This weekend, a phenomenon stormed the Japanese box office. Earning 1.05 billion yen ($7M) and seeing some 690,000 visitors to the theater, Detective Conan: One-Eyed Flashback (名探偵コナン 隻眼の残像; meitantei konan sekigan no furasshubakku), the latest flick in the series performed even better than last year’s movie.
One-Eyed Flashback is the 28th (!!!) movie in the series based on the still-running manga from creator Aoyama Gōshō. The TV anime, which began airing in 1996, is (as of this writing) on its 30th season and 1,159th episode. It has been one of the highest-rated anime shows on Japanese TV for decades, making it one of the rare anime in Japan that many people here actually watch.
Known abroad as Case Closed, Conan never caught on in the United States, possibly thanks to questionable decisions around character naming and the overall poor quality of the anime’s dub. However, it’s popular in Vietnam and other countries, with the manga having sold 270 million copies worldwide.
What makes Conan so popular? In a word, it’s fun. It’s also patently ridiculous.
(Note: Minor spoilers for the series follow.)
Detective Conan: The basic story
Police discover Shinichi turned into Conan in a movie re-creation of the pivotal event.
17-year-old detective Kudō Shinichi is a student at Teitan High School in the fictional town of Beikacho in Beika, Tokyo. He’s also a detective renowned across the country for his deductive skills. While many girls fawn over him, he’s mostly attached to his childhood best friend (and eventual girlfriend), Mōri Ran. (The two weren’t “officially” a couple until episodes 927 and 928 of the anime, which aired in 2019.)
Life is all aces for Shinichi until one night at an amusement park, he follows a mysterious man in black and observes an extortion deal. Another man knocks him out from behind. With police in the area, the thugs don’t shoot him but opt instead to force-feed him an experimental drug their organization developed, named APTX4869, that’s meant to be used as an untraceable poison. However, instead of killing him, the pill turns Shinichi into a pre-pubescent elementary schooler.
Shinichi runs to his friend, Dr. Agasa, for help. While there, Ran visits, forcing the young Shinichi to make up an identity on the spot. He christens himself Edogawa Conan, after Japan’s famous mystery author, Edogawa Ranpō, and Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Insanely, Ran’s family agrees to take the child in while his parents supposedly recover from an accident. Ran lives alone with her father, Mōri Kogorō, a former cop, second-rate detective, and chronic alcoholic. While living with his best friend/lover Ran is weird, Conan hopes that staying close to detective Kogorō will get him info about the Black Organization. Meanwhile, Conan and Agasa keep the two convinced that Shinichi is off solving important cases around the world.
Somehow, people keep dying around Conan and the Mōris at an alarming rate. Frustrated by Kogorō’s bumbling attempts to solve the crimes, Conan uses two devices from Agasa – a tranquilizer gun disguised as a watch and a voice-changer – to pretend to be Kogorō. The older detective becomes known across Japan as “Sleeping Kogorō” for his trick of solving mysteries while he’s apparently unconscious.
Conan solves crimes while simultaneously trying to hunt down the people who drugged him. He learns they’re part of a shadowy criminal gang called the Black Organization and go by alcohol-inspired codenames, such as Vodka and Gin. He keeps his identity a secret – especially from Ran, afraid that, if the Organization knows who he is, they’ll come after her.
Life moves slowly in Conan’s world
Haibara Ai a.k.a. Miyano Shiho a.k.a. “Sherry”
I’m not going to try to exhaust the list of characters that comprise this sprawling series. For that, check out the Detective Conan Wiki.
For the most part, the series is highly episodic. The major through-line of the plot moves at a crawl, with Conan and the gang focused mostly on solving a new murder every outing. In the anime, this usually happens in a single episode, but can sometimes span two or even three. Other episodes focus on the Youth Detective Squad or characters such as Hattori and Kaito Kid. Some even—gasp!—move the plot along.
Along the way, Conan collects a colorful cast of characters. Forced to attend elementary school, Conan makes friends with three kids – Genta, Mitsuhiko, and Ayumi – who become the “Youth Detective Squad.” Thanks to Conan, these three are constantly pulled into danger, to the point of almost losing their lives.
Some of the people in Conan’s life know his true identity. Osaka-based boy detective Hattori Heiji quickly roots out Conan’s secret and becomes his ally in hunting down the Black Organization. Heiji remains a recurring character and one of the most popular characters of the series.
Miyano Shiho (her boozy code name is Sherry), a scientist with the Black Organization who helped develop APTX4869, takes it herself in an attempt to commit suicide, instead escaping the organization when it has the same effect on her as it did Shinichi. She comes to live with Dr. Agasa under the name Haibara Ai and becomes a good friend to Conan, devising a temporary antidote that can briefly return him to his Shinichi form.
(There’s debate in the Japanese fandom over whether Haibara’s actually telling Conan the full truth, with some believing she’s holding out on him for various reasons. But that’s a subject for another article, probably on another website.)
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Two additional main characters pop in and out of Conan’s life. Kuroba Kaitō, known as the Kaitō Kid (Kid Thief), is a white-clad Robin Hood-type figure who loves to ridicule the police with his audacious acts of robbery. Kaitō, funny enough, is a dead ringer for Shinichi and uses this to his advantage.
There’s also Amuro Tōru, the 29-year-old member of a secretive police unit who fronts as a detective and the owner of a coffee shop below Kogoro’s detective office/home. Amuro doesn’t know Conan’s true identity, but happily works with – and keeps close tabs on – the suspiciously smart young detective.
Why is Detective Conan so popular?
An ad for the 2025 movie release, One-Eyed Flashback.
