Detective Conan: The Villa Dracula Murder Case

Last year, I reviewed three multi-part episodes of an anime based on Gosho Aoyama's successful, long-running manga series, Detective Conan, which included the superb The Cursed Mask Laughs Coldy and The Case of the Séance Double Locked Room – two unsung classics of the impossible crime genre. The Black Wings of Icarus was a fairly minor detective story in comparison, but had a good, old-fashioned alibi-trick Freeman Wills Crofts would have appreciated.

These episodes were highlighted, here and here, by Ho-Ling Wong on his blog and recommended two more episodes in August that were written by the same screenwriter, Hirohito Ochi.

Ochi is a writer with a reputation for crafting "insanely tightly structured" plots and his best episodes are "excellent examples of synergy in mystery fiction" where everything is intricately, but logically, linked together. The Cursed Mask Laughs Coldly and The Case of the Séance Double Locked Room are great examples of Ochi's webwork plotting. And the reason why those two episodes ended up being my favorite locked room tales of 2018.

The Villa Dracula Murder Case is a two-part episode, originally aired on January 26 and February 2, 1998, which is not exactly in the same league as those previously mentioned episodes, but was still an excellent specimen of the locked room mystery – one that fully exploited its surroundings. This anticipated the maze-like, double locked room murder from The Case of the Séance Double Locked Room.

The episode begins with Richard Moore, Rachel and Conan driving to the clifftop home of a famous horror novelist, Daisuke Torakura, who's better known among horror fans and readers as "Mr. Dracula." Torakura earned his fame as a writer of vampire stories and even named his home, Villa Dracula, after that fanged icon of the horror genre. At the Villa Dracula, Moore, Rachel and Conan meet several people and acquaintances of the horror novelist. There's his wife, Etsuko Torakura, and a personal assistant/student, Toshiya Tadokoro. And two house-guests: the editor-in-chief of the Monthly Horror Times magazine, Fumio Doi, and a researcher from the North Kantou University's Folklore Research Center, Shuichi Hamura.

Initially, Richard Moore, the Great Sleeping Detective, is disappointed when he learns Torakura had summoned him to investigate his wife, but a one-million yen fee proved sufficient to paper over any potential hurt feelings. Anyway, a snow storm forces them to stay for the night.

Later that evening, Torakura withdraws to his private study to finish a manuscript. This private study is an octagon-shaped room semi-attached to the main house by a covered corridor. A balcony goes around the room and looks out over the sea (see map below).

However, Torakura never emerged from his study and the main door is securely locked from the outside, but, when they go onto the balcony, they found the french window standing open – inside they make a gruesome discovery. Torakura is crucified to a giant wooden cross, standing against the wall, with a stake driven to his heart and the body was lighted up by a film projector. A splendid and macabre scene.

 

 So how did the murderer enter the study? The door on the corridor side was locked on the inside and, while the french window was standing open, there were only footprints directly in front of it. The path to the french window was bare of any footprints. And there's another quasi-impossibility: how did the murderer snatched the stake from the locked or watched collection room that's full with horror movie memorabilia. Yes, the murder weapon was a movie prop.

Firstly, the impossible murder in the octagon-shaped study was more difficult to solve than expected, because the qualities of crime-scene brought two particular locked room stories to mind. The round shape of the room and balcony with its long corridor makes it look like a key-hole, which is nearly identical to the locked room crime-scene from Edmund Crispin's "The Name in the Window" (collected in Beware of the Trains, 1953) – which also looks "like a key-hole." The round balcony around the octagon room and the wooden stake also brought The Rosenkrauz Mansion Murders from the Kindaichi series to mind. And the explanation of that Kindaichi story would have nicely explained why there were only footprints by the french window.

Fortunately, the resemblance to those two locked room stories were only superficial and the original solution was as simple as it was satisfying. Logically explained the bizarre setup of the murder and the clueing was excellently done. Such as the smell of oil paint, a small piece of wood and weird marks in the snow on the roof above the collection room. Everything fitted neatly together and foreshadowed the plot synergy that propelled The Case of the Séance Double Locked Room to classical status. In my book anyway.

Something that was as well done as the intricately presented, but ultimately simple, locked room-trick was the neatly posed false solution. A potential answer to the impossible murder that was shattered to pieces in a dramatic scene when it was revealed that there were no footprints on the roof of the covered corridor, which made it appear as the murderer could have only reached the study had he flown there – "like a vampire." My only complaint is that the murderer's identity was painfully obvious, but the excellently-handled impossible crime made more than up for that.

