C.M.B. volume 43 review

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C.M.B., vol. 43, by Katou Motohiro. Grade: B
We're back with 4 stand-alone chapters.

Ki no Awanai Yatsu (Incompatible Guy, Monthly Shonen Magajin 9, 2019)
The story starts out with a bit of history regarding the Kurds in Iraq. It then switches to an archeological dig 50 km out in the desert, run by Professor Tarheru (Tarheel?). The professor has invited Shinra to the dig to see the work in progress, but his primary apprentice, the young Kurd Mulato, is miffed at having to share the professor's attention. He angrily stomps into his tent, and runs into a young Kurdish woman named Salumar. Salumar is currently trying to escape Iraq and avoid being the victim of an honor killing. Her parents had escaped Iraq to live in France, where Salumar was born. When she was 9, her father died in a construction site accident, and her mother had to raise her on her own. Her uncle, Kashim, agreed to take her into his own family, and for a while everything was ok. Then, about 6 months ago, her mother called to say that she was having trouble staying in France, and Kashim decided to marry the girl off in an arranged marriage to a relative. Salumar ran away to try to find some way to get to France, but in doing so, has embarrassed her uncle, and his only choice is to have her killed to restore his honor.

Tatsuki tries to work with the French Embassy in Iraq to get their cooperation, but the clerk there can't do anything unless the girl can show her passport and ID card at the main airport. If she does that, he can arrange for air tickets out. Unfortunately, Kashim confiscated the passport and ID card and locked them away somewhere. Mulato keeps trying to talk Salumar into going back to her uncle, begging forgiveness, and accepting her fate, and acting confused when she refuses to do this. In the end, Shinra and Tatsuki decide to get Salumar to the airport anyway to try and bluff their way through customs. Mulato goes to Kashim's house and rats on them. Kashim and his male cousins race to the airport, spot the girl, and prepare to kill her when they get the chance.

Questions: Why is Shinra's plan so poorly thought-out this time? Will Salumar get out of this alive?
Natural History: Just a little background on Kurdish history and honor killings.
Payment: Nothing mentioned.

--- Spoilers ---

Mulato is willing to work with Shinra when they have shared goals. He tricks Kashim into showing where he'd stashed the girl's passport and ID (behind a painting), and gets the uncle and relatives to follow the wrong car. When the jilted groom-to-be sees the girl getting stuck at the ticket widow for not having a passport, he lunges forward to stab her in the back. Of course, it turns out to be Tatsuki dressed up as Salumar, and she throws her attacker to the ground and demands to know what crime this is. Meanwhile, Mulato is in a different taxi with Salumar, and they reach the U.S. Air Force base, where a black female soldier welcomes the girl to safety.


Toumei Zakana (Transparent Fish, Monthly Shonen Magajin 10, 2019)
In New York, at the Alan and Ellie Art Museum, there's been a break-in and assault on the co-founder, Alan. He's put into a hospital, and Shinra is called in to help Ellie and the museum guards figure out what happened. The museum is currently running an exhibit on climate change, and some nutjob is apparently trying to have it shut down (they received a letter earlier threatening to kill everyone associated with the exhibit). There's only one entrance into the museum, and that's across a small bridge over a reflecting pond-like moat, and the security cameras didn't record anyone coming in that way. Just before the attack, one of the displays, a stack of Earth globes, was knocked over with a crash, and a different painting was set on fire. There were three guards in the main exhibit room at the time, and no one could have gotten past them while they were putting out the fire to get to the back rooms to attack Alan near his office. Tatsuki, Ellie and the guards run through all the possible scenarios and come up blank.

Questions: Is there an attacker? Or, is this the work of a ghost? How did the assailant get past the cameras and guards unseen? What does Shinra's comments about ghost fish relate to?
Natural History: Just talking about the camouflage techniques of the ghost fish.
Payment: None mentioned.

