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scans_dailyWith Halloween fast approaching, I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon with a couple horrific comics of my own. But since another poster here seems to have the market cornered on Junji Ito material, I thought I'd go with a different approach: horror in series that really, really shouldn't have it.
Enter Meitantei Conan (lit. Great Detective Conan, officially known as Case Closed in English-speaking nations), a manga/anime franchise that, at this point, is probably Japan's equivalent to Scooby-Doo. A long-running series with hundreds of installments, a ridiculously iconic mascot that can be plastered across any number of lunchboxes, backpacks, you name it, and whose main focus is on solving paper-thin (yet often highly complicated) mysteries with an over-the-top cast whose personalities are largely set in stone. A great number of its haters (and for that matter, a great number of its fans) complain that it's long outlived its golden years and ought to be put out of its misery, but still it chugs on... and on... and on...
(Aww, come on. How horrific can a series with this little guy as the main character be?)
But this being Japan, there are a few key differences. Like the fact that instead of unmasking goofy monsters in rubber suits, our protagonists usually go up against murderers. Murderers who usually succeed on their first try.
The real horror actually starts in the later volumes, but let's get acquainted with the cast and the direction of the series first. And in actuality, this pilot chapter is pretty damn horrific on its own (if not too rich in common sense...).
(Remember, read right to left.)
Meet our protagonist, Shinichi Kudo. Your average 16-year-old who happens to have all the brains and reputation of Sherlock Holmes and twice the ego.
But wait! AWild Tsundere Love Interest Female Protagonist appears!
Ran is an old childhood friend of Shinichi's (this is something that crops up in pretty much every one of the author's works, by the way), and despite the fact that they sometimes scrape each others' nerves raw, they usually get along pretty well. So, in celebration of Ran having won the city karate tournament, Shinichi takes her out on a not-date to the local amusement park.
Some more cheesy UST later, the Mystery Coaster finally takes off:
Just a friendly reminder: this series runs in Shonen Sunday, widely considered the kiddy pool of manga over in Japan. The guy who founded the damn magazine said he picked the title because he "Wanted to remind the readers of a lazy, relaxing Sunday afternoon".
... all the better to prepare them for scenes like this, I guess?
Anyhoo, the cops show up (the head inspector is practically on first-name terms with Shinichi by now).
So it looks like Tokyo's Finest have their perp!
Or do they?
Using the cops as guinea pigs, Shinichi demonstrates (mostly in the abstract, of course).
All told, this is probably the least convoluted murder method in the series. Quick, brutal, and quite easy to work into a fast-paced action sequence as well as a cold, calculated murder.
So, conveniently enough for everyone involved, the gymnast does indeed confess to the crime (motive: a love affair gone sour). But the story's not quite over yet...
Shinichi sees the man in black extorting a company president - money in exchange for evidence of a gun-smuggling deal. Unfortunately, Shinichi isn't quite Batman-levels of experienced at investigation:
Heavens to Betsy! Is this the end of our detective's illustrious career?
You wish.
Now shrunk to the body of a six-year-old, Shinichi realizes that no one can recognize him, and no one will take him seriously. His "murderers" are long gone, and...
Meet Dr. Agasa, our residentDr. Slump rip-off kindly old scatterbrained inventor and Secret Keeper. Later on, he begins to evolve into a fusion of Dr. Watson and Q from James Bond, which is slightly more interesting.
Dr. Agasa warns Shinichi that he can't blab about his shrinkage to anyone, or the men in black might come back for Round 2 and bring innocents into the crossfire. Unfortunately, Ran picks this exact moment to show up, worried about how Shinichi never called her after leaving her at the park:
And when asked for his name, Shinichi picks the first two names he sees on the bookshelf:
(Sidenote: Edogawa comes from Rampo Edogawa, a Japanese literary figure who's basically Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allen Poe rolled into one; he's credited with popularizing the superhuman detective in Japan, but he also wrote a buttload of horror, so...)
If all this seems like a paper-thin, half-assed setup for the rest of the series... that's because it kinda is. As you might have been able to tell from the title and the cover, this is Conan's series, and Shinichi is sadly not much more than an excuse for him to exist and go on adventures. The bulk of the series consists of self-contained murder cases that are always tidily wrapped up at the end and are rarely, if ever, mentioned again. Characters generally don't learn anything, no one important dies, and time never passes in any meaningful way. Also, Shinichi/Conan often engages in "keep her from finding out my identity at ANY cost" schemes convoluted enough to make Silver Age Superman shake his head.
But every so often, the men in black do return, and that's actually one of the main draws of the series. When they show up, the series practically turns into a different genre, with dark, gritty espionage sequences and plenty high stakes. The men in black aren't just a couple of random yahoos, after all; they're working for a vast criminal syndicate commanded by a man who might well be the twenty-first century's Moriarty...
Unfortunately, those aforementioned men-in-black arcs only show up about once every 5-10 volumes, so it's best to focus on the self-contained murder arcs. And many of them are pretty effectively written, including one blood-curdling case in particular that I'll be covering right before Halloween...
