Slightly Biased Manga

I caught myself up on Case Closed while my internet was down.  Of course, I got the new volume on Saturday, so I’ve got that still, but here’s one that can be stricken from the backlog list.  Which is great, because I love Detective Conan.

Granted, it’s repetitive.  The first case is a pretty awesome one where a magician gets killed, and many magic tricks are discussed and performed to try and decide how the murder was committed.  It was set up to be a suicide, which makes it that much more interesting.  Once again, Ran almost figures out Conan’s disguise, and she has him pretty good this time… but he’s saved at the last minute by his mom, who takes him on a trip to a friend’s house to try and help figure out whether the friend’s uncle is the real person or someone who’s shown up to claim an inheritance.  It quickly turns into a murder case, and there’s someone behind the scenes solving things for Shinichi as well.  Hooray for a bunch of regular characters appearing!

The last case in the volume, which continues on into 15, is about Ran and Sonoko taking Conan with them and winding up in a cabin with some of their old teachers… and a dead body.  After reading a bunch of these in a row, I almost wish less of them involve murder, but I still get a kick out of the elaborate solutions every time.

The one involving Shinichi’s mom and the inheritance was the main case and stretches over many chapters in this volume.  It involves murder, mistaken identity, international espionage, and some trickery from beyond the grave, as well as cool characters that don’t appear very often.  What more could you ask for?

The last case in this volume took place on the set of the last Gamera movie.  That’s right, someone finally committed murder in a kaiju costume.  That means that everything I hoped for in this series has come true.  This one was another Detective Boys/Dr. Agasa mystery, but because it featured Gamera and talked a lot about giant monsters, I forgave the presence of the other three.  They have almost no lines anyway, so you can just watch Conan all the time.  This was the mystery that was easiest for me to figure out.

The case in the middle of the volume was another where we see the suspect kill the victim and we need to figure out how they did it and erased the evidence.  This one was the most elaborate “who the hell pulls that off” case in the volume where you just can’t figure it out until Conan explains it, but there was something fun about this one too… maybe just because I have a fondness for painters.

The first case involved triplets, which was significantly less hot than it sounds because this is a comic for young boys and Aoyama’s art does not allow for that sort of thing.  Sonoko was in it, so you also know it was slightly stupider than it needed to be, but it consisted solely of picking apart each of the triplet’s alibis and no action, so it was a pretty cool case.

I enjoy the detective corner in the back of every volume, and I worried that Aoyama would eventually run out of people to talk about since perhaps he doesn’t have as much free time as he would like, drawing a weekly manga series.  Then I realized that he has to be consuming (and thus be a big fan of) enough detective literature, tv, and movies to keep himself inspired to keep doing the elaborate plots of these cases over and over again.  For at least 57 volumes.  The man is DRIVEN.

While I LOVE this series and it’s a lot easier to read now that the majority of the cases are new to me, I’ll probably still space the volumes out so I can read them 2-3 at a time.  Of course, I’ll deplete my supply if I keep checking the first chapter of the next volume to see the end of the case like I did here.

There’s a Detective Boys case at the beginning where Dr. Agasa was with them, and for some reason I had thought I saw this one in the anime before… it may have been adapted into a different story, because the episode I’m thinking of has a similar plot and code, but takes place outside.  Maybe it came earlier in the manga and I don’t remember… oh well.  Anyway, episodes with codes like this fall a bit flat without more explanation since the codes translate into Japanese instead of English, especially when they don’t contain ANY translation notes.  The code corresponded to hirigana, which they gave no explanation for in case you didn’t know anything about Japanese, and the decoding relied heavily on Japanese too, and even in one part all three of the kids start spelling words in Japanese… though I wonder about the translation to this.  Ayumi says mostly English words with a Japanese pronunciation (”panty” is one of them), Genta says types of bread (which I knew only because I knew the word “pan” and also he was saying things like melon pan et al), and I have no idea what Mitsuhiko was saying other than Nippon.  Some notes would have definitely helped out, but I wonder if it wasn’t made a bit easier than the original?  I don’t know.

The important part about that case was that they found an old corpse in the attic and Conan didn’t bat an eye, he just concluded he died of natural causes and shoved the body away so he could see what he was writing.  Awesome.

The second case here involves plot.  Yes, plot!  It doesn’t happen very often, and this one was only a tease because it doesn’t actually go anywhere, but it was plot all the same.  The setup to this one was actually rooted quite firmly in reality, so it was pretty easy to figure out where it was going.  The one thing that bothered me was that they gave the names Kaspar and Melkior as being types of GIN and VODKA, and then didn’t change Tequila’s name.  What’s the point if you’re not going to hide the fact they’re alcohol anyway?  Plus, it’s got an OT rating on it in the first place.  What?

