Rum Arc Discussion Series: Higashio Maria
Higashio Maria is a kansai transfer student in Teitan Elementary that was introduced during Kir arc (File 548-549), and was recently reintroduced in Rum arc (File 1006-1008). I will be discussing this suspicion, that I’ve held since her reintro, about how she could be Asaka. Previous Discussion Topic (Iori Muga):
https://masterdetectivexx.tumblr.com/post/157524917964/rum-arc-discussion-thread-plot-characters
Asaka’s disappearance
Asaka’s disappearance is very suspicious, since she was last seen with Amanda, who was killed later that day, and was perceived as her bodyguard. Rum was able to successfully kill Amanda with the APTX4869 prototype drug (made by the Miyano parents) and cover it up as if nothing happened, according to the Black Organization’s M.O (as seen with how clean and tidy her room looked 17 years ago, in contrast to Kohji’s messy room, File 948). Despite being a female figure guarding Amanda the last time she was seen, Asaka was somehow still missing from the crime scene and not found dead along with Amanda (after failing to hinder Rum’s plans). As I’ve suggested in previous discussions, Asaka’s disappearance could be because she was drugged by Rum along with Amanda 17 years ago, but instead of dying, she actually shrank like Conan and fled (which would explain why she is missing). “Asaka taking the same drug as him” was a possibility that Conan also considered during his first speculation of Asaka’s identity (File 953), so there’s a good chance that Gosho was foreshadowing what had happened to Asaka.
In File 948, Haibara explained that she tried to recreate her parents’ APTX4869 with their remaining data (even though the BO wanted her to make something else that wasn’t a poison), meaning that her APTX4869 prototype, which shrinks as a side effect, originated from her parents’ APTX4869 model.
In File 1025, Gosho further clarifies Haibara’s statement by having her directly monologue that her parents created the same drug that shrank her and Shinichi, meaning that according to her, the shrinking side effect definitely originated from her parents’ APTX4869 prototype.
This information further underlines the possibility that the 17-year-old prototype could also shrink people as a side-effect in rare occasions, which in turn could easily explain how Asaka was able to disappear from the crime scene despite being in a position that should have made her someone Rum got rid of in the process of successfully killing Amanda.
Foreshadowing to Asaka’s identity
What we know about Asaka is very limited, but the info that we do have suggest a connection between Asaka and Kohji. In File 948, when Conan read about the hand-mirror, Haibara explained that it was a popular hand-mirror and that her sister had one of them which she inherited from their mother, and later suggested that Kohji might’ve inherited the hand-mirror from his mother as well. However, we later find out in file 953 that Asaka was seen holding that same hand-mirror. This immediately suggest that the hand-mirror was passed on from Asaka to Kohji, implying that they were familiar with each other to that extent. If you take Haibara’s correlation to Kohji about “sister inheriting mirror from mother”, it’s possible that Gosho was using Haibara’s story to foreshadow that just like Haibara’s sister, Asaka inherited the hand-mirror from her mother.
In other words, Kohji borrowed Asaka’s hand-mirror in order to prepare for his meeting with Amanda, and Asaka later leaves with Amanda to act as her bodyguard. Going back to Conan’s first suspicion of Asaka, he suspected that Asaka took the same drug as him and that Mary would be the prime suspect. This is something Conan also did in regards to Rum’s identity, where according to his first suspicion, Yamato Kansuke came the closest to the descriptions of Rum (File 913).
Iori Muga, who I deduced could be Rum, fits with Kansuke’s characteristics. They are both considered effeminate men (both have long curly dark hair), a strong build, Kansuke’s left eye is damaged while Rum’s left eye is foreshadowed to be a prosthetic (Higo plushie “left eye coming off” reference, File 999) and Muga’s left lense consistently reflected like Rumi’s suspected blind right side (File 981-982), and if Muga is hiding 5 years from his age like Satami Saya (File 920), then he would be the same age as Kansuke. If Kansuke is a Rum model that shares direct similarities to Rum, then the likelihood that Mary was utilized as an Asaka model is very high.
The one who shares the most characteristical similarities with Mary, and thus could be Asaka, is the latest transfer student Higashio Maria. Mary and Maria have pretty much the same name. “Maria” is the latin form of “Mary”. Gosho even went as far as to have Ogura mistake Mary’s name for “Mari-chan” (File 928-930), which could have been intentional on his part in order to emphasize the similarity to “Maria-chan”.
