III

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At a first glance he seems like a perfectly fine uber detective, but it’s just too perfect and the lines between dedicated and obsessed become blurred. He has unhealthy obsessions and too much control, and is never confronted about it.

Something that wasn’t addressed as much in the OP was that Shinichi isn’t the only one that is enforcing this extremely unhealthy lifestyle. He’s been told, repeatedly, that he is the only one who can save everyone, that he can’t mess up, that everyone will die if he makes any mistakes, shows any weakness. So many people have put him on a pedestal, and it’s been proven time and time again ICly that if he doesn’t turn himself into this cold, hard, perfect machine, that people will suffer and it will be all his fault. Couple this with the whole ‘you will never be good enough’ bit from his father that he grew up with, and it’s a recipe for violent self-destruction.  

He’s just a kid. We’ve seen cracks in his invincible facade before. We’ve seen him push down his feelings - violently, at times - in order to get the job done. This has happened time and time again, but he keeps fighting because he truly believes that there are no other options. He’s deluded himself into thinking that it’s acceptable to use because because he has no choice, this has to be done, sacrifice for the greater good. He’s so utterly flawed and warped and, the really tragic thing is – it's not (all) his fault.  

Not that he should have a free pass for all of his actions. Definitely not. He NEEDS to face the consequences. If he doesn’t realize what he’s been conditioned to do, how screwed up all of this is (AND SOON), he isn’t going to make it. There comes a point where a person is so far broken that they will never, ever get back to where they were before. Learning lessons won’t be good enough, he’ll just be tatters… and it seems like the series is heading very quickly in that direction.

Granted, there’s no actual guarantee that Gosho intended this. He’s beat around the bush enough times that we’re all allowed to be more than skeptical about his ability to pull this off with a reasonably satisfactory resolution. That said, in order for me to continue to enjoy the series at all, I have to ASSUME that Gosho is doing all of this intentionally, that he has a plan for it, that he WANTS us to be seeing these things, questioning our hero and his ethics, seeing him for the very, VERY troubled teenager that he is. 

If it turns out that this is what we’re supposed to take away, that Shinichi will have to answer for his actions, learn from them, realize that he’s just a human mortal with flaws and that he DESPERATELY needs help, and goes through all of the work to FIX IT, I will be so, so happy. Even ShinRan could make sense again - there IS time to fix it (I stubbornly cry), to have him make amends and get her involved and all of that jazz. It’s POSSIBLE.

Hell, it’ll be BRILLIANT if we see a revelation where Shinichi realizes that he’s trying to be this “perfect" fictional character like Sherlock Holmes, and that Holmes himself was CRAZY FLAWED AND NOT HEALTHY… that he may not necessarily be the best person to emulate 100%…! That would be incredible. A deconstruction of the hero’s journey, the role model, the insane chess game played between brilliance and madness… 

But…

If Gosho lets Shinichi continue to play this part without dealing with the consequences or conveying to us readers that these things are not actually okay to do, then it’s all going to be pretty pointless. 

In a lot of ways, I compare Shinichi to Ender from Ender’s Game. I’ve only read the first book (and some of the Shadow series), but there are a lot of similar concepts. The game nearly destroyed Ender, and there were lots of good consequences that had to be dealt with. All along, I’ve been hoping that we see the same sort of responsible writing in the end. That all of this stuff we’ve been digging up, the symbolism, the undertones, the overall story arcs… I hope they’re leading to something, and I REALLY hope that it saves Shinichi in the end. 

No more happy accidents: I want conscious, good writing with the intent to clean up the mess that’s been made. I really don’t want to end up hating my favorite character because of bad writing. 

And... Smile!

(or, Kaishin and their daughter, Kuroba Mitsuki!)

one of the best things in detco: conan and shinichi appearing side by side in frames/panels

happy birthday shinichi kudo