Acceptable Professional Targets: Journalists. Whenever one shows up as a named character, you can bet they'll be a creepy, sleazy douchebag with at least a 50-50 chance of being the Asshole Victim of the day (not to mention the innumerable cases where paparazzi harassment figures into a killer's Motive Rant); the Shiragami case in particular jumps through a lot of hoops to give Makoto Okuda a light punishment because he "only" hospitalized one.
In the beginning of the series, the only clothes Conan is seen wearing are his miniature suit, complete with a bow tie. This combined with his cute ways of expressing his feelings and his Sherlock Holmes obsession create top quality Adorkable material. He can also be classified as an out-and-out mystery geek, not just a Holmes geek.
Conan's dad, Yusaku Kudo is a mystery writer who gets a bit too excited about mysteries. Also, his glasses rock. And his wife/Conan's mom Yukiko mixes this with One of the Kids, Tsundere, and being really damn pretty.
Conan's teacher Sumiko Kobayashi is not only really pretty, but a very sweet Nice Girl who often goes adorkable when she fangirls over her beloved mystery authors and the Japanese Police (she wanted to be a police woman before choosing to become a teacher), or when she tries to become the Detective Kids's "manager". Appropriately, when she and Gentleman Inspector Shiratori get together, her adorkable levels start rubbing off on him.
Kogoro Mouri has been interpreted as having actually figured out Conan is actually solving the crimes for him, or just let him solve it for him while he receives the credit for it. Kogoro isn't a bad detective; he's just got an extreme case of Tunnel Vision and wants things to be done as fast as possible, so he'll come to one conclusion a detective would, but then insist he's right until proven wrong. Whenever Ran or Conan are threatened, he actually becomes scarily competent (Kinda like Inspector Gadget whenever he knows Penny & Brain are threatened). There have been several other times where he actually got it mostly right, and several times where he solved the case and only needed a couple hints from Conan, or in one occasion, not only solved it but got a couple details that Conan missed. (It also helps that he tends to be more street-smart while Conan is more book-smart — Kogoro has more insight into peoples' emotions) Chapters 853-55 reveal that Kogoro believes his "sleeping Kogoro deductions" to just be his true, brilliant self coming to light, with the drowsiness and sleeping a consequence of all his brain cells working at full power. Yeah...
Shinichi Kudo:
Genius or selfish, immature Jerkass who places himself above the others and doesn't really get the meaning of death, especially to their loved ones, and for whom each dead person is nothing but challenge?
You can make the case that he starts out as a selfish Jerkass, but as the series progresses and Character Development sets in, becomes more attuned to the human nature of the cases, especially after the Moonlight Sonata case since in Episode 78 when Miyuki Hyuuga tries to kill herself and Conan thwarts it, Heiji explicitly asks why he did that, and Conan says "a detective that allows a suspect to commit suicide is no better than a murderer", Moonlight Sonata flashback included. An obvious character arc is apparent if one watches the Mountain Villa Bandage Man Murder Case, the Moonlight Sonata Murder Case, the Distinguished Family's Consecutive Accidental Death case, the Dissonance of the Stradivarius Murder Case, and the Detectives' Nocturne in chronological order. Each deals, subtly or greatly, with culprits that either threaten to or are genuinely at risk of suicide, and each reflects a slow difference in how Shinichi deals with this kind of scenario over the course of the series.
Conversely: has being Conan made Shinichi humbler and less insufferable... or has it actually fed his ego by letting him live under someone else's roof for free, rub shoulders with big-time intelligence agencies, and stage long-term webs of lies and manipulations way beyond what he could've managed as "just" Shinichi Kudo?
Some readers interpret that Ran has known Conan is Shinichi all along and is just pretending to not knowing because she thinks that he has good reason for not telling her. Most of her behavior stems from the Kazuha Charm Case with the fingerprint evidence (AKA the most ironclad evidence that one can possibly had) seems to support it.
Is Gin really loyal to the Boss? Or does he only kiss up to him with the hopes of moving up in the Black Organization? The latter is supported by his envy of Vermouth being the Boss's favorite employee and that he'll gladly look for any excuse to terminate her.
Americans Hate Tingle: The show is not truly hated in the US, but it has a small following at best in the United States, compared to the absolute monster of a franchise that it is in its homeland. There're numerous explanations about how it ended up this way.
The most common explanation is that it has an Audience-Alienating Premise. Americans like their gruesome murder mysteries well enough, but prefer them to have adult protagonists, and find the notion of an ordinary high-schooler, let alone one with the physical appearance of a six-year old, to be bafflingly violent or too weird to get invested in, especially for those who are unfamiliar with the Japanese tendency to have deliberately cute, young-looking, or childlike characters even in franchises that go into very dark or violent territory. While stories about crime-solving pre-adolescents or young kids are by no means rare in the States, the general assumption is they're aimed at audiences of similar ages, based on vastly different ideas of what level of violence and gore is appropriate for a children's cartoon. Essentially, fans in the United States like their grisly murders and they like their lighthearted Kid Detective stories, but not both of them together.
Another factor is that its run was Screwed by the Network, both in the US and the Latin America.
Adult Swim bought the right to the series for the US. The problem is, it aired weeknights at 1 a.m., a timeslot that's detrimental for people who have work or school in the morning. Funimation losing the license means that many fans in the states who missed the initial broadcast simply do not have access.
Besides Mexican audiences have the same reasons as Americans on hating the show, there's also the fact the handling of the franchise in Latin America, at least during the first years, was terrible, including very bad dubs, especially the Los Angeles-made one, awful or Japanese-ridden plagiarized translations, etc., something that alienated the Mexican audiences in many levels.
The third most prominent reason is the serious Archive Panic. The fact that it took so long for a proper import means that the cohort of fans in the states who were able to watch the whole thing from the beginning is basically nonexistent - a problem because that's definitely the ideal way of enjoying it. Not to mention that the story moves at a glacial pace even for those who are completely caught up on the plot already. While American audiences are no strangers to anime series that have run for an extremely long time, the ones that do best overseas usually follow mostly serialized stories with long-term plot development (like the Big Three: One Piece, Bleach, and Naruto), whereas Conan's storytelling is mostly episodic and largely static. The story moved slightly faster in the beginning but with over 1000 chapters, delayed import, and significant pacing slowdowns, American audiences not willing to invest their time in searching for unofficial translations and detailed summaries of the arcs they didn't get to see got hit with the effects of Continuity Lock-Out and Arc Fatiguesimultaneously.
Angst? What Angst?: Typical for a shōnen mystery fiction, the main characters are unfazed by witnessing grisly murder scenes virtually every day of their life. However, Case Closed is worse than most other mangas because it features the Detective Boys, Conan's friends at his elementary school. Three of them (Genta, Mitsuhiko, and Ayumi) are only 7-year-old and runs into murder cases at regular basis, but they're just fine by the end of the episode. The fact that people in Case Closed treat crimes with serenity spawned Stock Parodies in its homeland, even used in official media like Detective Conan: The Culprit Hanzawa.
The main story. Started in Chapter 1, it was intermittently advanced for the first couple of years per the story premise, but the updates keep getting farther and farther apart. Some breaks even span a little over two years such as the gap between the Red Shirts case and Mystery Train case, while the Bourbon and Rum arcs take up almost half of the series collectively. Many of the fans who were following the manga since the beginning already have their passion replaced with the obligation to just knowthe ending of manga.
