Spoilers follow for the smuggling scheme, mastermind and ending of Follow Them! Detective Taxi 3.
Follow Them! Detective Taxi 3, international episode 1247 (Japanese episode 1188), is an anime-original robbery and smuggling story. The organizer is an unnamed elderly man who hides behind an apparent medical emergency. His plan links stolen jewels, frozen croquettes and a drone, while Kogoro’s invitation to a civic event is a deliberate distraction.
The central mystery is not how the jewels are stolen, but how the thieves intend to move them after the theft. Genki Ishikawa’s taxi gives Conan the means to follow that movement once the two apparently separate investigations connect.
An invitation falsely attributed to Megure
Kogoro and Conan travel to Furai City in the taxi of Genki Ishikawa, an enthusiastic Kogoro admirer. Kogoro has been invited as a special guest at a city event marking the completion of a factory producing frozen croquettes and minced-meat cutlets.
Mayor Shoji Ogawa says that Inspector Megure recommended him. Conan checks with Megure, who knows nothing about such a recommendation. The supposed endorsement is the first concrete sign that the invitation serves someone else’s purpose.
Megure is investigating a series of unusual jewel robberies in Tokyo, carried out by people recruited through illicit job offers. The stolen gems have not appeared on the domestic market, and monitoring airports and ports has produced no result. The thieves must still have a way to dispose of or transport what they have taken.
A fresh attempted robbery adds another oddity: the staff overpower the perpetrators, and no goods are lost. The failed theft initially seems separate from the civic celebration, but one of its detained suspects becomes central to the later escape.
The factory explanation supplies Conan’s connection
The mayor describes how the factory finely cuts meat and vegetables. That ordinary explanation prompts Conan to connect the food-production process with the missing jewels. Individual stones could be removed from their settings, mixed into fillings and packaged with the frozen products.
The criminals intend to move the gems as apparently ordinary food, rather than carry recognizable jewelry through the watched routes.
The event makes the factory available while production is stopped and keeps Kogoro occupied. Falsely invoking Megure separates attention into two directions: police focus on the Tokyo robberies, while the detective is tied to the Furai celebration. Both diversions belong to one operation.
Drone pursuit: from the factory to the hospital
After hearing Conan’s deduction, Megure and the other officers hurry to the factory. Suspicious men emerge moving freezer equipment. Kogoro and Ran help subdue the men, but in the confusion a drone lifts the cargo containing the jewels away.
Among the people arrested in the latest attempted robbery was an elderly man who appeared to suffer a heart attack during questioning. He was taken to a police hospital. When the drone heads toward that hospital, its destination connects the detained suspect to the smuggling operation.
The emergency was feigned. The old man is the boss of the gang, using his apparent position as a patient to direct the final stage while the other criminals work at the factory. His name is not given.
The hospital is an effective reversal because being under police supervision seems to put him outside the active chase. In fact, that apparently protected position is where the cargo is going. Conan solves the connection by following the movement of the stolen goods, not by assuming that the man in care can no longer be involved.
Ishikawa’s taxi follows the last escape
Conan rides with Ishikawa to pursue the drone. Ishikawa calls on fellow taxi drivers over the radio, widening the pursuit beyond a single vehicle. The recurring driver’s eagerness finally has a direct practical role in the investigation.
At the hospital, the elderly organizer attempts to flee from the roof using the drone, hanging beneath it as he makes for a boat. The escape turns the unusual transport device into an equally extravagant way of carrying the culprit himself.
Ishikawa intervenes with his taxi from a bridge, cutting off the escape. The old man falls into the river and is secured by Megure. The factory operation is stopped before the jewel-filled food can leave the country.
Who is responsible, and what does the evidence establish?
The unnamed elderly man organizes the jewel collection, recovery and attempted export. The unnamed gang members working at the factory are his accomplices. This is not a murder mystery with a concealed killer; the objective is profit from stolen jewels and getting them beyond the investigation.
The deduction has two main stages. The factory’s process explains a possible transport method and why the civic event matters. The drone’s route then connects the cargo to the hospital and its supposedly incapacitated suspect. The second link turns the first insight into a traceable operation.
The invitation is therefore more than an excuse to bring Kogoro to the episode’s setting. Its false recommendation belongs to the same attempt to manage everyone’s attention as the fabricated medical emergency. One puts a detective where the gang wants him; the other makes the gang’s leader appear unable to act.
Why the outrageous chase still has a clear mystery underneath
Ishikawa’s enthusiasm and the civic festivities make the opening broad and comic. The false recommendation changes the mood without abandoning that energy. A seemingly harmless detail in the mayor’s speech then becomes the bridge into a much larger crime.
The jewel-filled croquettes are deliberately extravagant, but the question they answer is concrete: where have the stolen goods gone, and how are they meant to move? Keeping that question clear lets the chase become increasingly wild without losing the case’s organizing idea.
The finish balances Ishikawa’s headlong loyalty with the boss’s calculated concealment. The taxi supplies the spectacle; the police hospital supplies the more unsettling thought that a suspect can exploit the assumptions surrounding his own apparent vulnerability.
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