Enter Meitantei Conan (lit. Great Detective Conan, officially known as Case Closed in English-speaking nations), a manga/anime franchise that, at this point, is probably Japan's equivalent to Scooby-Doo. A long-running series with hundreds of installments, a ridiculously iconic mascot that can be plastered across any number of lunchboxes, backpacks, you name it, and whose main focus is on solving paper-thin (yet often highly complicated) mysteries with an over-the-top cast whose personalities are largely set in stone. A great number of its haters (and for that matter, a great number of its fans) complain that it's long outlived its golden years and ought to be put out of its misery, but still it chugs on... and on... and on...
(Aww, come on. How horrific can a series with this little guy as the main character be?)
But this being Japan, there are a few key differences. Like the fact that instead of unmasking goofy monsters in rubber suits, our protagonists usually go up against murderers. Murderers who usually succeed on their first try.
The real horror actually starts in the later volumes, but let's get acquainted with the cast and the direction of the series first. And in actuality, this pilot chapter is pretty damn horrific on its own (if not too rich in common sense...).
(Remember, read right to left.)
Meet our protagonist, Shinichi Kudo. Your average 16-year-old who happens to have all the brains and reputation of Sherlock Holmes and twice the ego.
But wait! A
Ran is an old childhood friend of Shinichi's (this is something that crops up in pretty much every one of the author's works, by the way), and despite the fact that they sometimes scrape each others' nerves raw, they usually get along pretty well. So, in celebration of Ran having won the city karate tournament, Shinichi takes her out on a not-date to the local amusement park.
Some more cheesy UST later, the Mystery Coaster finally takes off:
Just a friendly reminder: this series runs in Shonen Sunday, widely considered the kiddy pool of manga over in Japan. The guy who founded the damn magazine said he picked the title because he "Wanted to remind the readers of a lazy, relaxing Sunday afternoon".
... all the better to prepare them for scenes like this, I guess?
Anyhoo, the cops show up (the head inspector is practically on first-name terms with Shinichi by now).
So it looks like Tokyo's Finest have their perp!
Or do they?
Using the cops as guinea pigs, Shinichi demonstrates (mostly in the abstract, of course).
All told, this is probably the least convoluted murder method in the series. Quick, brutal, and quite easy to work into a fast-paced action sequence as well as a cold, calculated murder.
So, conveniently enough for everyone involved, the gymnast does indeed confess to the crime (motive: a love affair gone sour). But the story's not quite over yet...
Shinichi sees the man in black extorting a company president - money in exchange for evidence of a gun-smuggling deal. Unfortunately, Shinichi isn't quite Batman-levels of experienced at investigation:
Heavens to Betsy! Is this the end of our detective's illustrious career?
You wish.
Now shrunk to the body of a six-year-old, Shinichi realizes that no one can recognize him, and no one will take him seriously. His "murderers" are long gone, and...
Meet Dr. Agasa, our resident
Dr. Agasa warns Shinichi that he can't blab about his shrinkage to anyone, or the men in black might come back for Round 2 and bring innocents into the crossfire. Unfortunately, Ran picks this exact moment to show up, worried about how Shinichi never called her after leaving her at the park:
And when asked for his name, Shinichi picks the first two names he sees on the bookshelf:
(Sidenote: Edogawa comes from Rampo Edogawa, a Japanese literary figure who's basically Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allen Poe rolled into one; he's credited with popularizing the superhuman detective in Japan, but he also wrote a buttload of horror, so...)
If all this seems like a paper-thin, half-assed setup for the rest of the series... that's because it kinda is. As you might have been able to tell from the title and the cover, this is Conan's series, and Shinichi is sadly not much more than an excuse for him to exist and go on adventures. The bulk of the series consists of self-contained murder cases that are always tidily wrapped up at the end and are rarely, if ever, mentioned again. Characters generally don't learn anything, no one important dies, and time never passes in any meaningful way. Also, Shinichi/Conan often engages in "keep her from finding out my identity at ANY cost" schemes convoluted enough to make Silver Age Superman shake his head.
But every so often, the men in black do return, and that's actually one of the main draws of the series. When they show up, the series practically turns into a different genre, with dark, gritty espionage sequences and plenty high stakes. The men in black aren't just a couple of random yahoos, after all; they're working for a vast criminal syndicate commanded by a man who might well be the twenty-first century's Moriarty...
Unfortunately, those aforementioned men-in-black arcs only show up about once every 5-10 volumes, so it's best to focus on the self-contained murder arcs. And many of them are pretty effectively written, including one blood-curdling case in particular that I'll be covering right before Halloween...
no subject
Date: 2014-10-28 12:11 pm (UTC)First of all, why would learning the truth put Ran in danger? If the men-in-black learn of Conan's true identity, they will target Ran regardless of what she knows. If anything it would be prudent to let her know that if she ever sees those guys she shouldn't trust them.
Second, as the series goes on Ran's dad become super famous as the detective that puts countless criminals behind bars. So, as his daughter, Ran already has a target on her back.
OMG NO RAN IS ABOUT TO FIND OUT THAT CONAN IS SHINICHI was constantly used as a source of drama. but it was cheap, fake drama, because even if she had learned the truth nothing bad would have happened. It was SO annoying.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-28 01:02 pm (UTC)