Detective Conan

Detective Conan (名探偵(めいたんてい)コナン ,Meitantei Konan, lit. Great Detective Conan) is a Japanese detective manga series written and illustrated by Gosho Aoyama. It has been serialized in the Japanese manga anthology Weekly Shōnen Sunday since 1994 and had been collected in 103 Tankōbon volumes by April 2023.

The manga has been adapted into an anime series by the animation studio TMS Entertainment (formerly Tokyo Movie), directed by Kenji Kodama (episode 1 to 118), Yasuichiro Yamamoto (episode 119 to 161, 163 to 218, 220 to 332, 667 to 677, 680 to the last episode to date), Masato Sato (episode 162, 219, 333 to 504), Koujin Ochi (episode 505 to 666, 678 to 679), Nobuharu Kamanaka (episode 975 to the last episode to date), and is broadcast in Japan on Nippon Television, Yomiuri TV and Animax. The series debuted on January 8th, 1996 and had broadcasted 1000 episodes by March 6, 2021. The series has seen high levels of popularity in both manga and anime formats in Japan since its reception, and has also been adapted into twenty-seven Golden Week movies, with the first released on April 17th, 1997 and since then followed with a movie released each year, always in the month of April. Ten of the movies held a top 10 box office position in the year they were screened. In addition, five Magic Files related to the movies and twelve Original Video Animations have been released.

Even though Detective Conan is a Shōnen, its audience is composed of a substantial proportion of female viewers and readers. The series also seems to attract all ages.

Story summary

Conan Edogawa

Shinichi Kudo is a high school detective who sometimes works with police to solve cases. During an investigation, he is ambushed and incapacitated by a member of a crime syndicate known as the Black Organization. In an attempt to murder the young detective, they force-feed him a dangerous experimental drug. However, instead of killing him, it shrinks his body to the size of an elementary school child. Adopting the pseudonym Conan Edogawa and keeping his true identity a secret, Kudo lives with his childhood friend Ran Mouri and her father, Kogoro Mouri, who is a private detective. Throughout the series, he tags along on Kogoro's cases. Nonetheless, after Kudo solves one, he uses Dr. Agasa's hidden tranquilizer to sedate Kogoro and then uses a voice changer to simulate his voice to reveal the solution. He also enrolls in Teitan Elementary School, where he makes friends with a group of classmates who form their own Detective Boys group. While he continues to dig deeper into the Black Organization, he frequently interacts with other characters, including his neighbor, Dr. Agasa; Ran's friend Sonoko Suzuki; a fellow teenage detective, Heiji Hattori; assorted police detectives from different regions; and a phantom thief called Kaito Kid.

Kudo later encounters an elementary school transfer student, Ai Haibara, who reveals herself to be a former member of the Black Organization under the code name Sherry and the creator of the experimental drug that shrunk him. She too ingested it to evade the pursuit of the organization. She soon joins the Junior Detectives. During a rare encounter with the Black Organization, Conan helps the FBI plant a CIA agent, Kir, inside the Black Organization as a spy.

Internal rules

The world of Detective Conan has a set of internal rules that might catch unfamiliar readers of the manga and spectators of the anime off guard, such as the lack of information sharing and the regular illogical and irrational behavior exhibited by many characters. The universe is mostly consistent within its rules, with a few exceptions. The passing of time is difficult to judge, due to a literary device known as a floating timeline, which enables the compression of 20+ years worth of events and technological upgrades into less than one year.

Media

Manga

The first manga volume cover

Written and illustrated by Gosho Aoyama, Detective Conan started its serialization in Shogakukan's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Sunday on January 5, 1994. Detective Conan became one of the longest running manga series, with over 1,000 chapters released in Japan, and the first series with over 1,000 chapters published in Weekly Shōnen Sunday. Shogakukan has collected its chapters into individual tankōbon volumes. The first volume was released on June 18, 1994. On October 18, 2021, the series reached one hundred volumes; One Piece author, Eiichiro Oda, whose series achieved the same feat a month before, sent congratulations to Aoyama. As of April 18, 2025, 107 volumes have been published.

Spin-offs

Gosho Aoyama's assistants have written an anthology series of Detective Conan which are released irregularly.

A spin-off manga series, titled "Detective Conan: The Culprit Hanzawa, by Mayuko Kanba, began in the July 2017 issue of Shogakukan's Shōnen Sunday S, released on May 25, 2017.

