Ranpo Edogawa

Ranpo is a young man of 26 who acts like a 2 year old with a fair complexion and short, messy black hair. His eyes, which are closed most of the time, are green. His attire consists of a brown inverness cape that he wears over his shoulders and whose color matches both his hat and his pants. Under that, he wears a dark grey blazer and a white button-up with a light and dark blue striped tie. Under his three-quarter length pants, he wears long white socks that cover the visible part of his legs, and simple black shoes. Ranpo takes extreme pride in his "ability" which can solve any mystery in mere seconds, with which he has solved countless cases. With his incredible intelligence, he is commended for it by the rest of the Armed Detective Agency, even more so because he lacks an ability. He is often found bragging about his status as the greatest detective in the world.[11] Ranpo is also shown to be rather childish, frequently teasing the other detectives in the Agency and sometimes refusing to do work or cases for trivial reasons such as laziness or spite.[12][13] Ranpo has been shown to be unable to complete simple tasks such as riding a train or finding his way home when not utilizing Super Deduction.[11]

Ranpo showing his serious resolve when his friends are in danger. However, despite this demeanor, Ranpo becomes serious and calm when the situation calls for it.[3][14] Atsushi Nakajima once noted Ranpo's serious façade when devising their plan in protecting the virus-stricken Fukuzawa, an expression he admitted he has never seen before in the great detective. One of his long-time colleagues, Yosano, also understood Ranpo's grave concern for the President when placed in trouble.

Ranpo's conviction stems from his resolve to save his friends. Because of the Agency's faith in him, Ranpo equally places his trust in them.[14][15] He recognizes how the Agency members, whom he regards as his friends, see him as invincible, so Ranpo has a sense of conviction to protect them and vowed never to let anyone hurt them.[1] This rings true most especially after the events of Cannibalism: Ranpo admits his failure to catch Fyodor Dostoevsky, which might have prevented a child's death and consequently Kunikida's arrest.[8] During such cases, Ranpo does acknowledge that he has limitations himself, but he is nonetheless more than willing to perform any plausible means to solve the situation. Notably, even though his colleagues seem to think that he is completely oblivious to the fact that he is not an ability user, he is aware that his Super Deduction is in fact not an ability. However, since the Agency puts so much faith into him, he initially refused to openly admit this to anyone in the Agency, as he refused to believe Fukuzawa when the latter straightforwardly told Ranpo that he is not actually an ability user[2] and seemed to dance around the topic with Yosano,[3] yet he outright admitted his lack of ability after the Yokohama fog incident caused by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa[16] and later to Mushitarō Oguri.

Admitting that he took in Fyodor's methods in himself, Ranpo vows never to let anyone hurt the Agency. With his vision and desire not to lose to Fyodor nor to anyone again, Ranpo carefully learned Fyodor's ways and willingly took in the Conjurer himself, illustrating Ranpo's exceptional resolve to do anything that he can for the sake of protecting the Agency. He claimed that such intimidation surpasses that of a typical deduction skill, which can defeat even detective killers and evidence suppressors—the great detective's weaknesses—like Mushitarō.[1] He even put up a contingency plan to ensure that the Agency would be given all the help they need, especially from Mushitarō, in their battle against the Decay of the Angel, as he threatened to expose Mushitarō's friend's legacy to the public that might defame the late author.[17]

Ranpo offers his help to Poe, who was once his rival. In addition, Ranpo has a certain kind of charisma that plants an apparent change in his former adversaries into people who aid him subsequently in different manners. One notable example is Edgar Allan Poe, once his sworn rival whom Ranpo defeated in a deduction battle six years ago,[3] who gradually becomes one of Ranpo's trusted allies in his later pursuits and cases, such as the Cannibalism strategy,[18] its aftermath,[8][19][1] and in rescuing Agency members and affiliates during their frameup.[10][9] Another is Mushitarō himself, who prides himself as the infallible detective killer who challenged Ranpo but later warned the great detective of the Decay of the Angel' threat out of his own volition.[20]

Ranpo convinces the police to rethink their perception on the wanted Agency. Minoura, a police officer who initially doubted Ranpo's detective skills, eventually sought his occasional help[21] and later broke him out from arrest[22] together with 30% of Yokohama's police force.[23] Through his words of persuasion, Ranpo was able to turn such percentage of the military police into believers in the Agency despite being a wanted terrorist at the time.[9] Ranpo also appears to have a great memory, as he is able to remember his duel with Poe from six years ago and identify Minoura as the "man whose subordinate he arrested".[21] In his 12 years of solving baffling cases as a detective, he seems to remember some of his clients, as hinted when he turned to a specific police officer out of the many arresting him, whom he possibly recognized to have helped out some time in the past. Ranpo was born somewhere outside Yokohama to two genius parents, namely the legendary detective known as the Clairvoyant and an equally intelligent housewife. He was raised in the countryside until their deaths when he then moved to Yokohama shortly afterward per his father's suggestion. He soon attended the Yokohama Police Academy and lived in a dorm, where he found the strict rules to be a hassle. He soon ended up getting into an argument with the warden and exposed his past exploits with women, causing Ranpo to get kicked out of the academy. Since then, Ranpo wandered around Yokohama, including living and landing a job at a military post, working at a construction site, and delivering mail. However, he eventually got expelled, as he exposed the military post chief's embezzlement and disposed an unnecessary letter in the postal delivery; or left of his own accord, since he found the construction site's corporate hierarchy to be quite bothersome. At some point, Ranpo managed to secure an appointment interview with S&K Corporation as an apprentice office clerk. However, the company's president was assassinated, so Ranpo settled to find a government-issued document for job searching somewhere in the president's office to turn it in to the government and keep receiving financial aid and information. During this time, he encountered Fukuzawa, the bodyguard hired to protect the company president; Ranpo also met the president's secretary, whom he easily deduced was the actual killer instead of the suspect, identified as the boy assassin Sakunosuke Oda, "caught" and detained in the other room.

Ranpo vents out at Fukuzawa about the strangeness of society and the adult world. Eventually, Fukuzawa took Ranpo with him and treated him to a café. From then on, with nowhere to go, Ranpo sought Fukuzawa's help, who decided to bring him to his next assignment at Theatrum Mundi, where a mysterious "V" had delivered a death threat. Ultimately, after Ranpo vented out his fear and bewilderment towards the "strange" world, Fukuzawa persuaded that he was an ability user who could see the truth in a single glance and gave him a random pair of glasses to "control" such ability. Realizing that he was indeed special rather than alien to others, Ranpo solved the theater case, which he deemed to be a trifle compared to a bigger one. This latter case led him to Jun Mitamura, a member of V, who attempted to scout Ranpo into their organization of ability users bent on getting rid of other ability users. Ranpo declined his offer, and Fukuzawa arrived in time to rescue him. Subsequently, Ranpo and Fukuzawa formed a partnership and were requested by various clients for their services. Sometime later, at Fukuzawa's behest, Ranpo located Sōseki Natsume, a man rumored to hold connections throughout Yokohama who helped them secure a Skilled Business Permit. Fukuzawa then used this to establish the Armed Detective Agency, where Ranpo became its first member.[2]