We always have our fingers-crossed that each and every year will bring us more detective anime and manga, we simply crave mysteries to be solved! In the case of 2015, we’ve already gotten a lot of news that has us anticipating a very special year for detectives.

 In 2014 I think it might have been even easier than usual to forget that Reverse Thieves is actually a detective-themed anime and manga blog. Without a major new detective series like Gosick or UN-GO we mostly stuck to mentioning a few of the staple series like Detective Conan and Kindaichi Case Files for the year. Those are fine series but they have been running forever and at this point tend  to be titles more worth bringing up highlights from than doing big posts about.

The end of 2014 did have some great Detective Conan highlights. The end of the year finished with a bang when Conan finally started streaming on Crunchyroll along with a Magic Kaito TV series. In a way it seemed to signal a renaissance in detective anime in general. I don’t think it purposely meant to lead this charge but I’m not going to complain.

Note: If you mention Tantei Kageki Milky Holmes TD as a detective show in 2015 within the comments below the owners of Reverse Thieves take no responsibility if you undergo spontaneously combustion due to Kate’s mind powers.

Remember near the end of 2014 when Detective Conan started to be simulcast and that was super crazy awesome? It seems that 2015 was feeling a bit jealous of 2014 so it started the year with the announcement of Lupin III VS. Detective Conan movie streaming on Hulu. While it is not as huge as the simple fact that Detective Conan TV series is on Crunchyroll, this movie being on Hulu is still rather shocking. While both franchises have long-time fans, and have been getting far more attention lately, seeing this movie in the U.S. seemed like a bridge too far.

Not that we want to be ungrateful, buuut it is too bad they didn’t put up the Lupin III VS. Detective Conan TV special too since it directly ties in to the movie.

Most people are aware of Weekly Shonen Jump’s race to find their next big hit. They have been trying out all kinds of genres, basically seeing what will stick, and the first wave wasn’t much of a success so they are on to the next. One of these new hopefuls is Kagamigami by Psyren’s Iwashiro starring a boy with Shikigami powers and a woman whose goal is to become a great detective! Doubling up on the awesome, this series is already in the U.S. version of Weekly Shonen Jump.

Surprisingly, the biggest source of new detective anime for 2015 will be the Noitamina block. We are getting not one but two detective shows: Everything Becomes F and Mysterious Stories of Ranpo (Rampo): Game of Laplace. The details on them are still a bit thin, however both have strong pedigrees that buoy our confidence.

Everything Becomes F is based on the first novel of the S&M series featuring Professor Saikawa and his student Moe by Hiroshi Mori. This book series has already become quite a franchise with 9 other books, a manga adaptation, a live action TV series, and even a visual novel. It is a popular story to say the least.

Everything Becomes F is a serial murder case with a bit of thriller aspect to it. A-1 Pictures and director Mamoru Kanbe have a prize series on their hands. If they can capture what made the original novel so appealing it seems like an easy road to success. Though Mamoru Kanbe’s backcatalog doesn’t really inspire confidence, Hiroshi Mori used to be a manga author so perhaps his work will be well suited to an anime. Hiroshi Mori also wrote the book that The Sky Crawlers film is based on but we won’t hold that against him.

We don’t know much about Mysterious Stories of Ranpo (Rampo): Game of Laplace, but we do know Edogawa Rampo. Considered the father modern Japanese detective fiction, he is up there with Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Dashiell Hammett as mystery writers everyone should know. When Shinichi Kudo needs to make up a name to go by after he is shrunk into a child he picks the name Conan Edogawa. Edogawa Rampo’s creations Kogoro Akechi and Fiend with Twenty Faces among others are characters who are adapted, referenced, and paid homage to in countless different iterations. Sufficed to say he is an institution.

Game of Laplace is inspired by the works of Edogawa Rampo to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Rampo’s death. The wording is rather vague, but this anime doesn’t seem to be a direct adaptation of any of Rampo’s stories. It could mean that it is a re-imagining like UN-GO (based on Ango Sakaguchi‘s novel Meiji Kaika Ango Torimono-cho but greatly modified) or a loose adaptation for a modern audience like Sherlock. Or it could mean that they are just invoking his name as it is synonymous with mysteries. Only time will tell what we get.

 Among all of this, the PSYCHO-PASS movie was released in January and we’re looking forward to when it will hit U.S. shores. There were other little announcements, too. Like more Kindachi stories being written and new manga adaptations of Agatha Christie stories which started at the end of 2014. And who knows what the coming months’ news will have in store! It will be interesting to revisit this post at the end of the 2015 to see if it really was a good year for detectives.

I for one will just be glad to be able to reintroduce the best detective series entry to the Narutaki & Hisui VS. The Best of 2015 post.