--- Spoilers ---

There's an aquarium in the museum with a bunch of translucent fish. For normal sea fish, the backs are darker and the underbellies are lighter. In this way, predator birds have difficulty spotting normal fish from the air because their backs blend into the color of the water. And predator fish coming in from below lose their prey with the lighter stomachs blending in with the sky above. Shinra states that the villain came in dressed as a workman carrying a large sheet mirror. The mirror reflected the bridgework back at the camera, making him appear invisible on playback. Then, inside the museum, he turned the mirror around so that the back would blend in with the interior walls of the room. He used the globe display and burned painting as distractions to get past the guards, and broke the mirror up and hid the pieces in with the wreckage from the painting frame to dispose of it before escaping through the storage area back exit. The FBI does catch the guy, but he claims innocence. Shinra tells them to check the his sneaker soles for glass fragments.

The reason why Shinra helps Ellie this time is because of the importance of the freedom of speech in the arts, which he sees being threatened in his own museum. (This story may be in reaction to the public response to a comfort woman statue that appeared in an art exhibit in Aichi, in 2019.)


Haisha (Dentist, Monthly Shonen Magajin 11, 2019)
Tsuneya Kozumi is an unemployed system engineer going into a dentist's office to get a cavity filled. In the waiting room are: a high school girl talking on her smartphone; an old woman with her granddaughter looking at a picture book, and Shinra. Tsuneya gets called into the operating room, has his tooth filled, returns to the lobby to pay his bill, then heads back outside, where he is surrounded by mist. When he comes to, he's back in the dentist's office lobby. He wakes up in a shock, and everything repeats. After several groundhog day loops, he starts to panic, so he asks the school girl next to him if she's noticed anything weird going on, adding that he thinks he's in a "time leap". She gets angry and calls the police. They haul him away and he wakes up in the lobby again. He tries asking the grandmother, and the same thing happens. Cautiously, he tries asking Shrinra for help, and the boy says, "yeah, so?" Shinra's first suggestion is that there's been a break in the timeline. His second is that maybe there's something impeding his future. And so on (each time, Shinra forgets his previous advice). Finally, the boy asks if there's another exit. Maybe there's a hint in the lobby that he's overlooked.

Questions: What's going on? Is Tsuneya another killer with amnesia which will be revealed at the end? Is Shinra the one messing with him? If not, what are the hints, and what needs to be set right? Is this even about Tsuneya at all?
Natural History: Nothing.
Payment: None:

--- Spoilers ---

Eventually, Tsuneya realizes that the high school girl's phone ringtone matches that of his old girlfriend. The little girl has a beauty mark on her cheek right where his girlfriend's was. The teddybear on a back shelf is like the one his girlfriend used to love, and the next dental appointment would be on her birthday. Turns out that some months ago, Tsuneya had been in the middle of a really difficult programming job, and it was affecting his health. When his girlfriend tried to get him to go to an onsen with her, he went into a rage and broke up with her. A little later, he collapsed at his desk at work, had to be taken to a hospital, and lost his job. Tsuneya then tries to collect all the clues to try to see the woman again. After scheduling his next appointment for 2 days after the original date, he goes outside the building, and rather than being engulfed in mist again, his phone rings. The little girl in the office thanks the old woman that had been talking to her, and runs outside. In truth, the entire story revolved around the girl, who never would have been born if her parents hadn't gotten married. She runs to Tsuneya and the former girlfriend, now his wife, and both of them are looking several years older. She grabs their hands and they walk into the mist together. Shinra stands outside the door, wondering what had just been going on.


Kameo Gurasu (Cameo Glass,  Monthly Shonen Magajin 12, 2019)
In London, an old man named Morgan Alburn is sitting in his house, looking at a strange lamp. A Greek bowl is placed upside down on the shoulder of a female statue, which is standing on an inverted bowl for a base. In the statue's other hand is a light bulb. He says that this is really unusual, and asks himself if he can use this. Over in Japan, Shinra and Tatsuki are walking in the school hallways with their classmates. The other kids are trying to find a venue for their Christmas party, and they decide to hold it in Shinra's museum. The boy is less than happy about this, in part because of the possibility that some of his exhibits may be damaged. The money for the party isn't an issue because he can always get what he needs by drawing on the power of his C.M.B. rings. At this point, Mou Segirl drops by. She says that she'd been visited by this guy named Alburn, who'd given her this sad-sack sob story about needing to sell a weird antique to raise money for his wife's heart bypass surgery. He showed her a photo of the lamp, and said he'd sell it to her for 10,000 pounds. Mou wants Shinra to go with her to evaluate the lamp in person and tell her if the Greek bowl is authentic. If it is, she can turn around and sell it for 100,000 pounds.

