Detective Conan
| Title |
Detective Conan (aka Cased Closed) |
| Japanese Title |
?????? |
| Official Site |
http://www.ytv.co.jp/conan/ |
| Category |
TV |
| Total Episodes |
(303+ x 25 mins) |
| Genres |
Action, Adventure, Comedy
|
| Year Published |
1996 |
| Studio |
Tokyo Movie Shinsha |
| |
|
Case Closed, also known as Detective Conan (??? 
, Meitantei Konan?) in Japan and other countries, is a detective manga and anime series by Gosho Aoyama which has been published in Weekly Sh?nen Sunday magazine since 1994.
The series depicts the cases of a young private detective who was inadvertently turned into a prepubescent boy by a certain criminal organization. Although his body has been shrunk, he continues to solve many cases and is struggling to solve the mysteries of the criminal organization responsible in order to return to his normal body.
VIZ Media publishes Detective Conan manga in English as Case Closed for American audiences. The comic uses the original right-to-left format and the English anime names for the main characters while it uses the original Japanese names for the minor characters.
The anime version is produced by Tokyo Movie Shinsha and has currently aired 486 television episodes (as of September 3, 2007) and eleven movies in Japan, and is still running on Japanese television today. It airs Mondays at 7:30 p.m. on Nippon TV, and is also broadcast in Japan by the anime CS network, Animax, who have also aired the series across its networks in Southeast Asia and East Asia (including its English language network in Southeast Asia, where its English adaptation stayed true to the original, retaining the original name Detective Conan, as well as each of the characters’ original Japanese names and dialogue). In July 2003, FUNimation announced that they licensed Detective Conan for a release in North America, to be released as “Case Closed” due to legal issues concerning the name Conan (Conan the Barbarian, although Conan can be considered a regular name as in Conan O’Brien). In the United Kingdom VIZ’s releases are published by Gollancz Manga with the same naming conventions.
The tenth movie, Private Eyes’ Requiem was announced on December 15, 2005 and was released on April 15, 2006, debuting at the number one position in the Japanese box office[3] and remained there for three consecutive weeks. As of May 28, 2006, it has earned $25.8 million in the Japanese box office.
The latest series in the franchise is a live-action TV drama, which premièred in Japan on Nippon Television on October 2, 2006. It served as a prequel of the current storyline, starring Shun Oguri as Shin’ichi Kudo (Jimmy Kudo), Tomoka Kurokawa as Ran Mori (Rachel Moore), and Takanori Jinnai as Kogoro Mori (Richard Moore).
First episode of Case Closed, where Jimmy is given the APTX pill
The English manga names will be used, with the Japanese original in brackets at their first mention. Japanese names are in Western order, with the family after the given name, with the exception of Edogawa Rampo (Edogawa being the family name).
The story starts by introducing 17-year old (16 years in the manga) high school student Jimmy Kudo (Shin’ichi Kudo) and his childhood friend and crush, Rachel Moore (Ran Mori). Jimmy treats Rachel to a trip to a theme park named “Tropical Land” and encounters a murder. After easily solving the case and showing off his detective skills, he notices two mysterious men wearing black. Telling Rachel to go on home, he tracked the men to a meeting place and witnesses an illegal deal. However, one of the men in black (known only as Gin) notices him and knocks him out. Instead of directly killing him, the two black men give him an untested poison named Apotoxin-4869 (APTX4869), which was supposed to not only kill Jimmy, but also leave no trace of poison in Jimmy’s body. However, Jimmy wakes to find that he is still alive, but has now been shrunk to an elementary school boy, around six years old.
Following the advice of Dr. Herschel Agasa (Dr. Hiroshi Agasa), Jimmy hides his real identity, lest the men in black find out that he is alive. When Rachel asks for his name, Jimmy spots books by Arthur Conan Doyle and Edogawa Rampo and comes up with the name “Conan Edogawa.” Agasa says that “Conan” is a relative of his, but was too busy to take care of a young child, and suggests that “Conan” go live with Rachel, and both Conan and Rachel agree.
Rachel’s father, Richard Moore (Kogoro Mori) is an incapable detective. Conan always solves mysteries in his stead. As Conan appears to be just a boy, police don’t pay any attention to him. Conan instead uses Detective Moore by putting him to sleep with a “anesthesia gun-watch” and pretending to be Moore by using a voice changer disguised as a bow tie.
To maintain his cover, Conan goes to Titan elementary school (Japanese: Teitan Elementary School (?????, Teitan Sh?gakk??)) and has made friends with three children at the school, George Kaminski (Genta Kojima), Mitch Tennison (Mitsuhiko Tsuburaya) and Amy Yeager (Ayumi Yoshida) who form the self-styled “Junior Detective League” ?? (Sh?nen Taitei-dan, ??????) (Detective Boys in the Japanese anime and manga). Although Conan feels profoundly self conscious playing with them given his true age, the foursome have numerous adventures of their own and the trio have proved capable assistants to the detective for their age.
Jimmy was able to find out that Gin was working for a criminal organization, known as the Black Organization. In addition to Gin, other major members of the Black Organization that appears later in the story include his partner Vodka, Vermouth, Kir, Chianti, Korn, and a mysterious “boss” who has only been mentioned so far. Jimmy also meets the inventor of the APTX4869 and former member of the organization Shiho Miyano (codename “Sherry” within the black organization), who was also turned into a child after she took her own drug to escape the organization, and then lives with Dr. Agasa under her new name Ai Haibara.
Later on in the series, Jimmy meets with his parents, Booker (Yusaku) and Vivian (Yukiko) Kudo along with Harley Hartwell (Heiji Hattori), a rival detective from Osaka and his childhood friend Kazuha Toyama. Also appearing is the gentleman thief Phantom Thief Kid (Kaito Kid), who also appears in Aoyama’s other manga, Magic Kaito.
