Shinichi Kudo Returns! Confrontation with the Black Organization

''Shinichi Kudo Returns! Confrontation with the Black Organization is the second live-action drama based on the Detective Conan'' series.

Situation
Conan, Ran, Professor Agasa and Ai Haibara visit the “Miss Japanesque” award reception in the new Tokyo Bell Wood Hotel, which is owned and run by the Suzuki Company, upon Sonoko's invitation. Originally, Kogoro wanted to attend as well because the Miss Japanesque, Karen Kotobuki, is his current object of affection, but in his eagerness to get ready for the party he slipped on the stairs and broke his leg, rendering him a hospital bed patient.

As they prepare to enter the hotel, they are met by Mimi Kotobuki, Karen’s older sister and manager, who entrusts them with troubling news: Someone has left a threatening letter in Karen’s room, in which the stalker demands of her to return his affection and become his “marionette”, or else suffer death. Karen is neither impressed or intimated, however, and intends to attend the party with a throwing knife stuck in her garter. While inspecting the letter, Conan notices a strange, sweet smell lingering on the paper.

As the group helps itself on the buffet, Sonoko asks Ran to call Shinichi to ask him whether he can attend to the case. Upon Agasa’s suggestion, Conan prepares to call Ran back when he is suddenly seized by a very familiar seizure. Right afterwards, Haibara also begins to suffer these seizures and presumes that they stem from the contents of a rum cake they have both just eaten and which incidentally are about to neutralize the effects of the APTX 4869 they have been forced to ingest. They just barely manage to hide in a woman’s locker room to ride out the transformation back to their actual ages.

In the meantime, just before the ceremony, Karen contemptuously challenges her competitors, Sumika Abe (2nd place) and Kyomi Kawate (3rd place), about their outfits and entices the head of the election committee, Daigo Miura, and the show’s director, Shoichi Amano, into enforcing her petty demands; she later also talks down to her sister that way. The ceremony initially runs as planned, but then Shinichi phones Agasa and informs him about the most recent developments and fetch him some clothing. After a first startled meeting with Haibara’s adult form, Agasa is asked by Shinichi to take Haibara out of the hotel while he remains to check out the threatening message. He begins to check out the hotel, in particular the rooms of the contestants and the route to the stage.

While watching the elevators, Shinichi witnesses Karen and her troupe returning to their suites to prepare for the next stage of the ceremony and her attitude as a source of possible resentment, and then overhears Sumika and Kyomi dropping a remark about puppets which sparks his interest. But as he prepares to follow them upstairs, Ran, who has taken to searching the hotel for Conan, Haibara and Agasa, approaches his location. Desperate to avoid a meeting and uncomfortable questions, Shinichi enters an elevator, but Ran spots and instantly recognizes him, and storming into the elevator cabin, she clutches him tearfully. With no other option left, he decides to reveal himself, and Ran spontaneously decides to accompany him in the investigation.

As Shinichi and Ran exit the elevator on the floor where Karen’s suite is located, they see Mimi knocking frantically at Miura’s door (which is right opposite) and Miura answering it, whereupon she accuses him of kidnapping her sister. Shinichi, posing as Kogoro’s assistant to hide his involvement, and Ran intervene, and Miura confidently allows them to search his suite, to no avail. Mimi allows them to search Karen’s rooms as well, and she and Miura also tell them that Karen’s appearance for the next part of the ceremony will be that she is hoisted onto the stage hanging from wires. Just before preparing to change dresses, Karen was about to take a shower and has gone missing since, as well as the dress she wanted to wear for her entrance. Before Miuri can go into details about the grand entry, Mimi hurriedly excuses herself and runs off, allegedly to search for her sister. Once she has left, however, Miuri remarks how Karen is using her own sister ‘like a marionette’. In turn, Mimi later states that it is Miuri who wants to control Karen like a puppet of his own will.

Shinichi sends Ran back to the party and follows Mimi through the hotel in search for Karen. He follows her beneath the stage, where the hoist has been prepared for Karen’s entrance and where they are shortly joined by Amano, who is also wondering about Karen’s whereabouts. Just minutes away from the next stage of the show, Shinichi and Mimi separate to look for Karen. Only a few seconds before the next part, the director’s assistant announces that Karen has assumed her position, and the show is continued. But a sight of horror awaits the spectators as Karen is hauled upon the stage hanging limply in the wires and manipulated like a marionette – and with her own knife sticking from her chest – before she is dropped down onto the stage, dead!

As panic breaks out and the TV cameras in the room are turned away from this horrifying sight, it briefly records Haibara/Shiho, who has returned for the cake, storming inside, and as Ran wants to ask Shinichi about what has happened, she sees him talking to Haibara (actually urging her to leave the hotel at once lest the Black Organization would detect her presence from the live broadcast), and Shinichi earns himself a confrontational reproach from Sonoko and Ran’s devastation upon seeing him with another woman. However, Ai refuses to leave, and as Shinichi fears, Gin and Vodka indeed spot Ai in the live footage on the Internet and immediately proceed to the hotel. The police soon arrives, and Inspector Megure takes official charge of the investigation, in which Shinichi asks him to keep his involvement a secret once more.

After familiarizing Megure with the background information to the case, Shinichi surmises that the murder of Karen and her suspension from the wires must have taken place in the 12 minutes between the time he had left the understage and when the director’s assistant had noticed her below (assuming that she was still alive and just as contemptuous as usual). Meanwhile, Haibara begins to search the kitchen for the alcoholic spirit which was used in making the rum cake. When Shinichi tells her to leave, Ran inadvertently bursts in on their conversation and overhears (and misinterprets) Haibara’s statements about her and Shinichi’s fates being linked, leaving her all the more devastated. Shinichi entrusts Haibara into Ran’s care, and Haibara calls herself “Hairi” in order to avoid giving herself away. But as they proceed to the outside of the hotel, where Agasa is waiting, Haibara suddenly senses danger, which comes her way in the form of a Black Organization assassin wielding a knife. Ran is able to disarm him and drive him away, but Haibara flees back into the hotel; the assassin is subsequently executed by Gin for his failure. Shocked to the core and concerned for Ran and Agasa’s safety, Haibara asks Shinichi to abandon her if the Black Organization catches up with her, a suggestion Shinichi refuses to accept. When questioned by Ran and Megure, Shinichi and Agasa claim that “Hairi” is Shinichi’s new assistant.

Afterwards, Megure and Shinichi begin to question the main suspects in the case, which includes all of Karen’s entourage and her two competitors. Mimi states that she has been looking for her sister; Miura, that he has been making several telephone calls from his room; Sumika and Kyomi have apparently spent the time in question together in Kyomi’s suite; and Amano (who is hereby revealed to be Karen’s ex-lover), that after meeting Mimi and Shinichi he has been preparing the hoists for the show. Following this, Shinichi, Haibara and Megure begin to search the understage, whereupon Shinichi is met with a sensation that something has changed, though too subtly for him to notice immediately. Haibara, on the other hand, notices a trail of bloody prints leading from the stage to the elevator, indicating that Karen was quite possibly murdered elsewhere and then brought to the stage for her final entrance.

When they are alone later, looking for clues, Shinichi admits to Haibara that he knows that Ran is suffering from their forced separation and that he intends to revert to his former self no matter what it will take, just for her sake. Just as Shinichi later discovers a peculiarity in the murder’s live footage, he suddenly begins to experience another seizure, meaning that he will very soon revert back to his child form. But as his glasses fall onto the stage as he collapses to his knees, he finally discovers the missing link to the murder case. When met by Ran, who does not fail to notice his weakened state, he asks her to assemble all suspects and Inspector Megure for the final confrontation of the culprit, partly to have her avoid seeing him transforming back to Conan. Ran complies and leaves, but not before promising Shinichi to hold onto her trust for him until he is ready to tell her everything.

When all are assembled, Shinichi exposes the culprit for Karen’s murder and the motive behind it. But just as the case is finally closed and Shinichi intends to entrust Haibara to the protection of the police, he suddenly notices her missing and rushes back into the hotel, Ran in pursuit. In fact, Haibara is about to pack up all the alcoholic drinks in the kitchen for analysis, but with the police withdrawing from the hotel, Gin and Vodka finally make their move and penetrate the facility. Shinichi finds Haibara, and in a surge of relief Haibara embraces him right in front of Ran. Haibara finally decides to tell Ran a half-truth about her relationship with Shinichi: that Shinichi is in fact her protector from the associates of a culprit she had hired him to expose.

