Case Closed: The Eleventh Striker

Detective Conan: The Eleventh Striker (名探偵コナン　１１人目のストライカー, Meitantei Konan: Jūichininme no Sutoraikā) is the 16th film installment of the manga and anime series Detective Conan and it was released on April 14, 2012.^[2] The movie aired on April 19, 2013 on Nippon TV. The plot follows Conan as he deals with a serial bomber.

Plot

The Detective Boys attend a promotional event where the J. League play soccer with children. There, the group are introduced to several people. The next day, the Detective Boys watch the soccer match at Touto Stadium. Kogoro Mori receives a phone call from a bomber who relays the location of a bomb in the form of a riddle. The riddle reads "Blue zebra and blue boy, rain from above, people from below, their left hand, as it is shows, the tree on the left. Ran Mori relays the riddle to Shinichi Kudo allowing Conan to decipher it. The blue zebra and boy refer to the mascots of the teams currently playing at Touto stadium. The rest of the riddle is a play on kanji; The top part of Rain (雨, Ame), bottom part of People (人, Hito), left of Hand (手, Te), Show (示, Shī) as it is, and the left of Tree (木, Ki). Filling in the missing parts of the kanji and adding them together forms the word Electronic Scoreboard (電光掲示板, Denkō Keijiban). With little time to evacuate the spectators, Conan traverses up the infrastructure and arranges the explosives so the scoreboard falls in a safe location.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department work with Kogoro to find out the bomber's identity. Conan reveals the bomber revealed information only the people they acquainted with during the promotion event would know, limiting the suspects down to five. Kogoro receives a letter from the bomber stating a larger crowd will witness the next bombing and a second letter will arrive later to reveal the location of the next bomb. The police speculate Shiodome Arena is the next target as it is the closest event with the largest attending audience. The second letter arrives and reveals the J. League All-Star Soccer is the next target as it has the highest viewership. The letter declares in all ten simultaneous games, the strikers must use the following play hidden in the letter against the home team to stop the bomb and challenges Kogoro to confront him as the eleventh striker. Conan reveals the border and the staple matches an association football pitch and the kanji written in red is written in a way so that the staple has red markings on top of it; He deduces the bomber wants the strikers to kick the ball in the center of the goal post. As per the letter, the police are only able to alert the coaches and the strikers in each game about the bombs.

While the strikers in all ten matches successfully hit the goal post to deactivate the bombs, the police visit Keiichirō Motoura who they believe has a strong motive to be the bomber. Motoura confesses he holds hatred towards Kogoro and fans of the J. League All-Star Soccer games since they stalled the ambulance his dying son, Tomofumi Motoura, was in and blamed them for his death. Kogoro reveals the group mistakenly believed the ambulance they called was for a collapsed elder and attempted to charter the ambulance to their direction. Motoura however reveals he is not the bomber. Conan watches a video of Tomofumi playing soccer and realizes Kazumasa Nakaoka is the culprit. Conan then leaves to Touto stadium to confront Nakaoka.

There, Nakaoka reveals his brotherly relationship with Tomofumi and how he also believes Kogoro and the J. League All-Star Soccer fans were the cause of Tomofumi's death. Nakaoka then reveals that the eleventh switch to stop the bombs is on the goal post; However the detonations have begun. Conan attempts to kick the ball to the goal post but is blocked by falling debris. The Detective Boys give Conan a second ball allowing him to make the shot and stop the explosions.

Production

The film was officially revealed through the 52nd 2011 edition of Weekly Shōnen Sunday.^[3] The official website was opened on November 26, 2011.^[4] The film is a collaboration with the J. League Division 1 to commemorate its twentieth anniversary. As part of the collaboration, players from the J. League voiced original characters in the film.^[4] On February 22, 2012 the theme song was revealed to be Spring Song (ハルウタ, Haru Uta) performed by Ikimono-gakari.^[5] The crowd noise is a recording from the 2012 Japanese Super Cup.^[6]

References

External links

• Official website (Japanese)
• Official NTV website (Japanese)
• Case Closed: The Eleventh Striker (anime) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia