Funimation Entertainment

Funimation Entertainment (previously known as Funimation Productions, and usually stylized as FUNimation) was an American entertainment company. Originally founded in 1994 by Gen Fukunaga, the company became a subsidiary of Navarre Corporation on May 11, 2005. Funimation produced, marketed, and distributed anime and other entertainment properties in the United States and international markets. The company is headquartered in Flower Mound, Texas. The company would be shut down in April 2024.

Funimation would eventually get the rights to dub the first 4 seasons and a half of Season 5, and later the first 6 movies of Detective Conan.

Case Closed

Funimation has licensed the rights to produce an English adaptation of the anime Detective Conan and would start dubbing in 2004.

According to R. Bruce Elliott, the english voice actor of Kogoro Mouri (called Richard Moore in the dub), Funimation would only managed to license the rights to the first 5 seasons (from episode 1 to episode 128) and the first six movies. However, alongside the first 6 movies, only 4 full seasons were dubbed and half of Season 5, which totaled to 123 episodes (130 episodes in international units). However, all of this was done in 2004. All of the voices and characters were changed to be "Americanized", to appeal for more broad audience. That means most, if not all, Japanese names were changed in the dub. Examples include Shinichi Kudo being renamed as Jimmy Kudo; Ran Mouri being renamed as Rachel Moore and Kogoro Mouri being renamed Richard Moore.

The cast would eventually return to dub the video game Case Closed: The Mirapolis Investigation, however only released in Europe and Japan.

On February 28th 2013, it was announced that Funimation will start airing the english subbed episodes of Detective Conan on their streaming service, starting with seasons 1-2 (from episode 1 to episode 54) .

Reception

Funimation's conversion of the principal characters' names into anglicized forms was heavily criticized by various parties. However, season five of the show is currently a big seller at many retail outlets, even making the top ten list of most sold Funimation DVDs at Amazon.com.

Discontinuation

It was unknown if Funimation would continue dubbing the show, due to low sales of the DVD's, as well as the low ratings when the show aired on Adult Swim.

Although despite dubbing Season 5, they wouldn't dub to its entirely as the last 11 episodes were left out of Season 5`s DVD, which included the important debut of Ai Haibara. Oddly, the movies that Funimation would later dub does include the character, who was renamed Vi. This caused some confusion for those who haven't gotten to watch the episode where she first appeared in the English version of the anime.

Funimation wouldn't dub anymore of Detective Conan content after the first six movies, as the license would eventually expire in 2017 and its DVDs would stop officially be sold. It's unlikely that Funimation would continue the dub, as the rights would be sold to other distributor companies to dub the movies and its shutdown in April 2024. The anime would eventually get new dubs by Macias Group in 2023 and Studio Nano in 2025.

There has been attempts to convince Funimation to pick up the license to continue the dub, examples are "Detective Conan Translation Project", "Save Case Closed", and petitions online.

In December 1st, 2024, it was confirmed by Mau Villarroel Sáez, the founder of Aedea Studio, that there are no plans to re-release the episodes dubbed by Funimation, as TMS Entertainment no longer allows distribution of any animated media of Detective Conan that has altered and localized character names.

See Also

• Staff (Cast and crew members of the original Japanese Version)
• Viz Media