Rating A｜Detective Conan has stuck in a bottleneck in 25th year

On the 25th anniversary of Conan’s movie release, Detective Conan: The Bride of Halloween set a new series record at the local box office in Japan with nearly 10 billion yen. Detective Conan has been popular in Japan for 25 years, and just look at the continuously rising box office, It's a proof of its popularity. Universal Studios Japan has officially announced the detective Conan Park will open in 2023, which shows that Conan’s popularity is equal to Transformers and other world-class IP in Japan.

Detective Conan: The Bride of Halloween

USJ officially announced the establishment of Conan Park

The Kids who grew up with Conan become adults. As it enters its 25th year of serialization, many people said that the plot is getting worse and worse, and the author can no longer wrote a good story. We can only see the outrageous plot in TV version and some "superhero" cliches such as blowing up the Tokyo tower in TV version. Ordinary audiences may find it funny, but fans can only see that Detective Conan may come to a dead end.

Why can't the story be finished in 25 years?

Gôshô Aoyama‘s dream of becoming a mystery manga artist began in primary school: after reading The Sherlock Holmes Mysteries: The Dancing Villain, he became interested in the plot and thus fell in love with mystery.

In 1994, the Japanese speculative manga The File of Young Kindaichi was a huge hit. Thus, the editor of Weekly Shonen Sunday proposed that Ganso can also create a deductive manga. In less than two weeks, Gansho Aoyama created the first popular protagonist wearing glasses. And the name of the protagonist, respectively, homage to Sherlock Holmes and Akechi Kogoro's authors, called "Edogawa Conan”. In the following 25 years, this primary school detective took us on an adventure together and gradually grew into a world-class IP.

After many years, the hero and heroine finally officially announced their relationship

So far, more than 80% of the content in manga are focused on the daily crime cases, the main plot progresses very slowly. At present, the latest plot has developed to reveal who the second in command of the "Kuro no Soshiki" (the villain in the series) is-that is, who is the person code-named Rum? However, this main storyline has only developed less than 10 episodes, and the remaining mainline-related part are all promoting its new movie - Detective Conan: The Bride of Halloween. To put it simply, they actually don’t want to develop the main plot, and if they do, it must be tied to commercial interests.

This is why Detective Conan has been serialized for 25 years, but the plot is advancing extremely slowly-the author doesn't want to draw it.

Movie version, the money-making routine

If there was no accident, Detective Conan should have come to a grand finale in 1996, but Ganso Aoyama suddenly received a call from the editor: "Your manga is too popular, so we are going to adapt it into a movie."

He attached great attention to his first film and participated fully in the creation. With the first movie Detective Conan: The Time Bombed Skyscraper released, it did quite well at the box office.

In the following 25 years, the annual Conan movie has become the expectation of all fans.

Detective Conan: Skyscraper on a Timer

Around 2000 was the period when the Conan movie had the best word-of-mouth. The first seven works are all good, and if you choose one of the best works of all time, I think Detective Conan: The Phantom of Baker Street will be no surprise to top. In terms of plot and deduction, this movie is the strongest ever. The "virtual reality" game envisioned in the movie has also successfully become a reality more than ten years later.

Detective Conan: The Phantom of Baker Street

But the tenth Detective Conan: The Private Eyes' Requiem met its waterloo. As the staff constantly changes, The style of the movies changes.: from 2011’s movie, directed by Kobun Shizuno, it began to develop consistently in the direction of Hollywood blockbuster. Within a few minutes of the opening, a large building shall be blown up. Plus, something like a skateboard going up into the sky and soccer smashing the plane could happen. As a result, such outrageous plots have turned Conan's movies into annual farces.

In fact, the box office has been rising and breaking the record of previous works while the rate is getting lower and lower. The director said in an interview that it was the result of a combination of author requirements and audience research. When the production team pays too much attention on special effects, the script is hardly up to standard quality. This is the result of the market choice, right?

They could be forever young

In Conan’s world, time is relative and unaffected by the real world. We've watched the characters spend countless Valentine's Days and Christmases, and the communication mode has also changed from kiosks to smartphones. But they are still so young, repeating their first-grade lessons.

In Detective Conan: Count Down to Heaven (2001), Haibara Ai uses a public phone to communicate

In 2021, she used a smartphone to call

In his 100 volumes, Ganso Aoyama has used more than 400 kinds of modus operandi, saying that he can no longer think of anything new. To keep thoughts fresh, he studies most of the latest products every month to contemplate new ways of committing crimes, items such as selfie sticks and sweeping robots have been adopted as props. However, these methods cannot cover up the monotony of the plot. Besides, whoever draws homicides for 25 years in a row will fall into creative and aesthetic fatigue. We will remember the surprise when first watching Moonlight Sonata case and the charm of Hattori Heiji and Kid the Phantom Thief. Although Conan has inevitably stuck in a bottleneck, but I still look forward to the finale.

No one will always be young, but they could be forever young. I hope those teenagers can enjoy solving countless cases and live their ideal life in their parallel world.