantly refers back to the source material. Finally, the personal attacks you are making (e.g. "you miserably ignore the point", "You just being another primed person is trying desperately to think Haneda murder as collateral damage you don't consider that it could have been the part of the plan.") are unnecessarily demeaning. Cut that out. You can be civil with someone you disagree with.

Please forgive me for quoting myself, but what I said about Muga Iori 4 months ago is relevant here. It's true that VermiAraide was a school nurse. Amuro is a waiter sometimes. But there comes a point where even undercover evil realistically dares not tread because they become too ridiculous to be taken seriously. Somewhere on the far side of that line is Muga Iori: the side character grunt of a side character wench trying to usurp a side character's side character girlfriend position.

I have honestly been out of the loop with the latest cases, but from my glance over, this is how I am currently piecing the story together to be most consistent with the various factions' actions and reactions. I think Wakasa Rumi is likely to have been the bodyguard Asaka, but Rumi is also the one who took pictures of the Kohji murder scene, removed various clues (To preserve their integrity? Fear of being framed?), and then started the ever-shifting website with all of Haneda Kohji's death info. In other words, she is not Kohji's killer, she is trying to get someone to find the real one. Kohji's dying message probably does refer to her (and thus Wakasa Rumi is her real name) and not the BO named Rum, but I haven't put much thought into whether she knows the decipherment or not. My best guess is that Kohji didn't intend to name her as the killer, but instead to point the police to the person who knew more, OR, Kohji thought wrongly that she was the killer (and disguise was involved or something. dunno.) Rumi apparently has a shogi piece which may very well be a clue from the original murder scene that has not been posted. I suspect that will clinch the Kohji murder case somehow. Her motive in getting close to Conan is probably because she wants to make contact with him or Kogoro (depending on if she knows Conan is behind Sleeping Kogoro) and get the case solved. Meanwhile Kuroda Hyoue and the NPA found the website, solved the mirror clue, and consider her, wrongly, to be the primary suspect for Kohji's killer but lack concrete proof to drag her in I guess. I can't really explain why Kuroda is holding back. It's reasonable to think Asaka was the killer based on his/her behavior; Conan did make the same assumption after all. Rumi might have been framed by Rum, or Rum did it and the blame just happened to fall on her. Meanwhile, the Black Organization has no idea about Wakasa Rumi, so they can't figure out the meaning of the mirror clue because they are fixated on the Rum interpretation. Because the BO/Rum hates the idea of a not-fully-understood potential time-bomb dying message, they have been sending agents to investigate ASACA things.

It's possible, but we were only shown details from the past two years. My (could-be-flawed) recollection is that Gosho said in one of the interviews (check Jimmy's wiki interview page to find it probably) that we maybe should be able to figure out why Itakura was needed by the Black Organization with just the info we have.I don't know if Gosho thinks he has said enough, or if there is more coming from Itakura eventually. Before the Mystery Train, I would have guessed that Gosho was going to drop the issue until the end of things, but maybe since it came up again there is more to be explored. Conan would need some reason to check the disks again, which isn't too hard of a scenario to create, but only if Gosho intends to follow up on that plot. I'm hoping that during the Rum arc we can find out more about the Black Organization's computer goals. I take the movies with a Great-Salt-Lake sized grain of salt, but since the recent trend has been to link the movies with manga canon events, I am hopeful that Rum's rather robotic presentation in that movie (not just the altered voice which was kind of a given in order to obscure his identity, but everything to to with that weird light show) might be a hint he is tied in with the computer agenda. This might be just wishful thinking though on my part. On another note, the one thing in common we have seen between the victims and associates of the Black Organization computing agenda is a relationship to computer games. Tequila's associate, Hideaki Nakajima, was a game developer related to "Mantendo" games and the list of skilled programmers he would have prepared certainly would have certainly drawn from his expertise there. Itakura worked on games as well, and seems to have had an interest in game programming before he got into CG work. And even if we jump to the Night Baron Murder Case, Genichirou Kaneshiro, whom many people like to consider suspicious, actually fits better into to potential target category if you think of what the Night Baron virus destroyed: his girl dating sim game in development. If he was developing one game, what other game or game-like materials could he have been working on? Thinking more about it, that could put Agasa on a target board, since he is known to develop games besides his usual quirky inventions.

I'm sorry to lock the topic, but I'd like to encourage you to continue this at forum games.

Regarding links to subs rules, the important thing is that this site is not and should not become a go-to resource for illegal downloads and streams, and searches of this site's public content should not be able to find links to these things. Breaking these rules is how DCW got nailed the first and only time, and how DCTP got nailed for the anime and manga translations they used to do.