Both Mary and Maria are also light-haired kids and are hinted at being half-japanese. Mary’s sister Elena is confirmed to be half-japanese (File 1011), and Maria has the english influence, to the point that her grandma called the toy “bird-chan” (File 1007).
Asaka was also compared to Ran (File 954), which also could be Gosho’s hint to that Asaka is in reality a normal 17-year-old girl who was mistaken as a “personal SP”/official bodyguard for Amanda, due to her skills. If Maria is shrunken adult Asaka, then the comparison to Ran would make sense too, since she has a sweet personality like her that is very subverted from everyone’s expectations of “the bodyguard Asaka”/“a weird person”(as Ran put it), despite her similar qualities.
In other words, 17-year-old Maria came along with Haneda Kohji to the US in order to watch him play in the chess tournament. Her black hair colour in the Asaka photo would be as a result of her dying her hair black, like how Gosho seeded that concept in with Takashi during department store case (File 941).
And after she got drugged by Rum and shrank, she changed her one-tail hairstyle (as seen in the photo) to her current twin-tail hair style, just like how that concept was seeded in with Isuzu from secret cafe case (File 994), in order to not get easily recognized.
If Maria shrank as Asaka 17 years ago, then the true purpose it would have would mainly be to answer the question regarding Conan’s and Haibara’s aging state, and that answer would be that they can’t age like Vermouth, since Maria is still a 7-year-old, because, as mentioned above, the drug they were affected by is a recreated version of the one Asaka would have been drugged by (and is very likely to have the same effect). If Maria has been a child for 17 years then her parents would be much older and the parents that she is currently said to have (File 1006) would have to be fake/stand-in parents.
Going back to the idea that Asaka inherited the hand-mirror from her mother, there’s another detail about Maria that fits with this interpretation. In File 1006, Maria’s grandma gave her the advice “it’s important for a girl to watch over her appearance”, which is very consistent with someone who would pass down a hand-mirror. This could be a small clue to that Maria’s grandma is actually her mother. In other words, those cherished memories in her reintro case was actually her with her real parents.
Wakasa Rumi’s True identity (Link to summary)
Wakasa Rumi’s target
Gosho has a tendency to foreshadow the introduction of new plot elements by hinting at it just before it happens. in this case, just before Higashio Maria was reintroduced, the previous chapter had a cliffhanger with Wakasa Rumi staring at the APTX4869 victim list (File 1005).
This could be Gosho’s introduction foreshadowing to that Higashio Maria is that very target Rumi is after, Asaka (who potentially got drugged 17 years ago). In fact, both of Maria’s reappearances in Rum arc consistently followed Rumi’s appearance, as if she could be tied with her in the ongoing plot (File 966 & 1006).
Following my deduction regarding Rumi’s identity being Vermouth, this would automatically fill in the holes regarding Rumi’s APTX victim interest, since Vermouth has personal motivations for keeping the shrinking effect hidden. If the BO dismissed Asaka as dead, despite her missing corpse, someone like Vermouth, who knows about the shrinking effect’s existence would suspect that Asaka is alive. Rumi’s goal in Teitan Elementary could therefore be to not only investigate Haibara’s neighbor in the Kudo mansion (Subaru), but also investigate Asaka’s disappearance. Her disguising as a potential Asaka, carrying Kohji-case-related objects and using a dying-message-derived name (“wACASA RUMi”) could be a grand scheme in order to use Conan’s help in locating Asaka, who ends up being the newest transfer student in class 1B after Haibara.
Maria’s Personality
Maria’s personality is very child-like and innocent, and ever since her intro in File 548, she never showed any signs of having an adult mind (more than likely because even if she happens to be Asaka, she was probably not initially conceived as another APTX victim). How Gosho could handle such a plot move, where a seemingly normal older character enters the plot, is maybe by playing the amnesia card, meaning that Maria suffered memory loss as a result of a post-traumatic stress from the Kohji case. In which case, Maria-chan may have lived those 17 years with her “grandparents” in the Kansai area as if she was a “normal” child.
Summary: - Asaka was drugged by Rum along with Amanda 17 years ago, but shrank and fled. - Asaka lent her hand-mirror to Haneda Kohji, which she might’ve inherited from her mother. - Asaka could be Higashio Maria. - Wakasa Rumi is Vermouth in disguise and is investigating Asaka’s potential shrinking.