The last case involves plot again, this time in the form of Heiji coming back.  He mentions they’d met the other day, but I refuse to believe that the group went on a ski trip, filmed a live broadcast, had a casual afternoon lunch, went to a huge day-long conference, and got stuck overnight in the woods over the course of three days.  I’m willing to suspend my disbelief, but at least make time move in the story, even if it’s not going to move forward.  Anyway, this is a Holmes Freaks meeting/contest that goes sour, as such events always do in fiction (I saw an old episode of CSI or something not too long ago that had a similar premise, I assume such events can’t happen in real life because of the high probability of murder).   Heiji goes because he’s hoping to see Shinichi, and of course he and Conan wind up trying to figure out the elaborate series of murders, with Heiji suspicious all the while.  This was another one which had a setup which was waaay too elaborate, but I’m willing to forgive it this time since it was a Holmes club thing.

I’m not quite sure why Conan felt the need to tranquilize Heiji at the end (the conclusion is in the next volume, but I read it so I’ll talk about it anyway), because clearly Heiji knew the solution to the case and would’ve backed him up if he’d made the deduction himself.  But Heiji is the one that gets put to sleep.  Someone, be it the translator or adaptor, did a good job on Heiji’s kansai accent throughout, but when Conan imitated his accent, it was absolutely perfect as an exaggeration and an obvious fake.

But yes, I am still a sucker for this series.  I’ll probably keep reading these until I’m caught up, but we’ll see.

The first chapter in this volume was the last episode of the anime that I saw on TV, so I was hoping the rest of the volume would be new cases. The last case is new, but the one in the middle was also something that I had seen in the anime. Same with the first case in the next volume, but most of what I’m reading now is brand new.

The ski resort conclusion was one of the few I was able to figure out for myself. The case is pretty good, and I liked the shogi element a lot. Better still was the throwaway joke at the end. I don’t know why that struck me as so funny.

The second case was a murder that took place during a live broadcast. You see the criminal commit the crime, so it’s a matter of trying to figure out the evidence against him. I remembered this one as soon as he made the kill at the beginning, so I didn’t think much of it… but the setup for this case is pretty elaborate, just like the last one. Maybe I should start questioning the practicality of these murders? Naah…

The third case was pretty good and for the most part starred Ms. Ellery Queen, or Eri Kisaki. For whatever reason, Shinichi solved this one by himself, and Eri didn’t suspect him of anything. Eri is actually an important character, but the fact she didn’t really grill Conan the way she should have and it took 11 volumes to mention her probably means she won’t come around very much.

The fourth case was the first regular case that I think I’ve read in the manga before seeing in the anime (there was one other I think, but it was the Detective Boys, and I don’t count those), and I was a bit put off by how elaborate the setup for the murder was. There were several things that didn’t make sense to me, and… you just couldn’t DO that without leaving more evidence. Oh well. I liked it anyway.

The one thing that did bother me was the lack of explanation of Eri’s name.  Aoyama mentions in the back he named a character after Ellery Queen, and when he did this before they made a note of how the name translated, but no such original name or explanation went along with Ellery Queen, so you’re left scratching your head when Aoyama mentions he named the character after him.

I haven’t read this series in FOREVER, which is weird because it is one of my absolute favorites.  It’s like I forgot about it for almost a year while ordering new volumes, and when I’ve now got 10-15 which I haven’t read, I suddenly remember how good it was.

I think one of my problems was that I read the first half of 10 then shelved it before finishing the volume.  There is no reason to read the second half, despite the fact it contains two decent cases, after reading the first.  As Gosho Aoyama mentions in his author notes, there is someone from the first volume which reappears in celebration of the tenth volume.  This person:  SHINICHI KUDO.

Yes.  Yes, yes, yes.  He turns up for the express purpose of absolutely schooling Heiji Hatori, who turns up for the express purpose of absolutely schooling Shinichi.  Obviously Conan was there instead of Shinichi, but luckily a case popped up so that they could have a youth detective style showdown.  Conan turned into Shinichi just long enough to pull the wool off everyone’s eyes.  Of course, he tried to have a romantic moment with Ran too, but that was unfortunately cut short.  Shinichi: 1, Heiji: 0.

BEST VOLUME EVER.  Well, so far anyway.  And that was only the first half.   Like I said, the second half’s pretty decent, but it just can’t compare to Shinichi.  There’s a Detective Boys case, which typically I don’t like, but the way that this one was structured was quite good.  They have to figure out where and what went on in the library going on little other than the fact that one of the employees was missing.

Also, there’s a case which I remember from the anime where Ran, Kogoro, and Conan are confined to a cabin full of doctors during a snowstorm and one of the doctors is murdered.  All the other doctors are suspects, so they have to figure out who did it.  It’s a cliffhanger, but unfortunately I remember the ending from the anime.  Fortunately, this was the last episode of the anime that aired on Cartoon Network, so I think all the cases will be new to me from here on out.