NO links to subs. That's how this site got a DMCA takedown before.

Blocked on the forum, or blocked on the wiki? If you mean that you are blocked from editing on the wiki, that is because the IP address that Sucuri* gave you was also used by an anonymous user I blocked on the wiki earlier. Because of the way Sucuri works, several people share one editing IP address. When I block an IP address because one person is misbehaving, everyone else using that IP address becomes collateral damage. It's unfortunate, but I have no choice when I have to stop someone. You have an account with a name since you made one to post on the forum. You should be able to edit on the wiki since the block in question only covers users who are not logged in. Try editing while you are logged in and it shows your username in the upper right on the wiki; there should be no problems. One final complication is that certain pages on the wiki are protected so new users cannot edit them even if they make an account. Most of these are high traffic or important support pages that are potential vandalism targets (Main page, Anime, Template! etc.). Logged in users stop being "new" once they make some regular edits on other pages. There are a few other pages that have been locked to anonymous and new users because of past problems. These are currently (Feb 4, 2017): Relationships‎ (Locked because of semi-frequent deletions by people who dislike certain romances, romance triangles, etc) The Boss of the Black Organization‎ (Locked because one editor made 400-500 tiny edits in large batches at a time, added false rumors, and rewrote sections into incorrect English. It got completely out of hand when movie descriptions became longer than the rest of the article. I basically got tired of having to fix the page several times, only to have the same types of edits made again later.) The Beauty, The Lies, and The Secrets‎ (Same editor as above made about 30 edits about how an AO char is similar to Fujiko from Lupin III.) Everyone Saw‎ (An anonymous user repeatedly changed a crime description from murder to suicide. Someone left an invisible note saying why it should be one way, but the other user kept changing it several times without explaining his side. So I locked it, because even they are right, people who just try to force their way without even so much as an edit summary explaining why are rude.) *(Sucuri = the security service this website uses to protect against hackers)

@Both @MeiTanteixX and @DCUniverseAficionado in general, because I am too lazy to select and quote, and I trust you both not to edit you posts or delete them later. Gin's moves don't represent an original threat IMO. Ancient memory from the pre-DCTP edogawa proboards time, but I seem to remember people anticipating a Gin threat development after Kir's intro case where Gin declared his continuing suspicions about Kogoro after the sniping was interrupted. That suspicion that maybe Gin would do something further to Kogoro was used to manipulate people's perceptions of Eisuke, i.e. he was a plant by the BO to spy on Kogoro. Now we are in a very similar situation. Gin complains, some suspects show up around Kogoro and the kids, and people suspect they could be BO following up on Gin's worries. Personally, I think Gin's words are a tactic to make the suspects more suspicious by encouraging people to think they were sent by the BO to look at Kogoro. Gosho could certainly do this and make it so, but I'm not holding my breath. I'll start worrying when Gin's not sitting in the Porsche. That's not to say Gin's threat isn't interesting or relevant. It just isn't in the same category of threat development as what happened in past arcs where the titular arc character was announced to be making moves. Gin's threat to Kogoro is one of many small threats, along with the BO being worried about "Asaca", Mary's likely involuntary shrinking, the deletion of data, the suspects being suspicious, Kohji's death etc that, from our current perspective, are mostly independent from one another. Speaking in very wide writing theory generalities, the strongest starter plot structure for a mystery is to establish one main threat/conflict/issue that readers can rally around, and then introduce subplots which teasingly circle it, like remoras following a shark. The Vermouth arc followed this structure exactly. Vermouth's identity and target was the shark threat, and the goal of the APTX drug, Jodie's past, the Miyano's past, Shinichi's connection to Vermouth, The Vineyards, Itakura, Haibara's fears, etc, were the remora issues. Eventually each of those subplots was attached to the main plot with ample opportunities beforehand for the reader to speculate how they all tied together. The Bourbon arc started this way too (shark = detective Bourbon on the move), but the pacing was a severe problem. And then partway through, the Akai family sideplot was dropped into the pool as a second shark to distract from the main one. The Rum arc already has lots of remoras, maybe even more than the Vermouth arc, but we only have a shark's shadow (Rum, uh, exists.... somewhere. And maybe he's doing something.) Borrowing political terms, that's not rallying the base. The fact that the remora issue Gin-continuing-to-be-suspicious-of-Kogoro is being mistaken as a shark is a bad sign, plot-structure wise. And back to the big picture, I'm not saying the Rum arc is all bad. It's just had a rough start, one that wasn't planned to maximize impact and use characters to their fullest. (info-dumpy, failure for main threat to materialize) I think that's a valid complaint to field at this stage. Enough chapters have gone by. But there is plenty of time for things to be redeemed. Claiming we are already in part 2 of the Rum arc is jumping the gun to the max. There has been no paradigm shift. We are still in info dump and suspect reveal mode. The Rum arc has had no file equivalent to the Mystery Train case or Golden apple.

