#file 1153

Do you think Tsutomu will show up to protect Mary, now that Rum has found out she was shrunk by the drug? (Spoiler – File 1153)

@maitresain Hello, if the footage happens to leak and Vermouth sees this, how do you think she'll react? Will she make a move to correct her blunder and try to kill Mary once more? How will she deal with Masumi?

File 1153 Review

This chapter further confirmed what I've always been suspecting in terms of the direction of Rum arc, especially since the last case with the Wakita resolution,... that the Rum arc climax case is gonna spotlight Rum's APTX4869 investigation.

At the end of this chapter, Rum officially got confirmation to his APTX4869 side-effect suspicions (that were likely born from reviewing Sherry's experiments with mice). He learned that Mary Akai has shrunken, upon seeing her de-aged middle-schooler body in a news photo, and proclaimed his goals of figuring out the necessary conditions for achieving a de-aging effect from APTX4869.

The fact that Rum has been suspecting the possibility of human de-aging by the missing APTX4869 victims is further recontexualizing why Rum would be so keen on trying to test and figure out the truth behind Conan's odd/adult behavior in File 1144-1146. The thought did occur to me that Wakita could have been suspecting that Conan might be a de-aged adult when he rushed to see if Conan was speaking for Camel and was wondering if he was just a normal kid, so this confirmation of Rum's suspicions in File 1153 is further supporting that thought.

However, even if Rum suspected that Conan could be a de-aged adult, I highly doubt he has ever suspected that Conan could be Shinichi, nor that Shinichi has de-aged to the extent of becoming an elementary schooler. The reason for this is the fact that Shinichi appeared in the news as having solved the kyoto serial murder case (File 1005-1008). From Rum's point of view, there is no de-aging antidote because there is no living potential creator of such an antidote (Sherry), so the fact that Shinichi appeared as a teen would rather be grounds for Rum to suspect that Shinichi de-aged by less than 1 year, unlike Mary, due to different conditions being met by him. This could therefore be Shinichi's greatest benefit for eventually relying on his Conan cover for protection, whenever he has to fake his death in the future.

This plot progression is also a very promising development because it is the first time Mary's subplot properly intersects with the ongoing Rum plot (making all of her developments up to this point in Rum arc extremely relevant all along), and it will most likely spring Rum into action in the upcoming cases, and while it will become a challenge for Rum to find Mary, with enough force from his subordinates, similarly to how the BO discovered Kir's whereabouts when she was in a coma in a hospital (during Clash), they will eventually zero in on Mary, and potentially even push the MI6 to make a defensive move (just like the FBI back during Clash). As for whether I believe Tsutomu will show up to protect Mary, that highly depends on his current status. If he is in hiding/in disguise, then there is certainly a decent chance for him to make a very low-profile move, that we may not even realize is done by him, for Mary's sake. For example, if he is Vader's driver (the man who sett off the alarm in File 1096), then I could see him making some kind of disrupting move that foils the BO's plan to intercept her, seemingly as per Vader's orders (when it's in reality his own personal agenda as well). If he has amnesia or is dead however, then he won't obviously make a move by himself.

While that alone is hype and exciting, I think the more exciting potential from this is Rum's intensified interest and pursuit of Kudo Shinichi after this revelation. Now that Rum is aware of the de-aging effect and has established his upcoming investigation of how it is achieved, he is most likely gonna wanna test out APTX4869 again on Shinichi (who seemingly barely de-aged), even more so than Mary (who de-aged too much). While tracking down Mary is still gonna be a priority, both as a threat to eliminate and as a test subject to evaluate, Shinichi is probably gonna be his main person of interest when it comes to the APTX4869 investigation. I could therefore see Rum making moves to both locate Mary and draw out Shinichi from where he is hiding. This could therefore lead to an exciting major multi-frontal showdown between Rum (BO), Mary (MI6) and Shinichi (FBI/Team Shin-chan), which could then lead to the Rum vs Shinichi confrontation and APTX re-drugging developments that I speculated about in my review of File 1151:

For this reason alone, if Vermouth is, or will become, aware of Rum's APTX4869 de-aging knowledge after discovering the shrunken Mary photo leakage, I don't think it will be in Vermouth's interest to immediately eliminate Mary. Vermouth's priority is her treasures, Kudo Shinichi & Mouri Ran, so she would prefer that Rum gets distracted as much as possible from pursuing and investigating Kudo Shinichi in order to keep Shinichi safe. If Mary were to be eliminated by Vermouth, then Rum's only hope of investigating the APTX4869 side-effect is by going after Shinichi after all.

We got to see Conan's reaction to the Mary photo as well, which lead to Conan speculating about the existence of an active figure that has been the reason why the photos and footages of that Hotel alarm incident (File 1096) have been censored for so long.

Just as I predicted in my File 1151 review, Conan has started to sniff out the existence of the likely mysterious perpetrator behind the news censorship, "Vader" (respirator elder), who is most likely Haneda Yasuharu (The Akai-family-father friend who is covering for Mary and Masumi's hotel expenses).

Something else I also found to be very interesting was the fact that Ran got a chance to once again get a proper glimpse at shrunken Mary (second time since File 905). What's more, Ran recognized her resemblance with Masumi. I think this yet another underestimated development, since there is a strong potential for Ran figuring out the possibility of shrinking through her remembering her meeting with Masumi and adult Mary 10 years ago (File 972-974), which in turn would lead to her figuring out that Shinichi is Conan as well, as previously speculated:

Apart from these groundbreaking developments and potentials, I really thoroughly enjoyed this case and very much appreciated the return of the Mob, Deisan group, and their leader Busujima Kiriko, ever since her last appearance in Black Impact (File 500-504).

Hello!

Well, the clear link is that the mob, Deisan group, that Busujima leads are similar to the BO, in that they don't want someone in position of power that makes their criminal work inconvinient for them. Both Kiriko and the BO therefore wanted to eliminate Yasuteru Domon (who seemed the most problematic as a candidate out of the three in File 500 because of his strong righteous convictions). Now, we see the Deisan group trying to plant in one of their own affiliates, Kondou Shuuhou, in a ministerial position.

If anything, this pattern of criminal activities with politics is showing that the BO might eventually make the same move of planting one of their own associates into the japanese government, just like they attempted with Amanda Hughes in America, who was rumored to be running for precidency.

This could therefore be promising, especially if the former prime minister (Ōoka) becomes a relevant player in such politically-themed battle, if he is the mysterious falcon elder who has been active in current main plot.