Chekhov MacGuffin

Definitely.

To be fair, Haibara pushed them out, but they heard it. Ayumi had some questions when she made her unwilling exit. Sera's reaction shows she also has some serious questions about why Shinichi is on the other end of Conan's cell phone. I hope she tries to prove the Conan is Shinichi theory by sprinting over to Agasa's house once the case if over. I'm upgrading my vote to she is suspicious Conan is Shinichi, and depending on the translation, possibly sure.

That's the main problem here, along with incidentals like they appear to be oppositely handed. The timing makes this impossible for two people to play the three roles. When Okiya knocks over Jodie, scar Akai is just going outside. Scar Akai is now stuck in the crowd in front of the door. Before scar Akai can squirm out of the crowd, Vermouth pulls up in front of Gin's car while scar Akai is still in the crowd with Chianti watching him through the scope. If Vermouth is disguised as Okiya, in that too short span of time she couldn't manage to leave the same door and push through the crowd, take off all her disguise where she couldn't be seen, hop on a motorbike, and get over to Gin. Furthermore, she would have to put all her disguise back on somewhere privately, ditch the motorbike, get back through crowd, and figure out Conan's gift card plan, in a very short span of time. Even if the timing made this possible, why bother taking all the disguise off just to chat with Gin for a second? Couldn't she have called him during the red shirts case? All these disguise changes you are proposing aren't going to be very private. Also, Vermouth and scar Akai couldn't anticipate that there would be a messy case that would get them trapped, so why would they be carrying (multiple?) spares of disguises of each other? It seems too contrived to be possible, unless they were somehow psychic and knew the red shirts case was going to happen.

Oh dear, it appears I have neglected my halibut duties... Back to business... As far as Akai's acting goes, he may not like to pal around with kids/teens, and water plants and stuff, but he has a really strong motivator to act well. Akai as Okiya is trying to hide from both the FBI and the Org, but is also trying to stay close enough to watch and potentially protect Ai and Conan (and Jodie as well). By staying close to the action he is likely to run into people who know who he is out of disguise. In this kind of position, the safety of Kir's life and potentially his own comes down to how well can convince people he isn't Akai. Akai chose to stay in a risky location by living near Ai (both the apartment and Shinichi's house are close). We don't know if Akai knows about Vermouth's agreement with Conan not to chase after Haibara, and even if he did, Vermouth might come around to spy on things anyway. Also, Okiya is shown following the FBI (Jodie). Assuming Okiya is Akai, Akai didn't deem it a good idea to let the FBI know about his fake death plan, and we know the Black Org spies on the FBI (Vermouth found out all of their living arrangements). If Okiya is following the FBI, he has to be discreet in case the Org is also watching them. Also, Vermouth can disguise as virtually anyone, all the more reason for him to keep in character all the time, even around people he thinks are friendly.

772 spoiler This case looks like it might involve a wordplay solution... I'm not looking forward to that.

Right, but I wanted to clarify that Shiho and Akai are acquaintances, perhaps even "friends". (They can't be that good of friends if she flips around Akai. However, in the Black Organization a "friend" could be defined as someone you would pump full of lead at a moment's notice, but then you would feel bad about it afterwards. A little.)

Well even if the BO wanted Kogoro to help them, they would send someone to scope him out beforehand and see if he was corruptible. Kogoro strikes me as having basic integrity, so I doubt the BO would want much to do with him, even if Kogoro was related to the boss. Masakagi was the name. He disappeared 10 years ago. The BO was around before then so why disappear then? He also left his wife behind.

That's my assessment as well. I hope this means we are on the fast track to the finale of the Bourbon arc. If we are lucky we will soon get to the point where Sera A) runs into scar Akai and mistakes him for the real deal or B] we find out the BO (Bourbon most likely) is tailing Sera because they're hoping she will find Akai for them. Both possibilities would force Okiya and Conan to make a move to stop Bourbon from making his. I favor "A" as being the most likely to happen, although I imagine it will happen by accident. I also imagine Ran is going to catch wind of Sera's speculation of Conan is Shinichi and is going to start suspecting Conan herself. Then Conan has to deal with suspicious Ran and Bourbon at the same time. Hopefully Okiya takes pity and helps Conan out revealing he knew Shinichi was Conan for a while now.

It sounds like someone's speculation rather than fact, and I presume they meant corporeal reanimation, bringing dead people back to life.

Don't be too certain that what I am saying is right.

It sounds like they sent whatever the Japanese equivalent of a DMCA is. In the US at least, receiving a DMCA doesn't mean that what you did was illegal, it means the right holders think you are violating their copyright. You might not be, and thus it may be possible to take it to court and win. I'd have to see the circumstances of the Disney case. My personal opinion is that I think the US system is unbalanced because it is onerous for a single individual to fight a wrong DMCA, thus allowing mass mailings of DMCAs that may very well be improper. I have heard Japan has less protection for fairuse than in the US, but I don't know enough about the Japanese system to make a legitimate comparison.Anyway, I heard that a possible reason that Shogakukan is taking these measures now is because they planning to launch a work by the Manga Artist who created Fullmetal Alchemist and that they are interested in controlling all aspects of the launch.