The Heiji/Kazuha romance. Unlike the majority of the other couples (Shinichi being shrunk, Satou mourning her father and first love's death, Kogoro's numerous behavior problems), they have no real reasons to not move their relationship beyond bickering. Hell, it took Kazuha 600 chapters to confess her feelings afternote And when she did, Heiji didn't hear it due to her telling him beforehand that Shinichi had confessed to Ran in London, making him run over to tease Shinichi (who is Conan) about it and 100 more chapters for Heiji to confess back (keep in mind that each of their appearance together are about 15-20 chapters apart). By the time Heiji realizes his feelings for Kazuha, he's attempted several times to have "the moment" to confess to her, only for bad luck or interruptions to prompt him to try again some other time. All of these instances, Kazuha is oblivious to his attempts. Momiji Ooka being introduced as a love rival to Kazuha further drags out the arc. The one time Heiji and Kazuha finally have a moment together with neither of those instances happening thanks to Ran making sure of it, Heiji forgets to confess, much to Conan and Ran's shock and his own dismay when he realizes his mistake as he and Kazuha head back home.
The whole thing about Sera knowing about Conan being Shinichi. The plot could've been avoided if they had just confronted each other directly in a private and secure setting, especially since Conan realizes fairly quickly that Sera isn't a Black Org member, she's actually Akai Shuichi's younger sister, and further, that she's here partially to investigate her brother's death and partially because her mother shrunk from APTX 4869 just like Shinichi himself did. Instead, Conan desperately dodges her attempts at conversation anytime she makes her very thinly veiled references to having history with him as children and knowing his identity and current problem. So thinly, in fact, that she's basically created the reason Conan doesn't trust her, as she keeps trying to force Conan to out himself as Shinichi in the worst times and in front of uninvolved or uninformed people and in insecure and unsafe places, often in front of Ran, from whom Conan has been going to absurd lengths to keep out of the loop, with Sera's lack of tact and poorly-timed invasions of privacy even escalating to her trying to out Haibara and obviously attempting to steal Conan's things, thus giving Conan every reason to feel his paranoia regarding Sera is justified because despite knowing about the Black Org and what it's done to her family, she seemingly still has no respect or understanding of exactly how dangerous the secrets she's trying to expose in unsafe spaces are and how much danger she's potentially putting the targets of her investigation in. By the time Sera makes attempts at a more secure location to speak, Conan is justifiably wary of Sera due to her incredibly reckless behavior. It says a lot that Conan trusts his big secret to a clumsy and ordinary guy like Eisuke Hondou, but not to Sera, a fellow detective with whom he has solved multiple cases.
Even worse, in October of 2018, chapter 1008 dropped one of the biggest plot bombshells of the series. The Boss's identity? Karasuma Renya! But instead of immediately following that up by delving into an investigation into who this character is (like a more naturally-paced mystery series would have, or even like earlier Detective Conan arcs would have), Conan drops this line of investigation as quickly as it appeared and side characters Akai and Yusaku go off to do the plot-relevant interesting investigation offscreen while Conan's time is taken up by other cases. This major bombshell thereafter goes dozens of chapters without being acknowledged, seemingly not treated like a big deal. Also, 2018 saw the series release schedule slow down massively due to Aoyama's health, to the point that it only managed to get one volume out over the course of that year and, as of 2023, the topic of Karasuma Renya the Big Bad still hasn't been followed up on at all.
Archive Panic: The manga started in 1994 and has passed 1000 chapters in 2021. The animated adaptation has all of the manga's and adds its original Filler episodes. There has been a yearly Non-Serial Movie in production since 1997, which means there are 24 movies by 2021. Late-2010s introduced more spin-off mangas like Detective Conan: Zero's Tea Time, some of which have its own animated adaptation. The only consoling factor is that because the main story about the Black Organization suffers from a huge Arc Fatigue, most of the series consist of standalone mini-stories that only require basic knowledge for established characters and you don't have to worry about Continuity Lockout too much unless it's related to the Black Organization.
In Tokyo Serial Bombing Case finale, Conan manages to to both in a span of four seconds: cut all the remaining cables in the bomb to deactivate it; and identify accurately that "EVIT" means "EVITCETED" or "DETECTIVE" in reverse, which needs to be translated into Japanese "Tantei", and then be reversed again into "Teitan". This is a glaring problem for some fans, that an Amateur Sleuth with barely any experience in a bombing case (save for a Non-Serial Movie) can both survive the ordeal and save the day, while Matsuda — a former member of a bomb squad from Mobile Police unit — managed to save people but unable to make it out alive.
The identity of the supposed "boss" of the Black Organization — Renya Karasuma can come out of nowhere for some fans. The character in question was introduced as a long dead billionaire in volume 30, 17 years IRL before his connection to the Organization was revealed. There's vague thread tying them together, with "Karasu" meaning crow and crows being the Organization's semi-recurring Animal Motif, but you'll find few fans willing to count that as substantial enough for genuine Foreshadowing.
Audience-Alienating Premise: Cited as the reason the series failed in North America, Mexico included, especially among mainstream audiences. Its premise about a teenager trapped in a little boy's body solving murder mysteries was considered too dark for children and too childish and ridiculous for older audiences. Made even worse by having thousands of episodes, which will alienate anyone from North America from committing to such a long series, considering the fact that many episodes already aired in Japan years before they were officially translated overseas.
Apart from being an awesome song in its own right, whenever "Kimi ga Ireba" (the vocal version of the movie opening theme) starts playing in one of the Non Serial Movies, something awesome is usually about to happen — most often, some unsuspecting baddie is about to receive the butt-kicking of a lifetime. Sometimes they use "Boku ga Iru" instead just for variety.
"Step by Step" by Ziggy and "Nazo" by Miho Komatsu are two of the most well-known Case Closed songs, especially the former which was quite a hit in the '90s, even non-Case Closed fans can immediately recognize the song due to their distinctive intro.
TWO-MIX's song "Living Daylight", while not exactly used as a theme song, made a guest appearance as an In-Universe clue for the abduction crime in "The Kidnapping of a Popular Artist Case".
From the same case as above, there is also another song by TWO-MIX "Break", an upbeat song which In-Universe happens to be one of few J-Pop songs Conan actually likes. Kinda sad when one reads the lyrics of "Break" while knowing Conan likes to sing this song in the karaoke box.note Break my lies. Run after her back again. Save my heart. She's waiting for you to hug her. Now, return to love.
Jodie was vital in the battle of wits against Vermouth during her arc. Later, when Akai becomes a series regular, poor Jodie is just another FBI agent who along with the rest of them get fooled by the Black Organization before Conan and Akai clean up their mess.
Kazuha was introduced as a spitfire martial arts champion who can go toe to toe with Ran. Later appearances have mellowed her out by a significant amount without any explanation and have her barely do any fighting at all, even in situations where she would get to show off her skills. Most notably is her reaction to Momiji Ooka's blatant flirting with Heiji compare to her first reaction to just suspecting that Ran might be interested in Heiji.
Kogoro. Some like him for his occasional funny moments and arcs for when he shows competence, but others hate him for his Small Name, Big Ego, his stupidity often derailing cases, outright ignoring evidence if he finds the culprit attractive, and for his borderline abuse towards Conan. It doesn't help that anime filler episodes tend to Flanderize his worst traits.