Shinra and Tatsuki dislike Mou's intent to defraud a desperate old man out of his money, but Mou offers to tell the boy something that will turn his life around, so the three of them fly to London. There, Alburn pulls the lamp statue out of a very elaborate metal case, and both Shinra and Mou determine the bowl to be the real thing. It had probably been used by someone who didn't know its real value to cobble together the lamp from scrap. Mou offers the guy the 10,000 pounds, but he starts to cry and says that after approaching her, he returned to the hospital where his wife revealed that the lamp was really just junk and that they shouldn't take advantage of Mou this way. He returns the lamp to the case and prepares to leave. Mou demands to give him 3,000 pounds anyway just for the surgery, and that she'll take the thing off his hands. Alburn produces papers handing ownership of the lamp over to her, with a clause stating that she agrees not to complain if it turns out the components of the lamp really are worthless. Mou signs the contract, Alburn gets his 3,000 pounds, Mou gets the lamp, and everyone goes their separate ways.

Questions: Is the lamp real or not? If not, what can Mou do, and can she get her money back? Is 3,000 pounds really enough to pay for Mrs. Auburn's heart surgery? Does she die before she can be saved?
Natural History: Just a bit of background on the value of Greek bowls, and the occasional practice of using antiques to make kitsch art.
Payment: Shinra gets told a secret.

--- Spoilers ---

Mou takes her lamp to a testing lab, where she's told that it's a fake. All of the components in the statue, base and shade were made recently. Back in England, Alburn and his wife are cackling evilly over their success at tricking the Queen of the Blackmarket trade. They'll now be known as the Pair that Pulled a Fast One Over Mou, and they'll be able to open up shop on the blackmarket themselves and command top dollar for the inventory they've amassed. Workmen are currently boxing everything up in the house to be moved to a warehouse prior to starting up their new business endeavor. Suddenly, Mou and two henchmen appear at the top of a stack of crates, having overheard the confession. At the time of the deal, Shinra had commented on the quality of the carry case, and had taken that opportunity to slip a homing beacon inside it. The case was actually a standard magician's trick, with space for holding two lamps, and two doors - one that opens when the case is turned upside down. Mou had been shown the real lamp, but had then been given the fake one. Shinra and Tatsuki are crouched off to the side of the room, watching this. The boy had used the beacon to track the case to Alburn's house. Because the guards are armed with submachine guns, Mou has the upper hand. She tells the two would-be traders that she'll generously buy everything they have for half-price. Later, at a pub, Shinra demands to receive the information Mou offered for payment. She tells him that there's talk on the grapevine that someone is trying to get the C.M.B. rings from him.

Summary: None of the stories really stand out. Incompatible Guy is kind of irritating because Mulato acts like a spoiled brat, and the entire subject of honor killings is treated superficially. Plus, the ending trick was telegraphed too obviously. Motohiro has used mirrors and reflective surfaces several times before, so that trick was also telegraphed in Transparent Fish. He's also employed the "villain as protagonist in a dream" trick a few times. The only thing interesting with Dentist was in the reveal for whose dream it really was. And Cameo Glass was a run-of-the-mill whodunnit. I knew the case was gimmicked, I just didn't know the specifics of the design. The reveal that someone is after the C.M.B. rings kind of fell flat because that was one of the sub-arcs back when the series first started. However, the back splash page advertising book 44 announces that this will be a 4-chapter arc, and the artwork shows six new characters, a flashback page to three of Shinra's "fathers" from the British Royal Museum, and the title "C.M.B. Satsujin Jiken" (C.M.B. Murder Incident). So, maybe we'll get more background on the three previous holders of the rings, and how Shinra had been raised. Recommended if you like the series.