This is my second year living in Japan witnessing what happens when a new Conan movie is released before Golden Week. It’s quite the event, filled with an insane volume of cross-promotions and TV appearances. Conan is well-known all year round. He has an attraction at Universal Studios Japan, and manga author Aoyama’s hometown of Hokueichō bears a museum and 12 bronze statues of the series’ characters. But a new movie release cranks this to the next level.
So what makes Detective Conan so popular? Of course, the characters are charming – and everyone has their favorites they come out to see. Amuro Tōru in particular has a large fan base due to his good looks and his aura of mystery.
In an article in President Online, Tanikawa Yoshihiro argues that the movies are a big driver of the series’ popularity. He compares the films to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and notes how, in recent years, they have more of a big-budget Hollywood feel to them. He pins this development to 2013, with the Lupin Sansei/Conan crossover flick. Since then, the movies have been about “town-leveling” spectacles such as 2022’s Bride of Halloween, in which the gang has to destroy parts of the city in order to save it.
Having seen several of the movies in theaters in Japan now, I can agree with this. They’re roller coaster rides of a level one would usually associate with a major Hollywood release. Each film also recaps the basics of Conan’s story for first-time viewers, so that even those unfamiliar with the series can enjoy a given movie in its own merits. This combination of spectacle and accessibility helps explain why Conan flicks keep besting themselves at the box office release after release.
The willing suspension of disbelief gets quite a workout
With that context laid, it’s time to look at some of the more…fishier elements of the series.
Now, before the entire Internet jumps down my throat and starts sending death threats to my dog, let me be clear that I’m a huge Conan fan. Have been for years. I love the series and am already anticipating next year’s film.
However, that enjoyment requires disengaging your brain. If you think about it too hard —by which I mean, at all—a few things stand out.
Conan is an angel of death
Don’t worry, they’ll work through it later in therapy.
One consequence of making nearly every chapter/episode of Conan a murder mystery is that Conan sees a lot of death. One fan estimates that two people die every day around the little bugger. That’s earned Conan the label of a “walking angel of death” (歩く死神; aruku shinigami) from some Japanese fans of the series.
How many people have to die across Japan for Conan to encounter a death literally every day? The Tokyo of Conan’s world sounds like a rougher place to live than the fictional wasteland of the Mad Max series.
The time Ayumi almost got garrotted.
It’s amazing that no one has called child protective services about this kid who’s being exposed to a constant series of murders. It’s doubly amazing that the Youth Detective Squad’s parents let their kids hang out with Ryuk Junior, given how he’s nearly gotten their children killed multiple times. They have to dodge gunfire in the new film too!
Everyone believes the “Sleeping Kogorō” thing
James Randi would not have stood for this.
“Sleeping Kogorō” doesn’t happen every episode. In a few episodes, Mōri—whose comical attempts to solve cases on his own are a recurring source of humor—gets to close a case by his big boy self. Sometimes, Shinichi is on hand to close things out.
For the most part, however, most cases end the same way. Conan tranqs Kogorō, does his voice-changer act, and brings home the bacon.
Like…how?
In the real world, someone would’ve noticed Conan by now pretending to be Kogorō. Skeptics would be crawling out of the woodwork trying to get this trick on tape to analyze every frame and bust Mōri, who’s now a national celebrity thanks to Conan. But in Conan’s Japan, everyone lets this slide.
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The Gaslighting of Mōri Ran
Who are you gonna believe – this cute little kid or your own lying eyes?!
The worst element of the series isn’t logical. It’s ethical.
Conan keeps his identity secret from Ran. How does she never get suspicious, you might ask?
Oh, but she does. Heck, in episode 2 of the series, when Conan tells Ran his made-up name, it immediately reminds her of Shinichi.
Ran has come close to unmasking Conan at least four times. And each time, he manages to deceive her into dropping her doubts.
I won’t go into this too deeply. Instead, you should read Assad Abderemane’s piece in Anime Feminist. While most fans in Japan seem to write this off as protective behavior on Conan’s part, Western fans generally agree this is gaslighting, a form of psychological control that makes the victim doubt their own perception.
We can debate whether a lack of maliciousness on Shinichi’s part makes this any better. But hiding his secret from Ran involves perpetually lying to and, in several cases, undermining her. That’s not exactly the foundation for a stable relationship.
It’s still a fun time
Detective Conan is a silly story. It’s also an easily accessible and fun romp that’s reached blockbuster status in Japan.
When will it end? Will Conan ever catch up to the Black Organization? Will Haibara ever perfect the antidote? No one knows. As of this writing, the series has no projected end date. With author Aoyama still a relatively young 61 years old, it could go on for a decade or more. If and when it does end, it’ll be a spectacle – and the series’ absence will leave a noticeable hole in Japanese pop culture.
Sources
「名探偵コナン」劇場版新作、前作超えのスタート 「８回見た」観客も、山田孝之「聞いたことがない」. Jiji.com
名探偵コナン. Wikipedia JP
Detective Conan’s popularity in different countries. Reddit
【名探偵コナン】23年越しの告白！工藤新一と毛利蘭がついに恋人に！【紅の修学旅行】Renote
ぜ大人も映画館に｢名探偵コナン｣を見に行くのか…年800冊の漫画を読む哲学者が語る”知られざる魅力”. President Online
「名探偵コナン」安室透はなぜ愛されるのか キャラの枠を飛び越える“深い魅力”. Encount
致死率100％！？コナンが歩く死神と呼ばれる理由を徹底解説！Hobby Museum
【考察】アポトキシン4869の解毒剤は本当は完成していた！？灰原がコナンに嘘をついた理由とは！？ Syumi Matome
AloJapan.com