I would like to point out Shogakukan's directive is not a law. While I am not familiar with Japanese law, I doubt that anyone could ban something like plot summaries and survive a decent legal challenge. If Shogakukan wants to go after a site based in another country, they are going to have to do it by that country's laws. I think DCW is hosted in the US so Shogakukan would use the usual DMCA takedown notification. IANAL, but in the US, I doubt they will be able to legally back takedowns of plot summaries, list of contents (as long as not directly copied), images used as illustrations of a topic, criticism or reviews, and parodies (note that most fan art and fiction are not parodies). This won't however stop them from being able to serve takedown notices. As lawsuits are expensive to fight, I imagine most people will comply. The legality of fan fiction and fan art in general in the United States seems to be a murky gray area. There are multiple factors that have to be taken into consideration when deciding if something qualifies as fair use or not. Against fan fiction/fan art is that it is a derivative work and the fan artist is violating the exclusive right of the copyright holder to control and distribute his/her work. Also most fan fiction and art borrow significantly (character design, settings) from the originals. On the other hand, most fan fiction/fan art is non-commercial (i.e. not sold), does not replace or substitute for the original work, and does not negatively impact the saleability of the original work or derivative works the author may create. Also, fan work has a promotional aspect. The result is that the legality is determined on a case by case basis. This is also expensive. Shogakukan will not want to deal with every individual case. My bet is that the impact of this directive isn't going to have much international effect because I doubt that Shogakukan willing to spend the extra resources to go after foreign based sites which are often in other languages and do not make up a substantial money earning base.

Akai dated Akemi to get close to Shiho and use her influence to infiltrate, so they should know each other. Akai used the alias Moroboshi Dai at the time, so Shiho isn't going to recognize the name "Akai Shuuichi". Shiho did say that she asked the Organization why her sister was killed and the Org wouldn't tell her the reason, thus Shiho may not know that Akai was actually a spy and may still think he is part of the Organization.

And not the giant ears?

Blame the lawyers.

We have been clubbed over the head with so many hints that Sera is Akai's sister in the last four chapters it's not even funny now. Geez, Gosho, you are making it too easy! Sera has a friendly, silly, extroverted personality while Akai is an introverted stoic. I bet the family interaction is hilarious. Sera reminds me a bit of Jodie, I wonder if Akai left Jodie for Akemi because he realized his affection for Jodie was more like how he treated his sister?

Poll's up, but I'm thinking about posting a final question when the next chapter comes out. Regarding the case, it took place at a ryokan in Gunma a month ago, but it probably is not the Kappa one as it didn't have onsens as far as we saw. If Yamamura was on that case no wonder Isao has a bad impression of the police investigation. I wonder how he got ahold of the evidence? Stole it? If Sawaguri Miku's death was a murder, then the motive is probably professional jealousy, someone's novel idea being stolen, taking the competition out, or a past murder or suicide we don't know about yet. Regarding Akai's little sister (Seriously, there's so much evidence in four chapters... make it harder Gosho!), Sera clearly knows Conan is the brains behind Kogoro. She has looked at newspapers, so she has enough info to figure out when Conan first appeared (when Sleeping Kogoro first hit the stands). The question is does she know when Shinichi disappeared? Once she knows that, she will have cleared one of the major hurdles to figuring out Shinichi is Conan.

The filming at the snowy villa case. Kogoro talked about how one of the suspects was glaring at him and it reminded him of asking for Eri's father to support him marrying Eri.

Can you redirect this conversation to the fanwork's section?

Regardless of what she knows now about Shinichi and Conan, eventually Sera is going to start putting two and two together. I think it makes sense to look at it from the angle that Sera is probably trying to figure out where/how/why Akai disappeared to. She came in knowing Conan's name and that he was extremely bright and a detective in his own right, a fact which she most likely knows from whatever source told her Conan and Akai had worked together just before Akai vanished. (Which is why she would bother investigating Conan in the first place.) Conan appeared in front of a host of FBI during Red vs. Black, perhaps she grilled one of those agents. This of course leaves her the unresolved question of what the hell was the FBI doing working with a six/seven year old kid. If I were Sera, I would want to test out Conan's abilities and see what kind of person he was because it is hard to believe FBI would cooperate with a first grader. She purposefully threw the case to lure Conan's intelligence out, but then Conan brings this Kudo Shinichi into the picture. Sera left Japan before Kudo became famous one year prior to the current timeline, so she might only know him from investigations of the people around Conan. Now that Sera is alerted to Shinichi's existence, she has another lead to chase down: a high school detective makes more sense than an elementary school detective. Perhaps Conan is Shinichi's proxy, and Shinichi had to do with Akai's disappearance. How much she has gone into Kudo Shinichi between cases is unknown, but I suppose the translation will give some indication.