So, all in all, The Villa Dracula Murder Case was a cleverly plotted, clued and well handled locked room story. Not of the same high caliber as some of Ochi's later episodes, but still highly recommendable to locked room fans. Even if you don't like anime or manga.

Ho-Ling also recommended Entrance to the Maze: The Anger of the Giant Statue of the Heavenly Maiden, but I'll be saving that one for another day.

A Hostage Situation: Case Closed, vol. 67 by Gosho Aoyama

The 67th volume in Gosho Aoyama's long-running series Case Closed, originally published in Japan as Detective Conan, customarily begins with the conclusion of the story that began at the end of the previous volume – an inverted detective story that uses a popular sub-culture to create a perfect alibi. So let's dig in.

Previously, Richard Moore, Rachel and Conan were getting a bite to eat at a diner when the body of a young woman is found in the restroom dressed as a Gothic Lolita. She had rope and scratch marks on her throat. The murderer is known to the reader, a close friend of the victim, but the problem is that the murderer possesses "an airtight alibi." Conan has a keen eye for details and shatters the alibi based on a broken drinking glass, fingerprints and the fact that the victim wasn't wearing the fake nails that came with the Gothic Lolita getup.

I'll admit that this is not one of the strongest stories in the series, but passable enough and thought it was interesting how Aoyama used the particulars of a niche-culture to create an alibi-trick. What can I say? Christopher Bush has given me a new appreciation for alibi stories.

The second story consists of a single chapter and concerns an elderly men, who seems full of life and positivist, but Conan spots a number of holes in his story and together with the Junior Detective League they prevent not one, but two, tragedies – which somewhat reminded me of Agatha Christie's "Wasps' Nest" (collected in Double Sin and Other Stories, 1961). These one-chapter stories are incredibly rare in Case Closed and are usually nothing more than filler material to bridge a (publication) gap between story-lines. The end of this story has a reference to the hostage case from volume 65 and the man who closely resembled the supposedly dead Shuichi Akai. And this reference is very relevant to what comes next.

The third story, covering no less than five chapters, is complex in nature and has multiple layers stacked upon each other.

Richard Moore is hired by an anonymous client to find out who has been sending this person red, long sleeved shirts in the mail every week and Moore is asked to meet with the client at the sporting goods store at the Baker Department Store, but there Conan and Rachel spot Ms. Jodie – who's looking there for a trail of the Akai look-a-like. The look-a-like who was spotted in the hostage case was wearing a limited edition, black-knit hat with the logo of the department store on it. However, this apparently simple case quickly becomes a dangerous one when an innocent shopper is knocked out in the restroom and a masked man straps a remote control bomb to his body! The perpetrator demands that whomever has been sending him the red shirts reveals himself. And the Akai look-a-like is present in the department store.

However, their problems are only just beginning: Gin and Vodka are waiting in a car outside of the department store with Gin pointing a gun at Kir, who killed Akai in volume 59, because the Black Organization has become aware someone is walking around the city who closely resembles Akai and they suspect they might have been played a sucker – which is why they stationed Chianti in a top-floor window, across the department store, with a sniper rifle. A very tight situation, to say the least.

So Conan has to diffuse the hostage situation by cracking the code of the red shirts and the torn receipts, which show that all the shirts were purchased at exactly 12:29. The code is a nifty twist on Conan Doyle "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" (collected in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1903), but perhaps a little impractical and a little bit too easily solved. Still, it was definitely an ingenious code. I won't give anything away what happened with the Akai look-a-like or the Black Organization, but Aoyama spoiled one plot-thread in the ongoing story-line when he injected Subaru into the story. Aoyama gave him way too many lines and facial expressions, which gave his own story-line away. I know who you are now, Subaru!

Anyway, this was a good, multi-layered story with a whole group of familiar characters moving around in the background and long-time readers of the series will definitely appreciate it.

The last three chapters are a continuation of the Metropolitan Police Love Story from volume 66 with a simplistic murder of a pawnshop owner thrown in for good measure, which will be concluded in the next volume, but I already identified the murderer – because the attempt of misdirection here is beneath Aoyama. Granted, I have seen silhouette-trick (or mistake) before, but still, it's childishly easy.