The Detective Boys, usually written off as annoying kids, mostly due to their frequent appearances in filler episodes. Not helping as they can often come across as The Load on more serious cases, often causing trouble for Conan right when he's in the middle of a deduction or confronting the killer. On the other hand, they have been consistently scoring high in popularity votes and their Character Development as of late has won over some of their previous haters.
Sera initially received almost unanimous positive reception by a fanbase that craved a female sleuth, and the mystery surrounding her doubled the interest. But she's wearing out her welcome among some fans due to her being the main conflict driver in one of the most frustrating subplots of the entire series: the conflict between her and Conan, with Sera apparently being willing to compromise Conan's dangerous secrets for her own convenience and benefit in public and Conan subsequently being unwilling to share the information she's trying to pressure out of him. Her subplot is made even more frustrating by the fact that focusing on her has noticeably slowed the main plot down even further, and the apparent lack of common sense and self-centered, tactless entitlement towards others' secrets that Sera has displayed during this conflict has frustrated a good number of readers. Presently, depending on who you ask, she either continues to be a refreshing addition to the reoccurring cast or is a major (and majorly annoying) roadblock actively diverting focus away from characters and plots that need more attention.
KID is generally well-liked, although he does have his detractors who either do not see him in as positive and heroic a light as the narrative treats him with or who see his appearances as another annoying and repetitive type of filler diversion from the main plot. However, more recently the truly big break regarding his character has been his changing characterization in the franchise as time goes on, which has caused some Fanon Discontinuity regarding a variety of his appearances. While many fans are ecstatic at any and all new KID-related content, some fans complain that the films in particular frequently distort KID's characterization in a negative and more morally ambiguous way than his characterization in other related media would align with, and thus reject and even outright dislike his Detective Conan film incarnation. KID's actions in the 23rd film, The Fist of Blue Sapphire, seem to have exasperated this divide.
A number of fans consider "anime original" episodes (episodes written specifically for the TV series by its own writers, rather than adaptations of issues of the single-author manga) to be of generally inferior quality.
Canon filler cases. Many readers have noticed the repetitive nature of the cases Gosho's been writing. Particularly, the many three-act-structure casesnote (3 chapters that follow a copy-and-paste format where a case occurs that Conan and company witness. Then, Conan and company talk it out to figure out who the killer is amongst three suspects, and finally, Conan and company reveal who the killer is) that don't have anything to do with Character Development, the Black Organization, or even being a complex case, in any way. While there are those that like reading through these cases as they are deemed canon, and are 90+ percent of the time better than actual filler cases created by the anime adaptation, there are also those who are sick of these constant Padding cases as detractors claim that they add nothing to the overall world/story, and is just Gosho stretching out his manga.
The Black Organization's Bourbon turning out to be another spy that has infiltrated the organization to try to destroy it from within. While some are glad that Bourbon turned out to be a more complex character with a good side apart from being just another evil henchman, others find it to be repetitive since this is now the third time Gosho has pulled this plot-line after the B.O. members, Rye and Kir, had already used the exact same stunt. Some are also disappointed that due to Bourbon's characterization, it lowers the threat of the organization as a whole. When Vermouth mentions to said spy, offhand, even Gin considers the Organization to be "full of rats".
The multi-part chapters of Conan VS Kaito Kid. Some find them entertaining and intense, trying to figure out Kid's tricks upon tricks to gain a treasure and whether Conan will be able to prevent the theft. Others find them boring since it's the same routine, with Kid dressing up as the most unlikely person, faces getting pinched and Sonoko's uncle being an attention seeker but always getting overshadowed by Conan.
The Heiji monster cases as of recent. On one hand, they're some of the more complex cases that it's interesting to see how it all unfolds by the end of them. On the other hand, they always follow the same format revealing that the monster is a fake by the end of it that it gets incredibly annoying to see the characters act like a monster could end up being real when they come across another monster case. Particularly with Ran and Kazuka. No matter how many times a monster is revealed to be fake, the two girls will ALWAYS be scared.
Which of the films are quality and which, if any, are bad. Some find the newer ones increasingly engaging and enjoy them branching off into other subjects or attempting to explore and further develop side characters; others find the circumstances and stakes to be increasingly ridiculous and destructive to the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Particularly often subject to mixed reactions are films 11, 16, 19, and 21, which all feature scenes fans have found either refreshingly unique for the series or utterly contrived. Some particularly well-known examples would be the near-airplane crash in 19 that Conan runs directly in front of for seemingly no reason and "the satellite scene" from 21 in which Conan escapes a burning building by spinning around the inside of a satellite dish on his skateboard.
The Chris Carter Effect: The franchise is still very lucrative and popular in its native country of Japan and in many parts of the world, but the years of Arc Fatigue no matter what arc the story is actually on, and the lack of faith that Aoyama will significantly develop the overarching plot any time soon, has caused many, usually grown-up fans to lose interest. While the overall cast is likable, the manga's success as Cash-Cow Franchise delayed its story progress to an absurd extent, to the point some readers gave up on the main story and only stay for individual character episodes. Over the manga's runtime of decades, a constant invocation of Invincible Villain, Status Quo Is God and So Last Season with practically no signs of progress in the Myth Arc soured the series permanently for some readers, makes it very hard for them to get invested in the story.
"Old Blue Castle" case: Mutsumi Nishikawa was a maid working for the Mamiya family who became obsessed with finding the treasure the family patriarch left in his castle. To this end, Mutsumi set fire to one of the castle's towers to fake her death, killing over a dozen people, and then killed and impersonated Masuyo Mamiya. When a man was hired to investigate the tower, Mutsumi starved him to death and dumped his body in the woods. When Professor Agasa and the Detective Boys arrive at the castle, Mutsumi stalks and attacks them, gloating about her plan to starve all of them to death so they wouldn't get between her and the treasure.
"Metropolitan Police Detective Love Story III—The Case of Masayoshi Sato": The unnamed arsonist is a gleefully sadistic man who desires to "light up" Tokyo with flames. Before the events of the case, the arsonist started several fires across the city and also stabbed an innocent man to death. When witnessed starting another fire by the Detective Boys, the arsonist tries to kill them with a smile on his face. After his arrest, it is revealed that the arsonist had planned to blow up a fuel warehouse and burn the entire city down in a "beautiful carnival" of flames.
The Time-Bombed Skyscraper: Teiji Moriya is an architect with a violent obsession with symmetry. Unsatisfied with his past asymmetrical works, he plans to destroy them in disproportionately violent ways while taking revenge on Shinichi Kudo, who had unintentionally wronged him in the past. Starting by burning down four of his past works, he stole bomb-making materials and created plastic explosives to play a game of cat-and-mouse with Shinichi and the Tokyo police, bombing a park with children in it, a public square, and the Tokyo railway, causing further chaos by designing the bombs so that they explode if the trains slow down, forcing them to speed up. When finally revealed, he attempts to blow up his own house and take the detectives with him. After being arrested, he reveals his greatest plan, destroying his "ultimate disgrace", a skyscraper and a major city center, starting by bombing the exits so that more people will die, all the while taunting Kogoro and Shinichi about Ran being trapped underneath the rubble, with the largest bomb, about to die.
