#now if only aoyama might provide some long-overdue resolution to some of his foreshadowings:(

[imurasakaw]

Some thoughts about APTX...

In File.821, it is revealed that in the tape to Shiho for her eighteenth birthday, Elena said to her:

“The truth is, your mom is making a truly terrifying drug at the moment. My lab mates are getting really excited about it; they say it's like a dream drug. Your dad and I are putting all our hopes on it and calling it the Silver Bullet! But in order to complete the drug, your dad and I will have to leave you and your sister. Please understand, Shiho.”

—In order to complete the drug, your dad and I will have to leave you and your sister. Please understand.

She asks Shiho to “please understand” their departure in a tape that is meant for Shiho’s eighteenth birthday; she had planned all these recordings in advance and made them before her own death. These recordings are meant to cover the years of Shiho’s life until she reaches majority, from her first to her twentieth birthday—and all of them were recorded before Shiho was even a year old.

With that context in mind, the “leaving” she’s talking about sure sounds like the permanent kind, rather than, say, merely leaving them temporarily in someone else’s care to focus on their research. So Elena knew they were going to die. And according to her, the reason they have to die is to facilitate the creation and completion of Silver Bullet.

And if we accept that reading, then the next question becomes:

Why must the Miyanos “leave”—die—in order to “complete” the drug?

How fantastical might Aoyama go with this drug?

And this ties into a different question I’ve had for a long, long time, which is: why did the Organization spend so many years (and money and effort) into raising Shiho, putting her through the best education possible, shaping her into a prodigy, a child genius, all so that she can carry on her parent’s research? Why wait over ten years for Shiho? Why not just recruit a different scientist? No matter how wild or out-there Miyano’s ideas may have been, it’s unlikely that the Organization (especially with their deep pockets) can’t find even a single other scientist willing to carry on that research.

Additionally, Vermouth’s fervor in making sure Sherry is killed—not captured, killed—also raises questions. “If you want someone to hate for this, blame your parents who took over this foolish research,” she says to Haibara right before she’s about to shoot her. I know many people read this as a personal hatred she has against the older Miyanos and in turn Sherry for what they had created/were trying to create, but what if her goal is simply opposite to the Organization’s and the Boss’s, and not enmity directed specifically at individual persons? The Organization raised Sherry to continue the research; Vermouth wants Sherry dead so the research cannot continue. (She agrees to Conan’s demand during the Full Moon case that she give up on Sherry, in part because she sees how dedicated he is to fight the Organization and shield Sherry from it, and for a long time she does abide by that agreement, but then she tries to kill Sherry again during Mystery Train because Bourbon has found Sherry and aims to bring her back to the Organization. Vermouth’s preeminent goal has always seemed to be to prevent Sherry from returning to the Organization by any means necessary.)

And to be fair, all this may have just been, well, the product of the author having already decided on the character profile of “Haibara Ai” that he wants (genius teenage scientist, creator of APTX4869, the Irene Adler to Shinichi’s Holmes) and then just shaping her backstory around that decision. And Elena’s words in that tape may have just been lies and euphemisms to her daughter, cloaking the fact that she can sense that her death is near with allusions to a grander purpose. Parents all want to appear as best as possible in front of their children.

But if it’s not that, might there be some other reason? Again, just how fantastical might Aoyama go with this drug? Might there be some genetic component required here?

Might APTX4869’s effects have something to do with the Miyanos’ genes? Or rather, Sera family genes? Because why is it that, out of everyone who has supposedly been fed the drug (the APTX victim list that we keep seeing appears quite lengthy), only three people have been shown to the readers to have survived, two of whom (Mary and Haibara) we know for sure are closely related? (I think I once read someone saying that Aoyama said in an interview that Haibara and Conan aren’t related, but that’s so many layers of hearsay that I don’t know how much stock I should put in it until I see the print interview. I just know that one panel in Scarlet Return (File.897/Ep783)—where Conan talks about how Yukiko is “good at disguising herself as family” and then immediately thinks about how she also did a good job disguising him as Haibara that time—that panel still has me going eye emoji.)

Anyways, there are more questions than answers after all that, but it’s all so interesting to think about!!!