C.M.B. volume 40 review

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C.M.B., vol. 40, by Katou Motohiro. Grade: B

Kiseki no Shinden (Miracle Temple, Monthly Shonen Magajin 9, 2018)
Boa is a female customs guard at the main airport in Cambodia. She frustrates the attempts of one traveller to smuggle a bag of cobras into the country, and that night tells her mother at their hut about the event. Her mother mentions that about one week earlier, a group of foreigners showed up apparently to look into some miracles attributed to a nearby temple. According to her, one of the local boys had gotten sick, and the villagers had taken him into the temple, lit up a bunch of incense, and left him there. A day or two later, he was spotted up and around, wandering back into the village. Boa goes into the main town to drink with a friend at a bar, and overhears Shinra refusing to authorize a group of British medical researchers to use explosives to blow through some boulders blocking the hallway leading into the back of that specific shrine to find the source of the rumored "miracles" (the hall ceiling had collapsed recently). That night, Boa dreams of being attacked by cobras, and wakes up to see smoke coming from the temple. She runs over, meeting Shinra and Tatsuki at the entrance. Firefighters report that the British researchers had used explosives anyway, and are currently scattered around the area, writhing in pain, their faces and bodies swollen up, whispering "run."

Questions: Were the researchers cursed by the god of the temple? Are there really miracles coming out of this temple? What's the connection between the cobra smuggling and the current curse? Are Boa, Shinra and Tatsuki next to die?

Payment: Boa may have paid for desserts at a cafe afterward.

Natural history: Some pictures of Shiva statues and Angkor Wat. An explanation of how certain medicines are derived from poisons and venoms.

===== Spoilers =====

The blast opened up a small passage into the hallway leading deeper into the shrine room. At the far back is a huge wasp nest. The wasps are attracted to sources of light, and they immediately swarm anyone with a torch or flashlight. Tatsuki saves the group by covering them with the large urns lining the hallway. After the wasps settle down, the humans in the building escape and an extermination company is called in to clear out the shrine. Shinra thinks the wasps are the source of the "miracles." Occasionally, the victims of various illnesses would survive being stung, but more often the stings would be fatal. He says that this is the nature of most "miracles," in that there's always a dark side. A few days pass, and a local cop contacts Boa to show her the aftereffects of the cobra smuggling. Turns out that some people allow the snakes to bite them on the tongue because the venom is said to be an hallucinogen. More often, it's simply fatal, as with the current corpse. (Shinra's main science lecture is on how venoms and poisons can be processed into medicines by big pharma for the "benefit of society".)


Urusai Koroshiya (Noisy Killer, Monthly Shonen Magajin 10, 2018)
Tamajirou Momoya is probably the world's worst contract assassin. He agrees to hit Ryuusaku Kakiyama, a smuggler of endangered animal skins, tusks and trophies. Kakiyama lives in a penthouse at the top of a building with heavy security systems. Time after time, Momoya gets past the front door guards, but is thwarted before getting even close to the target. Each time, the other guards beat him up until he escapes to try again a few days later. His daughter, Ichigo, keeps asking if he really is a killer, and suggests that this may be why her mother left him. Finally, Kakiyama is found dead in his office of a stab wound in the chest, and the knife Momoya had left in the building in one failed attempt lying on the floor nearby. The police take Momoya in for questioning, but release him because stupid isn't a crime.

Questions: Who really did kill Kakiyama, and how did they get past all the guards and security doors if Momoya himself couldn't?

Payment: Nothing mentioned, although Shinra receives an ancient Egyptian lock and key set from a collector in Kakiyama's building for an unrelated transaction. I can't find anything online that looks like the lock in the manga. The manga shows a wooden pin that sits in a hole of the door frame inside the house, with a string or strip of animal skin running through a nearby hole in the door. The pin blocks the door from opening, and pulling the string just makes the pin block the door (letting the owner "lock" the door when leaving. The "key" is a length of tubing (or a hollow piece of wood) with a notch at one end. The owner runs the string through the hollow key and out the notch, and inserts the key through the hole in the door. Pulling on the string causes the key to push against the pin, and the distance of the notch from the end of the key is what determines that the door will open properly.

Natural History: A demonstration of how the Egyptian door lock worked.

Note: I've never seen kanji used to spell out "urusai" (noisy, persistent, "shut up") before. Usually, it's been in hiragana or katakana, or heard in spoken Japanese. It's certainly evocative. 五月蝿い = Month 5 Hae (i), or more literally, "Mayflies".

Note: All the character names include words for fruit. Ichigo = strawberry, Kakiyama = Persimmon mountain, Momoya = Peach Shop.