There was a minor error when Eri was climbing in the drawers. The second drawer up should have been most of the way out when Eri was climbing into the bottom drawer, not all the way pushed in (because she needs room for her head). I imagine the culprits don't have anything better for Eri planned after they film her. They left secretary Midori alone because she didn't see the culprit's faces, but I'm going to guess they will take a page from Agasa's kidnappers and go for murder/arson after [not] having their way with Eri. If I were Eri, instead of trying something subtle and clever, I'd just announce that my messages will end with the name of a police officer that Kogoro and Ran know personally. Then Eri can say what she wants and end each message with an officer's name. Eri knows Megure, both Yokomizos, Sato, Takagi, and Chiba. That's 5 messages and 1 to set up the next pattern, such as high school friends of Ran. Of course, this being a DC case, things aren't going to be so straight forward. TBH Eri should just text the emergency services directly if that is an option in Tokyo. Edit: I predict that Eri will be caught by the kidnappers because they hear the growl of her stomach, but Kogoro breaks in and wrecks them (with Ran and Conan's help) before they get her undressed beyond Shounen Sunday censorship standards.

If the Black Org were to test any detective's skills, they would test how well the detective can dodge bullets.

A consequential appearance (not a flashback, not a reference) in the next fifteen files would be significant enough to put him on the list, but only if it doesn't solely revolve around Hattori's romance with Kazuha (i.e. fatherly gossip).

Both Sakurako and Koumei have had enough appearances for me to be pretty certain. I did more than just statistics, I also looked for contexts where they were responding to things they could only see in their peripheral vision, and unlike Kansuke, they never had any "misses" over overcompensation headturns. I don't think Heiji's father is a viable suspect if he hasn't had a substantial recent reappearance (last appearance = a few panels with Ootaki in the vampire mansion case post mystery train), so even if I had a way to compensate for squinty eyes, I would not bother.

Tsutomu sent Mary a final message which was vague, but specified that Tsutomu had made enemies of "horrible people". It's a pretty easy leap to deduce that Tsutomu ran afoul of some group when doing whatever regarding Kohji's case (Shuuichi knew Kohji case tied to Tsutomu's disappearance). That doesn't give too many pointers, but it indicates a concrete enemy rather than an abstract force, and said enemy would be suspect #1 if someone attacked the rest of Tsutomu's family. Possibility is not the same as probability. Let's also be brutally honest here, if Gosho doesn't notice (or doesn't care) that he has frontloaded the Rum arc with an info dump for 75-80 files, then I don't expect him to be thinking a whole lot about gaming the meta. And the most important thing I said before about Sakurako and Koumei: "I don't think either of them are Rum because they appear to have fully decent vision." I looked really really hard at these two, and the evidence is really good for both eyes sighted.

