#rum suspects

The BO has always shown to be quite resourceful, whether it’s weapons or ways of transportation. I wouldn’t say it’s a unique Rum-specific trait that has to mean that Rum has direct wealthy connections himself (rather than the organization as a whole).

On the other hand however, we once again got to see how Rum speaks, and this time, it was even further highlighted that he has very polite speech style in Japanese, where he used the polite form of what was translated as “just as I thought” (”soudeshitaka” instead of ”soudattaka”), as well as using the more polite masu-form (”masu” suffix) on his verb here.

Gosho is further establishing the hint that Rum has a polite speech pattern, which is once again pointing towards and befitting Iori Muga, who speaks in an especially polite manner as a butler.

Detective Conan Opening 50 - ANSWER

I do in fact know about his seemingly confirming reply to SDB BLACK+ Q92 “Is Rum certainly amongst the trio Kuroda, Wakasa & Wakita?”, however, I don’t think it’s as straightforward as he made it seem.

I think that his reply stems from the fact that Wakita Kanenori is the former “Rum” in the BO, and his current codename is actually the same as the drink that was referenced in his introduction, “Highball” (File 975). Highball is a cocktail drink that is a mix of a liquor and non-alchoholic drink, and a common one among them is “Rum + Coke”. These two drinks were also referenced in his intro (as “pirate’s spirit” & “Cola”).

I think that after passing on the second-in-command title, he was given this cocktail codename as a symbol of that he is not the same Rum anymore (the same concentration of Rum in the drink basically). 

My thoughts on File 1032-1033:

Case Deduction

A basic “how-dunnit” case. Zenda moved the car manually by the tire, which resulted the dirt on her right arm and palm, which explains the tire mark and the movement of the four-leaf clovers that Ayumi spotted before the corpse was found, in order to fake her alibi with the photo of a corpse-less tree that is actually the wrong tree (because the car was blocking the real corpse tree). That is why she made sure to cover the windows of the right side of the car with cardboard, so that no one but her can see the corpse even when they exit the car. Prior to meeting DB, She also drugged the woman Uruma was keeping in his villa, then locked her in the closet until the murder happened (and was lucky to have her faint due to her claustrophobia even after waking up) and finally after killing him, she unlocked the closet and smeared her hands with his blood to frame her and then dragged Uruma’s corpse to the designated encounter site.

Wakasa Rumi’s memories

My suspicions about this proverb about the kakugyo (watchtower bishop) and Kohji asking if Rumi (someone) will still kill him despite that, as well as Rumi calling him foolish, is that Kohji surrendered to his death and was calmly ready to use the bishop piece as a dying message (hence fitting with the proverb “future holds a good move…”, since its move will take effect in the future after he dies), and Rumi (who is implied to be BO) had come to his room with intentions to kill him before Rum got to him (wild shot: because she wanted to prevent APTX usage by Rum), but Kohji, having an inkling on her inconsistent intentions with Amanda’s killer, convinced Rumi, who took his proverb as the piece being his good luck charm (hence the flashback trigger from “good luck charm”), to pretty much let him make his stand against Amanda’s killer with his “good-fortuned” retaliation (which actually meant to leave the bishop piece as a crucial part of the dying message and die by Amanda’s killer’s hand), thus leading to his death and her calling him a foolish guy for his martyr-like act, and perhaps also because Rum took the bishop piece from his hand in the end (since he doesn’t have it on his hand in her memory), making everything seem like a failed retaliation. That would mean that Rumi was there to see him orchestrate the dying message and know what the relevant pieces are (whether she takes anything later or not) and hid herself when Rum came in to kill him (since this was noted as Rum’s mistake alone, and not any other BO figure). Either Gosho is being fair with the flashback implications (meaning that Kohji indeed wondered if she was gonna kill him), or he is going to extreme lengths of highlighting misleading snipbits from completely different contexts of her memory to fuel the Rum mislead. Personally, I’m leaning towards him being fair on this, since unlike Conan during swimsuit and Ran during Chinatown, Rumi doesn’t seem to have recollection issues (since she boldly calls Kohji foolish, meaning she remembers Kohji’s actions), so it doesn’t make sense for her to recall out-of-context snipbits when she already remembers the context (unlike Ran and Conan).

I don’t think Kohji’s proverb necessarily excludes the piece’s promoted side (uma) from being relevant, since the proverb can just be his way of emphasizing the piece as a whole to be important for later. The fact that Gosho revealed the piece with its uma side in File 1008, and then highlights the piece with a kaku proverb here makes both sides candidates (and perhaps it’s the least obvious one with that logic, uma, seeing as we had the Rum horse easter eggs).

