[dsojourn]

Greetings all. Was watching one of my favorite anime series, Detective Conan, known rather inanely as "Case Closed" in its brief US run, when one of the shows main, yet ironically mostly ignored, plot points raised its head. I'm not such a fan of AR myself, much prefering its AP counterpart, yet I have to say this is one of the better clips I've seen, good process, relatively good detail, and great quality in general. As a plus, from my point of view, its pretty much indistinquishable from a SW clip without knowing the context of the video, so I'm sure our good host Lorekeep and many others will appreciate that as well. Clip explanation, long but neccesary, is below.

**warning, Detective Conan Spoilers ahead**

For those of you unaware, Detective Conan is like a combination Encyclopedia Brown and CSI. It's the most popular anime in Japan some ten years/20 seasons running, and one of, if not THE longest running series currently at over 430+ epsiodes. Its about a high school student, Shinichi Kudou, who happens to be a genius detective.

One day, after solving a case, he witnessing an illicit deal concerning members of a mysterious "Black" crime syndicate, but before he can do anything they knock him out and drug him with a long-running, in development experimental and deadly drug "Apoptoxin 4869". It kills most people nearly instantly, but 1 in a million victims have an adverse reaction in which their bodies regress to a state of about 8 years old.

Such a fate befalls Shinichi and, as a child now, he creates a false identity to protect his loved ones and goes to live with his girlfriend, whose father is an incompetent detective. His plan is to solve all her father's cases and make him an internationally famous detective (he does over many, many epsiodes), and then eventually he believes a case will involve him with the Black Corporation and he'll be able to obtain a sample of Apoptoxin 4869 to develope a cure.

Far into the series (episode 128-129), Shinichi finally re-encounters the Black Corps., although not in a way he suspects. The new girl in his class, Haibara Ai, reveals to Shinichi that she was, in fact, a scientist for the Black Corps., which is far more powerful and widespread then Shinichi ever suspected. Her real name is Shiho Miyano, codename: Sherry (all the Black Corps. chief agents are codenamed after alcoholic beverages), and she's the one who developed the very drug which regressed Shinichi.

She was going to betray the organization after they killed her sister, but they discovered her plan and handcuffed her to a pipe in her lab, planning to interrogate and the kill her. Distraught, guilt-ridden over how many deaths her life of crime has caused, and expecting to die anyway, she took her own drug to commit suicide. It turns out she's also that 1 in a million because, rather then die, she regressed, slipped out of the now-too-large handcuffs, and escaped with the Black Corps. none the wiser about her regressed identity. With nowhere else to turn, she attaches herself to Shinichi, the only one who shares her situation and who she can trust. Unfortunately, her initial regression isn't really that visible or great.

Eventually (eps. 176-178), they discover a Black Corps. murder scheme incidentally and become involved in it. Over the course of events, Ai is recognized and captured, trapped in a saferoom while Conan/Shinichi works desperately on the outside to discover the Back Corps. agent's identity, save her, and solve the murder even as more Black Corps. agents come to kill her. Shinichi has Ai drink a bunch of an old Chinese sake named Paikuru which, he's discovered in the past, has the effect of returning one's body to it's proper age for a short while, although it only works once before the body developes an immunity.

Unfortunately again, you don't get to see Ai AP back to her proper, adult, age, nor do you get to see her in tattered clothes afterward as she changes immediately into worker's coveralls. For those of you unaware, kids in Detective Conan only come up to the knees of adults, which makes for quite a size change as you can see in the clip and much destroyed clothing. It also leads to, with a bit of imagination, a number of faux-GTS scenarios as Shinichi throughout the series now only reaches his girlfriend's, and all other women's, knees with much interaction, but I digress. After some harrowing events, the effects of the alcohol wear off and Ai regresses back to her child form as seen in the clip. There's actually a long lead in to the transformation, both AP and AR, but though it makes for a good mood-setter, I can't capture clips that long.