This year marks 10 years of Detective Conan anime, and in celebration of this children’s detective show a tanpatsu, or one shot/television special, was aired a month ago.
This is an live action movie that takes place BEFORE the manga/anime (it ends leading into the first episode), so Conan is actually is high school self. He is the master detective and well known throughout Tokyo. His popularity has gotten him so far that people are actually chanllenging his skills as a detective, which forms this television special’s plot:
A person challenges Conan to a match to see if he can save his classmates on a class trip in a certain amount of time. Conan decides to take up the challenge and go on the trip but it ends up growing into something bigger than what he had initially expected.
The show’s format is EXACTLY like the anime in which it names all the main characters and suspects. It also has the original animation music as well as opening theme (which incorporates the animation and then transforming them into its ‘live action’ counterpart). The actors fall deep into their anime counterparts, looking like them and acting as silly as them, which makes sense considering the budget is that of a sentai. This is also emphasized by the wacky soundeffects used.
The acting isn’t spectaculator but something you would expected from a show aimed at 10 year olds. Its over the top and silly but gets by just enough so it isn’t annoying. The actor for Conan, Oguri Shun, plays it off as someone who’s always deep in thought which looks funny and not so convincing but it works. I’ve always remembered Ran as someone who was always high strung, but Kurokawa Tomoka passes her off as a sweet high school girl who just doesn’t get her best friend/semi-love interest. Then again, I’m not so familuar with Detective Conan past the first season.
Either way, the tanpatsu is good to see at least once. There’s no strange gizmos or knocking out of Ran’s father, Detective Mori to give him the credit of solving the case; but its a fun hour and thirty minute adventure through a crazy kidnapping cases that has you second guessing at every minute but don’t expect too much out of it, or you’ll sorely be disappointed.