Quarter of Silence: Keisuke Yamao is an unemployed villager of Kitanosawa who had been living with a gambling addiction. To pay his debt, he had raided a jewelry store, killed the owner of the store, and stole the diamonds. While driving drunk to his hideout, Yamao accidentally kills the younger sister of his friend Mizuki Toono, and while disposing of her body, the son of his other friend Fuyumi Tachihara witnesses the scene. When Yamao attempts to kidnap him, he accidentally causes Touma to fall from a cliff. After hiding the diamonds Yamao confesses his crime and is sent to jail. Eight years after, when Yamao discovered that the place where he had hidden his jewels are submerged in a dam, and that his past would be revealed, he tries to kill those aware of his past and bomb the dam to recover the diamonds, which would kill many innocents, all to Yamao's apathy, if not delight.
The Bride of Halloween: Plamya, true identity Christine Richard, Tsutomu Muranaka's fiancée, is a terrorist hailing from Russia who had planted numerous bombs in the past, leading to countless people losing their loved ones, including Yelenika Lavrentyeva's child. Having her bomb disabled by Rei Furuya and other police in the past, Plamya tried tried to take revenge by planting a collar bomb on Rei's neck and cover up her tracks by blowing Oleg Lavrentyev up. Growing paranoid over the possibility of the Detective Boys knowing her tracks, Plamya attempted to kill them with a bomb trap. When ultimately exposed, Plamya attempted to gun down everyone in the wedding room with a maniacal smile on her face, and when cornered, she gleefully revealed that she had massive explosive planted in Shibuya during a crowded Halloween party, perfectly willing to engulf Shibuya in a humongous explosion solely to hide her true identity.
Continuity Lock-Out: For a manga that started in 1994 and reached 100th volume in 2021, it's not as awfully confusing as it seems because most of the series consist of self-contained stories that only require basic knowledges of the characters (which is more true with Non-Serial Movie). Still, the series has many issues that make the read so difficult:
The biggest issue is the main story revolving the Black Organization due to Arc Fatigue and The Chris Carter Effect. People following the manga in real-time often forget what's going on and Archive Binge viewers usually have the same issue because the episodes are too spread thin through the entire series. Skipping early episodes will not help things because the story has become a Kudzu Plot that makes it more difficult to follow.
Magic Kaito, Gosho Aoyama's previous manga, received a Canon Welding into Case Closed and its characters became a regular cast. The titular Kaito Kid gets a proper introduction in this series, but everyone else from Magic Kaito appears in this series without such, making viewers confused. People often don't recognize Aoko Nakamori (Kaito's love interest resembling Ran) and Ginzo Nakamori (a police inspector chasing Kaito), and they're even more confused about Saguru Hakuba (a detective chasing Kaito, who is more obscure than the previous two).
In the U.S. Since it aired at such a late time even for the [adult swim] schedule, the show never found that strong a following compared to its massive success in Japan. The manga, however, does have a decent enough fan-following and Viz has been translating the graphic novels for over a decade now (they're past Volume 60!)
The anime seems to be this in Latin America, specially in Chile. As a proof, the anime stopped being dubbed in Los Angeles several years ago — but a second dub began to be made and broadcasted in Chile.
Designated Hero: Heizo Hattori during the Tiger Scroll Murder Case. To start, he punches Heiji (and not in the cartoony way Kogoro normally does with Conan) and gives him a "Reason You Suck" Speech because he got careless during the investigation. By the end of the case, it's revealed that it was all a Batman Gambit to enrage Heiji enough to act as bait for the culprit. So, not only did he physically abuse his son, he could have gotten him killed if something went wrong. You know something is wrong when the only person who calls him out for how he acted was Kogoro, who isn't exactly a shining example of a good parent in this series himself.
Designated Monkey: Takagi. Though he does lose some of the uncertainty that makes him such a monkey as time goes on. For instance, in "The Man Who Called for an Ambulance" he ends up delivering a lecture to a more senior detective about jumping to conclusions that Conan silently applauds. However, it looks like he will always be a monkey where his relationship with Satou is concerned. Until she lets him know that her heart has been with him all the time.
Ran from the Conan/Haibara fans, as already mentioned. Surprisingly, the Shinichi/Heiji shippers are more respectful, or at least leave her out.
Some particularly rabid Shinichi/Ran shippers seem to feel pretty threatened by Masumiand Ran's close friendship, enough to accuse Sera of trying to steal Shinichi's girlfriend from him, and/or of being an "offensive lesbian stereotype".
Lately, the Akai/Jodie and Akai/Akemi fans have been seen ducking it out. The rabid Akai/Jodie fans tend to see Akemi as "stealing" Akai's heart from poor Jodie even post mortem despite Jodie "deserving" his affection more in their view, while the rabid Akai/Akemi fans accuse all Akai/Jodie fans of being Akemi haters and insist that he only considered Akemi as his true love and still does after her murder.
The peaceful Heiji/Kazuha corner has been shaken up by the apparition of Momiji Ooka, a potential Amateur Sleuth who wants to marry Heiji. (Plus, she's rumored to have a shared past with him). Some think she's a potentially fun addition to their dynamics, others believe her to be a bitch out to steal Heiji from Kazuha, and others fear that she'll just be used as a plot device to bring Heiji and Kazuha closer.
Since being imported into Detective Conan, Kaitou Kid has consistently been ranked as the 2nd most popular character in the series behind only Conan himself. The only time he wasn't ranked second was when he was ranked first.
The Kaitou Kid's rival, Hakuba Saguru, being something of an ensemble Dark Horse within Magic Kaito itself, still has a rather large fan following among Detective Conan fans, despite having only appeared in two DC story arcs and sort-of one movie.
Amuro Tooru is a very beloved figure among the female fanbase and even more so when his backstory and his status as a double agent for the Black Organization was revealed. The 20th movie, with him as a major player in it, opened at #1 just a week after it premiered in theatres.
Sonoko's Adorkablesuper boyfriendMakotoKyogoku keeps bringing more and more fangirls (and hype) with each of his appearance. Leading to Sonoko's actress resolving to notify the public one week prior to the episode containing Makoto's appearance. Makoto was also, in his highest place, placed 8th in popular ranking to boot. He is confirmed to be the major player rivaling Kaitou Kid in Conan's 23rd movie.
Shuichi Akai holds a stable amount of fandom for being a Friendly Sniper, and rivals Amuro in Conan merchandise due to Akai's Relationship Voice Actor ( as well as his similar double agent characteristic) stats with Amuro Tooru. He is confirmed to be on the roster for year 2020's 24th movie.
The trio detectives of Yamato, Uehara and "Koumei" Morofushi are pretty popular as well for being one of the more interesting characters introduced in the filler cases. The fandom generally agree that the filler cases are generally more bearable if these three appeared instead of Yamamura. The case that they introduced in is one of the more interesting and dramatic cases also doesn't hurt.
For a one-shot character, Natsuki Koshimizu was surprisingly popular in the Detective Koshien case. It helps that she was a female Amateur Sleuth with a tomboyish nature. There was even plans for a video game starring her. However Aoyama declined on the grounds that she was the special's Sympathetic Murderer, therefore a criminal. Although she was the inspiration and basis for future character Masumi Sera.
Reiko Kujo, a prosecutor attorney anime original character, also became this for her interesting relationship with fan-favorite Eri and especially after her Hidden Depths is reviewed in her A Day in the Limelight episode. She is to-date the only anime-exclusive character who continuously appeared more than one episode and played a major role.
