NinthFeather's Meta Archive

Look, I’m not a real hardcore animal rights type most of the time, but honestly? The real victim of the Blush Mermaid Heist was the turtle.

 

It’s not safe to glue something to a turtle’s shell, especially for an extended period of time. If the glue is something toxic and goes through the cracks, it can make the turtle sick. If the turtle is still growing, you run the risk of stunting its growth.

 

Then KID put iron dust in the poor little guy’s food and stuck him to a magnetic plate.  Again, we are not seeing a lot of concern for the turtle here.  On a meta level, I think Gosho researched synthetic diamonds more than he did aquatic turtles, which are fussy, easy-to-injure animals when kept in captivity. I don’t know if giving a turtle enough iron fillings to supplement the magnetic properties of the fake diamond on its back and make it stick to a metal plate is safe. This isn’t something you can easily research on the internet, and I’m sorry, but I don’t have enough invested in this to ask someone outright. But Gosho did, and he could have easily called a pet store about the matter. The way the scenario is written suggests he did not bother doing this, especially as there is no effort to reassure the audience that KID’s trick didn’t hurt the turtle.

 

Gosho is usually nicer to animals than this–puppies and kitties get to be cute and remain unhurt, and the doves get looked after too. But apparently turtles aren’t special?

 

Also, okay, everything about the Masumi disguise situation was stupid. KID crossdresses almost constantly. Assuming gender based on clothing is a complete rookie mistake that Gosho had him make because it was funny. Except the gag regarding Masumi’s chest was off-color when he introduced it and it’s only gotten worse.  Masumi kicking KID was funny, but it would have been just as funny if she’d gotten to do it for him trying to steal her clothes. Also, it felt like a cheap way of making sure that Conan, not Masumi, took the lead in the heist investigation. I’d like to see a proper face-off between Masumi and KID.

 

(Frankly, speaking as a woman, you can tell that a man is writing something when a teenage girl is restrained and unconscious in a men’s bathroom for an extended period of time and this is basically handwaved as “no big deal.”)

 

Basically, this was the kind of heist I’d expect to see in MK, where Kaito doing poor heist prep and making mistakes has a payoff–it increases suspense and makes the readers worry about the protagonist.  For all that I personally am a big KID fan, when I read DC, I generally try to read the chapter from the perspective of the narration, so I was trying to read from Conan’s point of view. From Conan’s point of view, this was just a particularly ill-thought-out scenario and the humor/Kaito’s mistakes felt distracting, rather than like something that added to the tension.

 

In short, I’m not a big fan of the Blush Mermaid heist, and I hope to goodness the upcoming heist is a bit better.