Spoilers: this article identifies the murderer and explains the fingerprints, failed alibi and ending.
Misfortune of the Positive Man, international episode 1192 (Japanese episode 1134), is an anime-original case. The murderer is landlady Teruyo Imaizumi. The optimistic tenant accused of killing her victim has not been deliberately framed: she tried to keep suspicion away from him, but a failed attempt to remove his fingerprints and an outing without witnesses have the opposite result.
An optimistic neighbor volunteers his fingerprints
The Detective Boys meet a good-natured man who wants to become a novelist. Even the collapse of his company becomes something to view hopefully: he now has more time to write. Ayumi admires that outlook, while Conan and Haibara react with more skepticism.
When they reach his apartment building, the neighboring tenant is arguing with Imaizumi. He has returned from a business trip to find that his room was burgled. Imaizumi opposes calling the police because she fears the building will acquire a bad reputation and become harder to rent.
The aspiring novelist mediates and persuades them to report the burglary. Once police arrive, however, being the next-door neighbor makes him a suspect. He willingly submits his fingerprints, expecting cooperation to settle the matter. That gesture links him to a much more serious investigation.
A discarded parcel rope becomes evidence in a murder
The following day, Megure and Takagi arrive from the murder investigation division. His fingerprints match prints on the nylon rope used to kill a habitual blackmailer named Tarao. The tenant explains that the rope came from a parcel his grandmother sent him and that he threw it away afterward.
Other circumstances make his position worse. He and the victim attended the same school, and he cannot provide a reliable witness for where he was at the relevant time. Imaizumi had suggested that he go out to observe people for his writing, but his trip to a pachinko parlor leaves him without the corroboration he needs.
The existence of his twin brother also enters the questioning, adding another complication to the discussion of his movements. The Detective Boys respond by making inquiries themselves, trying to establish what actually happened instead of accepting the implication of a fingerprint match.
The burglary and the murder do not share the assumed culprit
A different offender is identified in the apartment burglary. That resolves the first suspicion against the optimistic tenant, but it does not by itself explain why his rope was used in a killing. Conan still has to account for the murder evidence.
The rope shows signs that someone tried to wipe away fingerprints. This is the important contradiction in the apparent frame-up: a person trying to make the tenant look guilty would have a reason to preserve his prints, not erase them.
The neighbors’ information and the Detective Boys’ patient questioning give Conan a way to reconsider the landlady’s behavior. Her resistance to calling police and her earlier advice that the tenant leave the apartment can be read differently once the presumed intention to frame him is questioned.
Imaizumi’s precautions worked against the person she wanted to protect
Imaizumi is the killer. She took steps intended to prevent the innocent tenant from coming under suspicion: she tried to remove his fingerprints from the discarded rope and encouraged him to go out. Neither precaution worked as she intended. Prints remained, and the outing failed to give him a verifiable alibi.
Her efforts to prevent a police report over the burglary also belong to that attempt to keep the inquiry from reaching him. What looks like a set of carefully planted clues is instead the residue of precautions that failed. The distinction explains why the evidence has seemed so oddly inconsistent.
Her motive is revenge. Her niece was driven into a desperate situation by blackmail and died in an accident, and Imaizumi had also lost her husband. The inquiries include a reference to her visiting his grave, giving a quieter context to the losses behind her anger.
Trying to spare the tenant does not undo her decision to kill. His response, however, preserves the generosity that introduced him: he encourages her to make amends and believe that a life can be rebuilt afterward. The episode allows his optimism to become support for another person without treating the murder as justified.
The twin’s appearance gives the case a final comic release
The twin brother finally appears and is noticeably heavier than the tenant, making the suggested possibility of an easy substitution look rather unconvincing. The visual joke releases some of the tension accumulated around the accusation.
The case’s strongest reversal is the explanation for the wiped fingerprints. The apparently helpful act of volunteering prints creates the crisis, and the murderer’s attempted protection deepens it. The Detective Boys resolve that contradiction by continuing to ask questions, while the tenant’s positive outlook survives circumstances that might have destroyed it.
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