There's a lot of talk about Heiji's tendency to drop everything and go to Tokyo to help—or even just to see!—Shinichi, and rightfully so. It's something Heiji unabashedly admits to (Episode 278, Magic File 5)...
Heiji: If any other suspicious persons show up, just call me! I'll run right over!
Ran: Hattori-kun saw that incident on the news and rushed over because he was worried about you, Conan-kun.
Heiji: Grabbed the first bullet train in the mornin'!
And I still can hardly believe that Heiji's canon, actual, real-deal reaction to a request to put his life on the line and impersonate Shinichi... is an immediate "OK" composed out of heart emojis (Episode 345).
Seriously. That happened. Heiji couldn't not help.
Heiji (internally): I had no choice. After all, Kudo e-mailed me asking me to do this.
But in Shinichi's first appearance since being poisoned (Episode 49), after seemingly refusing to show his face to Ran or Inspector Megure or anyone else in town for who knows how long, he unabashedly claims that he dropped everything to meet Heiji. He smiles about it!
And of course it's a lie, but there's a smidgen of truth to it, too. Conan did accompany Heiji, despite feeling terribly sick and harboring zero interest in the (apparently) non-murderous case, because he was intrigued. Because he was impressed with what Heiji had uncovered about him already and was nervous about what else his so-called "rival" could reveal.
Conan (internally): I don't wanna go, but there's no telling what this guy might say!
But even without that context, Shinichi's easy, immediate cover story gets to me. He really, truly, unhesitatingly asserts that meeting Heiji was important enough to jump right on a train to get there.
It reminds me of Shinichi's excitement when he first learns of Heiji (File 520), and his grin when he thinks of meeting Heiji for real one day (File 522):
Shinichi: Really? Then he's just like me!
Shinichi (internally): We'll meet each other again... on that mysterious stage...
I think I could totally buy that Shinichi actually would have done exactly what he claims in the clip. He is interested in other detectives like himself, and with the pain of the antidote wearing off in Episode 49, that smile's gotta be genuine.
Finally, while it's Not That Deep, there's maybe something to be said about how Heiji is symbolically the key to Shinichi's true self, since it's Heiji's alcohol that transforms Conan back into Shinichi. With this clip, Shinichi underlines the same idea. It's Heiji who brought him back after so long. It's because of Heiji Hattori that Shinichi Kudo makes his first appearance after vanishing.
And I love how forthright Shinichi is about it.
176 notes
·
View notes
Listen, don't get me started on my feelings about stereotyping and cultural appropriation or all of that, because it would be long and rambling and probably not really in line with any popular opinions on the topic, which is just how it is sometimes and that's fine.
This is a small country. We've been conquerors and conquered and rose up and been conquered again. Our religion and much of our culture was eradicated over the last thousand years because it didn't gel with Christianity or whatever power was lording over us at the time. Other small countries are much closer to us at any time than some of you could ever imagine and over the course of history we sometimes traded bits of our culture, but more often than not we made stereotypes, sometimes harmless oftentimes not, about the people on the other side of the invisible line so we could set ourselves apart. This is us and that is them and it's fine if we found them strange or didn't understand their habits all that well, because we are different people and anyway they probably think the same about us.
And if all the world cares to know of our culture are the embroidered flower patterns of what used to be just one small subset, used as tacky decals in the completely wrong context, well. At least they cared to know something. At least there is something that can remain alive while the tourists from those bigger, richer, much more important countries think it's pretty enough for a souvenir. And maybe that guy there raving about the goulash recipe he loves wouldn't even eat a proper gulyás dish if you served him one, but at least he knows the word, kinda, right? Right?
And yeah, maybe that stings if you think too hard about it, but we are small and not much can be done about it and there's not much left to preserve after all this time. We try out best quietly anyway, because speaking up about it too loudly will invite the far right nazi-adjacent crowd, thumping their chests about a mythical, glorious Hungary of conquerors rather than conquered that haven't existed in centuries if ever.