Matsuda Jinpei, Satou's ex-half-boyfriend, appeared only in flashbacks for about three episodes, having died years before the events of the manga began, yet he got his own keyhole appearance on the back cover and is sometimes considered one of the (admittedly numerous) main characters.
The Criminal, the black silhouette character stand-in present in every investigation, became wildly popular with the fanbase. It's enough for the character itself to have its own spinoff manga.
Vermouth has been consistently ranked high in popularity poll ever since her introduction, even if she has only sparing appearances compared to the other Black Organization members. This is because of her design, coolness and complex relationship with Shinichi and Ran.
A particular fan theory is that Eri's cat, Goro, is the Boss of the Black Organization. Or Yusaku. Or Dr. Agasa.
As for Subaru, There are two main theories in fandom about his identity: he either is the high-ranked Organization member Bourbon (always alluded to, and hinted to be very powerful and dangerous), or Shuichi Akai who is now Faking the Dead.The last one turned out to be true.
As for Sera, The fandom wonders if she's related to Shuuichi Akai. Also confirmed in the manga: She's his younger sister.
A mysterious young girl showed up in 2014. Theories about her identity have been running wild, some of them being: "She is Ai's mother, Elena only shrunk", "she is Sera's never-seen mother, only shrunk" and "She is "Sera's middle brother", only shrunk".The second one is the closest to the truth.
There's the deal of Sera's "middle brother", where the most popular "option" is Shukichi Haneda.972 also confirms it.
The identity of the supposed Number Two of the B.O., Rum. The biggest "suspects" of being this person are: Hyoue Kuroda, Kansuke Yamato note (Jossed in an interview released in December 2018), Rumi Wakasa, and Kanenori Wakita. Chapter 1066 reveals it's the last one.
Ran finding out Conan is Shinichi is mostly done among fans.
A significant subset of these have her breaking it off with Shinichi as a result, usually so Shinichi can get together with either Kaito or Hattori. These are almost always written from Shinichi's perspective, and depending on the writer's individual taste, may portray Ran sympathetically (and possibly in a relationship with Sonoko, Sera, or Eisuke) or give her a full-on Ron the Death Eater treatment.
There’s another subset where Ran knew all along, but kept quiet for his safety.
Anyone else besides Conan gets shrunk by the APTX 4869. Ran is often picked on for this, as is KID.
Akemi Miyano having survived her death at Gin's hands. It's optional to have her shrink by the APTX 4869, which led to her being reunited with Shiho, now Ai Haibara, being shrunk by the same drug.
KID and Conan teaming up to take down the Black Org, who are usually written to be the same organization as Magic Kaito's crime syndicate.
Fan Nickname: The Chinese fandom calls the Black Organization 酒廠 (brewery). With the reveal that just about every recurring B.O. character not Gin or Vodka is The Mole, flagrantly incompetent, or liable to Heel Face Turns, it's frequently joked that the "brew" has been increasingly watered down.
Fanon: Virtually any fanfic that examines the Black Organization's workings in-depth - and plenty that don't - will take it for granted that they have infiltrators at all levels of Japan's (and possibly other countries') police forces, usually to justify Shinichi's (highly selective) secret-keeping and paranoia. The first time canon even hinted at this idea was the Rum arc, and as detailed above, Rum turned out to be someone totally unconnected with the police; most if not all other times, the Organization and the police are kept to totally-segregated cases that barely even seem to exist in the same universe.
Friendly Fandoms: From The New '10s on, it's become extremely common for fans of this series to also be into the Persona franchise — especially since Persona 5 tends to be Westerners' other big introduction to Kogoro Akechi.
The series — especially the manga — is very popular in Indonesia. As of May 2016, the translation has been keeping up with the latter 88 volumes.
Also the Germans in the case of the anime. They have one of the best fansubbing projects, and Keep Circulating the Tapes of the German dubbed episodes scarily efficiently. These fans also cut together an uncut edition from the Japanese original and the German dubbed Edited for Syndication versionthis means in practice: The video is the original except for the title card and occasionally opening song, but the audio is the dub except for Deleted Scenes where it's back to Japanese.
The anime is adored in Chile, too: even though the (So Bad, It's Good) dub was discontinued since the Los Angeles-based studio was shut down andthe dub itself had a very difficult production, a Chilean TV cable held several re-runs through the years, and as of November 2014 a new dub made in Chile started to be aired there...
The anime is extremely famous in Spain, to the point where fans recently started begging on Twitter for the discontinued European Spanish dub to come back to TV — and they've seen some sucess, since Alfa Pictures has now released dubs for the 22nd and 23rd movies featuring a large number of the original dub's cast.
Catalunya deserves special notice, as they boast the longest-running dub of the series ever — that is to say, the only dub that has managed to run uninterrupted from its start in 2001 to the present day. As of 2020 they have dubbed over 900 episodes and counting, plus every single movie to date.
Detective Conan and Doraemon shared the status as THE most popular mangas in Vietnam by any metrics. The official manga regularly sold out at 100,000 paperbacks per volume note For comparison, One Piece and Naruto printed 20,000 paperbacks per volume.
Despite varying degrees of censorship on TV, the anime is popular in the Arab world, to the point where Detective Conan is the longest Arabic dub in terms of episode count.
The very first full-length murder case involves a murder via decapitation in a closed segment of a roller coaster. While not murder, in Real Life in 2016, Verrückt, one of the largest water slides in the States (which had frequent safety issues and nonfatal but long term rider injuries) had to be closed after the son of a prominent politician had been decapitated after being thrown off.
The Non-Serial Movie released in April 2001 (Countdown to Heaven) happened to be about a pair of Twin Towers being bombed, with many being trapped on the upper floors of the burning skyscrapers as sections of the structure begin to collapse. Even worse, in the film the bombings were a planned controlled explosion by an undercover crime syndicate — which happens to include corrupt politicians within its membership — which pretty much gets away without having any suspicion pointed towards any of its members, which is exactly what many 9/11 conspiracy theorists believe.
The 29th episode of the anime is about a computer programmer who writes a program with the intent of hijacking his boss's thermostat, causing it to repeatedly rise and fall over the night to aggravate his heart condition (And cause him to die in his sleep of a heart attack). At the time this episode was originally made (1996), this was quite an outlandish premise. Not so much with WiFi compatible devices and smart homes being able to be accessed remotely, making this murder almost eerily prophetic.
Ho Yay: Chapter 1020 will probably go down in history as "that chapter where Hattori tried to make out with Kaitou KID." Granted, KID was disguised as Kazuha at the time, but considering the reader has been following KID's internal perspective for the heist, we the reader base are fully aware of what's going on.
Hollywood Homely: Sera, who is supposedly unattractive because she looks like a boy despite being drawn with quite feminine features. Just compare her when she is standing next to Ran.
"The Moonlight Sonata Murders": Seiji Asoh is the son of Keiji Asoh, the true identity of Doctor Narumi Asai and the culprit behind the murders on Tsukikage Island. Seeking to avenge the deaths of the Asoh family, Seiji begins murdering those responsible, playing a recording of the "Moonlight Sonata" as a funeral piece for each of them. Seiji drowns Hideo Kawashima so the Japanese Police will have to examine the body on the mainland, leaving him as the only doctor on the island. Seiji then kills Tatsuji Kuroiwa, using the recording of the Sonata and his medical knowledge to create an alibi for himself. Seiji then murders Ken Nishimoto, making his death look like a suicide and writing a note saying that he's the real murderer. When his crimes are discovered, Seiji calmly burns himself to death along with his father's beloved piano, spending his last moments thanking Conan for his kindness.