The three prepare to leave immediately, but just before she follows Shinichi and Haibara, Ran decides to make a phone call to her father to come with a police helicopter. But with his seizures coming more frequently, and thus with his re-transformation being imminent, Shinichi knocks out Ran with his Stun-Gun Wristwatch. When they hear Gin approaching, Shinichi stays behind as a decoy to cover Ran and Haibara’s escape. Upon seeing Shinichi fleeing, Gin correctly assumes that he is Shiho’s “knight protector” and intends to get his body and thus force her out of hiding.

Using the key to Karen’s room Sonoko had passed him earlier during the murder investigation, Shinichi hides in that suite, wounded in the arm by Gin’s gun and wracked with pain from his imminent transformation. Gin and Vodka penetrate the hotel suites one by one until they hit the right one, but just before they can find and eliminate Shinichi, the helicopter Ran called for arrives with Kogoro Mouri inside. On the roof they find Ran, still unconscious, and Haibara, who has transformed back into a child and tells them that Shinichi is in danger. Kogoro quickly figures out which room Shinichi is in, and upon seeing the police helicopter, Gin and Vodka make a swift retreat – leaving an armed hand grenade as a parting gift! The grenade explodes, obliterating the suite ... and apparently, Shinichi with it.

When Ran comes to, she finds herself before the hotel, surrounded by her father, Sonoko, Agasa, Haibara and Megure. When she asks about Shinichi, Kogoro tells her bluntly that he is dead, but before Ran can sink into despair, Conan (using his Voice-Changing Bowtie to imitate his old voice) calls her up to assure her that he is still alive and, while he has gone to attend yet “another case”, he will certainly come back for her. He then asks her to put the professor on the phone, but instead Haibara snatches it to ask him how he has survived and Conan reveals that, after shrinking back to his child form just before the grenade went off, he managed to escape through the suite’s laundry chute. While Gin and Vodka are left wondering about the identity of the person who has led them on a wild goose chase (they didn’t get to see his face, though Gin has a brief suspicion, which he dismisses as impossible), Conan rejoins Ran and her father for the usual everyday routine and spends a quiet moment with her watching the full moon.

Resolution
Hide= The murderer of Karen Kotobuki is Shoichi Amano. He had hung up Karen in order to make it appear that the writer of the threatening letter was also Karen’s murderer, and her fall onto the stage was meant to hide that she was in fact bludgeoned to death (Shinichi had discovered on the footage that the hair on the back of her head was stuck together by the blood which had poured from the head wound). The threat letter had actually been written by Daigo Miura (the sweet smell Shinichi/Conan caught on the message was the smell of the cigarettes Miura habitually smokes) after Karen had spurred his romantic advances, but he was not involved in her murder at all. The evidence encompasses following facts: Confronted with the facts, Amano admits that he was suspected by Karen to be the author of the threat message, and that she had derisively named her to be a mere pawn for her personal games, a puppet she could control at her whim, and that she didn’t want to be involved with him anymore; thereupon he had clubbed her in his incited rage.
 * -|Show=
 * The wound was inflicted on the left hind side, and therefore the culprit must have been left-handed. Amano is the only left-hander among the suspects.
 * The "missing detail"-feeling Shinichi had had was in fact triggered by a triple-row stack of paint cans which mysteriously became a double-row right after the murder: Amano emptied a cardboard box of paint cans to hide Karen’s body inside until the onstage revelation, using three cardboard boxes arranged in a row. Evidence for this trick is a bloodstain inside the box with the paint cans.
 * Upon Miura’s (faked) arrest as the murder suspect, Amano would return to the crime scene to dispose of the murder weapon which he had hurriedly hidden inside a stack of carpets in the understage room, just as Shinichi had foreseen he would.

Differences between the novel and the live action drama
Hide=
 * -|Show=
 * In the novel, the culprit isn't Shoichi Amano, but the victim's sister, Mimi Kotobuki.
 * Karen isn't Miss Japanesque yet in the novel.
 * Mimi and Karen's mother, Misuzu, doesn't appear in the live action drama.

Note

 * While not canon, this marks the first story that Shinichi, Agasa, Ran, Sonoko, and Megure see Haibara in her adult form. The latter three don't know that she is Haibara, though Ran has the feeling that Haibara (in her adult form) seems vaguely familiar to her. The reason why Haibara wants to protect Ran is because she reminds her of Akemi Miyano.
 * Conan would later see Haibara in her adult form in canon at the end of "The Shadow Approaching Haibara's Secret (Part 2)".