Case Closed, also known as Detective Conan (名探偵コナン, Meitantei Konan?) in Japan and other countries, is a detective manga and anime series by Gosho Aoyama which has been published in Weekly Shonen Sunday magazine since 1994.The series depicts the cases of a young private detective who was inadvertently turned into a prepubescent boy by criminals and now struggles to continue his profession while keeping his true identity, age and medical condition secret.
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 460 television episodes (as of 15 January 2007) and ten 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 television network, Animax, who have also aired the series across its networks in Southeast Asia and East Asia. 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[1] was announced on December 15, 2005 and was released on April 15, 2006, debuting at the number one position in the Japanese box office[2] and remained there for three consecutive weeks. As of May 28, 2006, it has earned $25.8 million in the Japanese box office. [3]
The latest in the series of its franchise is a live-action TV drama which is poised to be aired in autumn 2006. It would act 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) [4].
Plot and/or ending details follow.
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 surname after the given name, with the exception of Edogawa Rampo (Edogawa is the last name here).
At the beginning of the story, 17-year old (16 years in the manga) high school student Jimmy Kudo (Shin'ichi Kudo) becomes the boy, Conan Edogawa. Jimmy Kudo in the beginning of Case Closed is known as a high school student detective. One day, Jimmy goes to a theme park named "Tropical Land," with his childhood friend (or current girlfriend), Rachel Moore (Ran Mori). He encountered a case where a roller coaster passenger, Kishida (Kenneth in the English anime), is killed in a spectacularly bloody decapitation[5]. He solved the case and on his return home, he witnesses a suspicious deal involving some men dressed completely in black. Another man in black spots him, knocks him down, and gives him an untested poison named Apotoxin-4869 (APTX4869), which is intended to kill him. The poison does not kill him. However, when he comes to his senses, his body has shrunk down to the size of an elementary school boy.[6]
Following the advice of Dr. Hiroshi Agasa (Dr. Herschel Agasa in the English anime), Jimmy hides who he really is, 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.[7]
Rachel's father, Richard Moore (Kogoro Mori) is also a detective, but is not very capable. Conan always solves mysteries in his stead. As Conan appears to be just a boy, police don't pay Conan any mind. Conan instead uses Detective Moore by putting him to sleep with a "anesthesia gun-watch"[8] and pretending to be Moore by using a voice changer disguised as a bow tie. [9] Other important characters that appear (some later) are Jimmy's parents Booker (Yusaku) and Vivian (Yukiko) Kudo , Harley Hartwell (Heiji Hattori), a rival detective from Osaka[10], gentleman thief Phantom Thief Kid (怪盗キッド, Kaitō Kido?)[11] , who also appears in Magic Kaito), inventor of the APTX4869 Shiho Miyano (codename "Sherry" within the black syndicate, turned into a child also after she took her own drug to escape the organization, and then lives with Dr. Agasa under her new name Ai Haibara)[12], and the other members of the Black Organization: Gin, Vodka, Tequila, Calvados, Pisco, Vermouth, Kir, Chianti, Köln, and a mysterious "boss" who has only been mentioned so far.
To maintain his cover, Conan goes to Titan elementary school (Japanese: Teitan Elementary School (帝丹小学校, Teitan Shōgakkō?))and has made particular 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 (Detective Boys (少年探偵団, Shōnen Taitei-dan?) in original). Although Conan feels profoundly self conscious playing with them given his true age, the foursome have numerous adventures of their own and the normal trio have proved capable assistants to the detective for their age.
