To celebrate the upcoming release of this year's latest movie, "Detective Conan: The Million-Dollar Pentagram," hitting theaters on April 18, Nippon TV's "Friday Road Show" kicked off a three-week "Conan Festival" on April 4. The first film aired was 1998's "Detective Conan: The Fourteenth Target," which surprisingly revealed Inspector Megure's full name, sparking immediate online buzz as many viewers realized they never knew it!
In "Detective Conan: The Fourteenth Target," Inspector Megure, Ran's mother—attorney Eri Kisaki—and Professor Agasa are all successively attacked by an unknown assailant. Since most of the targets are people close to Kogoro Mouri, it's suspected the culprit harbors a grudge against him. Conan, however, notices clues left at the scenes related to playing card suits and discovers a common thread among the three victims' names, all linked to card numbers.
During the story, Inspector Megure is ambushed by the culprit while jogging and ends up in the hospital. It's here that his full name is finally revealed as "Juzo Megure," even surprising Conan, who exclaims, "So his name is Juzo..."
While this might be common knowledge for seasoned Conan fans, the broadcast certainly enlightened many viewers about Inspector Megure's full name.
Nippon TV's "Friday Road Show" official X account also revealed that creator Gosho Aoyama once stated Inspector Megure's surname was inspired by "Jules Maigret," the famous detective created by Belgian mystery novelist Georges Simenon. As for his first name, "Juzo" (meaning "thirteen"), it made its debut in this very movie.
What's more, the playing card mystery in the film was also Aoyama-sensei's brainchild. He explained, "Since Shinichi, Kogoro, and Eri Kisaki all have numbers in their names, I'd always wanted to try a setup like this." While devising the trick, he realized he was missing the number "13." Aoyama-sensei then had a stroke of genius, deciding to name Inspector Megure "Juzo" (thirteen), and thus, the name was set!
Fans were genuinely surprised to learn that "Inspector Megure's full name was actually created for the movie." After all, he's a highly frequent character in the series and Kogoro Mouri's former colleague, so it's wild that his name wasn't finalized until a film!
This recent broadcast of the movie reignited the discussion around Inspector Megure's name, with its origin story prompting netizens to exclaim: "LOL, I just found this out!", "It's hilarious that even Conan didn't know Inspector Megure's name!", "So it's Juzo Megure! What a cool discovery!", and "I had no idea what his name was either, Conan's surprised reaction totally cracked me up!"