Detective Conan Movies

I love detectives and have ever since I was really little.  For a long time I wanted to be a detective when I grew up; that is, until I figured out that my romantic version of a detective didn’t exist anymore, if it ever really had.  I still love detective fiction of all kinds.  And this includes a little show called Detective Conan, known in the states as Case Closed.  The manga for Detective Conan has been running for a long time.

It’s a show about murder and crime, but it’s for kids.  My elementary students love it, but it’s a tough sell in America.  Someone dies in almost every episode, so it seems very violent to American audiences.  It’s not overly gory or bloody, but it’s a serious show.  The story revolves around a high school student named Shinichi Kudo.  He’s a talented and observant detective and is already consulting with the police on cases.  But that all changes one day when he witnesses an exchange run by a dangerous crime syndicate.  Before he even has time to think about what he’s seeing, he is struck from behind and given an experimental poison that should be untraceable.  But instead of killing him, like it was supposed to, it shrinks his body down to the size of a first grader. 

The crime syndicate thinks that he is dead, so he takes on the alias of Conan Edogawa in order to try to investigate them and eventually reverse the drug’s effects.  Conan of course comes from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes.  Edogawa comes from the Japanese author Edogawa Rampo (which was a pen name inspired by Edgar Allen Poe) who is considered to be the father of the modern mystery story in Japan. 

Of course, a first grader can’t exactly just show up at crime scenes and expect to be taken seriously, so he devises a way to live with his friend and love interest Ran Mori.  Her father is a private investigator, which allows him access to crime scenes.  Conan soon discovers that even though he still has his mature mind, no one takes him seriously due to his size.  So even if he solved a crime, he’d be told to be quiet and leave the grownups to do their jobs.  Even if he can find the criminal and confront them, he is a tiny child who is easily beaten.

So he has his scientist friend, one of the few people who know his true identity, make him some nifty gadgets to help him compensate for his decreased strength and size.  Two of his most used gadgets are a watch that contains tiny stun darts and a bowtie that allows him to change his voice to sound like other people.  Although Ran’s father is an investigator, he isn’t a very good one, so it’s usually up to Conan to connect the dots for the final reveal.  Conan stuns him and then hides and lays out the evidence in his voice.  Thus Mr. Mori’s reputation goes up and grants him, and Conan, access to bigger and bigger cases.

 Every year around Golden Week, which is a week in May where three national holidays fall close together, a new Detective Conan movie comes out.  I have seen all three of the movies that have come out since I’ve been in Japan.  This year marked the 15^th movie to make its way to the big screen.  Sadly, the 15^th was by far the worst of the three I’ve seen here.  The previous two movies featured important side characters to the series and had big stakes.  This movie lacked either of those. 

Movie 13: The Raven Chaser

One of my favorite things that the previous movies did was find a way to use all of his various gadgets somewhere in the story.  It was creative and fun and was a nice reminder of some of the gadgets that don’t get used as often.  This movie showed all of his gadgets during the story recap at the start, but barely used any of them in the story. 

Let’s compare the villains of the movies.  In both the previous two, we know fairly early on who we are up against, but they are too powerful to take down.  In the 13^th movie Conan was chased up Tokyo Tower while being shot at from a helicopter.  In the 14^th movie he got a bit too cheeky with the big bad, who promptly picked him up and threw him out of the window of the blimp (which is probably my favorite Conan moment ever, click the link and watch it!).  Both were shocking and showed that we were dealing with someone who meant business.  This movie had a dude with a hunting rifle and a stun gun.  Who could not hit Conan at fairly close range.  He also blew up a dam, which I guess was a big deal, but he was a very standard crazy dude who tries to kill Conan when he gets caught and not some evil mastermind who could be a real threat.

