Spoilers follow for the giant’s identity, the culprit and the murder evidence.
The supposed giant is Mitsuhiko standing on Genta’s shoulders. Their cat search explains the strange sight over the wall, but it does not explain the murder. The killer is Yumura, who tries to frame his colleague Matoi by switching their wedding-gift bags after killing Jojima to conceal his embezzlement.
Find the Phantom Giant is international episode 1235 (Japanese episode 1177), an anime-original case. A small request to find a missing cat unexpectedly puts the Detective Boys in the position of witnesses to part of a much larger investigation.
A missing cat and a witness nobody remembers seeing
Ayumi, Mitsuhiko and Genta have been looking for Mu-chan since the previous day. When Conan and Haibara join them, Detectives Takagi and Chiba arrive nearby with a different question: has anyone seen a very tall man dressed as though he works in construction? The children were searching in the area until night, yet remember no such person.
The lead comes from Matoi, who was drunk after a wedding reception and says he remembers little about the evening. Around the time of the incident, approximately seven, he was sitting in the road and saw someone apparently taller than the wall opposite him. He thinks that person might be able to account for his whereabouts.
Conan recognizes that the children themselves explain the sight. Mitsuhiko had been standing on Genta’s shoulders, so the combined height looked like one exceptionally tall person from Matoi’s position. There is no need to find a separate construction worker. Resolving that image clarifies a witness lead, while leaving the killing itself unsolved.
Why suspicion falls on Matoi
The victim, Jojima, was Matoi’s former partner. Matoi has no clear alibi, and Jojima’s younger sister Madoka describes him as unfaithful and irresponsible. She points to an open window at the apartment as a possible way he could have entered or left. Her criticism and the accessible window make him easy to suspect, but they do not establish that he was the attacker.
Jojima died from suffocation. The position of the body near the apartment entrance suggests that someone had been inside and attacked as the victim tried to get away. It is a reconstruction to test against the evidence, rather than a reason to assume the former partner must have been there.
Inspector Megure also has information that Matoi had been drinking with colleagues. Conan follows that thread back to the wedding’s after-party, attended by Jojima, Matoi, Natsuhara and Yumura. During the questioning, Natsuhara’s separation from his former wife is mentioned, but the investigation’s crucial new issue is missing company money.
The apparent limit on access to the accounts is misleading
At first, only Natsuhara and Jojima seem able to alter the company’s accounting records. That raises the possibility that Jojima discovered embezzlement and was killed to keep it quiet. The assumption about access matters: knowing whose account can change the books is not necessarily the same as knowing who used it.
A check at a nearby convenience store produces no witness who remembers seeing Matoi. Conan notices that this does not fit comfortably with the account being assembled. He then speaks to Matoi loudly enough for others to hear, setting up the next stage of the investigation.
The switched wedding gifts bring Yumura to the window
When Conan and the others go to Matoi’s home, Yumura enters through a window carrying a wedding-gift bag. A receipt found in the bag associated with Matoi helps expose what Yumura has done: he switched his own wedding gifts with Matoi’s in an attempt to make the other man look guilty. The bags cannot be treated as proof of their apparent owners’ actions until the exchange is recognized.
The missing plastic cover from Yumura’s bag supplies another link to the killing. It appears to have been used to suffocate Jojima. That connects an ordinary wedding item to the murder, while the receipt and the attempted manipulation of the bags unravel the effort to blame Matoi.
The investigation then establishes that Yumura knew Natsuhara’s password. He could alter the records despite the apparent restriction to two authorized people. Yumura was the embezzler; after Jojima discovered it and began blackmailing him, he killed to silence the person who knew.
Two mistaken appearances serve different parts of the mystery
The giant and the gift bags are different kinds of misleading evidence. The first is an innocent misreading of two children viewed over a wall. The second is a deliberate attempt to transfer suspicion by exchanging objects. Conan must correct both appearances without assuming that the simple answer to the first question has already solved the second.
Matoi’s poor recollection makes him vulnerable to suspicion, but it is Yumura’s access to the password, his manipulation of the bags and the missing cover that connect motive to the crime. The case moves from finding someone who can account for a drunken man’s movements to identifying someone who has actively rewritten the evidence around him.
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