And your example of this done right in DC? When immediate investment and the urge to continue met? For sure, the Kir and Vermouth arcs started this way. The Kir arc was perhaps the fastest arc to do this. It opens with the most action-packed showdown with the BO since the Hyde City Hotel and the brand new BO agent Mizunashi Rena, codename Kir, gets captured by the FBI. Three files later, Ran mentions a transfer student that looks like Rena is enrolling in Teitan. And in the next case the Rena clone, "Hondou Eisuke", pops in Mouri's office and gets all up in the detective agency's business with some probing questions. BO agent? Sibling? Both? What's his angle and why get close to Ran and the Mouri Detective agency? Eisuke continues to establish himself as suspicious quickly after this. The premise starts quick. You are already invested by the time Kir's backstory comes under question and we find out about the BO's efforts to recover her. Vermouth's arc started with the first BO showdown of the manga, involved a temporary antidote and Shiho prominently, and ended with this new lady BO agent sitting in Gin's car indicating she wanted to stay behind in Japan for reasons. Uh-oh! Desperate Revival, although interesting to Vermouth's plot, was not obviously related at the time, so I'm going to ignore it. The next known Vermouth-related case was "Battle Game Trap" ~30 files later where Jodie used Vermouth's trademark line. "The Mysterious Passenger", 15 files after "Battle Game Trap", was in many ways the file that really set the Vermouth arc on fire. We find out 1) Vermouth is a disguise artist (and who knows who she was before now!), 2) we confirm she is looking for someone and meeting with Gin, 3) Haibara confirms that Vermouth is on the bus setting up the three major suspects (Jodie, Araide, Akai), 4) Vermouth already knows "Cool Guy" Conan is a genius and is observing his anti-bus-jacker plan with interest so she's got something personal there. 45 files in and we have the full premise: an amazing BO disguise artist is hunting someone, likely Shiho, and she's maybe picked a disguise of someone close to Conan. Oh yeah, she knows Conan is a genius and thus undoubtedly be compensating for him with her plan. Go find her! The Bourbon arc, if we consider it starting with Kir's message to Jodie in File 622, opened with the reveal of a new Detective-like BO member named Bourbon who is on the move, Okiya's introduction, Haibara's fear of him, and his move into Kudo's house. That's certainly a premise to become invested in, but the arc took it's freaking sweet time developing it. It took 55 files for Scar Akai to show up and add to events, and 20 on top of that for additional information to come out about Bourbon's activities in the 13 red shirts case. The Rum arc, while getting the info ball rolling faster than Bourbon's, doesn't have a clean start and has instead been focusing on developing past connections rather than an active threat. We have a BO agent's name and description (which is an incentive to look for him), but no firm indications of activity. Shrunken Mary, introduced in the Bourbon arc, is certainly part of the premise and interesting as a likely APTX victim, but she's not firmly connected to anything actively-developing yet. Mary's relation to Shiho and Elena hasn't yet bore fruit. We have some Rum suspects, and most are close to the main characters, but without knowing Rum's angle it's hard to assign them a sense of threat. (Compare Vermouth, where we knew she was hunting someone by the time three suspects were announced.) The 17-years-ago Kohji case seems to be a major point, introduced ~45 files into the arc, but other than being a sore point for Rum and the BO, it's unclear how it's affecting things beyond making the BO investigate ASACA things. So far for 80 files, the Rum arc has basically been in info dump mode, and we are awaiting the reveal of a current threat which will start tying unconnected issues together. It's not all bad, but it's not what I would call a well planned start. I really would not over-estimate the information sharing going on between Mary and Masumi. It's almost non-existent in Gosho-land and especially among the Akais. Super Digest Book 80+ Gosho Interview: Q67: Does Sera know about the Black Org? A: She doesn't know. I'm sure Sera can make some guesses, but she really has shown no firm indications she knows anything specific about the BO. Regarding her father's disappearance, until it is shown that she knows a single specific detail about her father, I'm not going to make any speculations at all that she was told anything. Yes, I am super cynical about info sharing. And that's another sign of "sloppy plot setup," right? If so, how could Gosho have avoided this? That is not sloppy in the same sense I am saying Gosho's failure to design and order plot events in the Akai Family subplot so they develop and maintain a sense of jeopardy, relevance to other plots, or impact is sloppy. Designing a mystery and the suspects in a way so that those experienced with the genre will have difficulty is a "meta writing issue", while designing a plot so that it has an early and strong impact is more of a "fundamental writing issue." It's more important to attend to the fundamentals than hit the meta problems. And to be sure, it's hard to address meta issues because you have limited time and limited suspects, and sometimes you just need to do your thing because you need to achieve the fundamentals. The easiest way to game the meta is to buck your past trends and tropes. Gosho certainly uses recurring tropes which are exploitable. A higher level strategy is to "clear" a suspect via a secondary case and have some entirely innocent backstory come out. People tend to put a character out of mind when they are "resolved", and don't suspect a person may have layers. For instance Koumei and Yonehara Sakurako are two characters in the resolved state, because both have been cleared through a case(s) and had some backstory come out. I don't think either of them are Rum because they appear to have fully decent vision, but it would be a pretty twisty twist for the savvy fandom if one of them turned out to be Rum.

