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Physician Confirms that Detective Conan's Kogoro Would Not Survive Conan's Stun-Gun
posted on by Kim Morrissy
In the Detective Conan anime and manga series, Detective Kogoro Mouri usually takes credit for Conan's deductions. Conan uses his stun-gun wristwatch to shoot a tranquilizer shot into Kogoro and pretends to speak in his voice after he has been knocked out.
Freelance writer and long-time Detective Conan fan Yamato Nishikido has always wondered whether Kogoro could actually survive after getting hit with a tranquilizer so many times. The tranquilizer is described as strong enough to knock out an elephant, and consistently knocks out adult men for 30 minutes at a time. Nishikido read the entire 95-volume manga, which apparently takes place over the span of half a year, and found that Kogoro gets shot exactly 50 times. He then approached an anesthesiologist named Kappei Matsumoto, who also supervises the Anesthesiologist Hana manga, and asked him several questions.
"Does a tranquilizer strong enough to knock out an elephant for thirty minutes really exist?" Matsumoto said yes. However, he clarified that it would take one liter of ketamine to knock out an elephant, but only 10 cubic centimeters (a bottle) would knock out an adult male.
"If Kogoro got shot with a liter of ketamine, what would happen to him?" Matsumoto answered bluntly: "He'd die."
Matsumoto also pointed out that every time Kogoro gets hit with a needle from the stun-gun, that needle would remain in his body. Even if the tranquilizers don't kill him, he'd end up like a porcupine. Furthermore, even if the dosage were appropriate, Kogoro would die if the needles entered his hepatic artery, his heart, or his head.
While he was at it, Matsumoto pointed out further inaccuracies with the anesthetics depicted in Detective Conan and TV shows in general. It is not possible to make someone instantly go to sleep if you make them smell a handkerchief with chloroform smeared on it. The most it would do is make them sneeze or give them a headache. It would only be possible to make someone sleep if you smeared the chloroform on a towel, put it up the person's mouth and nose, and then left them in that state for several minutes.
Although this was the answer Nishikido was expecting, Matsumoto apologized for exposing these plot devices as scientific inaccuracies. "When everyone hears about this, they get disappointed. I'm kind of sorry."
Nishikido's article was published on Fumminers, a website that shares sleeping tips and the science behind sleeping.
Source: Fumminers (Yamato Nishikido)