Another spin-off manga series, illustrated by Takahiro Arai with supervision by Aoyama, titled Detective Conan: Zero's Tea Time started in issue #24 of Weekly Shōnen Sunday on May 9, 2018. The story centers on the agent Toru Amuro/Rei Furuya. New chapters of the manga are only published when Detective Conan is on hiatus.

Another spin-off manga series by Arai, titled Detective Conan: Police Academy Arc – Wild Police Story, was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Sunday from October 2, 2019, to November 18, 2020. Spanning 13 chapters, it again focuses on Amuro/Furuya during his years in the police academy with his colleagues.

Anime

An anime television series adaptation, produced by Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation and TMS Entertainment, premiered on January 8, 1996. Over 1,150 episodes have aired in Japan, making it one of the longest anime series.

Video games

Detective Conan's expansion into the video games industry followed behind its foray into animation. On December 27, 1996, Detective Conan: The Underground Amusement Park Murder Case was released for the Game Boy. Since then, 24 games have been released. Currently, the majority of the games have only been released in Japan, though Nobilis has localized Detective Conan: The Mirapolis Investigation for the PAL region as "Case Closed: The Mirapolis Investigation". All dedicated Detective Conan games released for the Game Boy, Sony's consoles, the WonderSwan, and the Nintendo DS have been developed by Bandai. Banpresto developed the Detective Conan titles on the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance while Marvelous Entertainment developed Detective Conan: The Mirapolis Investigation.

Audio CDs

"The Best of Detective Conan" CD cover

Katsuo Ono composed and arranged the music in the Detective Conan animation; his works have been released on several CDs. Two image albums, comprising several songs sung by Japanese voice actors of the characters in the animation, were also released. Several theme music were performed by pop musicians such as B'z, Zard, and Garnet Crow. The first four theme music were released by Universal Music Group and all releases thereafter were by Being Inc.

The Best of Detective Conan and The Best of Detective Conan 2 albums collectively sold over 2.2 million copies, while singles from The Best of Detective Conan 3 collectively sold over 1.6 million copies. On July 25, 2017, the singer Mai Kuraki was awarded a Guinness World Record for singing the most theme songs in a single anime series, having sung 21 songs for Detective Conan, starting with her hit song "Secret of My Heart" (2000).

Live-action drama

Four live action drama TV specials and a TV series were created by Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation and TMS Entertainment based on the series. The first two specials aired in 2006 and 2007 featuring Shun Oguri portraying the teenage Shinichi Kudo and Tomoka Kurokawa as Ran Mouri. The third and fourth TV specials aired in 2011 and 2012 featuring Junpei Mizobata as Shinichi and Shioli Kutsuna as Ran. The cast used for those TV specials were used for the television series which aired between July 7 and September 29, 2011.

Other related media

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Weekly Shōnen Sunday and Weekly Shōnen Magazine, the two companies collaborated to publish twelve biweekly magazines consisting of chapters from Weekly Shōnen Sunday's Case Closed and Weekly Shōnen Magazine's Kindaichi Case Files. The magazine ran between April 10, 2008, and September 25, 2008.

Shogakukan have also produced many books spun off from the series. Fifty volumes of a film comic series were published in Japan between June 1996 and August 2000, covering the first 143 episodes of the anime, though some episodes were skipped. Five additional film comics entitled 5 Juuyou Shorui (5重要書類, lit. 5 Important Documents) were published between July 2001 and January 2002 and covered selected episodes between 162 and 219. Thirteen official guide books were published between June 1997 and April 2009. Shogakukan has also published novels, digest books, educational books, and puzzle books. In January 7th 2024, it would be announced that Takara Tomy will publish the "Detective Conan Trading Card Game", with the first card being included in Shonen Sunday issue 9 in January 24th.

In North America, Score Entertainment published the "Case Closed Trading Card Game" on June 29, 2005. The game entails the use of three customized decks of cards, which players buy and collect. Representing characters, events, and objects in Detective Conan, these cards are used by players to fulfill certain conditions to solve a case and win the game. Certain cards are used to foil the progress of the player's opponents. An English unofficial guidebook to the series titled The "Case Closed Casebook: An Essential Guide" was published by DH Publishing Inc. on March 25, 2008. A collaborative themed event by Universal Studios Japan with the series, for the Universal Cool Japan 2018 attractions, ran from January 19 to June 24, 2018. Characters from the series were featured in a crossover event for the survival horror video game Identity V for the game's China server in 2020, and released globally in 2021.

