Detective Conan

When I was 12 I went through a phase where I thought I was going to be the next great comic writer / illustrator. I remember actually forming a ‘comic group’ with two of my friends in elementary school, and then again in middle school. To begin with we equally split the responsibilities amongst us, like storyboard-ing, layout, sketching, colouring etc… but towards the end of our short-lived mini career it was obvious that we were each better at completely different things. The other two girls were always a lot better at drawing Manga than I was, so they’d butt heads a lot because their styles were actually completely different haha. Meanwhile I think I realized I enjoyed the writing bit of it more than the illustrating bits. Of course none of my stories were GREAT but there was one story I made up that I quite liked. I think my mum saved it somewhere. It was of a girl who liked to go traveling, riding on the back of a giant gold fish… I think I should try and salvage a copy of that when I finally get to go home next. BUT anyway, I’m getting carried away. I wanted to write about one of my favourite Mangas of all time.

I don’t know how popular Detective Conan is in the Western world, I just know that I grew up reading it in black and white, translated from Japanese to Indonesian by the biggest publishing company back home, Gramedia. When I was 11 the comic books were only Rp. 3000 each (That’s equivalent to 16p!!!), then Rp. 4000 the year after, Rp. 5000 the year after that… and this annoying inflation continued until the comics retailed at Rp. 10 000 – Rp. 11 000 each today. After some extensive googling I found out that it actually circulates under a different title outside of Asia because of copyright issues… or something equally stupid like that. So really I should be referring to this series as ‘Case Closed’, but I think that sounds lame, so we’re sticking to Detective Conan.

Born on June 21 1963, Gosho Aoyama is only 45 years old. I always imagined him to be this really old, wise-looking beardy guy (that sounds more like Alan Moore) who sits in his work room brooding over fictitious and non-fictitious murder cases in search of a good plot for his next issue. I wonder if he knows that there are kids in countries he’s probably never been to (like Indonesia) who religiously follow his series.

The thing I love about Detective Conan is that it provided a more intelligent Manga experience than the mind-numbing Shojo plot of shy girl meets popular boy in class, boy falls in love with shy girl, or has been in love with her since preschool, love is confessed, then broken, then reiterated, da da daa kill me now. The art in itself isn’t particularly special, but it does have its own charm and is distinctively different from other Manga styles I’ve known. I learned more from reading Detective Conan than I did at school back home. Currently 576 chapters in, I have yet to solve a case before Conan did. That was always a fun part of reading the series, trying to beat Conan. Give it a go. You can read free manga on OneManga, and the last time I checked the anime adaptation is all over YouTube.