Spoilers follow for Kurauchi’s murder, the people wearing the costume and the final discovery at the abandoned temple.
Supermarket employee Nakamura kills the reporter Kurauchi behind the store, then carries his body into the mountains while wearing a Stone Age costume. The mountain is the disposal site, not the place of the killing. Nakamura is a fugitive member of a criminal recruitment ring, and Kurauchi’s discovery of his whereabouts gives him a motive to silence the reporter.
Welcome to the Stone Age Village is international episode 1268 (Japanese episode 1208), an anime-original case. Several people share a similar appearance, but the solution must distinguish a killer in disguise, a costumed promoter and the actual subject of the viral video.
A viral video brings tourists and a reporter to town
A video of a man apparently living like a Stone Age inhabitant turns the town into a tourist destination. Conan, Ran and Kogoro head toward the mountain to investigate the sightings. Among the visitors is Kurauchi, a reporter whose business suit and determined search for someone set him apart from the amused tourists.
Outside Nagakura supermarket, Kurauchi speaks to a person dressed in the promotional costume. He asks where he can find Nakamura. The person inside the costume is Nakamura himself, but the concealed face prevents Kurauchi from recognizing the very man he is seeking.
For Nakamura, the encounter is a warning: the reporter has traced him to the town. The costume that keeps Kurauchi from recognizing him also lets him learn how close the investigation has come. A comic disguise acquires a much darker use.
Ran follows a costumed figure to a body
Ran spots a Stone Age figure in a tree and pursues him when he runs into the mountain. She finds Kurauchi dead, with a bloodied stone axe-like tool nearby. The arrangement makes it appear that the mysterious mountain inhabitant attacked him there.
Takagi identifies the victim as the thirty-three-year-old reporter. The tool matches merchandise sold at Nagakura supermarket, where one such item is missing. The supposedly wild mountain crime now has a direct connection to the shop.
The costume also complicates the sightings. Nakamura wore it outside the shop that morning, while Nagakura wore the same outfit later. A witness remembering a Stone Age figure has not necessarily seen the same person each time. The timing of each sighting matters as much as the outfit itself.
Other people’s lies make the murder harder to see
Nagakura and Tsuzuki, who works in the tourism department, react uneasily when they learn that Kurauchi was a reporter. Their discomfort invites suspicion about the town’s promotional campaign. Iwata adds a false statement intended to provide Nagakura with an alibi.
Iwata’s bruises and injuries also raise suspicion that Nagakura has been violent toward him. Those details make Nagakura look increasingly troubling, but they do not establish that he killed Kurauchi. The explanation of these suspicious appearances has to be kept separate from the murder evidence.
Nakamura, meanwhile, claims that the reporter was looking for the boss. That redirects attention away from the real purpose of the visit: Kurauchi was searching for Nakamura, not investigating Nagakura as the central subject.
The seeds suggest that the body was carried
A word used by Iwata becomes useful when Conan understands it differently. Baka can sound like an insult, but Iwata is referring to plant seeds that cling to clothing. The victim’s clothes and the costume carry the same kind of seeds.
The matching traces suggest a connection between the costumed person’s route and the body’s movement. In the reconstruction, Nakamura carried Kurauchi on his back through the vegetation. The seeds support that explanation alongside the missing shop weapon, the costume schedule and Nakamura’s contact with the reporter; they do not identify the killer in isolation.
That reconstruction changes the scene’s meaning. The bloodied tool beside the body was left to make the mountain look like the place of the attack. The actual killing took place behind the supermarket, and the costume allowed Nakamura to move the body without exposing his face.
The first seconds of the video explain why Kurauchi came
Conan watches the Stone Age video from its beginning and finds that its first fifteen seconds or so include Nakamura’s face. While filming, Nakamura mistakenly used the phone’s front camera. The accidental image reveals the identity of the person behind the camera before the main subject takes over.
Kurauchi’s earlier articles provide the context. For roughly six months he has been pursuing a criminal recruitment ring, and Nakamura is one of its senior members on the run. Seeing Nakamura in the video lets the reporter trace him to the town. The clip attracting tourists has also exposed a fugitive’s location.
The video, the articles and the shop encounter explain both the visit and Nakamura’s lie about it. Kurauchi has not simply wandered into an unrelated tourist dispute. He knows whom he is pursuing, even though the costume prevents him from realizing who is answering his question outside the store.
Sleeping Kogoro reconstructs the killing and concealment
Conan puts Kogoro to sleep and presents the solution through Sleeping Kogoro. Nakamura led Kurauchi behind the supermarket and struck his head with the stone tool sold there. He then carried the body into the mountain while still dressed in the costume and left the bloodied weapon beside it.
The fleeing figure Ran saw was Nakamura after disposing of the body. Nagakura’s later use of the same outfit complicated identification, but it did not change who had spoken to Kurauchi that morning. The costume’s changing wearer explains the confusion without turning every wearer into an accomplice.
Nakamura admits the crime and his hidden identity. The reconstruction brings together evidence with distinct jobs: the video exposes him, the reporting explains the threat, the morning encounter provides the trigger, the shop’s tool links the weapon to the location, and the seeds support the body’s journey.
The man in the original video really does exist
After the murder is solved, Kogoro finds Soichiro Kikumura at an abandoned temple. He is a modern man who enjoys living in a Jomon-style way, and he is the person shown in the original video. His chosen lifestyle is real; he is not the murderer or either of the shop’s costumed promoters.
Kogoro’s reason for coming to the town is also revealed: Kikumura’s family hired him to find the missing man. Discovering him completes that assignment separately from the murder investigation. The local story that helped disguise a crime was not wholly fabricated.
A cheerful disguise becomes frightening for a reason
The early humor comes from tourists chasing an unlikely mountain celebrity. Kurauchi’s death changes the same costume into a threatening shape, but the real danger lies in Nakamura’s deliberate use of it. The reporter unknowingly asking his target for directions to himself is especially chilling once the motive is known.
The solution is satisfying because it untangles appearances instead of treating every Stone Age figure as one person. The overlooked start of a video, an ambiguous word and an outfit used at different times each correct a different assumption. Kikumura’s safe discovery then supplies a lighter final turn without erasing the weight of Kurauchi’s death.
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