"Murder at the Ski Lodge": Akiko Yonehara is a cheerful former teacher of Ran and Sonoko who's out to deliver justice to two of her colleagues who murdered her student. Inviting all of her coworkers to a ski lodge, Akiko murders Sugiyama before everyone arrives, then fakes an attack on herself and Sonoko in order to give herself an alibi. She then strengthens her alibi by rigging Sugiyama's body to be found at a set time where everyone is in the same place. Not knowing the identity of the other murderer, Akiko invites a reporter connected to the student's death to the lodge and leaves subtle clues to her true intentions in order to cause Sugiyama's cohort, Kohei Shimoda to panic and reveal himself. Akiko then strangles Kohei with her wig to obfuscate his death and when exposed admits fully to her crimes and expresses regret that she had to hurt Sonoko to get what she wanted.
"Mysterious Clocks": Monjiro Izubuchi was a criminal known as "The Demon" and the leader of the gang of thieves known as "The Goblins". After several years of successful criminal activity, Monjiro decided to retire and distributed his stolen goods among the gang while keeping a valuable set of diamonds for himself. Years later, Monjiro decides to give a gift to his beloved granddaughter Misao. Gifting his house to Misao when he dies, it's revealed that he set up an intricate puzzle within the house, with the ultimate prize being a watch containing the diamonds as his gift to Misao.
"The Actor's Apartment and the Two Rooms": Kozaburo Hijikata is a famous actor who schemes to murder his cheating wife and frame Hajime Okita. Inviting Kogoro Mouri to his apartment under the pretense of teaching him how to act like a detective, Kozaburo rigs his wife's corpse to fall on an adjacent balcony so Ran and Conan will see it. In order to frame Hajime, Kozaburo makes his rooms on the fifth and sixth floors look identical so his guests think that they are on the fifth floor when they're really on the sixth. When everyone runs to get the police, Kozaburo lowers the body onto the balcony of Hajime's apartment a floor below so he will look like the killer. When accused by Conan and Kogoro, Kozaburo points out that the evidence used doesn't prove he's the killer, and Conan is only able to find the damning evidence by pure luck, with Kozaburo quietly accepting his arrest while complimenting Kogoro.
"Murder on the North Star Express and the Unpublished Novel": Toshinori Kaetsu is a former member of Yasuji Asama's gang who initially began working for Keitaro Izumo as part of a plan to rob his store. However after his girlfriend died from a drug overdose, Kaetsu began planning to kill Asama for getting her hooked on drugs, and Izumo for being a drug dealer. Lying to Asama by telling him that Izumo wanted his store robbed to get insurance, the robbery is botched when Izumo hits the alarm, causing people to believe that he caused the robbery to look like a hero. Kaetsu then tricks the two into getting on the same train and beats Asama to death, then shoots Izumo while disguised as Asama and rigging his body to fall out of the train, making it seem as if Asama killed Izumo, then died accidentally while trying to escape. When Yukiko Kudo claims to have evidence that would expose Kaetsu he plans to kill her, being only seconds away from succeeding when he's finally caught.
Conan, the Death God. Explanation The amount of people that have died whenever Conan is in the vicinity has led to a lot of jokes that he's somehow responsible. Something of an Ascended Meme, as the reoccuring police officers at one point started quipping about this in-story.
Everyone is related to Akai Shuichi.Explanation The Akai family, an expansion on the background of the Ensemble Dark Horse character Akai Shuichi, are relative latecomers to the series but continue to have twist reveals about relationships and thus frequently retroactively gain family members from the preestablished cast. There have so far been five characters in the last two arcs who have been revealed to secretly be related to Akai Shuichi, three of whom predate the concept of his family as an addition to the cast. Occasionally this meme takes the form of the Spongebob Squarepants joke in which everybody is Squidward.
Did Kaito Kid just leak exam questions?Explanation During the 2022 National High School Graduation Examination in Vietnam, a Facebook page under the name "Kaito Kid" managed to "predict" the literary works that would be featured in the Literature exams. Should we mention that the person behind the page had done this twice? Given his reputation as a Gentleman Thief, and the manga's popularity in Vietnam, interests on Kaito Kid (the character) skyrocketed to the point that the word "Kaito Kid" became the most trending topic on Twitter. Overseas fans become absolutely astonished and also baffled by this phenomenon.
Shinichi's Yearly ClobberingExplanation Each Non-Serial Movie always starts with Shinichi retelling his origin story via flashback, including the near fatal clock to the head Gin gives him
"When I woke up, I changed voice actors!"Explanation Another joke concerning Shinichi's origin story
The power of science is amazingExplanation Each Non-Serial Movie generally tends to run on Rule of Cool, and Serial Escalation means that the awesome death-defying moment often turns into a full physics defying one. The Chinese calls these moments "柯學" (replacing the first character of the Chinese for "science" with the first character of Conan's Chinese name).
Conan Edogawa, patron god of examinations.Explanation Since The New '10s, if not earlier, Chinese students often post pictures of Conan Edogawa on the doors to their dorm rooms. Why? In Mandarin Chinese, "Posting (lit. hanging) Conan" has the same pronunciation as "Impossible to flunk".
"Obama's on the train?!" Explanation From thisGag Dub of the series, where Conan tells a pair of police officers there's a bomb on the train they're on, and they mishear it as "Obama's on the train." This audio clip spawned a good number of animations with various characters acting out that scene.
Mis-blamed: Neither Funimation nor Viz Media changed the title “Detective Conan” to "Case Closed". That change was actually requested by the Japanese editors to avoid copyright infringements/confusions with another Market-Based title: Conan the Barbarian.
Narm Charm: The 8th opening (Koi wa Thrill, Shock, Suspense) features Conan dancing with a completely serious face, which can come off as silly to first-time watchers, but long time fans of the anime are able to take it at face value since the theme song is very iconic and memorable, and it only adds to the nostalgia-factor.
One-Scene Wonder: The character sheet has a special part for these. Jinpei Matsuda, though, is worth specific mention.
Periphery Demographic: Let's see. Attractive male characters? Many prominent competent and well-written female characters (majority of whom are Action Girl)? Numerous romance subplots? No wonder the show has a large female fanbase.
Quirky Work: The series is about a teenage detective trapped in a six-year-old boy via Applied Phlebotinum, who solves morbid and seemingly impossible crimes with many gadgets (anesthetic included) while keeping his acquaintances in the dark. This premise is regarded as the reason it never caught on in the North America because it's considered too silly as a serious Mystery Fiction and too violent for kids.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Yumi Miyamoto was not well liked due to her shallowness and lack of contributing to the Case of the Week, as evidenced by her low placement in popularity poll. The introduction of her romance with Shukichi Haneda allows her to be more involved in the case and display tremendous Hidden Depths has redeemed her in the eyes of many fans.