The wiki has a lot of the character names and I suggest you use it as a reference. I have a partial list for the first 100 or so chapters that ignores case culprits. I doubt it would be helpful, but if you want it... I am afraid that I don't think your venture will successful in telling you who the boss is.

Thanks to HADAA for pointing this out. (Later Edit: and Abs. for telling me about it) Many of you are familiar with the whole Akai Shuichi is a pun on Char Aznable thing. Well, it turns out Char Aznable had a sister, Sayla Mass. The original Japanese name is セイラ マス or Seira Masu. The similarity between Seira Masu and Sera Masumi is hard to ignore. Put that with the eyes look alike thing and that's more than enough evidence to convince me Sera is Akai's younger sister. Assuming Sera is Akai's little sister, this situation strongly reminds me of how the Eisuke arc played out. Akai went missing so now Sera has come to investigate what happened. I am not sure how she found out Conan was involved, but her suspicion and interest in him makes complete sense if she knew Akai and Conan were seen together before Akai disappeared. She would look into Conan like Eisuke did while looking for Hidemi. Knowing this, where could the plot go now? Sera could run into scar Akai and mistake him somehow. In that case, the plot would really get rolling because Bourbon might try to use her or kill her. I think this is the most likely plot choice. Sera meeting with Okiya and uncovering that he is Akai would be a dead end plotwise unless Sera is being followed. In the Eisuke arc, Conan was suspicious that Eisuke was unknowingly being used by the Org to find Hidemi, but that turned out not to be the case. If Bourbon knows about Sera, then he could be using her as an unwitting bait for Akai, and in the process of following her stumble across her investigation of Conan and take interest in it himself, leading to the showdown with him. In any case, Sera's presence will trigger Akai to do something once he finds out she is in Japan looking into his death/disappearance. Akai doesn't have much of a choice because Sera is investigating Conan and Shinichi which will bring her to Shinichi's house eventually. Akai can't ask the FBI to help since they think he is dead, also with Bourbon wandering around looking like scar Akai, he has to do something to protect her before she meets scar Akai and becomes a target. I also think that Sera is going to drive the Ran's suspicion plot that has been waiting in the wings since the start of the Bourbon arc. Back during the Shiragami case (V62 chaps 650-651), Heiji used Shinichi's fingerprints on his omamori as evidence to show "Shinichi" was a plastic surgery lookalike. Shinichi/Conan's fingerprints got on Heiji's omamori in the first place when Conan pulled the handcuff link pieces out of the bag to show Ran that they blocked Numabuchi Kiichiro's stabbing attempt (V19-F8 188 pg 8). Ran remembers this incident in the sports bar case (V66-F8 693 pg 11), and asks Kazuha about the discrepancy: she knows Conan handled the omamori a long time ago, but when did Shinichi handle it? Basically, when Sera becomes serious (if she isn't already) about trying to uncover Conan is Shinichi, she may either tip off Ran about her suspicions or her investigations may be noticed by Ran and result in Ran's suspicion. Conan will have to work to deceive Ran and Sera because I doubt Conan will want Sera in the loop about the effects of APTX. Note that this situation closely parallels the question of Akai's fingerprints on Conan's cellphone (and Conan may try to resolve it in a similar fashion.) The appearance of suspicious Sera suggests to me that the Bourbon arc is going to start building towards a conclusion since both halves of the plot (Ran's suspicion, and Okiya/Scar Akai) are now in play and will likely reach a climax at the same time (e.g. a dual confrontation with the Org/Ran's suspicion arc).

This topic is for case discussion for chapters 771-773(?). The situation at Kogoro's agency looks tense. Hopefully this will help get the plot back on board, if not the Black Org plot, at least the Ran's suspicion plot that has been left hanging since the Sports Bar Case way back when. If you are interested in discussing Masumi Sera's identity in general please see the following two threads: Sera's identity speculation thread Previous case with Masumi Sera's appearence

To be fair, this isn't the clearest question because it is too open. What do you mean by "something else that we are not aware of"? We don't know their goal in the first place nor the full extent of their operations. We do know they have a biochemical agenda and a computer programming agenda which may or may not be for the same purpose. We also know they recruit doctors and programmers for their research operations as well as politicians, lawyers, business people, and people in other high level positions perhaps for evading justice and/or collecting funds. Are you polling to see if people think they have a third research arm that is something other than biochemistry and computer programing? Or are you asking something like do you think they are going to infiltrate the police? Is there another project like APTX 4869 that we haven't heard about? Are they planning to kill someone? In any case, I used my magical mod powers to add two extra questions, one about APTX and the other about the BO in general, but didn't change your question in case you wanted to change it yourself.