Puto wrote:
Wakarimashita wrote:
Gin says 'he', but japanese can be neutral. You'd have to ask the translator if Gin was being neutral or specific about Bourbon's gender.
Yeah. The JP line doesn't imply gender. It's just "dokudansenkō ka" which literally means "acting arbitrarily on one's own authority."
Kir did use "kare" (彼) when referring to Bourbon which is male specific, and the naming scheme for Black Org members so far has been hard liquors for men and wine or wine-based cocktails for women. Of course you could make the argument that Sera was deliberately codenamed Bourbon because she looks like a man. In general though, you have the problem of explaining why Bourbon Sera is sitting around and twiddling her thumbs while she knows about Haibara, knows Shinichi is alive, and knows Conan and Shinichi are connected if she is not already suspecting they are the same person.
Re:kkslider
I think a lot of people, you included, don't consider that part of their dissatisfaction with the BO plot probably comes from discussions they read on the internet that preempt their own efforts to solve it. I have noticed the general trend among people who are first time comers to a Detective Conan forum that are caught up to the Bourbon arc, but not significantly exposed to prevailing theories, are often satisfied with the Bourbon arc plot, although they may not like the slow progression. (Newbies may be dissatisfied with the romance or other aspects, but that's a different deal.) If I were making a DC website or suggesting a format for one, I would definitely split the manga side into plot discussion and weekly case discussion with as relatively little crossover as possible.
Kkslider, my read of you is that you feel greater satisfaction when you are surprised, don't see it coming, etc. If you want to get back into the greater plot of DC more, I'd strongly suggest to you that you stop reading any posts that deal with the greater Org plot, and instead only read threads related to weekly cases and romance and stuff. Definitely do this when a new arc kicks off. I understand that it is hard to do because there is no separation between the plot and everything else, but it's doable especially if you warn people replying to you that you don't want to hear their ideas about the Org plot.
I can understand your frustration with the predictable way the plot and the character identities are developing, but I'm only marginally sympathetic. Part of that lack of sympathy is because of the type of reader I am, the other part comes from considerations about the target audience of DC. The second of those is more interesting to talk about.
Gosho has been writing the Kir and especially the Bourbon arc with a "many obvious small clues" type approach. This is because of the reading style of the target audience; most people reading DC are not using the internet to help them, they read week by week, and they don't flip back through records of past cases to crosscheck so they forget what happened in the past, and are younger than college age. The reason why the many obvious small clues style is appropriate in general for the manga format is because 1) People reading week by week are not going to remember all the clues, 2) the target audience is young and not advanced at solving stuff.
You can contrast this to the Vermouth arc where there were only a few clues, and they were harder to find and more definitive on average. The reason why the Vermouth arc wasn't good for the target audience is because the best clues were too well hidden and thus missed (Like Jodie's pictures of pictures), and because there were not many of them so they were more easily forgotten. For the average reader, the end of the Vermouth arc was basically an arse-pull because the clue presentation style was not appropriate for weekly installments over 2.5 years. The Vermouth arc would have been great in a graphic novel format to be read in a few sittings, but the way it was spaced out meant that far too many people had no clues as to what was coming. The Vermouth arc was a wonderful mystery, but failed at fitting the reading style of the target audience.
This reason is why Gosho, likely with encouragement from his editors, changed the clue presentation style. They recognized most people aren't referring to the past and are forgetting things, so the only way most readers were going to have a fair chance is if there are many small clues, some of which they will pick up on and remember. Arguably, having the plot in concentrated bursts also helps because the average reader is going to remember more during a "plot burst" and may be able to draw some conclusions to save for later.
If I were Gosho making changes, I would continue to use the many small clues format, but write shorter arcs, 85~100 chaps, to avoid many of the above problems associated with having the plot spaced as widely as it is currently. It would increase the story and development pace, decrease the number of clues needed overall due to length shortening, and decrease the number of redundant clues being dropped and relatively useless reminder cameos. Such a format would be target audience friendly and suitable for people working together to solve arcs.
Regarding Sera, I would have liked it better if Sera was not Akai's sister and instead a colleague of some sort because it would have removed the similarity to the Hidemi Eisuke thing. Other than that, the Bourbon arc and the Kir arc are different.