...yeah, best not talk about those guys. Leave them no place to stand. They don't deserve to be here.
I'm fascinated by and a little envious of foreign cultures that, despite facing adversity, are still living, breathing things, because so much of my own has already become empty window dressing. We assimilated into the culture that is a wider Europe in the hope that being more like those richer, bigger, more powerful countries would compel them to spare some scraps from their table and yeah it fucking sucks. And we are not big or interesting enough for others to care, so it's all up to us to hold onto what we can.
And we are not alone in this. This seems to be the lot of the small and there's plenty of that here. We are in fair company.
11 notes
·
View notes
Thanks for tagging me @valkoinenlintu! Here are the last 10 songs I listened to (from memory, because I don't use streaming services and can't just check):
1. Maxim - Ich erinner mich an alles
2. Maxim - Vielleicht in einem anderen Leben
3. Giirl - Bloodshed
4. Elton John - Empty Garden (and the rest of the B side of that vinyl)
5. Billy Joel - Vienna
6. KT Tunstall - Old Man Song
7. Herbert Grönemeyer - Doppelherz
8. Cynthia Nickschas - Tanz!
9. Die Ärzte - Lasse reden
10. Die Toten Hosen - Der letzte Kuss
Tagging: @fritzes (thanks for the KT Tunstall obsession :D i will be making my way through all of their songs), @advantage-sinner (thanks for the Giirl recommendation!), @alwayshappyhoursomewhere, @all-my-worlds-a-stage, @chrisoels, @badgermcghee, @faeryaesther, @cricrithings (no pressure obviously, do it if you feel like it <3)
10 notes
·
View notes
Reading List 2023
Ocean Vuong: Night Sky With Exit Wounds
Alena Mornštajnová: Hana
Wolfgang Benz: Theresienstadt. Ein Geschichte von Täuschung und Vernichtung.
Jáchym Topol: Die Teufelswerkstatt [org. title: Chladnou zemí]
Ocean Vuong: Time is a Mother
Richard Siken: Crush
Ben Nevis: Die Drei ??? Die Yacht des Verrats
Frank Wedekind: Frühlings Erwachen (reread)
James Ellroy: Die Schwarze Dahlie [org. title: The Black Dahlia]
André Marx: Die Drei ??? und der Puppenmacher
Evelyn Boyd: Rocky Beach Crimes #2. Mord unter Palmen.
Peter Hallama: Nationale Helden und jüdische Opfer. Tschechische Repräsentationen des Holocaust.
Brigitte Johanna Henkel-Waidhofer: Die Drei ??? Späte Rache
Kim Newman: Professor Moriarty. The Hound of the D‘Urbervilles. (reread)
Vera Schiff: The Theresienstadt Deception. The Concentration Camp the Nazis Created to Deceive the World.
Evelyn Boyd: Rocky Beach Crimes #2. Mord unter Palmen. (reread)
Josef Bor: Die verlassene Puppe [org. title: Opuštěná panenka]
Kari Erlhoff: Rocky Beach Crimes #1. Tödliche Törtchen.
Susanna Partsch: Wer klaute die Mona Lisa? Die berühmtesten Kunstdiebstähle der Welt.
Kathy Reichs: Virals #1. Tote können nicht mehr reden. [org. title: Virals] (reread)
Arthur Schnitzler: Reigen (reread)
Evelyn Boyd: Die Drei ??? Teuflisches Foul
Faye Kellerman: Der Zorn sei dein Ende [org. title: The Hunt]
J.D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye
Władysław Szlengel: Was ich den Toten las [org. title: Co czytałem umarłym]
Hanna Krall: Dem Herrgott Zuvorkommen [org. title: Zdążyć przed Panem Bogiem]
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Dispossessed
Thomas Mann: Der Tod in Venedig
James Oswald: Natural Causes. An Inspector McLean Novel.
Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar (reread)
Christoph Dittert: Die Drei ??? Melodie der Rache
Maria Rolnikaitė: Mein Tagebuch [org. title: Ja dolžna rasskazat']
Mark Thompson: Leatherfolk. Radical Sex, People, Politics and Practice.
James Baldwin: Giovanni‘s Room
Christopher Tauber, Hanna Wenzel: Rocky Beach. Eine Interpretation.
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry: A Raisin in the Sun
Jonathan Kellerman: Unnatural History. An Alex Delaware Novel.
Robert Arthur: Die Drei ??? und die Geisterinsel. [org. title: The Three Investigators in the Secret of Skeleton Island]
Evelyn Boyd: Rocky Beach Crimes #3. Eiskalter Rausch.
André Marx: Die Drei ??? Labyrinth der Götter
John Barth: Lost in the Funhouse
Langston Hughes: Selected Poems of Langston Hughes.
Claude McKay: Harlem Shadows. The Poems of Claude McKay.
Jonathan Kellerman: Exit. Ein Alex Delaware Roman. [org. title: Devil‘s Waltz. An Alex Delaware Novel.] (reread)
David Henry Hwang: M Butterfly
James Oswald: The Book of Souls. An Inspector McLean Novel.
Jonathan Kellerman: Time Bomb. An Alex Delaware Novel. (reread)
Manuela Günter: Überleben schreiben. Zur Autobiographik der Shoah.
Birgit Kröhle: Geschichte und Geschichten. Die literarische Verarbeitung von Auschwitz-Erlebnissen.
Alexander F. Spreng: Der Fluch (reread)
Sibylle Schmidt: Zeugenschaft. Ethische und politische Dimensionen.
Sibylle Schmidt: Ethik und Episteme der Zeugenschaft
Kari Erlhoff & Christoph Dittert: Die Drei ??? und die Salztote
Jeanette McCurdy: I‘m Glad My Mom Died
E.T.A. Hoffmann: Der Sandmann
Hendrik Buchna: Die Drei ??? Drehbuch der Täuschung
Michael Scott: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #2. The Magician. (reread)
Alain Locke: The New Negro
Mascha Kaléko: Großstadtliebe. Lyrische Stenogramme.
Marco Sonnleitner: Die Drei ??? Der Tag der Toten
Georg Heym: Gedichte [herausgegeben von Stephan Hermlin]
Rose Ausländer: Hinter allen Worten. Gedichte. [herausgegeben von Helmut Braun]
Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita
Paul Celan: Ausgewählte Gedichte. Zwei Reden. [herausgegeben von Günther Busch]
Rich Cohen: Lake Shore Drive [org. title: Lake Effect]
Jan T. Gross: Neighbors. The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland.
Kathy Reichs: Virals #2. Nur die Tote kennt die Wahrheit. [org. title: Seizure]
Jonathan Kellerman: Bones. An Alex Delaware Novel. (reread)
Akwaeke Emezi: You made a Fool of Death with your Beauty
Friedrich Schiller: Maria Stuart
Bret Easton Ellis: American Psycho
Christian Handel: Die Hexenwald-Chroniken #2. Palast aus Gold und Tränen.
Maurice Leblanc: Arsène Lupin und der Schatz der Könige von Frankreich [org. title: L'Aiguille creuse]
E.T.A. Hoffmann: Nussknacker und Mausekönig
Marco Sonnleitner: Die Drei ??? Panik im Park
Ben Nevis: Die Drei ??? Tal des Schreckens
Michael Borlik: Ihr mich auch
Robert Arthur: Die Drei ??? und der grüne Geist [org. title: Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators in the Mystery of the Green Ghost]
Barbara Köhler: Niemands Frau. Gesänge.
Christoph Dittert: Die Drei ??? Hotel der Diebe
Cornelia Funke: Tintenwelt #4. Die Farbe der Rache.
DNF:
Thomas Ziebula: Paul Stainer #1. Der rote Judas.
Faye Kellerman: Mord im Garten Eden [org. title: The Garden of Eden and Other Criminal Delights]
8 notes
·
View notes