Detective Haga hosts "The Disappearance of Furuhata Ninzaburô", a tongue-in-cheek retrospective celebrating the previous 24 episodes of the show. Besides featuring clips from all the episodes, "The Disappearance of Furuhata Ninzaburô" also boasts a series of talking head interviews with all the killers who had the misfortune of running into Furuhata. It's quite sweet that they all came back to do their little cameos. Although brief, the interviews are quite entertaining and occasionally revealing. It's fun hearing about the killers' perceptions of Furuhata, what happened to them after their arrests, and whether they still hold a grudge (the killers from "The Contradictory Corpse" and "The Wrong Man" certainly do!). Kôki Mitani's dialogue is as witty as ever and I appreciated the little nods to the running gags from their respective episodes: the psychiatrist from "The Laughing Corpse" is still overanalysing everything, the shogi player from "The Dirty Prince" is as arrogant as ever, the actor from "Rehearsal for Murder" can only think about which films he would cast Furuhata in, the strict headmistress from "The Woman Who Doesn't Smile" still dislikes closed doors, and "The Quiz King" is still obsessed with trivia.
The clips themselves are introduced by Furuhata's associates: the ubiquitous Shintaro, the sentimental Mukojima, and the stoic Haga. Also there are Furuhata's boss Inspector Kanimaru and Shintaro's best friend the scientist Kuwabara. The clips are short and mostly compiled in thematic sequences. For instance, one covers Furuhata's childishness, his love of food, and his tendency to be starstruck by his suspects. The funniest sequence by far, however, is the compilation of all the scenes in which Furuhata slaps Shintaro on his big, shiny forehead. I also found the compilation showing all the methods of murder quite fascinating. Besides these compilations, several of the most notable scenes are shown and then commented on by the people involved such as the final scene in "Red or Blue" in which Furuhata uncharacteristically slaps the killer.
Unlike a typical clip show, however, "The Disappearance of Furuhata Ninzaburô" has a plot centring around, as the title indicates, the mysterious disappearance of the wily inspector (a clever way of explaining Masakazu Tamura's abscene). Where is he? Numerous theories are presented throughout the episode. His boss believes he suddenly decided to go on holiday, Haga wonders if one of the killers he caught may have gotten their revenge, Shintaro meanwhile is convinced Furuhata was involved with some kind of a crime syndicate which was actually committing the murders Furuhata claimed to solve. "Where ever he goes, murders follow," says Shintaro echoing the criticisms of many detective show viewers. Little satirical gags such as this abound.
When looked at as a retrospective or a celebration of the show thus far, "The Disappearance of Furuhata Ninzaburô" is a fun if somewhat elongated special - a neat bonus feature for the BluRay collection. As an integral part of the show itself, however, it doesn't really work. For one, it is far too self-referential and knowing. More disappointingly, however, it is a fairly slight version of what could have indeed been a fascinating episode. Had Mitani gotten rid of the clip show aspect and focused solely on the killer interviews, this could have been a unique and genuinely fascinating exploration of what happens after the credits of a detective show roll. Lives are ruined, sentences passed, and yet the viewers don't really tend to see or think about that. It's a shame then that Mitani went down a more comedic route and wrote something that plays more like a sketch than drama.