The Scrappy: Misao Yamamura, the police officer from Gunma Prefecture. Like other cops in Case Closed, he plays Police Are Useless trope so that Conan can overshadow him, but unlike other officers, he hardly ever learns anything. Even Kogorō comes off as a more mature person than him most of the time when both are in the scene. He also doesn't really acknowledge Conan's skill and thinks he, as well as Heiji, is still learning from Kogorō. While other police inspectors like Megure and Yokomizou twins have grown better as the series progress, he remains an idiot and his role as a Plucky Comic Relief had stopped excusing his actions for many fans. His belief of superstition and tendency to suspect the heroes does not help at all.
Seasonal Rot: One consensus the fandom generally agrees about Case Closed, regardless of where they're from (Japan or otherwise), is that the series has long passed the point where it should've ended and the quality suffered in transition to Cash-Cow Franchise. However, opinions greatly vary about when it started to decline. Here's a general breakdown about which demographic took issue with it at points:
Readers who gave up on the series the earliest are those who think Case Closed should've stayed as a short series as it was originally planned (the author Gosho Aoyama repeatedly said on interviews, like on Yomiuri for the anime's 10th anniversary in 2006, that he expected it to last no more than three months). Once the series expanded into a franchise and Strictly Formula became a norm, they felt the suspense was no longer there and deemed it not worth reading. This type of readers usually only count the series up to late 1990s or early 2000s (which include roughly first 30 volumes in manga, where characters like Heiji Hattori and Ai Haibara took focus) and will disregard everything after it.
Those who followed the main story of the Black Organization were satisfied with their increased focus in mid 2000s (around which characters like Jodie and Shūichi Akai came in action), only to be disappointed by not improving Arc Fatigue in meaningful way. The series showed with each arc that members of the Black Organization wear Joker Immunity and "Status Quo Is God" motto, driving itself into Kudzu Plot where it introduces more new characters and mysteries than it solves them. While this helped revitalizing the franchise to new fans (Tōru Amuro, a character introduced in 2012, got popular enough to get his spin-off), some old fans took this as a sign that there will never be a proper ending on the way as long as it stays as a Cash-Cow Franchise, leading them to drop the series.
If you support Childhood Friend Romance, then Shinichi/Ran, Heiji/Kazuha, and Kaito/Aoko is for you. To get Haibara out of the way, pair her up with Mitsuhiko, who already has a crush on her. You might also include non-related ships like Eri/Kogoro and Satou/Takagi along with Shiratori/Kobayashi (which is canon already) and Genta/Ayumi.
Frequently Shinichi/Kaito fans get Ran out of the way by having her and Shinichi's relationship blow up and then pairing her off with Eisuke, Hakuba, or Sera.
Chinese fansite forums have very specifically banned threads comparing Shinichi/Ran and Conan/Ai.
One English-language forum keeps the Shinichi/Ran and Conan/Ai shippers to their own separate threads. Sometimes, you can't even discuss the Ran or Ai as stand-alone characters without the thread dissolving into a shipper war when either character's relationship with Shinichi is brought into the discussion.
The culprit of A June Bride Murder Case, Toshihiko Takasugi. While he does have a Freudian Excuse, his eventual redemption and the fact that he got a very light sentence for his attempted murder can make some feel sour. First, there is the fact that he goes for a Revenge by Proxy, instead of going after the man responsible for the death of his mother. And even then, Superintendent Kiyonaga Matsumoto wasn't fully responsible. He didn't see her when she was wounded during a car chase, because he was pursuing a criminal, and he never forgave himself for that. Admittedly, at the end of the episode, he feels remorse for what he did. However, it's only because he realizes that his victim was his childhood friend (and crush) all along, not because she was an innocent victim of his Revenge by Proxy.note Watch him gloat about how easy it was to trick Sayuri and then his reaction when he learns the truth about her. Moreover, he has the dubious honor to be one of the few culprits in Detective Conan who don't go after an Asshole Victim, yet he has one of the lightest punishments and gets a happy ending three years later. This is especially jarring considering so many Sympathetic Murderers have had their lives ruined or even ended.
Mary Sera. Her sister, brother-in-law, nieces (that she knows of) and husband were all murdered by the same crime syndicate, and she was poisoned by said crime syndicate by a woman who introduced herself wearing her dead husband's face, leaving Mary the weak and sickly third known survivor of APTX 4869 — her backstory seems to be set up for us to sympathize with her. However, her major defining behavior so far is her cold, rude, manipulative, disrespectful, abrasive, and even physically violent behavior towards others in general and her own children in particular. While she does smile at her son Shuukichi's shogi victory, implying some kind of genuine affection, she otherwise doesn't act very parental; she also once attacked her other son Akai for lying to her about his intentions to join the FBI, leading to a serious fight that left them both injured, and in the present, uses her daughter Sera Masumi as her agent to enact her strategies outside the safety of her hotel room without fully informing Masumi of relevant details despite the clear danger that puts her daughter and others in. Mary also instructs and encourages Masumi to behave in an entitled and aggressive manner towards others' life-threatening secrets, showing little to no concern for the potential peril she's putting Conan, Haibara, their acquaintances, or Masumi herself into solely for Mary's own benefit. Mary further plays a major role in maintaining the long conflict between Conan and Masumi, even instructing Masumi to steal from Conan. The more neutral description the fan wiki gives for her characterization is that she's not very socially adept, but given that she's a parent and an actual adult and all the people she exploits and mistreats are actual minors in serious danger and/or her own children, this generally hasn't been considered a good excuse. The result is that Mary has so far inspired much more frustration and dislike than sympathy, at least within English-speaking fan spaces, with many posts from Tumblr and reddit responding to her more tragic flashbacks with disdain and/or genuine wonder regarding whether readers are actually expected to like or feel sorry for her. However, as the character's story arc isn't finished, there is at least potential that this can change, unlike the above example.
Eri, supposedly the saner and more put-together of Ran's parents, is suspected by a number of fans to be the more dysfunctional one. For all of Kogoro's blatant flaws, he was the one who stuck with Ran her whole life, and even if he is as bad as his harshest detractors say, what does that make Eri for leaving Ran with him all these years? (Though when Kogoro racks up a large amount of debts due to early celebration when he gets a high paying case, Eri try to convince Ran to live with her instead). Some of her behaviors toward Kogoro proper also veer into this, especially her taping (without his consent) an Anguished Declaration of Love from when he thought she was dead and replaying it for her own amusement.
Whenever Kid needs an on-the-spot disguise, he would knock someone out of commission. This is logical, but really doesn't make him sympathetic when the victim is a woman given how much sexual harassment can happen. This is acknowledged in the Blush Mermaid case where Sera is pissed that he knocked her out with a stun gun and gave Kid a kick on the face.
People tend to view Kogoro and Heizo as child abusers due to their harsh treatment of Conan and Heiji in early run of the manga. At the time, a smack to the head would not get the same reaction in Japanese culture as it would in American — and partially Played for Laughs with the cranial eruptions, especially in early stories and the anime originals, compared to the later manga and manga adaptations. Additionally, Heizo's one punch of Heiji is used to discourage Heiji from going after a dangerous mob boss, and then uses the fact that Heiji's primary reaction is to get mad for the dismissal of his detective skills and continue investigating as a distraction to get the police force in place to catch the whole gang. Somewhat understanble in context, but still harsh in hindsight in modern times.
Kogoro's alcoholism in the early episodes, which is almost always played for laughs. Likewise, the drinking culture in Japan was more forgivable in the past and such depiction was common in the Japanese media of the time. Both the manga and the anime have since phased out this trait as time passed.
