The episode opens with the Detective Boys at the park, and Genta and Mitsuhiko are practicing throwing baseballs. They hear a commotion nearby, and they find a man wearing a ski mask and wielding a knife threatening a woman who's walking her dog. The Detective Boys rush over just in time to see the dog, Pan-kun, run away. They make a lot of noise to get other people's attention, and this causes the man in the ski mask to flee. The woman's dog comes back and she and the Detective Boys talk before the woman heads on her way.
After she leaves, Conan and the others try to figure out why the man in the ski mask was threatening the woman. After some speculation, they decide to look into it further. They figure she couldn't have gone far, and they start looking for the woman. They finally find her residence, because they hear a commotion of the woman scolding Pan-kun for doing something he shouldn't. After seeing her name on the outside, Ai finds her social media account... which shows a lot of pictures of Pan-kun misbehaving. They then hear breaking glass and screaming coming from the residence.
The Detective Boys rush to the residence, where they find two men wearing ski masks threatening the woman. Mitsuhiko and Genta throw their baseballs and knock out the man with the net. After some words, the other man flees. When Takagi and Chiba arrive to take the downed man into custody, they discover the ski mask he wore was in surveillance footage of a recent jewelry store robbery. It turns out this store has been robbed repeatedly, and we see Conan and Takagi both pondering why this store keeps being victimized. To be honest, I was kind of amused by that pondering, because it points out some of the absurdity that is part of Case Closed.
Later, after Pan-kun is kidnapped, Conan pieces together the truth of what's going on, and has Takagi and Chiba help him located the dognapper. I can't really go into too much more detail about the story at this point, because it wanders too much into spoiler territory. The ultimate resolution to the story sees Pan-kun playing a role. All I will say here is that the viewer thinks they know the motivation for Pan-kun's kidnapping, but there's a twist that comes into play.
I have to give this anime-exclusive story focusing on the Detective Boys some props for remembering to include Ai. It seems like this year's Detective Boys stories are doing a good job of remembering and incorporating Ai into them. Considering that she's the main focus of this year's film, it makes sense that more of an effort would be made to include and feature Ai in the anime-exclusive episodes that focus on the Detective Boys. It'll be interesting to see going forward whether they will continue doing a better job of including Ai, or if over time, they return to the status quo of writing Detective Boys stories that ignore Ai's existence.
As for the episode itself, it was just... OK. It wasn't a bad story for the Detective Boys, but it wasn't an outstanding episode featuring them, either. It looks like next week's episode is another anime-exclusive story, but it's not focused on the Detective Boys. From the preview, it looks like it's going to be a single episode murder mystery. At this point, I have no strong feelings either way going into next week's episode.
Additional posts about Case Closed:
