Detective Conan

Detective Conan (名探偵コナン, Meitantei Konan), also known as Case Closed, is a children's crime manga series. This comic is written and illustrated by Gosho Aoyama. The series began in 1994. The manga series has been made into an anime television show. It has been on the air since 1996.

When Detective Conan first arrived in the United States, the name was changed to Case Closed in English for legal reasons that were never specified. Some of the character names were changed as well. Shinichi had his first name changed to Jimmy. Ran Mori became Rachel Moore, while her father became Richard. Hiroshi had his first name changed to Hershel. Heiji Hattori became Harley Hartwell. Sonoko Suzuki became Serena Sebastian. Ai Haibara became Anita Hailey. However, Conan kept his Japanese name in English.

Premise

Detective Conan is about a teenage detective named Shinichi Kudo, who is poisoned by an evil group called "The Black Organization". The poison was supposed to kill him. However, the poison instead turned him into a small child. Shinichi adopts a new identity as "Conan Edogawa", and lives with his girlfriend, Ran Mouri, and her father, Detective Kogoro Mori, under the pretense that his parents are away and unable to take care of him. As a child, Shinichi/Conan helps Kogorou solve murder cases, while trying to find the evil men who poisoned him, to steal the poison and create an antidote.

Conan uses disguised gadgets to help him pursue criminals. Some of these are a bow tie with a voice-changing function, a watch that can be used as a tranquilizing gun, a skateboard with a turbo-engine, and suspenders that can stretch and shrink when Conan turns them on or off.

The Black organization is an international crime organization and its main activity is assassination, trading, and inventing new drugs. The code names of the members are usually named after liquors. For example, Gin, Vodka, and Vermouth. Ai Haibara, who invented the drug Shinichi took, was a member of this organization but when she was locked in handcuffs, she took the same drug Shinichi took, and became a six year-old girl and escaped from them. Her old code name was Sherry.

Characters

• Shinichi Kudo/Conan Edogawa - The main protagonist. He solves cases (mostly murders) as a first grader. His seventeen-year-old body was shrunken due to a poison created by the Black Organization. He use a wide array of gadgets to solve crimes. This includes his glasses, which were built with many functions: radar, thermography, telescope, listening microphone, directional microphone.

• Ran Mori - A high-school friend of Shinichi. Conan lives with her, and she is not aware of his true identity. She longs to see Shinichi again.

• Kogoro Mori - Ran's father. He is a famous private detective, but his fame is due to Conan solving cases using his voice (via the Voice-Changing Bowtie).

• Hiroshi Agasa - A plump doctor/professor who knows Conan's true identity and makes gadgets for him.

• Ai Haibara - A former member of the Black Organization. Her body shrunk due to the same poison that Conan took.

• Heiji Hattori - A rival high school detective who knows Conan's true identity and is called the "teen detective of the west"

• Sonoko Suzuki - A boy-crazy friend of Ran's. Conan sometimes uses her voice to solve crimes instead of Kogoro's. She is also a big fan of KID, the phantom thief.

• Kaito Kuroba - Kaitou Kid (怪盗キッド Kaitō Kiddo, lit. Phantom Thief Kid) is the secret identity of the main character in the manga and anime franchise Magic Kaito, and a recurring character in the manga and anime franchise Detective Conan.

References

Other websites

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Detective Conan

• Shogakukan, Detective Conan website (in Japanese)
• Gosho Aoyama website Archived 2012-02-16 at the Wayback Machine (in English)