Case Closed
Case Closed,
Case Closed is licensed for English-language release in North America by Viz Media, which has published the manga in print since September 2004. It also publishes the series in English on the Viz Manga digital manga service, with the series' chapters receiving simultaneous English publication in North America as they are released in Japan. It has been adapted into an anime television series adaptation produced by Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation and TMS Entertainment, which began broadcasting in January 1996.
The volumes of the manga had over 270 million copies in circulation worldwide by January 2023, making it one of the best-selling manga series of all time. In 2001, the manga was awarded the 46th Shogakukan Manga Award in the category. It has received positive response from critics for their plot and cases.
Plot
is a high school detective who sometimes works with police to solve cases. During an investigation, he is ambushed and incapacitated by a member of a crime syndicate known as the Black Organization. In an attempt to murder the young detective, they force-feed him a dangerous experimental drug. However, instead of killing him, it shrinks his body to the size of an elementary school child. Adopting the pseudonym Conan Edogawa and keeping his true identity a secret, Kudo lives with his childhood friend Rachel Moore and her father, Richard, who is a private detective. Throughout the series, he tags along on Richard's cases. Nonetheless, after Kudo solves one, he uses Dr. Agasa's hidden tranquilizer to sedate Richard and then uses a voice changer to simulate his voice to reveal the solution. He also enrolls in Teitan Elementary School, where he makes friends with a group of classmates who form their own Junior Detective League. While he continues to dig deeper into the Black Organization, he frequently interacts with other characters, including his neighbor, Dr. Agasa; Ran's friend Serena Sebastian ; a fellow teenage detective, Harley Hartwell ; assorted police detectives from different regions; and a phantom thief called Kaito Kid.Kudo later encounters an elementary school transfer student, Anita Hailey, who reveals herself to be a former member of the Black Organization under the code name Sherry and the creator of the experimental drug that shrunk him. She too ingested it to evade the pursuit of the organization. She soon joins the Junior Detectives. During a rare encounter with the Black Organization, Conan helps the FBI plant a CIA agent, Kir, inside the Black Organization as a spy.
Production
Case Closed was conceived in 1994 during the rise of mystery genre manga due to the publishing of the series The Kindaichi Case Files; the first chapter appeared in Shogakukan's Weekly Shōnen Sunday on January 5. Aoyama cites the stories of Arsène Lupin, Sherlock Holmes and the samurai films by Akira Kurosawa as influences on his work. When scripting each chapter, he ensures the dialogue remains simple and spends an average of four hours for each new case and twelve for more complicated ones. Aoyama's older brother is a scientist who helps him out with the "gimmicks" in the series. Each case spans several chapters and is resolved at the end, when characters explain the details of their solutions in simple terms. An online database of all the cases from the manga was launched in 2007. In 2007, Aoyama hinted that he had planned an ending but did not intend to end the series yet. Aoyama and his staff decided to computerize their manga creation process in early 2011, although he still draws with a pen and paper. The change began with the final page of chapter 760.Media
Manga
Written and illustrated by Gosho Aoyama, Case Closed started its serialization in Shogakukan's manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Sunday on January 5, 1994. Case Closed became one of the longest running manga series, with over 1,000 chapters released in Japan, and the first series with over 1,000 chapters published in Weekly Shōnen Sunday. Shogakukan has collected its chapters into individual volumes. The first volume was released on June 18, 1994. On October 18, 2021, the series reached one hundred volumes; One Piece author, Eiichiro Oda, whose series achieved the same feat a month before, sent congratulations to Aoyama. As of April 18, 2025, 107 volumes have been published.Viz Media announced its acquisition of the series for North America on June 1, 2004. Following Funimation's localization, Viz released the series as Case Closed and took their character names to keep consistency between the two media. Viz Media released the first volume in September 2004 and began releasing digital editions in 2013. On May 9, 2023, Viz Media launched their Viz Manga digital manga service, with the series' chapters receiving simultaneous English publication in North America as they are released in Japan. Gollancz licensed and distributed 15 of Viz Media's volumes in the United Kingdom before ceasing publication of manga.. In 2014 Shogakukan Asia began its own English localization of the series for Singapore and other Southeast Asian countries as Detective Conan. Laura Thornton of CBR.com, citing the common Japanese ownership in both Shogakukan Asia and Viz, described the Singapore version as, compared to the Viz one, "completely identical, word-for-word, even -- save for the names and the Detective Conan logo".Spin-offs
Gosho Aoyama's assistants have written an anthology series of Case Closed which are released irregularly.A spin-off manga series, titled Case Closed: The Culprit Hanzawa, by Mayuko Kanba, began in the July 2017 issue of Shogakukan's Shōnen Sunday S, released on May 25, 2017.