Critical reception

Japan and other countries

The series has been well received in Japan, with the anime adaptation ranking in the top twenty in Animage's polls between 1996 until 2000, where it dropped below the top twenty. In the Japanese TV anime ranking, Detective Conan often ranked the top six. It has even been used as a mascot to promote citizens to follow the law. The manga is a huge success and it is continued to be published. It won the prestigious Shogakukan Manga Award for the shōnen category in 2000. Some of its volumes appear on the lists of best-selling manga.

The series is successful in Asia and Europe, where some countries translated most of the episodes and volumes. Due to the high popularity, the series has since been re-broadcasting in many countries after the original premieres.

United States

Although popular in many other countries, Case Closed was not as successful in the US. Many of its factors are most likely poor advertising, character name changes and script changes around Japanese characters and their culture. Despite their intention to make the series more accessible to general audience, the changes to more Westernized character names was very criticized. Due to this, Funimation Entertainment's dubbed version of "Case Closed" was cancelled at only 123 episodes and 6 movies. Despite the fan requests to continue dubbing the anime, it didn't do well enough for FUNimation Entertainment to continue the dub until they lost the license rights of "Case Closed" in 2018.

Bang Zoom! Entertainment and Studio Nano dubs was better received, as the original Japanese names would be intact and in higher-quality. However, Macias Group dub was criticized for its low-quality dubbing, audio problems and only covering episodes 960-1010 rather than starting from the beginning or continuing where FUNimation left off.

Despite its failed ways to localize in the US, the series still had a cult-following over the years and it has grown to have a considerable fandom since. The manga would still released by VIZ Media, despite its low sales[citation needed].

Appearances in other media

Besides his anime and manga appearances, Conan is the protagonist for all the movies and the video games based on the Case Closed series. Several anime and games have parodied, lampooned or otherwise mentioned him or the series. Some of them include: Yakitate!! Japan, Black Cat, Inuyasha, Hayate the Combat Butler, Proposal Daisakusen, Sonic X, Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple, Angelic Layer, and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney In case of Inuyasha, Detective Conan features Conan reading Inuyasha manga first in episode 200 (aired July 24, 2000). Later, Shinichi and Ran made their cameo appearance in Inuyasha episode 128 (aired October 13, 2003).

Conan has also been used as a character to promote people to follow the law in Japan, due to the popularity of the series.

Detective Conan cameo in Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple

Detective Conan in Inuyasha episode 128

In other languages

Every title without a note beside it in the table below translates to "Detective Conan".

Language	Name	Notes
Japanese	名探偵コナン Meitantei Konan	Lit. "Famous Detective Conan"
Arabic	المحقّق كونان Al-Muḥaqqiq Konan
Bahasa Indonesia	Detektif Conan
Bahasa Melayu	Detektif Conan
Catalan	El Detectiu Conan	Lit. "The Detective Conan"
Chinese (Simplified)	名侦探柯南 Míngzhēntàn Kēnán	Lit. "Famous Detective Conan"
Chinese (Traditional)	名偵探柯南 Míngzhēntàn Kēnán	Lit. "Famous Detective Conan"
Czech	Detektiv Conan
Danish	Mesterdetektiven Conan	Lit. "The Master-Detective Conan"
English (US)	Case Closed Detective Conan	Due to trademark issues, packaging and the door closing transition still use "Detective Conan" as the title. The original name would return being used for anime promotion in 2025.
English (Singapore)	Detective Conan	The Southeast Asian manga released by Shogakukan Asia uses the original title "Detective Conan".
Filipino	Detective Conan
Finnish	Salapoliisi Conan
French	Détective Conan
Galician	O detective Conan	Lit. "The Detective Conan"
German	Detektiv Conan
Hindi	जासूस कॉनन Jasoos Conan
Hungarian	Conan, a detektív	Lit. "Conan the detective"
Italian	Detective Conan
Korean	명탐정 코난 Myeongtamjeong Conan	Lit. "Renowned Detective Conan"
Norwegian	Mesterdetektiven Conan	Lit. "The Master-Detective Conan"
Persian	کاراگاهان کوچک
Polish	Detektyw Conan
Russian	Детектив Конан Detektiv Konan
Spanish (Spain and Latin America)	Detective Conan
Portuguese (Portugal and Brazil)	Detetive Conan
Swedish	Mästerdetektiven Conan	Lit. "The Master-Detective Conan"
Thai	ยอดนักสืบจิ๋วโคนัน	Lit. "Great Little Detective Conan"
Turkish	Dedektif Conan
Vietnamese	Thám tử lừng danh Conan	Lit. "Renowned Detective Conan"

See also

• Case Closed
• Detective Conan in Other Countries
• Yaiba
• Magic Kaito
• 3rd Base 4th

References

1. Wikipedia