This volume didn’t strike my fancy like some of the others… there just wasn’t anything to sink my teeth into. The best was probably the one that involved Mouri’s old Judo cronies (I really liked the ending to it), and that was actually a really good case overall… I loved Conan and Kogoro’s role in it. But the other two, again, not so good. Maybe it was because the volume started out with a Detective Boys mystery. I hate those, even though they often wind up being silly like this one. The last case was okay… just sort of okay. I’m not sure why I disliked it, but it may be because it was in a stalemate for so long and we didn’t get most of the clues ’til the end.

I also may not have liked this volume as much because I was looking forward to the Heiji case next volume. Not so much because I like that character (he’s sort of obnoxious… there’s already too many characters in this series who are full of themselves, including the oft-humbled Shinichi), but because of SHINICHI. HELL YEAH.

YES! Finally a long case that I haven’t seen in the anime already! It was really good. I love references to Shinichi’s past, and this has the Night Baron thing in there, and I loved it, red herrings and all. It was SO NICE to finally get a major case I was unfamiliar with. The only problem I had with it was the way it introduced all 7 of the characters as “Oh, Mr. So-and-so from room 1125! You’re such a joker!” For about a page, full of speech bubbles like that. Slightly too many characters that didn’t get too involved, but I liked the contest aspect of it. Plus there were nice Ran/Shinichi moments.

The second case was good too, because we saw yet more Shinichi as Shinichi, and I so honestly enjoy watching that little boy squirm and hold his secrets. That case was also very new and very good. An exciting volume all around, and no cliffhanger!

One thing though… the editing was a bit sloppy, as Ran was called by her real name several times. Maybe the fake names are just going to be phased out eventually. We can hope.

Yeah, I really liked the Moonlight Sonata story in this volume. It’s got a lot of massive characteristics to it, and it’s very well-constructed. It’s gruesome, it’s got lots of murders, a huge list of suspects, a huge cast of characters, and a big twist ending. It’s really good, and probably worth buying the volume for.

The end to the case from the previous volume was good. I like that case for its structure… you get to see the culprit commit the crime, then you get to watch everyone connect him to it despite a rock-solid alibi.

The case at the end is good too, if only because I love the Shinichi/Ran stuff. I liked that a random girlfriend for Shinichi shows up. The case is pretty good, too.

I was a bit sad that the cliffhanger story from last volume wasn’t quite as good as it was in the anime. For some reason, it was just a lot funnier then. Not to say it still wasn’t GOOD… but ’twas just better in the anime.

I still really like this series. After I finished this (after writing a full review of volume 5… I restricted myself and said I couldn’t read this one until I wrote that, and when I finished it I read volume 6 and went out and bought 7), the man at the comic store asked me if the series was any good. I said it was just sort of okay. That’s some sort of lie, because it’s amazing, but I’m embarassed to read it because it just seems like it’s oriented towards kids. It is, sorta, but it’s also pretty gruesome, and I love it for so many other reasons.

Volume 6 also marks the first time I’ve read a case in the manga before seeing it in the anime. The story with the bloody cat at the beginning, the one where they get their badges. I was sad to have figured it out almost immediately, but it was still a pretty gross crime. Gross, but good. I’m sort of glad Inspector Megure took them so seriously. I figured I had just slept through this episode when they showed it on TV, but come to think of it, I’m pretty sure they got their badges in an episode where the girl was “kidnapped” and not this one in the anime, so maybe this one just wasn’t animated. Hm.

And I liked the story at the end, where they start you with the suspect and you wonder how he’s pulling off his coverup so easily. I just LOVE THIS SERIES.

Argh, I didn’t realize this published to a page that I actually used on my site. So… the archives are down for now, and you can see a bunch of old, embarassing shit that was on blogger and not wordpress. Since it looks like I STILL won’t have internet when I get back thanks to SBC, I might as well make the most of it and post some more reviews while I have time.

I honestly had a hard time remembering what I’ve read since I’ve moved. Through the haze of memory, I tried to actually remember if I’d gotten around to reading this since I’d bought it, and I pulled up a couple memorable scenes, which is always a plus. What I can remember about it was that there were some fierce Jimmy/Rachael scenes, with an adorable one at Jimmy’s house where he manages to slip her a Christmas present on the sly. There was something else too… the case that’s most memorable was another that I saw the anime from (all three cases in this volume are, though), and it involved a Rock Star being poisoned in an extremely creative way… for all the wrong reasons. And I sort of like that case.

It’s gonna fucking bother me that I can’t remember what happened here. Do I have to look up a summary?

…

Ok, yes. The one about the psycho killer locked away in a deserted mountain villa with a bunch of innocent people. I really, REALLY liked the resolution to this one. There weren’t any good character moments really to speak of (other than the fact Rachael asked to share a bed with Conan because she was scared… that was adorable), but the mystery itself was so good, it was forgivable. Well, I also liked that Serena had a similar reaction to Mr. Moore when told he solved a difficult crime ^_^;