===== Spoilers =====

In fact, every single one of Momoya's failures were part of a larger plan. One attempt allowed him to put a hook and rope ladder outside the office windows. Another let him put tape over the door lock, and a third gave him access to a security card that he skimmed to get the mag strip data. A fourth resulted in the carving knife being left in the office. And the last had him spilling kerosene everywhere so Kakiyama would leave the office windows open to let out the smell. Finally, when Kakiyama was out visiting a buyer, Momoya entered the office from outside through the open windows using the hook and rope ladder. Inside, he retrieved the knife and hid until Kakiyama returned, stabbing his target in the chest and escaping the way he came in. Det. Kujirazaki comes to Shinra for help, and the boy connects all the pieces. Momoya is arrested for the crime, and Ichigo promises to wait for her father to get out of prison.


Ipanema no Musume (The Girl From Ipanema, Monthly Shonen Magajin 11, 2018)
Shinra and Tatsuki are boarding an airplane, in first class, to return to Japan from Rio, Brazil, for some reason. They are seated next to Takumi Hishizawa, a young Japanese businessman. Tatsuki notices the guy's bandaged wrist, and during the flight back, he tells her about his "girl from Ipanema." His father is a businessman doing some shady under the table deals, and had told Takumi to hand-deliver a memory stick to a partner in Rio, named Oscar. The hand-over was scheduled for 4 days after his arrival in the city, and Takumi had been instructed to enjoy the sights during that time. Pretty quickly, he was a target for an attempted street robbery. The robbery was aborted when one of the members, a beautiful young woman named Sophia, shouted out that the police were coming. The next day, Takumi spotted the woman working at a snack counter on the beach by the hotel. He starts pursuing her, and eventually he gets her to go on a date with him. He's very naive, though, and Sophia yells at him for carrying his valuables on him while he's outside. She gets him to hide the memory stick in a hollow wooden carving of the Christ statue, and to lock up both the memory stick and his passport in the safe in his room.

Takumi moves fast, taking Sophia to a really nice hotel for dinner on the last night before meeting with Oscar. She says that she doesn't know how to behave in these kinds of situations, then gives Takumi a lecture on how "economics" works in a country like Brazil (thieves stealing from each other in what's almost a barter system). After the meal, they go outside, where the previous group of robbers intercept them. The leader accuses Sophia of betraying them (there were no cops during the previous incident). The gang grabs both of them and takes the two to their hideout in an old hotel, places them in separate rooms, and proceeds to beat the crap out of Sophia. Takumi desperately yells out that he'll pay them anything if they stop torturing the girl, and the leader decides to listen to him. The plan is for the leader to go to Oscar's, and call back to Takumi's phone. Takumi vouches for him, and Oscar pays the ransom of $12,000 USD. Later, Takumi will negotiate that out of the payment for the memory stick. The leader leaves, calls in that he's at the gates to Oscar's mansion, and Takumi vouches for him. While the rest of the gang is preoccupied, Sophia makes a break for it with Takumi following after but they're trapped by a guard with a machine gun. Sophia throws Takumi down a laundry chute (in all this, he injures his wrist). Their parting words are for him to "look for the fish of Ipanema." When Takumi ran out of the basement of the hotel, he heard gunfire coming from above him. He got to the hotel, where the front desk clerk returned his coat and phone to him, saying that some girl with green eyes had brought them in, indicating that Sophia had somehow survived being shot at. Takumi got to his room, took his passport and the statue from the safe, checked out, and gave the memory stick to Oscar before getting on the plane. At the end of his story, he vows to find the girl again.

Questions: How did Sophia survive being shot at nearly point-blank? Why does Shinra say that it's better if Takumi minds his own business?

Payment: Nothing mentioned.

Natural history: Nothing.

===== Spoilers =====

Shinra was sleeping through all this, and he gets up to go to the toilet. Tatsuki meets him in the cabin attendent's area and asks what he thinks about everything. Shinra states that no gang would simply accept back a traitor like that. Normally, they'd shoot the girl and dump the body somewhere.This was never about a street robbery or a ransom. Instead, Sophia was a plant to get close to Takumi to get him to put the memory stick in a mass-produced souvenir to be placed in the hotel safe, and to get him to show her his passport at some point. Takumi was a complete rube, and when told to lock up his passport and the statue in the safe, would have used something like his birthdate for the lock combination. Since his birthdate was printed in his passport, that was an easy giveaway. Then, instead of going to Oscar's, the gang leader went to Takumi's hotel, where Takumi vouched for him, allowing him entrance into the hotel. He had Takumi's room key from his jacket, and got into the room, opened the safe, and switched statues. When Takumi got to the hotel and received his jacket back, all he cared about was being able to use the card key to get into his room and verify that his passport and the statue were safe. He never checked inside the statue before giving it to Oscar, and because his phone is turned off and stowed in his bags, he's unaware that his father is angrily trying to call him to ask why the transaction failed to happen. The real clue Sophia left behind was "to search for the fish of Ipanema." Ipanema refers to a neighborhood at the edge of Rio which has a river running through it where the water is polluted. There are no fish, so Sophia was saying that Takumi would never find her again. The chapter ends with the gang leader dropping Sophia off outside Oscar's mansion while there's a reception party going on inside. The guy asks if "the boss" will be ok, and Sophia reassures him that everything will be fine. She goes through the gates and tells a minion that she has something that Oscar wants. The minion leaves and a waiter asks her if she'd like a glass of champaign. She apologizes for not having seen him, saying that she doesn't know how to behave in sophisticated settings.


