Sorry, but I couldn’t lay off APTX 4869
nekosasu | June 13, 2009 | 10:05 am
What the hell is he talking about?
Don’t play dumb. I don’t know how any more obvious this title could be. Of course, it’s about Detective Conan, and about how much my addiction to this long anime has successfully hindered this blog’s activity again.
I have to admit, this is my second attempt at marathoning this series – 3 years ago, I started from the first episode, and eventually stalled at about episode 120 or so. And the reason is simple: repetition.
One of the bad points of this anime is that almost every case proceeds in exactly the same way: optional introduction of the situation, then some mysterious murder scene occurs, and coincidentally, Conan is always at the scene. Always. Be it with Ran, the Detective Boys or alone: he is always involved in some way. Then comes the investigation, where Conan always finds THE clue that CSI never managed to pick up. Eventually, Conan puts Kogorou or Sonoko to sleep and using their voice (sometimes Agasa’s voice too) to solve the case in his own logic.
I mean, that concept was fun in the first few fifty episodes, but it really is always the same. The only good, enjoyable parts are those where the Black Organization is involved, because it is exactly the backbone of this anime, what the entire shebang is boiling down to. Actually, if you took only the plot episodes, you probably would only have about 50 episodes or so. The rest, as much entertainment as they may provide, are downright filler episodes.
Attorney at low? Which means, Kogorou must be a Detective at high?
I took this point into consideration during this marathon, and didn’t focus on watching EVERY episode anymore. I blitzed through the opening preview and several episodes to see if the content was any relevant to the plot and my interest. Skipping the fillers barely made no difference to my viewing experience, and only in one or two cases, I felt that I might have missed some remotely important detail (like, when did Kaitou Kid find out Conan’s real identity). Like this, I managed to advance much faster in the series than I normally would have, and it took me only three weeks to catch up to the latest episode. As such, those 536 episodes and 13 movies didn’t really feel like much.
As I said, every case is always the same in essence, and you will grow tired of the fillers, but when you’re at that point where you’re close to quitting, an interesting episode appears. It’s usually a one hour special, or a long awaited Black Org-related arc. Episode 345, for instance, was a great milestone which I liked (well, apart from the awfully translated prologue. My loss for watching subs :|) Another milestone was episode 425, which had already impressed me years ago with a special opening, and a bombastic B’z song – Shoudou. I adore that song.
I won’t go too much into detail in this post (mostly because there’s so much to talk about I don’t even know what to talk about) so, most of my raw impressions to some of the episodes can be found at melative.
There were a couple of days, though, where I didn’t even have time to get on the net and do some microblogging. I took my laptop to the terrace, and watched Conan there in the beautiful weather (killing two birds with one stone, eh). I still jotted down notes, which I’ll place in a spoiler tag to save some space.
show
Old Men’s Eleven Part 2. Apparently exactly the same shit as part one. (Where did I hear this again…?)
As you can see (or not), episodes 491 to 504 were by far the most impressive ones. The Clash of Red and Black arc comforted me that I wasn’t watching this series in vain; actually, it made me love it. The episodes were intense in action and suspense, and the whole happy-go-lucky atmosphere of the filler episodes entirely disappeared, even in the previews (which honestly surprised me). Heck, the outstandingly good opening already makes clear that this is serious stuff. And for the first time, a good guy died in this series. Or did he? I’m sure Shinichi keikaku doori’d that, too.
To a certain extent, I understand the fact that Shinichi is smart, thinks overly logically, has an elephant’s memory and probably can read 398 moves ahead in chess, but I just don’t like the fact that he’s infallible. True, there’s the occasional showdown with his archnemesis Kaitou Kid whom he always seems to be slightly inferior to, but apart from that, he has no logical Achilles heel.
In the presence of such a modern day Sherlock Holmes, just why has nobody ever tried thinking logically, and relate Conan to Shinichi? Hundreds of cases where he’s leading the investigations, messing with the crime scene, standing behind Kogorou, Sonoko or Agasa, sometimes even stopping criminals, and yet it always feels like the characters are reset every episode. Every time, Kogorou bonks or kicks Conan for being near the crime scene. Every time, the police inspectors are bluffed by Conan’s perspicacity. Every time, Conan gives the decisive hint or metaphor to lead the investigators to the real criminal. And yet, nobody ever doubts his identity. In recent episodes, the policemen do acknowledge that Conan always notices the most peculiar things, and officer Satou seems to have her suspicions, but nobody ever says anything. Not even the FBI! And they should know much better, shouldn’t they? Same for the Black Organization. Though on the other hand, Vermouth already knows, but she probably is just waiting for the Silver Bullet to strike them and fell that house of cards. And I’m sure Bourbon knows as well.