So, all things considered, this was a pretty decent entry in the series with the hostage case as its highlight and an improvement over the previous volume, which only had one really good story. Well, I had been warned in the comments on my review of volume 65 (linked above) that this period in the series experienced a slight dip in quality, but slowly gets back into form as it moves towards volume 70. I can live with that considering how strong this series has been up till now.

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.

Cherry Blossom Memories: Case Closed, vol. 66 by Gosho Aoyama

The 66th installment of Gosho Aoyama's hugely popular, long-running Case Closed series, published in Japan as Detective Conan, turned out to be the first volume in ages that was completely underwhelming with only one of the three (complete) stories being any good – an impossible crime tale about a hungry, haunted store house that eats stolen treasure. But more on that delectable story later.

This volume opens with the concluding chapter of the "mystery of bloodred wall" that introduced police-detective of Takaaki Morofushi, of Nagano, who has a personal link to the tragedy that took place in "the Manor of Death." A mansion built by a millionaire and gifted to a group of artists, but one of them died tragically and ever since the place has garnered an unfavorable reputation. This reputation was compounded when another artist was starved to death in one of the room that had been blocked from the outside. However, the victim left an elaborate dying message.

One of the walls had been painted red and two wooden chairs had been nailed together, back-to-back, which were respectively painted black and white.

I've seen this dying clue referred to as fantastic and epic, but I think that would be overstating it. Nevertheless, the dying message deserves to be praised for tackling a problem often encountered with these clues, because they're regularly altered, destroyed or faked by the murderer – occasionally they were even left unfinished. So they don't really work as dying message stories, but here the victim had the time needed to create a destruction-proof dying message. And he did by simply giving it a double meaning. I only know of one other example in which the victim had the time to protect his dying message, which was in the Columbo classic Try and Catch Me (1977).

So I would definitely rank this story as a notable example of the dying message and something tells me Ellery Queen would have approved of it. Something tells me they would have appreciated the true meaning behind the painted wall and chairs.

Regrettably, the next story is a poor example of the unbreakable alibi. The Junior Detective League are at the cinema to see the latest monster movie, Gomera Final, where they find a familiar face, Inspector Santos, who's mooning about his unanswered love for Detective Sato. She changed his life when, as children, a soda drink decorated with paper cherry blossoms. The cherry blossom is "the emblem of the Japanese police" and that makes it "the flower of courage." One of the woes of the ongoing saga known as the Metropolitan Police Love Story.

At the cinema, they meet a woman who confides in them that she's being stalked and when they accompany the woman back to her condo, they discover the body of her boyfriend. Everyone knows she committed the murder, but the problem is that she was with Santos and the Junior Detective League at the cinema watching a movie. However, the alibi-trick is ridiculous with a lot that was left to chance, such as "befriending the people seated around her," establishing her alibi, but the whole trick was risky, particularly how the witnesses were used, everything could have gone wrong – like a certain someone waking up or a late moviegoer taking one of the unoccupied seats. And how she established her presence in the cinema, during the murder, was plain ridiculous.

Christopher Bush and Freeman Wills Crofts have rekindled my love of the alibi problem, but this alibi-trick was unbelievable rubbish that, even in a comic book setting, was hard to believe.

The next (locked room) story is my favorite from this volume and begins with the news of "a string of thefts," but the Junior Detective League are discussing the story of "the monster store house." A class-mate of Mitch was playing hide-and-seek in the neighborhood and was looking for a friend when he peeked through the top-floor window of an old store house, but the place was filled with expensive looking antiques – someone was staring at him from behind the treasure. The door was locked and nobody answered when he called. According to the owner, the building had been locked for years and nobody could possible be in it. And, when he unlocks the door, the place was entirely empty!

The store house was designed by a 19th century craftsman, Kichiemon Samizu, who also constructed the impenetrable vault from volumes 64 and 65. The place is reputedly haunted and, if you place anything inside, "a monster will gobble it up."

So they decide to take a look at this haunted store house and Conan witnesses this vanishing mystery first hand, when he looks through the top-floor window, but the room is, once again, completely bare when the owner unlocks the door – except for footprints in the dust. You can probably guess the nature of this locked room trick. However, it was still nicely constructed story with a nifty way to resettle a 19th century-type of locked room story in a contemporary setting. There is a nice side-story in which the members of the Junior Detective League try to upstage Conan. And he has to figure out who's giving them support in the background.

So a nice, old-fashioned impossible crime story that reminded me of Keikichi Osaka's short-short "The Hungry-Letter Box" (The Ginza Ghost, 2017).