Movie 14: The Lost Ship in the Sky

 Also the Junior Detective Boys played far too large of a role.  Conan has a group of first grade friends, to help with his cover so everyone doesn’t think he’s the most antisocial child ever one assumes, who fancy themselves detectives as well.  They occasionally “help” Conan on his cases.  Far more often they just hang around and say childlike things that sometimes help Conan figure stuff out.  I understand that they will always be in these movies.  Children, who these movies are really for, cannot picture themselves as Conan who is really a high school student.  But they can picture themselves as one of his friends.  But in this movie they were around the entire time and were mostly doing trivial, useless things, like crashing snowmobiles.  They work best as side characters and this movie had them front and center.

It wasn’t a bad movie, but it was really lacking in the things I have come to expect from a Conan movie.  It just felt like a really long episode and not a movie.  There wasn’t anything special about the villain or the setting or the crime.  It was just another crime that Conan happens to be around for and solves. 

 

Movie 15: Quarter of Silence

 One final note that I find interesting is that every Conan movie has an English title as kind of a subtitle/translation of the Japanese name.  The movies I have seen in order were, The Raven Chaser, The Lost Ship in the Sky, and Quarter of Silence.  What’s really interesting about this is that it seems like the creators come up with the English title first and then translate it into Japanese, often with certain parts of the title pronounced unlike they normally are in kanji and pronounced instead like the English word.  So for example, the title of the most recent movie, Quarter of Silence, looks like this in kanji: 沈黙の15分.  This would normally be pronounced Chinmoku no Jyuugofun but it pronounced here as Chinmoku no Kuootaa (which is about as close as you can get to quarter with Japanese syllables).  On a lot of the movie merchandise only the English title is listed, which makes the English teacher in me very happy.

Gegege no Kitaro live action movies

Another brief movie review due to my fascination with Japanese demons and ghosts. Gegege no Kitaro (which just means Kitaro from the Gegege Forest) is a very popular manga series here in Japan. It is credited with reviving interest in Yokai (demons) across Japan. It has been turned into an animated series no less than 5 times. I knew about it, but for some odd reason I never really looked into it. It looks like it could easily become one of my favorite series (so don’t be surprised if you hear more about it in the future). Unfortunately, because it does rely pretty heavily on Japanese culture, it has never been brought over to the states. Kodansha apparently translated the first three volumes of the manga as part of their Bilingual Manga Project, but now they are out of print and really hard to find. So I suppose it’s not really that surprising that I didn’t know too much about this series.

Kitaro is a demon who tries to prevent other demons from causing too much trouble in the human world. He’s one of the good demons, who simply wants us all to coexist peacefully. Kitaro has a number of friends who join him on his various adventues, including his father (whose body has decayed to just an eyeball), a cat girl, a rat man, a wall, and a flying white cloth.  They go up against various demons and have a bunch of interesting weapons at their disposal.  It's a lot of fun.

While we were looking for the last movie I talked about, we saw that there were a couple Gegege movies and decided to check them out. The first movie, simply called Gegege no Kitaro (released in 2007), had English subtitles, which we unfortunately didn’t realize until about three-fourths of the way through the film. The story revolves around the search and fight for a magical stone of great power which was removed from its protected shrine and ends up in the hands of humans. Kitaro gets involved trying to protect a high school girl and her little brother while trying to find what their father did with the stone. It was a really fun movie and I really enjoyed all of the demons that showed up throughout the film. The film wasn’t perfect by any means. Some of the special effects are really lame (especially Neko Masume’s transformation, ick). The little kid actor isn’t very good and thankfully in many scenes he is just required to sit around and look sad. But it does a good job of introducing the characters and the world of the demons. And it has kitsune, so that’s an automatic winner in my book. If you like demons and monsters and realize that you are watching a movie made for a younger audience that didn’t have an enormous budget you will probably enjoy it. Also there is an awesome demon dance party at the end, and who doesn’t love that?

