Detective Conan (名探偵コナン Meitantei Konan, lit. Great Detective Conan) is a Japanese detective manga series written and illustrated by Gosho Aoyama and is serialized in the Japanese manga anthology Weekly Shōnen Sunday since 1994 and has been collected in seventy-one Tankōbon volumes as of February 2011.
The manga has been adapted into an anime series by the animation studio Tokyo Movie Shinsha, directed by Kenji Kodama and Yasuichiro Yamamoto, and is broadcast in Japan on Nippon Television,Yomiuri TV and Animax. The series debuted on January 8, 1996 and has since broadcast 586 episodes as of September 04, 2010. The series has seen high levels of popularity in both manga and anime formats in Japan since its reception, and has also been adapted into fifteen Golden Week movies, with the first released on April 17, 1997 and since then followed with a movie released each year. Ten of the movies held a top 10 box office position in the year they were screened. In addition, eleven Original video animation have been released. As of February 2011, seventy-one volumes have been released in Japan.
The story follows the adventures of Shinichi Kudo (also known as Jimmy Kudo in Case Closed), a young detective prodigy who was inadvertently shrunk into a child's body due to a poison he was force-fed by members of a criminal syndicate. Neighbor and family friend Professor Agasa strongly suggested Shinichi hide his identity to prevent them from killing him and the people he cares about, so Shinichi takes the name Conan Edogawa. He goes to live with his childhood friend Ran Mouri and her father, Kogoro, and tries to use Kogoro's detective agency as a way to find the people who shrank him — without letting Ran figure out who he really is.
Detective Conan is known as "Case Closed" in North America. The name "Case Closed" results from concerns of copyright conflict of the name Detective Conan.
Viz Media licensed the manga series under the name for English-language publication in North America and released thirty-nine volumes as of July 2011. Funimation Entertainment licensed the anime series for North American broadcast. Both the English adaption went under the name Case Closed. The character names were also adapted into English ones with some names different between the two. Fifty episodes of the English dubbed series aired on Cartoon Network as part of their Adult Swim programming block on May 24, 2004 until January 2005 and were discontinued due to low ratings.Two years later, Funimation made the series available, airing it on Colours TV during its syndication with the Funimation Channel. As of 2011, only 130 episodes (episodes 1-123 Japanese version) have been dubbed in English. Though anime was not so popular in North America, manga enjoys high success. Volume 36 appeared in the New York Times Manga Best Sellers list during the week ending on October 24, 2010. As of October 11, 2011 40 volumes have been released by Viz Media.
The series has been well received in Japan with the anime adaptation ranking in the top twenty in Animage's polls between 1996 until 2000 where it dropped below the top twenty. In the Japanese TV anime ranking, Detective Conan often ranked the top six. It has even been used as a mascot to promote citizens to follow the law. Meanwhile, the English adaption has not been as equally popular as in Japan, and has been criticized for the name changes.
Even though Detective Conan is a Shōnen, its audience is composed of a substantial proportion of female viewers and readers. The series also seems to attract all ages.
Besides for his anime and manga appearances, Conan is the protagonist for all the movies and the video games based on the Case Closed series. Some anime parodied, lampooned and even mentioned him. Some of them include, Yakitate!! Japan,Black Cat,Inuyasha,Hayate the Combat Butler,Proposal Daisakusen,Sonic X, Kenichi the Mighties Disciple,and Angelic Layer.He was used as a character to promote people to follow the law in Japan, due to the popularity of the series.