The next story brings Harley Hartwell and Kazuha all the way from Osaka to Tokyo, because they need help finding a student attending Teitan University, Teruaki Kunisue, who grew up next door to Kazuha. Kunisue was in Osaka on holiday and Kazuha had made him a lucky charm, but Harley had accidentally given him Kazuha's charm. And she has a good reason to want it back before Harley can lay his hands on it and discover her secret.

A search that leads them to a sports bar, where Kanisue was assaulted, and Conan has to deduce, who of three suspects, had attacked him. I think the attacker was fairly obvious to spot for more than one reason. A simple and forgettable story.

Finally, the last chapter of this volume sets up an inverted detective story about the murder of a Gothic Lolita in the restroom of a dinner. As to be expected, Richard Moore, Rachel and Conan were present when the body was discovered. And that story will be concluded in the next volume.

So, all in all, this volume was rather underwhelming and only saved by the concluding chapter of the red wall case and the story about the hungry store house. Hopefully, the next volume is back up to its usual strength.

Detective Conan: The Case of the Séance's Double Locked Room

Last month, I reviewed a one-hour TV-special from the Detective Conan anime series, entitled The Cursed Mask Laughs Coldly, which first aired on March 13, 2000 in Japan and the episode has a splendid plot with a terrifying, brand new locked room trick – a grisly paragon of originality. I was alerted to the existence of this TV-special by Ho-Ling Wong and since then he has brought another, three-part episode to my attention. A three-parter with a pair of equally original impossible crimes.

The Case of the Séance's Double Locked Room originally aired in January and February of 2010, covering episodes 603-605, which were written by the same screenwriter as The Cursed Masks Laughs Coldly, Ochi Hirohito. You can clearly see his style of plotting and ideas reflected in the locked room tricks from both of these (multiple) episodes.

Just like in my previous Detective Conan post, I'll be using the English names given to some of the characters in the U.S. editions of the original manga series, re-titled Case Closed, because I already reviewed volumes 38-65. So a reversal back to the Japanese names might be confusing, but feel free to cool your purist rage in the comment-section below.

This three-part episode opens on a dark, misty road in a wooded area and Richard Moore, Rachel and Conan are, as the latter accurately predicted, completely lost, but a lonely mansion with a lighted window is spotted in the distance and they decide to seek shelter there – only to get a startling surprise when the door is opened. A cabal of cloaked figures answer the door, cowls drawn over the heads, but one of them recognizes the famous "Sleeping" Moore. Koji Yatsukawa is an assistant director working for Nichiuri TV and apparently made his first appearance as a TV original character in the two-part episode The Seven Wonders of the Hiroshima Miyajima Tour, which actually sounds like a potentially interesting detective story. Something along the lines of Yasuo Uchida's Togakushi densetsu satsujin jiken (The Togakushi Legend Murders, 1994), but hopefully with a better ending.

Anyway, the group introduce themselves as a fanclub of the late Miyahara Kira, a cosplay idol and actress, who was supposed to star in the movie adaptation of The Blackmagic Girl. A popular occult manga created by the owner of the mansion, Reiki Hirasaka, but Kira drove her car over the edge of a cliff and her body was never recovered – resulting in the movie getting canned. However, she's not at rest. Rumors are swirling around claiming Kira, like the protagonist from The Blackmagic Girl, has risen from the dead and became a witch in order to extract revenge on those who have betrayed her in life.

Several weeks ago, Hirasaka's production editor was fatally wounded in a knife attack and he left a dying message in his own blood that read "Kira."

So the fanclub decided to gather at the home of Hirasaka, who's well versed in the occult, to conduct a séance in his Meditation Room and summon the ghost of Kira, but the séance turns out to be sham performance and the two detective who happened to presence, Moore and Conan, immediately uncover a whole host of gadgets that were responsible for the apparently supernatural manifestations when they made contact with the spirits – like exploding candles, voices coming from framed posters, shaking lamps and plates tumbling out of cupboards. I think readers who love a good debunking of a séance in their detective fiction will particularly like this scene. 

 

Thackeray Phin gave an expose in John Sladek's marvelous Black Aura (1974) of some of the most well-known tricks spiritual mediums used in the old days and, if I remember correctly, he only overlooked the cheese cloth smeared with luminous paint, but this episode added a couple of new tricks to repertoire. And some of these tricks double as clue for the locked room murder later that night.

