The Reason He Became a Butler
| ‹ The Mystery of the Man-Eating Classroom | List of Episodes | TBD |
| Episode 1171-1172 (Int. Episode 1229-1230) | |
| Title: | The Reason He Became a Butler |
|---|---|
| Japanese title: | 執事になった理由 (Shitsuji ni Natta Riyū) |
| Original airdate: | August 16, 2025 (Part 1) August 23, 2025 (Part 2) |
| Manga case: | #319 |
| Season: | 30 |
| Manga source: | Volume 104 - F11 (1113 ~ Volume 105 - F1~2 (1114 · 1115) |
| Cast: | Conan Edogawa Heiji Hattori Kazuha Toyama Momiji Ooka Muga Iori Juzo Megure Rei Furuya Yuya Kazami Mysterious Old Man with Bird Hyoue Kuroda |
| Case solved by: | Conan Edogawa Heiji Hattori Muga Iori |
| Opening song: | Poker Face |
| Closing song: | Fun! Fun! Fun! |
The Reason He Became a Butler (執事になった理由 Shitsuji ni Natta Riyū) is the 1171 and 1172nd episode of the Detective Conan anime.
Cast
Case
The story opens with Heiji, Kazuha and Momiji playing cards in a car of a Nozomi train on the Tokaido Shinkansen line on their way to Tokyo. After Heiji loses again against Momiji, her butler Muga Iori, sitting in the row in front of them, proposes a game of karuta, which Heiji declines, since it would take too much space in the small train. Kazuha asks why Heiji and Momiji followed her on the train, since she was only going to Tokyo to meet Ran. Heiji avoids the question, while thinking in his head that he followed her since Conan told him that Kazuha and Ran were suspiciously searching scenic spots together, and that Heiji should probably not miss on the occasion to know what they are up to. Momiji says that she has an upcoming game of Hyakunin Isshu[2] in Tokyo, but she reveals in her thoughts that she lied and simply wanted to be with Heiji. While tailing Heiji and Kazuha, Iori saw them buying tickets, and Momiji asked him to book the whole train save for two seats for him and his mistress. Heiji and Kazuha are thus surprised that the train is rather empty. Suddenly, a drunk man with sunglasses and a face mask spills his can of beer on Iori, and apologizes, offering a set of tissues, but the former politely declines and goes to the restroom to clean himself. After Iori asks Heiji to take care of Momiji while he is gone, Momiji clings on to his arm, frustrating Kazuha. In the washroom, Iori rolls up his right sleeve, which reveals stitching marks on the length of his arm, and he remembers something the young mistress told him:
Great things come from little things, you know? I need you at your best to protect me —Momiji Ooka, some time ago, to Muga Iori. Suddenly, an abandoned cellphone starts ringing in the stall and Iori picks it up. He answers by saying that this is not his phone, but an eerie voice says that it is indeed him that he was looking for, Iori from the PSB who now works as a butler. The voice asks Iori to put a headset in his pocket, but when he refuses to comply, the voice asks him to look back at their seats. From the end of the hallway, Iori sees a hand holding a bloodstained knife poking out from behind Momiji's seat, which is a threat from the voice that he will kill her if Iori does not do as he says. Horrified, Iori complies. First, he throws his phone in the trash as instructed. Then, he goes to car 14 and sees an unconscious middle-aged man. When Iori realizes that the man is dead, the voice laughs and asks him to retrieve the flash drive in his pocket and put it in the washroom where he found the abandoned phone. Then, he must stay with the dead man until it reaches Tokyo in two hours. Before carrying out these last two instructions, Iori inspects the body and deducts that the assailant first threatened the victim and tried to take the flash drive, but when he fought back, he was accidentally stabbed to death through his heart. The assailant then muffled his cries and since they could not find the flash drive, the assailant and the accomplice hatched a plan to have Iori find the flash drive for them, having recognized him as the former PSB agent. They could not search themselves, since they still had blood on them and did not want to get caught by the other passengers. After understanding the two criminals' goal, he starts searching the body, but only finds a lightly bloodstained ballpoint pen and a train ticket. The assailants then reveal over the phone that that seat was not his original seat and that the actual one is in the front of the train. Iori goes there, and notices a briefcase, which he manages to open with a paper clip. Inside the briefcase is a towel, an electric razor, a toothbrush, clothes and a notebook containing business cards. On the last page of the notebook, the dead man wrote that he had found the last piece of evidence in the Tsurugi allegations case. Iori remembers the case: The secretary of Tsurugi, a diet member, committed suicide some time ago claiming responsibility for a series of crimes. While investigating the rest of the briefcase, Heiji asks him what he is doing, away from his seat and with someone else's belongings. When the voice over the earphone starts panicking, Iori makes a lie to Heiji and says that it is a briefcase of a friend he met in the train during its stop at Nagoya. However, Heiji seems to not have believed his lies, as he walks away and says to Conan over the phone that "turns out they were right".
As the distance to Tokyo shrinks more and more, Iori is still searching the dead man's body for the flash drive. The man on the phone asks him how far he is in the search and becomes more and more impatient. They also confirm to the butler that the man did not have any other belongings since they were tailing him since before he got on the train. They reveal that the dead man screamed that something about "exclusive data that will bring truth to light" and Iori thinks that it must be related to the Tsurugi allegations. The voice over the phone then reminds Iori of the fate of Momiji should he fail his mission and asks him to search faster as there is only one hour left before reaching Tokyo.
The story then shifts to 3 years ago, at the summer villa the Ooka family recently bought. Iori, special agent of the PSB, defeats the last man in a group of thugs that entered the mansion in search of Mr. Ooka, the former Prime Minister of Japan. His superior calls him on the phone and asks for backup since two or three thugs barricaded themselves in the mansion annex with a hostage, but Iori declines, because he sustained a serious slash injury on his right arm. He stops the bleeding by making a tourniquet with his necktie and then heads to the kitchen and finds an underground storage in which he plans to rest for 30 minutes. As soon as he gets inside, he hears a sound and points his gun at it, before realizing that it is a young girl, Momiji Ooka, the granddaughter of Prime Minister Ooka. She hid in the storage to surprise the butler before he would prepare the tea, but he never came. Iori reveals that the reason he was there was because he was to protect the former Prime Minister for his seven-day vacation at the villa, but when they arrived, they were ambushed by a gang of thugs who thought that PM Ooka was there. Momiji says that her grandfather is not here and that she came here alone with her grandfather's car because she wanted to come see the new villa. Iori chuckles, realizing that the thugs thought that the Ooka came in his private car, but it was in fact only his granddaughter. Iori then receives a call from two agents heading towards the annex as backup and asks them to help him protect Momiji when she leaves the storage. He then dozes off, but is woken up by a loud sound. Three new criminals entered the building and Iori realizes he slept an hour instead of 30 minutes. He then hears the three thugs saying that they will kill the girl because the Prime Minister is not there and they were fooled. Inside the storage, Iori realizes that Momiji still has not left and is still hanging tight to him. She also covered his slash wound with her band-aids and turned off his alarm to let him sleep some more. When asked why, she says : "The Bigger can serve as the smaller, but even the smaller can serve as the bigger." The three thugs hear the voices from the storage and stand on it and knock on it. Momiji whispers to Iori that there are three criminals, including one that has not talked much. She attributes her ability to hear better to the fact that she plays karuta. As soon as the thieves open the trap door, Iori knocks out one of the thugs and kicks the second thug who was behind him. He does not see the third one, but just before he can attack him with his long sword, Iori turns back and kicks him unconscious. The second thug manages to wake up and escapes, not before saying that "[he] will pay for this, Iori-san of the PSB". The two agents from the PSB then arrive and help Iori.
Back to the train, Iori resumes his thoughts and remembers clearly that this voice on the phone is the same as that second thug that escaped. He checks the dead man's ballpoint pen again and notices a gap in the blood trace between clicker and the body of the pen, and realizes that the man must have written something before dying. He sees a tiny bloodstained hole in his pants and realized the man wrote on his body through his pants before dying. After taking the pants off the body, he sees a small squiggly symbol, which he recognizes as Waseda-style shorthand (早稲田式速記)[2]. He deciphers the symbol and the characters make out "く つ し た" (Ku, Tsu, Shi, Ta), meaning "socks". He then takes a look at the victim's socks and there is not USB key, but he notices an imprint on the foot similar to the shape of a USB key.