Another spin-off manga series, illustrated by Takahiro Arai with supervision by Aoyama, titled Case Closed: Zero's Tea Time started in issue #24 of Weekly Shōnen Sunday on May 9, 2018. The story centers on the agent Toru Amuro/Rei Furuya. New chapters of the manga are only published when Case Closed is on hiatus.
Another spin-off manga series by Arai, titled Detective Conan: Police Academy Arc – Wild Police Story, was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Sunday from October 2, 2019, to November 18, 2020. Spanning 13 chapters, it again focuses on Amuro/Furuya during his years in the police academy with his colleagues.
Anime
An anime television series adaptation, produced by Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation and TMS Entertainment, premiered on January 8, 1996. Over 1,150 episodes have aired in Japan, making it one of the longest anime series.Video games
Case Closeds expansion into the video games industry followed behind its foray into animation. On December 27, 1996, Detective Conan: Chika Yuuenchi Satsujin Jiken was released for the Game Boy. Since then, 24 games have been released. Currently, the majority of the games have only been released in Japan, though Nobilis has localized Case Closed: The Mirapolis Investigation for the PAL region. All dedicated Detective Conan games released for the Game Boy, Sony's consoles, the WonderSwan, and the Nintendo DS have been developed by Bandai. Banpresto developed the Case Closed titles on the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance while Marvelous Entertainment developed Case Closed: The Mirapolis Investigation.Audio CDs
Katsuo Ono composed and arranged the music in the Case Closed animation; his works have been released on several CDs. Two image albums, comprising several songs sung by Japanese voice actors of the characters in the animation, were also released. Several theme music were performed by pop musicians such as B'z, Zard, and Garnet Crow. The first four theme music were released by Universal Music Group and all releases thereafter were by Being Inc.The Best of Detective Conan and The Best of Detective Conan 2 albums collectively sold over 2.2million copies, while singles from The Best of Detective Conan 3 collectively sold over 1.6million copies. On July 25, 2017, the singer Mai Kuraki was awarded a Guinness World Record for singing the most theme songs in a single anime series, having sung 21 songs for Detective Conan, starting with her hit song "Secret of My Heart".
Live-action drama
Four live action drama TV specials and a TV series were created by Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation and TMS entertainment based on the series. The first two specials aired in 2006 and 2007 featuring Shun Oguri portraying the teenage Jimmy Kudo and Tomoka Kurokawa as Rachel Moore. The third and fourth TV specials aired in 2011 and 2012 featuring Junpei Mizobata as Jimmy and Shioli Kutsuna as Rachel. The cast used for those TV specials were used for the television series which aired between July 7 and September 29, 2011.Other related media
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Weekly Shōnen Sunday and Weekly Shōnen Magazine, the two companies collaborated to publish twelve biweekly magazines consisting of chapters from Weekly Shōnen Sundays Case Closed and Weekly Shōnen Magazines Kindaichi Case Files. The magazine ran between April 10, 2008, and September 25, 2008.Shogakukan have also produced many books spun off from the series. Fifty volumes of a film comic series were published in Japan between June 1996 and August 2000, covering the first 143 episodes of the anime, though some episodes were skipped. Five additional film comics entitled were published between July 2001 and January 2002 and covered selected episodes between 162 and 219. Thirteen official guide books were published between June 1997 and April 2009. Shogakukan has also published novels, digest books, educational books, and puzzle books.
In North America, Score Entertainment published the Case Closed Trading Card Game on June 29, 2005. The game entails the use of three customized decks of cards, which players buy and collect. Representing characters, events, and objects in Case Closed, these cards are used by players to fulfill certain conditions to solve a case and win the game. Certain cards are used to foil the progress of the player's opponents. An English unofficial guidebook to the series titled The Case Closed Casebook: An Essential Guide was published by DH Publishing Inc. on March 25, 2008. A collaborative themed event by Universal Studios Japan with the series, for the Universal Cool Japan 2018 attractions, ran from January 19 to June 24, 2018. Characters from the series were featured in a crossover event for the survival horror video game Identity V for the game's China server in 2020, and released globally in 2021.