During the night, they all receive a text message from one of their fellow club members, Shoko Utakura, which says "I have come back to life" and is signed with "Kira," but Utakura is nowhere to be found and search leads them to the door of the Meditation Room – which has, somehow, been padlocked from the inside. Moore has to break a window in the door, in order to smash off the padlock, and when they enter the room they discover that all of the posters have been taken out of their picture frames and the frames are in disarray on the floor. The body of Utakura lies on top of the séance table, arms sprawled out at her sides, but the only problem is that the only other exist is a closed window high up the wall. So how did the murderer left a perfectly sealed room?

This is, however, not the only impossible murder committed that night: Hirasaka is locked inside his room and is unresponsive, which prompted one of the people to take a peek inside the room through the open transom above the door. A transom that only opened for about ten centimeters and through it you could see Hirasaka body lying on a coach with a toppled bottle of wine on the table.

Obviously, he had taken a swig of poisoned wine, but this problem gets even more baffling when Moore breaks open the door.

The decorative posters that were taken from the Meditation Room were torn to pieces and piled inside this second locked room, but even more inexplicable is that the key to this room and that of the padlock were found in a drawer of Hirasaka's desk – which also had been securely locked. Finally, the rope that was used in the first murder lay next to the heap of shredded posters!

Ho-Ling was, to use his own words, "a bit disappointed" by this second locked room trick and appeared to him "unambitious for someone who created a masterpiece" like The Cursed Mask Laughs Coldly. I admit that the central idea behind this impossibility is derivative of the locked room trick from The Cursed Mask Laughs Coldly, but it's used here in an entirely different and far more practical manner, which I found to be almost as satisfying as the gruesome trick from that previous episode. One thing I have come to appreciate, after nearly tagging 400 blog-posts with the "Locked Room Mystery" label, is innovation and originality.

However, I completely agree with Ho-Ling that this second impossibility is (further) strengthened when you see it in the light of the locked room trick in the Meditation Room, which definitely ticks the boxes for being innovative and original – as well as wonderfully clued. A great advantage of telling a traditionally plotted detective story in the medium of comic books or animation is that you can blatantly show what is going on without the danger of giving anything away.

As the viewer, you can probably gauge the escape route of the murderer from the Meditation Room, but how this person managed to do that is another story and one you won't have a shot at answering if you don't connect it with what happened in that other room. And that's where this episode becomes somewhat of classic locked room story.

John Dickson Carr described the perfect detective story as being a ladder of clues or a pattern of evidence, "joined together with such cunning that even the experienced reader may be deceived," which is perfectly exemplified in the plot and solution The Case of the Séance's Double Locked Room – which has a sound and logical reason for everything that happened during the night of the murders. Everything is linked together by logic and reason. The murderer even has a good motive for making the murders look impossible. Carter Dickson's Sir Henry Merrivale lectured in The White Priory Murders (1934) and The Peacock Feather Murders (1937) on all of the possible motives a murderer could have for going through the trouble of creating a sealed room illusion, but I don't think this one was mentioned. And that's another aspect making this a more than noteworthy impossible crime tale.

So, as a locked room mystery, this one is almost as great as The Cursed Mask Laughs Coldly, but this three-parter also shares the same weakness as that one-hour special: the who-and why behind the murders are very obvious. However, you shouldn't watch these episodes for the who or why behind the murders, but how the murders were perpetrated and why the murderer went through all that trouble to present the crimes as complete and utter impossibilities. 

I really think my fellow locked room enthusiast should start looking at these detective anime and manga series, because they have some truly excellent and original miracle crimes. And, as visual (animated) mediums, they can do more with the form than the written word or even a live-action TV-series or movie. The locked room tricks The Cursed Mask Laughs Coldly and The Case of the Séance's Double Locked Room are good examples of this. I can't recommend them enough!

Detective Conan: The Cursed Mask Laughs Coldly

Recently, our guide in the land of the Japanese detective story, Ho-Ling Wong, posted an enticing review on this blog of an old episode from a long-running anime series based on the popular manga often raved about on this blog, Detective Conan, which has been running since 1996 – culminating in 26 seasons and 900 episodes at the time of this writing. Understandably, the source material proved insufficient to keep the anime running for over twenty years and original stories had to be produced.

However, the TV originals are generally considered to be the poorer episodes and one of my reasons for sticking with Gosho Aoyama's original work. The other one is the frightful prospect of a backlog of hundreds, upon hundreds, of episodes!

