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Detective Conan Novel About Akai Family Debuts in Newspaper

The official Twitter account for Yomiuri Chūkōsei Shimbun, a newspaper for junior high and high school students, revealed on Thursday that the Meitantei Conan Akai Family Selection Hiiro no Collection (Detective Conan: Akai Family Selection - Scarlet Collection) novel will make its serial debut in the newspaper on February 28. The novel is marking the release of the upcoming Meitantei Conan: Hiiro no Dangan (Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet) film.

The Shogakukan Junior Bunko label will release the novel in a book volume on March 27. The "Sazanami no Mahōtsukai" ("The Wizard of the Ripples") arc from the novel is debuting in advance in the newspaper.

The novel is adapting the "10-nen Mae no Jiken" (Incident 10 Years Before) story from the 92nd compiled book volume of Gōshō Aoyama's original Detective Conan manga. The story centers on Shuichi Akai, who visits the beach with his family. He encounters the seven-year-old Shinichi Kudo, and then a car suddenly falls to the ocean from a nearby cliff.

Meitantei Conan: Hiiro no Dangan, the 24th Detective Conan film, will open on April 17.

The film will center on the FBI agent Shuichi Akai, his younger brother and professional shōgi player Shukichi Haneda, his younger sister and high school detective Masumi Sera, his mother Mary Sera, and Conan Edogawa himself.

In the story, Japan is celebrating the upcoming World Sports Games (WSG), the world's largest sporting event, in Tokyo. The "Japanese Bullet," the world's first vacuum-tube super-conducting linear train, is built with the latest Japanese technology and timed to coincide with the WSG opening ceremonies. The train is set to run from Shin Nagoya Station to Tokyo Station at up to 1,000 kilometers per hour (about 600 miles per hour). However, a bizarre incident occurs during a party held by famous major sponsors, leading to a string of kidnappings of top executives. Conan deduces a possible link to serial abductions in the WSG 15 years earlier in Boston.

Tomoka Nagaoka (Detective Conan: Fist of Blue Sapphire) is directing the film, and Takeharu Sakurai (Detective Conan: Zero the Enforcer) wrote the script. Katsuo Ono returns to compose the music.

More information will be revealed on December 7 during the next episode of the Detective Conan anime.

Detective Conan: Fist of Blue Sapphire, the franchise's 23rd film, opened in Japan on April 12, and sold 1,458,263 tickets to earn 1,886,292,700 yen (about US$16.85 million) in its first three days. The film had sold 7,164,729 tickets to earn a total of 9,182,702,500 yen (about US$86.6 million) as of August 25. The film is the seventh consecutive Detective Conan film to become the highest-grossing film in the franchise.

Source: Yomiuri Chūkōsei Shimbun's Twitter account