Sports Men

"I'm seeing Sundays / I could be apoplectic / The whole family gets in shape / Under the floodlights / People tell me I'm not strong / I can't seem to find the right charge" 

—Haruomi Hosono, "Sports Men"

How many years has it been since Detective Conan ushered in the 21st century with The High-Lows' "Mune ga Dokidoki"? Argue with me all you like—and I will still say that none of the opening theme songs in the Conan series are as upbeat as the very first one. Anyway ...

Funnily enough, my introduction to the world of teenage sports in Japan was through Detective Conan, and not through more focused titles such as Captain Tsubasa or Slam Dunk. With its youthful appeal, it was easy to be intoxicated by the combination of action, brains and brawn that these tales provided. In retrospect, what I had quite forgotten was how unironically hilarious and over-the-top these stories are.

"What do you mean I can't use karate on Shinichi the next time I see him?"

The "Pro Soccer Player Blackmail Case" (manga chapters: 68–71, anime episode: 10), for instance, is essentially a comic tale against the backdrop of a sports mystery. A girl arrives at the agency of detective Mouri Kogoro, introducing himself as the girlfriend of our protagonist, the elusive Shinichi Kudō who she wants to find and meet again. The problem? She does this in front of Shinichi's real girlfriend Mouri Ran, Ran's father Kogoro, and Edogawa Conan (that's Shinichi in his shrunken form)—all of whom express varying degrees of rage, cheeky amusement, and disbelief. Stepping into his double role-playing shoes, Shinichi (via Conan) shifts the scene of action to the girl's apartment where more shenanigans ensue. In many ways, the story gives viewers a taste of the kind of situational comedy and humour the series excels in—Ran searches for Shinichi, while Conan desperately seeks ways to keep Ran at bay, while trying to understand the client's real motive behind cooking up a false story. Even though the mystery itself is rather light, the layered approach shines through, thanks to proper foreshadowing and Conan's sleuthing. What unfolds is a kidnapping case where a football star is threatened to throw away the final match of a tournament in exchange for his brother's life. The way the kidnapping is carried out is actually quite interesting and age-appropriate—especially as it blends the worlds of real-life sports and video games. Not so much the way the culprit is captured because the 'rom-com of errors' approach overshadows the core mystery, with the clueless Ran indulging in some violence to literally knock down the perpetrator. But it is really the motive that cracks me up each time. I mean I understand the aim was to showcase professional rivalry and the emotions behind it, but all I can really think of is that for a three-month injury, the culprit could have simply waited and had his revenge at the first team scramble after recovering. That way, he could have avoided receiving another severe injury at the hands of Ran. All said and done, even in a seemingly minor case, the sheer tableaux (of comedy, emotions, situations, and layered narratives) that mangaka Gosho Aoyama presents is fascinating to behold.

The football star and the victim

Things take a more serious turn in "The Indiscriminate Stadium Threatening Case" (manga chapters: 189–191, anime episodes: 130 and 131). Conan and the Youth Detective Squad attend the finals of a football tournament when a ball goes out of play, suddenly deflates, and jumps awkwardly. The keen-eyed Conan who observed the ball do the funny jig jumps down from the stands immediately to find a bullet hole in the ball and the rubber surface around it. At the same time, the TV station van broadcasting the game from outside the station receives a call from someone threatening that they would randomly start shooting people if they were not paid 5 billion yen. A blackmail suddenly escalates into a hostage situation, with 56,000 people in the stadium being none the wiser. As the police arrive, Conan cleverly deduces that two people are involved in the plot. The police lay a trap, and captures one of the culprits inside the stadium, but the other proves to be a step ahead of the rest, ordering the police to release his partner and pay double the ransom. Even more puzzlingly, they seem to be aware of the positions of all the police personnel scattered around the stadium, and tells them to make their exit. The story unfolds as a cat-and-mouse chase, escalating from crescendo to crescendo, with a few false solutions, but given the choice of venue, the answer should have been evident pretty early on. The ridiculousness actually comes after the big reveal, when the second culprit's backstory is revealed. And, for a meticulous mastermind, one must admit they make some shockingly poor life choices. Sacrificing all of your savings of three years for a large payday from a single robbery you plan without any sort of backup? That too when you have someone dependent on you? No sir no—that's monumentally stupid no matter how much I try to justify it. Fun sidenote: The team that lost the final in the "Pro Soccer Player Blackmail Case" gets their win back this time around, against the same opponent. 

Upstaging the police

By now, the observant reader will have noticed Gosho's preference for dramatic blackmail/kidnapping and hostage-taking situations in the stories he sets in stadiums. The trend continues in "Holmes' Revelation" (manga chapters: 743–752, anime episodes: 616–621)—and, oh boy, where does one start with this? Overcoming a potential passport crisis (Shinichi has one, not Conan) with the help of an antidote to the poison that shrunk him, Shinichi, along with Ran, Kogoro, and Professor Agasa, travel to London on the invitation of a certain rich millionairess. (As the antidote only has a time-bound effect, Shinichi miraculously reverts to his Conan form at the Heathrow airport, after passing all checks no doubt). At the Sherlock Holmes Museum (duh!), Conan meets another kid frantically looking for Holmes (duh, duh!) because only he can stop something terrible from happening that may end up killing people. Conan—the 'disciple of Holmes'—is handed a cryptic code (duh, duh, duh!) that leads the merry gang to Sherlock-themed clues (duh, duh, duh, duh!) all over London. 