He could've certainly been introduced in the Red Wall case (682–686/558–561), though this may have lessened him as a suspect, as I presume (due to you comparing him to James) he would've been revealed to be Rei's/Toru's superior at the NPA, thus making him aware of not only Rei's/Toru's true allegiance, but Shuichi's survival, as well—and leaving him with the conclusion that Hidemi/Rena/Kir is, if not a NOC, a traitor to the BO—I find it very unlikely Rum would not take immediate action on both these pieces of knowledge, especially the latter. Eh, Gosho could have definitely had Kuroda pull double duty first as a Bourbon suspect and then had him menace as a potential double agent in the Rum arc. It's definitely not the first time Gosho has run arc suspects who know secret identities and should have acted on it. He'd have been just as believable as Masumi if not more so. Kuroda's practically been ruined as a suspect in the Rum arc already; Haibara already looked into his face and explicitly said he was just scary not BO smelly. I personally think she was potentially involved as early as the Adultery case (856–858/740–741), since I see no reason for Masumi to take a picture of Shinichi/Conan, there, unless it was to show to Mary—unless it was a prelude to her showing him a picture of Mary (872–875/754–756). You are trying to look back on the Bourbon arc and the Akai family mystery with current knowledge. I am speaking of it from the perspective we had while slogging through the middle of it, when we were basically told: "this random family stuff matters, but you'll have to wait and find out why." I hate when authors do that. I feel like I have been transformed into an obedient dog and my patronizing master has ordered me to sit and wait; if I am patient and behave (and part with more of my time and money) he will give me a treat. It's hardly just Gosho doing this. I'd like to get my dig in at Robert Galbraith, aka Joanne Rowling, and the The Cuckoo's Calling which had one of the most draggy and low-investment intros I'd ever had the patience to drudge through. Back to Gosho, let me explain in detail why the Akai family plot interim waiting period was terrible. Sera's sense of threat peaked soon after her intro. The mystery train confirmed what many had suspected, she was Shuuichi's sister and not a threat to Conan, and she had no idea what was going on with the fake death or the BO, and thus had no interesting connections to events there. Her sense of threat, which was waning as the train case approached, bottomed out. What was left open was how she knew Conan, and if it mattered to future plots, and if she could be used as leverage by Bourbon to get at Shuuichi. How she knew Conan was strongly hinted very early post train: she had an encounter with Conan and Ran as a child. There were no clues to suggest the eventual flashback would be plot developing. That dead-ended her character's interesting plot points pretty much, except for the middle brother. All that was left was to wait to see if she got entangled in anything to do with Bourbon and Okiya. Nope. She was completely left out of Bourbon's showdown with Okiya. And next point, the middle brother. There was (and still is 180 chapters later) absolutely no sign that the middle brother mattered to any plot more than tangentially, or to any of the main characters, as a hunter or hunted individual. As readers, we were given no incentives to figure out who he is. So what if he is an Akai? Why does he matter? True, we have guessed he will matter eventually because of genre conventions, but that's sloppy plot setup. Mysteries should be designed to invest the reader immediately and compel them to continue rather than start weak and promise delayed gratification. Me too, because mystery genre conventions. Chikara Katsumasa's a kinda innocent dude whose shown up, not done a whole lot other than hang around in the background around someone who will probably be plot relevant, and has potential for connections to earlier plot events (a chess match in America). He also hasn't been ruled out in my vision statistical test which helps. I'm already tired of waiting for clues that there is an active and plot changing threat. The biggest sense of active threat right now is the BO sending a crack team of trolls to knock websites related to the Kohji case offline (assuming they are the ones doing it), and freaking out about anything named ASACA. Even then, the BO's actions seem more like an extension of clean-up efforts that would have started 17 years ago rather than a new development that will entangle anyone Conan or the audience is invested in. We have Rum's name, but no hints of his direction. We have Mary, who is shrunken and switching hotels, but no signs she is being hunted rather than paranoid. The point I'm trying to make is that maybe there maybe someone's life is deeply in danger behind the scenes, they are being chased, and the BO is closing in. Excitement abounds. But we the readers don't know about it. The threats are vague and undirected. No one's picture has a dart through it on a dartboard. And that stinks. Eh, in that one case, you can argue. I'm still waiting for the origins of the "Guess I'm a bad girl, after all" thought (812–814/690–691). Wasn't expecting that case to be so short, either. No, that case was really about Masumi, and that it wasn't is a huge mistake. Masumi's character had been building to this moment. Her relation to Akai had been proven, but her motive for coming close to Shinichi was finally going to come out. All those hints about her affection for Shinichi, and how he left such a deep impression on Masumi to became an idol worthy of the title Wizard. Shinichi, Ran, and Masumi could have tried to solve an almost magical case together, with Shuukichi looking after them and the rest of the Akai family moving in the background to help out. Ran and Masumi could have had a cute jealous moment. Nope. We got Shuuichi acting like an ice cold b*tch while hogging the spotlight. Stupid choice IMO.