Detective Conan: The Lost Ship in the Sky

A group breaks into a laboratory holding a sample of a dangerous bacterium and blows up the building on the way out. In the same days a newly built giant airship is preparing for its first flight; it is presented as a demonstration of technology and there are guests aboard. The attackers seize the ship. They have demands and use the bacterium they took as their card. Conan is aboard too and there is no way down. Yasuichiro Yamamoto directs. It is the fourteenth feature in the series. The setting is closed: nobody can get off for the length of the journey, and that gives a plot close to the classic closed room mystery. Besides Conan, the character Kaitou Kid appears; using the two together is a method the series returns to often. The interior of the airship is drawn in detail and the narrative uses that layout directly; the escape routes and compartments are part of the plot. The bacterium strand puts a time limit on the narrative and the tension comes from there. Its limit is the scientific explanation; the narrative passes over it quickly and the details are not consistent. It did good business in Japan. Who it is for: people following the series and viewers who like closed setting mysteries. Who it is not for: a new viewer lacks the character background, the solution is convoluted, and the action is exaggerated.