Heiji then arrives and interrupts Iori and tells him that they have ordered drinks and asks if he wants some. At the same time, he shows his phone conversation with Conan along with the USB key that he was looking for, and he and Conan who's on the phone surreptitiously propose him some help and ask him to answer some questions, while disguising it as Heiji asking him if he wants juice, which Iori responds by yes. Iori, Heiji, and (via text messages) Conan continue to fake a conversation about choosing a drink, but in truth Iori confirms his situation and agrees to go along with Heiji and Conan's plan. Heiji then gives Iori the flash drive and leaves. The man on the phone reminds Iori to hurry or Momiji will die, but Iori explains that he found the USB stick. On the man's instructions, he puts it by the sink where he left the cell phone earlier. He walks past a female attendant with a drink cart back to the victim's body and sits down next to it as instructed. Heiji then gives him a hand signal that starts their plan: Iori starts a conversation with the man on the phone, but then speaks more and more softly. This annoys the man on the phone, who eventually yells at Iori to speak up. This allows Heiji to track down the man. By phone, Heiji tells Kazuha that the plan's started, prompting Kazuha to grab a suitcase at Momiji's and her place and use it to take out the man with the bloody knife behind them, who was the fake drunk man. The man on the phone with Heiji also pulls out a knife, but Heiji borrows the walking stick of an old man in the car, disarms the gangster and takes him out.
Heiji concludes that there were really only two perpetrators, but Iori discovers that the USB stick is no longer by the sink, so there must be another gangster on board. It occurs to him that the woman from the train service he had passed had not bowed as usual when entering the car, which is procedure in Japanese trains. He opens the other car's washroom and finds a bound and gagged woman in her underwear. The fake waitress is also one of the gangsters. She approaches Momiji and Kazuha, who is pinning the fake drunk man to the ground with the bloody knife, and also pulls out a knife to save her partner. Enraged, she swings her knife down at Momiji, but Iori is able to throw himself in between at the last moment, causing the knife to hit him in the chest. Heiji now joins in and takes down the woman. A worrying Momiji crouches beside Iori, but he pulls the knife from his chest and is unharmed, as the blade only hit the stack of karuta cards in his breast pocket. Momiji looks at the cards and realizes that as she said before, "the small really take care of the big as well" ; one card is thin and narrow, but as a whole stack they are thick and hard like a shield. She gives the cards back to Iori, explaining that she had told him something like this before, but that he had probably already forgotten. In his mind, Iori says that he did not forgot Momiji's words from their first meeting, as they were the reason he quit the security police and became her butler.
Half an hour later, the train pulls into Tokyo Station, where Megure is already waiting with his men, since Conan had called him. He arrests the three gangsters, who were actually acting on behalf of congressman Tsurugi. On the USB stick was a video showing a shot of a sunset, which also happened to capture the three gangsters throwing Tsurugi's secretary off a roof while Tsurugi watched. A short time later, Tsurugi is also arrested for inciting murder. On the platform, Iori inquires how Heiji had actually noticed his situation. Heiji explains that she had been worried when Iori did not come back for a long time and could not be reached by phone. Because of this, Heiji went after him and watched as Iori examined the body for the first time while talking to someone via headset. Secretly, Heiji then examined the body, discovered the shorthand writing, and sent a photo of it to Conan, who then thought the flash drive was in the socks. They then looked at the contents and realized the full situation. Iori effusively praises Heiji, saying that he is indeed a perfect match for Momiji. Heiji and Kazuha react unnerved, while Conan remarks that it was he who solved the shorthand puzzle after all, not Heiji.
As the group is leaving, Furuya and Kazami come onto the platform. Kazami spots Iori briefly in the crowd and tells Furuya that this man was one of his classmates at the police academy, who was later promoted to the same department as Furuya because of his skill, but quit the service for unknown reasons. Furuya says goodbye to Kazami to meet someone on a train without giving Kazami any more details. But when Furuya enters the arranged carriage, it is empty. Instead, he finds only a ringing cellphone there. Furuya answers it and is directed to a window seat by the person on the other side of the line. Through the window, Furuya sees the old man with the bird-headed walking stick sitting on the opposite train, talking to him on the phone. The man gives him orders to examine Conan in great detail. Furuya accepts and hangs up. Furuya then picks up his own cellphone, which had been ringing for some time; the call is from Kuroda, who wants to know why it took Furuya so long to answer and why his voice sounds so excited. Furuya keeps quiet about his new command and says that nothing happened.
Manga to anime changes
Trivia
- The North Star brand of beer held by the drunk man is in fact Sapporo.
Gallery
In other languages
| Language | Title | Translation |
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See also
| Episodes of Season 30 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Episode 1148 • 1149 • 1150 • 1151 • 1152 • 1153 • 1154 • 1155 • 1156 • 1157 • 1158 • 1159 • 1160 • 1161 • 1162 • 1163 • 1164 • 1165 • 1166 • 1167 • 1168 • 1169 • 1170 • 1171 • 1172 • 1173 • 1174 • 1175 • 1176 • 1177 • 1178 • 1179 • 1180 • 1181 • 1182 • 1183 • 1184 • 1185 • 1186 |
