Tag: Detective Conan

Ongoing Investigations: Case #108

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Just about as soon as possible we sat down for the 14th Detective Conan movie, The Lost Ship in the Sky featuring a myriad of familiar faces and also the charming Kaito Kid. Things are pretty complicated this time around as bioterrorism rears its ugly head, a secret crime group reappears, a plot to catch Kaito Kid is hatched, and an airship is hijacked. As often occurs, Conan and Kaito team up for a good portion of the film to take out the real baddies. The airship is pretty impressive, and there are some thrilling scenes throughout, but the final confrontation seemed less flashy than usual. The mystery had a lot going on, and figuring out the motive was near impossible, in fact I’m still not quite clear on it, so it came off as more thriller than mystery as Conan worked to find the bombs and disarm the hijackers before it was too late. Of course the cast was stupendous, pretty much throwing in a cameo of everyone including most of the police officers we’ve seen, though truly this is a Conan and Kaito show. After all was said and done, the last scene of the film tricked me into thinking something extremely plot relevant had occurred but the extra after the credits clears it up and things go back to normal. While not the best of the films, still a good ride and it has Kaito Kid!

hisuicon I like to call this Detective Conan Movie 14: Die Hard on a Blimp. Conan and Kaito cross paths with their usual delightful mixture of rivalry and comradery. We also get some cute interplay between Kaito and Ran as well. I agree with Narutaki that while there was a good deal of action overall there was not that same huge action sequence at the end of the movie that pushes the budget to the limit. It was a bit odd that Heiji was toting around a self insertion kid for this movie when they already have the Detective Boys for that purpose. Also they did not do much of an introduction to the story, characters, and gadgets as they have done with past movies. This was especially noticeable since we watched this movie with someone who had never watched Conan before. They followed along fine but I wonder if they cut the normal extended intro for time reasons or because they no longer feel they are as necessary. It was a fun movie that was a bit of a change of pace from the normal murder mystery while still having a Conan feel. Although with no murder I am sure that S. S. Van Dine and Narutaki were both slightly disappointed. It is worth checking out and hopefully FUNimation will get around to putting it out in the US. On a side note, I think I have leveled up again as an anime fan by the fact that I noticed that they changed voice actors on Kogoro.

 

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L: Consulting Detective and Other Great Anime Spin-offs

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hisuiconA common complaint I hear about series is that the main characters are bland but the side characters are far more interesting and nuanced. It seems almost epidemic in shonen fighting. In fact Shonen Jump just started a spin-off magazine whose whole purpose is to put the spot light on some of the more popular minor characters in their magazine. The announcement of Super Strong Jump was just the catalyst we needed to bring out one of our post ideas from the back burner about our favorite side characters who would do just as good if not better in their own feature title. Remember that Gunsmith Cats’ Rally Vincent is a spin-off from the original Riding Bean series and look how far she has come.

This post has been brewing for a while, and is by no means a complete listing. But before it got totally out of hand, we had to think of which characters could really use their own stories beyond the fact that we just like them a hell of a lot. This is mere sampling of some of the great side characters that we’re pretty sure could hold their own in a series. Eventhough the title of this post mentions L, he already has a spin-off albeit a bad one, so we’ve come up with a list of other great spin-off options! Oh, yeah, 1/3 of our picks are still detectives though!

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Detective Conan S1: The Essentials

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The Detective Conan series can seem amazingly daunting with 19 seasons currently out and still going as well as various movies and OVAs. But the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. If you do not start with the movies then the natural place to look is the first season (eps. 1-29 in the English release; 1-28 in Japanese). Since this is the first season, it has a fair share of pertinent episodes but we’ve still been able to whittle it down to about half. These episodes set up the basic formula for the series while introducing you to the lion’s share of the main characters and supporting cast, the relationships, and the most iconic gadgets. That being said, there are quite a few episodes that while entertaining are generally able to be skipped with little to no detriment to the viewer.

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