Wakasa Rumi’s pain

Conan concluding from Rumi just pressing on her eye area that she has monocular vision is to me just another Gosho attempt to mislead, because her pressing like that in general can also be a sign of headache/migraine. This is yet another symptom of wearing unfit glasses imo. Also, her excuse about feeling “anemic” is an interesting choice, since it immediately reminds me of Vermouth, who made the same excuse for Masumi collapsing in File 822.

Conan’s fake identity examples

“Such as a Detective, who’d change it to something that makes it easier to extract information” –> Kuroda “Or a Spy, who’d turn into someone well suited to the place they’re infiltrating” –> Wakita “Or Someone who’d pose as someone else to deceive people…” –> Wakasa

Detective Conan FILE 1008 Review/Discussion

CARASUMA

"CARASUMA" was heavily implied to be the mirror-message of Kohji's dying message. As predicted, it did end up becoming the most reasonable letter arrangement, and it further enforces the idea that the clenched scissor case (File 948-950) is Gosho's parallel to the actual case from 17 years ago, since the mirror message "CARASUMA" ended up being a surname, just like the glass message "SENBA".

Wakita's move and Rumi's shogi piece

Wakita finally made his move. He went to Agasa's house to pry on Kudo Shinichi. This is a strong indication that he is interested in Shinichi for some reason. Following my suspicions about him being a Boss-associated BO agent, his actions does go in line with him wanting to confirm if Shinichi survived the APTX drug.

This was later followed by half a page dedicated to the Rum suspects, where we not only see Wakita giving off a serious reaction to the Shinichi cover-up, but also Rumi being in possession of a shogi piece.

The shogi piece she had beside her was the "promoted bishop" abbreviated as "Uma"("horse"). If this is an indication to her figuring out, or being in a possession of, the missing object, that Kohji was clenching between his hand and scissor, that was taken from the crime scene, then this also follows my prediction that Kohji was using "UMA" as a part of the dying message. Since "Uma" means "horse", and we not only had the "horse" reference for the Rum movie cover but also directly used canonically in relation to "Pirate's Spirit"/"Rum"/the culprit of the Kohji case(File 975), it further foreshadows that "Uma" is most likely the right word from the piece. Same would imply if the shogi-like missing shape of "U" in the hand-mirror was hinting to the Shogi piece that start with "U". As for whether Rumi's shogi piece is the exact same one as the one that was taken 17 years ago, that is yet to be determined. Same goes for the object in her pocket, however, since Gosho revealed the shogi piece now, it lessens the chance that the object in her pocket is something else but the Uma piece.

All that's left now is for the knight piece to be revealed, in order to complete the potential full name of Rum: Karasuma Muga.

Rum's new objective

After the Rum-suspects scene, we finally got the awaited development that we have been waiting: an objective for Rum. We have been due an official goal for the antagonist of this arc, and this is our only confirmed goal that we have gotten from Rum. Rum sent a text to Bourbon demanding information about Shinichi, and that was followed by an english idiom "Time is money!". This is our first time getting a canon glimpse at Rum's writing, and the first unique thing we get is him writing in english. This could be Gosho's indication that Rum has been influenced by an english-speaking country. Following my theory about Muga being Rum, it does go well in line with him, since he was portrayed to have gotten European/British influence.

A very interesting finding that the Japanese fans made was that "Time is money!" in Japanese ("Tokiwa Kanenari") is an anagram for "Wakita Kanenori". Considering that Gosho reminded us of Wakita's full name pages before this idiom was sent by Rum, it highly suggest it could be an intentional hint to that "Wakita Kanenori" is a fake name derived from the anagram of the idiom "Time is money!". Since Wakita was using idioms and metaphors in his introduction, it makes sense that he would use this idiom often as well (along with others like "It's like encountering a demon in the darkness"). Just like my suspicion that Gin was using one of Wakita's idioms, this could be Gosho's hint that Rum is also using one of Wakita's idioms (which further supports Wakita's BO affiliation and his potential high position to be able influence agents like Gin, and especially Rum).

Karasuma Renya

Lastly, The biggest shocker was at the end, when Karasuma Renya was revealed to be, or at least have been, the Boss of the BO.

Iori Muga’s Appearance Pattern (in relation to Rum suspects)

HALLOWEEN FAN ART!