Detective Conan: The Black Wings of Icarus

Earlier this year, I reviewed two, multi-part episodes of Detective Conan, an anime based on the successful, long-running manga series by Gosho Aoyama, entitled The Cursed Mask Laughs Coldly and The Case of the Séance Double Locked Room, which Ho-Ling Wong recommended on his blog – both of his reviews can be found here and here. Ho-Ling had another recommendation for me in the comments, episodes 203-204, as it features "a return of the Cursed Masks most popular original characters." I finally got around to watching it.

The Black Wings of Icarus is a two-part episode, originally aired in August, 2000, but was

not as grand or elaborate a detective story as the previous episodes discussed on here. All the same, the episodes had a solid, well-constructed plot with a minor locked room problem and a daring alibi-trick that would have made Freeman Wills Crofts proud.

The moral of the story

Richard Moore, Rachel and Conan are spending a couple of days at a remote hotel, near the mountains, where the twin maids, Minaho and Honami, who previously appeared in Cursed Masks now work. And they spot another familiar face at the hotel.

One of the guests is a well-known actress, Bizen Chizuru, who's staying at the hotel with her husband, Shiromoto, who has development plants for the area and this may threaten a nearby mountain plateau – where there are many "rare butterflies and plants." Something that worries the hotel manager, Arimori. Chizuru and Shiromoto are joined later that evening by the president of a drama production company, Miyabe Kouta, who begs Chizuru to voluntary relinquish a movie role, because the sponsors want a younger actress to take her place. This scene ended with Chizuru's biggest outburst of the day.

Conan observed early in the episode that "her image is different from TV and the movies." Chizuru has been adversarial and unpleasant the moment she crossed the threshold of the hotel, publicly humiliating her husband, talking down to the staff and shamelessly flirting with Moore, but getting replaced on a movie angered her. She makes a veiled threat of suicide and storms off to her room. However, everything appears to be normal the following morning.

Some of the hotel guests and staff are going picnicking on the plateau, while Moore settles down on the coach with a VHS of a Yoko Okina TV-drama. Moore is given the master keys of the hotel and is left with the twins, the cook and Chizuru – who remains sulking in her room. So, when at the end of the day, she still has not shown herself they decide to go up and take a look, but the door-guard was engaged and the door had to be forced open. Chizuru is hanging inside from a ceiling fan.

As always, Conan subtly drops hints to help Moore and the local police figure out this is a case of murder clumsily disguised as suicide. Surprisingly, it was Moore who immediately figured out the, admittedly, simplistic locked room trick when he sees the scratch marks on the door-guard. So the locked room is only a tiny aspect of the story and the meat of the plot is found on the murderer's Croftian alibi. A seasoned mystery addict can instinctively point out the murderer, because there are so many tells, but the real challenge lies in demolishing this persons apparently cast-iron alibi.

Admittedly, the risky alibi-trick is not entirely believable, mostly the first part of the trick, but it had glimmer of originality and, somehow, felt pleasantly old-fashioned – like one of the alibi stories I read by Crofts (e.g. Mystery in the Channel, 1931). I still liked it. Conan dismantled the alibi with such clues as the air conditioning, lighting on the hotel roof and a white, powdery substance on the victim's dress. So the plot stuck together pretty well, but, where the story is briefly lifted to the same heights as Cursed Mask and Double Locked Room, is when Conan (through Moore) speaks those sad, final lines to the murderer – ending the episode on a somber note.

So, on a whole, not as good as the two previously mentioned episodes, but still pretty good by itself with a daring alibi-trick that will delight fans of Crofts. I hope you're taking notes, JJ.