In "Murder at the Ski Lodge", two of the teachers are introduced hitting on Ran and Sonoko in an attempt to get with them. This is portrayed as good natured mischief at worst. In modern times, teachers attempting to flirt with high school students would be seen as very predatory behavior. On a similar but lighter level, multiple characters treat the 25-year-old Dr. Araide as a possible husband for Ran, despite her being 16 and a student under his care.
Also, age gap relationships (especially with a high school student) were portrayed in less of a negative light in earlier chapters. For example, the Desperate Revival arc has a adult doctor victim in a relationship with a high school girl and it wasn't really remarked upon. Flash forward to the Sister Birthday Party murder case the victim tried to flirt with a high school girl is depicted as sleazy and creepy.
People who just started reading or watching the series will be confused about stories that revolve around some fugitives trying to blend in with the society and escape the statute of limitations after committing a serious crime years if not decades ago, (they can no longer be convicted if the case passed the expiration time), as Japanese legislation in 2010 has abolished statute of limitation for crimes that are subject to the death penalty, such as murder and robbery that result in death. The most notable example is the Symphony Cruise Ship case from volume 23 manga which involved an intricate Wounded Gazelle Gambit by the culprit who happened to be a former bank robber to avoid suspicion, and it was considered smart planning for its time, but would not make any sense if it was made in the context of today's era law.
Values Resonance: The manga have some extremely progressive attitudes for a work published since 1994:
Many female characters (like Ran, Kazuha and Satou) are portrayed as popular and attractive ever since their introduction because they are Nice Girls even though they have personalitytraits that Japanese find unappealing in women. The manga even made explicit that their loved ones love them because of those traits.
Chiba and Megure's main characterization aren't revolved around their weight and their fitness doesn't hinder them from being a competent police detective. Chiba's love interest is only concern about his health and still loves him deeply for his personality.
Almost every female characters avoid Stay in the Kitchen attitude completely, with every adult female characters in the main and supporting cast as well as the majority of the one shot case characters are working women.
Perpetrators / accomplices / cover ups are equally likely to be a woman, completely avoid Men Act, Women Are.
Despite Japan's preference for light skin, multiple dark / tan skin characters (some of them are major characters such as Heiji, Makoto, Rei and Kansuke) are never considered unattractive because of their darker complexion. Even the few time a black character appeared they do not have the stereotypical Sambo looks many manga drew them in the 1990s.
Viewer Gender Confusion: Eisuke is male, but it's easy to mistake him as a girl. When Ran mentions "a student who looks a lot like Mizunashi Rena" and Kogoro expects to meet a girl, viewers would have also thought so upon first seeing him. Of course, he's soon disabused of said belief.
What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Combined with Values Dissonance. The manga runs in a shonen magazine and it’s anime counterpart is aired on Saturdays at 6 in the evening. In spite of this, it’s filled with Family Unfriendly Deaths along with subject matter like suicide, drugs and violence among others. It’s this reason why Western importers had a difficult time trying to pitch the show to American kids networks. note Or at least in English-speaking Western countries, considering how it aired in European countries as children's programming, some of which had no censorship.
Why Would Anyone Take Him Back?: In one case, a man tries to kill his bride at a wedding. She notices his intentions, but three years later, she marries him anyway..
Woolseyism: In general, a lot of cases rely on Japanese wordplay that doesn't translate well into English outside the manga. The localizers try to explain it in a way that makes sense to the viewers, and change names when they couldn't.
A good example of how difficult these cases can be to translate and the attempts to have it make sense in English can be seen in one episode in which a victim is stabbed and writes the name of his killer in his blood, and a big part of the solution is wordplay. The victim was discovered by someone else, who saw the murderer's name and then attempted to change it to something else. It was seen again, and then changed again to another word that included the characters. In English, they change this to the first message being "shrine God", then it's revealed to be "Ringo" — which works because the letters to spell the name are in the words "Shrine God" in that order. However, the true killer was romanised as "Tina" — which is much harder to link to "Ringo" without assuming that it was smudged and the first person smeared it to look more difficult to read as "Tina".
In Billionaire Birthday Blues, when the first victim is found leaning over the fountain he was drowned in, Kogoro says "Hey, this is no place to be sleeping". In the English Dub, Richard wonders if he's feeling sick, which (To westerners at least; unless Japanese people are able to fall asleep with their heads hanging over something like that in the rain) looks more like he's vomiting into the fountain at a glance.
This is also something that would have been Lost in Translation otherwise, but there's a part in which a fashion designer is surprised when she finds out that Ran's father is Kogoro Mouri. You'd think that before asking her presence and planning to help use her as an alibi, she'd make sure that she's not related to a local celebrity with the same surname, right? The dub makes this a little more recognizable to English speakers because they wouldn't know that "Mouri" isn't exactly an uncommon surname in Japan, but they would know that "Moore" is a really common name so someone with the same last name as someone famous could be unrelated period. Then again though, this could be simple assumption...Would you assume Ran to be related to some famous person with the same surname by looking at her and then looking at Kogoro?
One of the cases had the hint that the victims were connected by playing Mahjong often be revealed by sentences that they told their families when they interrupted them during a game. Either this was a very difficult example to translate, but the hints make no sense to anyone who doesn't know Mahjong or the original Japanese text. The members of the game say things like "I'm going to the doctor" which wouldn't cause anyone to think Mahjong.
In the June Bride case; the bride is chastised for drinking lemon tea in the sub because "it was for kids" and it was localized as "Lemon Punch" in the dub. This actually makes a lot more sense in the dub; where she is instead chastised for drinking punch, also being told that it will rot her teeth. In the western world, tea is usually marketed towards teens and adults, whereas punch is usually marketed towards kids. Not to mention, punch is always very sugary, and "it'll rot your teeth" is something a lot of adults (and dentists) say to get kids off of drinking sugary drinks.
The English dub also changed a line the TV station murder. When Kogoro is showing how a call on an analog phone can be tapped into, he gives the example call of a husband having an affair. He changes the line of him and his wife being separate to the much more provocative "The wife is out with the kids", which would further incriminate the theoretical adulterer. Additionally, this line is a Brick Joke — Kogoro says it on live TV, and in the next episode, where Ran meets her mother at a diner, the line is played back taken out of context as they walk past a TV station. It still remains just as humorous and awkward in English.
In Viz's translation, they ignored the English that Aoyama used and just translated the Japanese translation. Vermouth's catchphrase goes from the always awkward sounding, "A secret makes a woman woman" to "It's that touch of mystery that gives a woman her allure".
Some dubs, including English, German and Korean, have Conan thinking in Shinichi's voice.
In the third and definitive LA-Spanish dub, Agasa's "Ai-kun" is sometimes rendered as the Affectionate Nickname "Ai-rin". It follows very closely the English pronunciation of the female name "Irene"... as in, "Irene Adler" from the Holmes stories.
Speaking of Ai — Funimation's movie dubs call her Vi Graythorn. That may not be as accurate as Viz's (Anita Hailey) in initials, but it both sounds closer to the Japanese original and references the two female detectives (Cordelia Gray and V.I. Warshawski) that Aoyama built her original name from.
(the vocal version of the movie opening theme) starts playing in one of the Non Serial Movies, something awesome is usually about to happen — most often, some unsuspecting baddie is about to receive the butt-kicking of a lifetime. Sometimes they use "Boku ga Iru"