When in London, ask Holmes for directions—any kind 

In the midst of all this are character interactions at a dizzying level of coincidence. Cupid arrives, not with bows and arrows, but with a tennis racket, as a tennis champion meets Ran under a statue of Sherlock Holmes (not doing the duh! thing any longer, it's tiring) and gloomily instructs her that "love means zero; no matter how many zeros pile up, it amounts to the same thing." (Lady, that's simply cold! You have gone to Sherlock Holmes for clarity and guidance before your tennis match, not to broadcast Sherlock's detached observations on love to a fellow woman.) And then there's the 'rom-com of errors' routine where Ran realises that Shinichi is actually in London, tracks him down to a phone booth to tearfully complain about Shinichi's vanishing acts. Then, Shinichi has to chase after a crying Ran to issue his rejoinder to Minerva: "Love is zero? Don't make me laugh. Zero is where everything starts! You can't go anywhere or achieve anything if you don't start from zero." (Sheesh, Gosho! You could have just taken a chill pill.)

"Yeah, sure, love starts from zero, but more importantly, you are going the wrong way."

That's not all, because in this story, all roads and all plotting of points on maps ultimately leads to ... Wimbledon. And, don't you just love a emotionally-grieving and -deranged but fair-playing villain who for some reason bets on a tennis player to win the French Open to gather funds for the treatment of their terminally ill mother? Who, for some reason, sends out Sherlock-themed clues into the London ether as a way to challenge Scotland Yard and wannabe detectives to try and stop him? Who also plants a bomb in the teddy bear of said player's blind mother but, for some reason, does not choose to press the button till the match is over? But then, also wants record the moment of explosion and the sight of people screaming and dying on a camcorder, as an offering of revenge completed to his deceased mother? If your answer to all these questions is yes, then you clearly know Gosho too well.

And thus, for the first time, in the finals of Wimbledon, we have a villain threatening a women's tennis champion through a message slipped in their wristband. We have said champion issuing Braille-coded SOS messages for two sets of the match that can be deciphered only by observing the positions on the court where the ball lands. Never mind the fact that she nearly has them all killed by almost losing the second set. We have Conan appearing on TV announcing he is Holmes' apprentice to the world, and then enabling the champion to bust out more Braille messages till the last point. We have a throwback to the culprit from "The Indiscriminate Stadium Threatening Case" who had told Conan that since everyone's eyes were glued to the game, no one would notice him shooting a kid with a silencer gun. Here, Conan identifies the criminal by tracking the movements of the heads of the audience as they followed the ball and picking out the one whose head did not move at all, as they were too focused on their target—I must admit that was pretty cool though. And then, there's the climax—a tennis–football combination where we have the champion whacking a ball straight at the culprit's face several stands up, and then Conan kicking the same ball as it rebounded with his kick-enhancing shoes. Gosh—now that I think about it, what would I not give to see Gosho write the script for a Shaolin Soccer movie?

"And I would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for that pesky Holmes' apprentice ... " 

It is now somewhat clear that mangaka Gosho indulges in his most cartoonishly ridiculous instincts and excesses wherever sports is involved. Is there any other sports story in the Conan series that features a more moderate, middle-ground approach, I hear you say. I am glad you asked—and for this, may I direct you to "Miracle at Koshien Ball Park! The Defiants Face the Dark Demon" (manga chapters: 445–449, anime special episode: 383)? Conan's eternal rival Heiji Hattori prevails upon Conan, Ran, his own not-quite-girlfriend Kazuha, and Mouri, and convinces them to attend the finals of Japan's annual high school baseball tournament, the Kōshien. Playing in the final are two teams that have now faced each other three times in the finals of the very same tournament, but an evil spirit soon stalks this particular game. A spirit that comes equipped with a bomb (again—seriously, what is it with this series and bomb/shooting/blackmail threats in stadiums hosting finals?). And issues a direct threat to not one, but two great detectives.

That time when Japan's greatest detective solved a case by cracking a joke

This is a better-structured and -paced story than the other ones discussed here. One of the things I particularly like is that while the codes and clues the perpetrator gives to our detectives may not exactly be fair to those who do not know much about baseball and its larger lore, they all work in the context of a story set against the backdrop of the Kōshien finals. These clues are all baseball-themed, and therefore enjoy a thematic coherence with the sport that is happening at the same time. The narrative is also broken down into mini-games—with the evil spirit leaving location-based hints that the sleuths have to solve within designated time limits (such as the end of certain innings in the game). As a result, the story unfolds as a more urgent but less bombastic game of cat-and-mouse.

"End this game, please. And the episode as well—it's too long."

One of the reasons the episode is pretty sedate from a theatrics-and-action perspective is because this is a story where the unfolding game also exerts an emotional pull on the culprit. Besides, the perpetrator is portrayed in a far more grounded and less cartoonishly evil manner than the other stories mentioned here. A recent tragedy leads the culprit to harbour an abnormal hatred for the game and the audience at the Kōshien. However, the excellence of the game's quality unsettles the person, and the memories of his deceased son (who was a sensational player) further makes him doubt himself. As to the reason why the game affects him this way, the answer is revealed in the culprit's identity—one that is befitting of this story. And, for a change, the denouement is shorn of any bombast and happens in a humane way. The culprit's admission that they know that this is something they should not be doing, but at the time, they simply wanted people on whom they could pass on the blame (for their son's death) makes for a very sombre note on which to end this story.

"Yeah, that last deduction was a total fluke ... "

Of course, these stories only scratch the surface of sports-themed entries in the Conan series. Other stories in this more-than-11,00-chapter series introduce martial arts, shogi, swimming, gymnastics and much more, in the mix. But, rest assured, going through these chapters is a hefty task unto itself—particularly with Gosho exploring the limits of his plotting and expressionistic abilities. "Go for the sports, stay for the adventure, laughs and chaos" is what I would say, even if you find the mystery element to be a bit muted and/or lacking.