5/21/2005

It just keeps going and going…

This boy-detective anime, based on the hit manga by Gosho Aoyama, is now one of the longest-running animes on Japanese TV. Both manga and anime are still ongoing as of the writing of this article, as the anime is just passing its 400th episode.

The story follows high-school detective Kudo Shinichi, who, upon witnessing an illegal transaction between a member of the “Black Organization” and a businessman, is knocked unconscious and fed a poison that, instead of killing him, shrinks him into a gradeschooler.

To hide from the Organization while he locates them - and a cure - Shinichi ends up living with his almost-girlfriend Mouri Ran, whose father is a private investigator, calling himself by the pseudonym “Edogawa Conan”. From there, we witness the adventures and drama between Conan and Ran, his friends the Shounen Tantei (Detective Boys), next-door neighbour (and sometime-genius) Professor Agasa, Ran’s suspicious schoolteacher, a mysterious Black Organization scientist who shares Shinichi’s fate, and many more characters.

Detective Conan is actually a spinoff of an unfinished earlier work of Aoyama-sensei’s, Magic Kaito, the story of a phantom thief that ran for 3 full volumes before Aoyama-sensei turned his attention to Conan. Kaitou Kid, the star of Magic Kaito, has made numerous appearances in the newer series as an opponent for Conan.

At first not much of a hit, but now quite popular in Japan, the anime began in 1996, and the 9th theatrical release made its appearance in April 2005. It airs on Mondays on YTV in Japan, and the second try at an English dub, Case Closed (the original was to run on Fox Family in 2000, but was cancelled due to the violent nature of the show), is currently being produced by FUNimation. In addition to English, it has also been translated into Chinese, German, Spanish and French.

Official Sites:
Japanese
Japanese (Movie website)
English

Fansites:
Dream Forest
DetectiveConan.com
Detective Conan’s Mystery File