The second movie (released in 2008) is called Gegege no Kitaro and the Thousand Year Curse Song. A young girl is cursed and Kitaro and friends try to help break her curse and deal with the greater evil behind it all. Sadly, no English subtitles this time. Unlike the first movie, this one doesn’t really try to set up the world and the characters for the audience. It really jumps right in, so if you are unfamiliar with the series this might not be the best place to go for your first taste. I would imagine they had a bigger budget this time around as many things are greatly improved. Neko Masume’s entire costume looks better and she doesn’t get any awkward transformation scenes like last time. Kitaro only has one eye, and the empty socket of the other one is almost always covered by his hair. In the first movie they completely ignored this and you could frequently see his other eye when the wind blew his hair or even when he turned his head quickly. This time the wig was much thicker and I don’t think I ever saw his other eye. They even threw in a bit with him looking at a bunch of glass eyes to kind of ret con the eye you could see in the last movie and bring it closer to cannon in that regard. This movie had less demons than the first one, but the ones that it did feature were pretty well done (I could have done without the poop slinging deer demon thing, though). We still had a small dance party, although this one was just tanuki and Neko Masume. The music was really good in this movie too, very dynamic and exciting. The action scenes were also much better choreographed.

For all their faults I really enjoyed both movies. Unfortunately, neither movie was released in America. You can probably find places to buy them online, but you’ll need a region two or region free DVD player to watch them and they probably won’t be cheap. If you do decide you want to check them out, I recommend heading to the Gegege no Kitaro Wikipedia page first and checking out the character bios. Unfortunately, there isn’t a plot synopsis for the movies on the page (the second movie isn’t even listed), so you’ll have to muddle through the plot of the second (subtitle-less) one on your own.



*Small Spoiler Alert*




Eric was upset that in both movies Kitaro doesn’t actually beat either of the final monsters. He gets help in both movies from much stronger demons who seem to come in as a sort of deus ex machina. I actually liked that as it showed that Kitaro is NOT the strongest in the demon world. He is fighting a really hard battle against really steep odds and fights anyway. Others recognize his efforts and join him and his cause. It gave a sense of depth to the demon world for me, showing how vast and potentially powerful the demons are.

The Great Yokai War

I have always been fascinated by Japanese demons (yokai), ghosts, and legends. I often see yokai pop up in anime, manga, and video games and always find myself wanting to know more about them.

I recently got this game. It’s the newest Taiko Drum Master game for the DS and as you can tell from the cover it heavily features yokai. My love for these little guys was rekindled and I sought out to learn more about them and where I could find them.

In my bingeing of Wikipedia I found a movie called The Great Yokai War. And when we were at the movie rental store I casually mentioned to Eric that it was a movie I wanted to see. I couldn’t remember how the kanji in the title were pronounced or what they looked like, only what they meant. But that was enough and Eric found it with very little difficulty. It was actually easier for us to find this movie than most American movies in the store (mostly because we are never sure if the titles have been changed for the Japanese release).

With the help of the plot synopsis on Wikipedia we were able to piece together most of what was going on. The main character is a young boy named Tadashi who has just moved to a small town. At a festival he is named that year’s “Kirin Rider,” a protector of all things good. And wouldn’t you know it, a protector of all things good is desperately needed as a yokai named Kato is set on revenge against humans and is planning to attack Tokyo. But in order to do so he also betrays his own kind as he captures yokai and feeds them to a vengeful fire spirit to turn them into a mechanical army. A group of yokai seek out Tadashi in order to help him defeat Kato.

I fancied myself pretty familiar with Japanese demons and ghosts, but I was sorely mistaken as to the scope of what I was dealing with. Of the main group that helps Tadashi I only knew about the Kappa. The other three were completely new to me, and two of them don’t even have entries on Wikipedia. I knew a lot of the demons that made cameo appearances or had smaller roles along the way, but I was clearly reminded that I have a lot to learn. And that actually really made me excited to know more.

I found out that this movie was released in America by a company called Tokyo Shock back in 2006, so if this article has caught your interest you might be able to find it. I’m certainly going to look for it once I get back to the states. It isn’t the greatest movie you’ll ever see. The special effects are lame at points and the acting probably won’t blow you away. It’s a movie for kids, so it’s not especially deep or unpredictable. But the movie is fun, and if you want a glimpse into this side of Japanese culture it is definitely worth a look.