The Cursed Mask Laughs Coldly is episode 184 from season 7 and originally aired on March 13, 2000 as a one-hour special. According to Ho-Ling, this episode has not only been "lauded as one of the best anime original episodes ever," but is considered to be "one of the best episodes" period. So my curiosity got the better of me and decided to give the episode a shot. I can already reveal that the plot has a ghoulish gem of a locked room trick! An absolute work of art!

Anyway, in order to stay consistent with my on-going review of the U.S. publications of Detective Conan, re-titled Case Closed, I'll be calling the characters by the names used in the English version. Yes, I know. Heresy and all that. You may vent your purist anger in the comments.

The Cursed Mask Laughs Coldly begins with Richard Moore, Rachel and Conan driving to the imposing mansion of Beniko Suo, President of Mahogany Promotions, which is a charity organization for children who lost their parents in a car accident, but they nearly crash themselves into a tree trunk that had been placed on the road – a note had been pinned to the trunk. It told them to turn around or "you'll regret it." The warning was signed with The Phantom of the Cursed Mask.

Not deterred by this threat, they arrive at the mansion and, upon entering, they're greeted by walls decorated with masks. There's even a mask room, or Chamber of Masks, which is the only room in the house connecting the east and west wings.

One part of the collection in the mask room are two-hundred, identical-looking masks that were made by a Spanish artist, Julio González, who was consumed by his work and committed suicide when he had carved the last mask. All two-hundred masks were found around his body and the blood made it look as if "the masks themselves had sucked it out of him," which helped them acquire the reputation of being cursed objects. As a precaution, every night at the stroke of twelve, the mask room is locked from both the east and west side, because "the masks like to do pranks" and after midnight "they will start to walk" – terrifying everyone unlucky enough to encounter them. And against this backdrop the other participants of the upcoming charity event arrive.

This group consists of a rock star, a well-known photographer, a popular baseball player and tarot prophet. The cast of characters is further rounded out by the assistant of the president and a pair of twin sisters who work at the mansion as maids. So the stage is properly set for some good, old-fashioned shenanigans.

During the night, Conan gets a phone-call from inside the house and the caller is nobody less than the Phantom of the Cursed Masks. The Phantom tells Conan that "the Cursed Masks are high for blood," a sacrifice and to hurry, or they won't make it, but there's a lot of confusing and running around – because the locked doors of the mask room separates the house in the east and west wing. However, they eventually arrive at the bedroom door of Beniko, but the door is double-locked from the inside. One of these locks is a big, sturdy padlock. So the window above the door is shattered and Conan climbs through the opening to open the room from the inside.

The "Case Closed" Look

The bedroom is littered with the González masks and Beniko is on her bed, a knife-wound to the throat, but nobody else is found in the room! A second door in the room was sealed years ago with bolts and the windows were shut air-tight. You couldn't fit an arm through the narrow bars of the grill above the bolted door. So how did the murderer enter and leave this tightly-shut bedroom?

I accidentally stumbled to the first step of the locked room trick, because the divided layout of the mansion and the bloodstained handle of the knife recalled Roger Scarlett's Murder Among the Angells (1932). You can say that these stories handle the knife in a somewhat similar way, but the comparisons end when the murderer of this story elaborates on this idea by creating a diabolic and nightmarish way to kill inside a locked room – an original idea complemented by the visual medium. You get to see the locked room trick unfold in front of your eyes and this ensures the explanation of this seemingly impossible murder is played-out to full effect, but the natural, down-to-earth solution does nothing to diminish the nightmarish quality of the murder's work. Some would probably argue that the trick is more terrifying than an unsolved murder with hints of the supernatural. Edgar Allan Poe would have approved.

The murderer and motive were easier to spot, but you only need a passing familiarity with a certain trope of these mystery anime and manga series to be able to do that. Somehow, the writers of these series have a fondness for a particular plot-motif, which tend to make the murderer standout in a crowd of suspects. Yozaburo Kanari mastered that like no other.

But the main attraction of The Cursed Mask Laughs Coldly is the ingenious, nicely clued impossible murder and the combination of originality, execution and presentation makes it a (minor) classic of the locked room genre. Highly recommend!

I'll end this post with a thank you to Ho-Ling for bringing this delightfully macabre locked room mystery to my attention. Now we'll wait and see how long it will take me to get back to the Detective Conan movies!