Botoru Shippu (Bottle Ship, Monthly Shonen Magajin 12, 2018)
The island of Malta is used as an international tax haven. One guy trying to make his fortune there as a beginner private banker is Rakuo Katakake. He's completely outclassed by the veteran Swiss banker, Poshette Boston, who steals a potential client from him. When Rakuo complains to a friend in a bar later on, the friend points out failed Hong Kong banker Echo West who is even worse off (West got into an altercation in Hong Kong and escaped to Malta some years ago to avoid getting arrested). Shinra and Tatsuki are also in Malta to do a trade of a diagram of an early Xebeg ship for a 17th century ship in a bottle, with the millionaire Land Sale. Land came from a wealthy family, and spent some of his time yachting. But, through a series of bad business deals, a divorce, and some other stuff, he'd sunk to living in Malta, trying to build his own ship in a bottle, and putting money into questionable speculative business investments. After taking the ship diagram, Shinra and Tatsuki returned to their hotel, and spend a couple days hanging around the city before getting ready to go home. They get approached by Interpol agent Bia Brust, who is currently in Malta to investigate the death of one Land Sale.

Apparently, Land had been murdered in his office on Friday between 3 and 4 PM, and his body wasn't found until his secretary came in for work on Monday. Cause of death - strangulation with a piece of rope. The secretary was a former model who wasn't really suited for the job. She'd stay in the office to announce Land's next appointment then go to a coffee shop next door to chat with the owner. Friday was Land's "searching for pearls" day. He'd sit in his office, and have bankers and brokers come in to pitch various business schemes to him for 20 minutes each. If he liked a specific scheme, he'd sign the contract then and there, and put some money into it. During the period between 3 and 4 PM, he had 3 appointments, first with Boston, then Rakuo, and finally with Echo. All three of them claimed that Land was alive when they left the office, and the secretary hadn't talked to him before going home for the day. The most obvious suspect is Echo, who has a history of violent behavior, but when the police dusted the office for fingerprints, the only prints on Land's desk were his own and Echo's. That doesn't make sense. Additionally, Land had been working on building his ship in a bottle, which was found shattered on the floor near his body. Shinra thinks this is a clue.

Questions: Who killed Land? How did they do it in what is otherwise a locked room mystery? Why? Why wipe the desk clean before Echo entered the room? What's the importance of the broken ship and bottle?

Payment: Shinra wants revenge for the death of a client.

Natural history: Nothing specific. Just some nice artwork of old buildings in Malta, and model ships.

===== Spoilers =====

Echo lied about Land being alive when he left the room. When he'd entered, he'd thought that he was the only one there. Eventually, he saw Land's body on the floor behind his desk, panicked and ran. He hadn't told the truth because he expected the police would use his past reputation for violence against him. Rakuo also lied about having the 3:20 PM appointment. At 3 PM, he was the only one in the lobby when the secretary called out the name of the next appointment. Rather than wait, he claimed that the 3 PM appointment was his and he went into the office, where he talked Land into signing a contract for the scheme he was pushing, providing evidence that Land was still alive then. The real killer was waiting outside, and when Rakuo left, he came in to claim the 3:20 PM appointment slot. Land knew the killer, which is why he continued to work on his ship in a bottle while the other guy talked, and walked behind his desk. Land didn't suspect a thing until the rope went around his neck, and in his struggles he knocked the bottle onto the floor. The killer is Boston. And, because he wears extremely expensive clothing, he probably still has Land's DNA on his thousand dollar silk tie from over the weekend (rather than wanting to take it in for dry cleaning right away). Bia rushes out of Land's office, radioing his men to apprehend Boston (the motive is that Boston had been embezzling Land's money, and Land would be figuring it out sooner or later).

Note: Rakuo's ultimate dream is to make enough money to afford the kinds of clothes Boston wears.

Note: Shinra ends the chapter by saying that the ship on the floor indicated that Land trusted whoever killed him, making this the final "message in a bottle."


Comments: Lots of silliness and plot holes this time. I do like the artwork of snakes and wasps in "Miracle," but "Noisy Killer" is just dumb. It's hard to believe that a contract killer would expect to get more work if he had a reputation for being incompetent, no matter how clever the actual hit was. "Ipanema" was fairly generic, but I did like the building artwork for Malta and the ships in "Bottle Ship." Again, I love the stories that incorporate a lot of science and natural history, but there's not much of that this time. Recommended for those that like the series.