Unless this is yet another misleading hint, huh. They already got me good with Kir.
Speaking of the Black Org, the 13th movie, which aired last April, is about a new member of the organization, Irish, who apparently has found out the truth about Conan. I probably can expect to watch the movie only Fall 2009 when the DVD comes out, but I can very well imagine that it will have no bearing on the normal TV series. Because so far, none of the 12 movies had any impact on the normal plot, not even such memorable moments as in Movie 2 or 4, where Conan and Ran get really close. If only Ran had any hint of intelligence (or is it only her endless naivete?), she’d quickly find out the truth and just live a more relaxed life. Speaking of romance, I rejoiced when Satou and Takagi finally lissed
Ah, I’m running in circles. I’m already at a thousand words, and yet I’ve said nothing that warrants this a review. No, this isn’t even one, it’s just a justification of my prolonged absence from this blog. Plus there’s the difference, I watched it back to back, while normally it’s one episode a week. I’m sure nobody would ever last thirteen years watching the same anime, but Sazae-san fans probably will disagree with me. Guess what, I probably will now (try to) watch it every week.
Blabla, I would strongly encourage people to watch this anime and see what I mean for themselves, but most people probably will back off from such an enormous amount of episodes. Had I been a little more attentive, I would have noted down the most important episodes to catch up quickly. But seriously, do give it a try. You’ll be surprised at the many plot twists that could put Code Geass to shame (not)! Find how futile your future assassination attempt will be if you plan it like any of the criminals in the anime! Then again, you’d have to bump into a real life Kudou Shinichi, what are the odds?
Ran will be mad if you don’t watch it! She knows karate, you know.
Oh and, I’ll resume my long announced Catching Up series later in the week. Or should I rather say, Wrapping Up? I intended it to be a series of mid-season reviews, but there are already some anibroggers dishing out their generic SUMMAR PREBIEWS so… yah. Well, episode 537 is about to air in a few minutes, and I shall tune in right now!
These point eyes look like Photoshops! Ahahaha.
No, really, I have never even watched the Conan anime, only saw one of two episodes at random, and with 500+ episodes, I am quite glad I didn’t. Back then, I started reading the manga and was head over heels over it, and when I was at volume 4 or 5, I got to know that the manga series is endlessly long. That was when I stopped reading, because I really wanted Conan to become his old self again and see some closure in the series.
As such, those 536 episodes and 13 movies didn’t really feel like much.
Huge! Feat! That’s seriously a lot. Like you say, some episodes aren’t all that necessary. It’d be pretty rad to have the minimum cover list of episodes.
There were a couple of days, though, where I didn’t even have time to get on the net and do some microblogging.
^^ True Marathon! I’ve actually watched DC on Adult Swim long ago. Never really got into it, but it was fun sitting and catching a couple episodes. Like many, I think the length was a turn-off :/ Not that I would mind following something of length, I just haven’t been able to stick with anything O.o
Also, try this link.
Marathons really mess my daily life rhythm up. You put off stuff you have to do because you really want to catch up ASAP – and then you get withdrawal symptoms. This is coming from me who “marathoned” a measly 52 episodes (Nanoha) in 2 weeks at the start of June.
500+ episodes…and I thought DBZ was long enough!
> “marathoned” a measly 52 episodes (Nanoha) in 2 weeks
lol, that’s normal watching rite? I remember I marathoned the 51 episodes of FMA in 2 days. That was pretty intense.
I’d watch Conan if it weren’t for the fact it had so many episodes. Maybe I’ll take it slowly.
As for marathons, Naruto 1-133 in 4 days. Y’know, back when I thought the anime was cool. Throw some stones.
I think I reached about 300++ episodes when I tried to marathon-ed this but yeah, it is tiresome and somewhat boring due to the repetition… But, I swear I can rewatch all of its movies anytime I want and I’ll never be bored.
The disclosure of the show seemingly still have a long way to go…
There actually is a list of episodes the subbers put together that make up the more important story arcs, versus the filler crime-of-the-week:
http://anime.dctp.ws/arcs.html
I watched Conan a few years ago, but also got burned out from the sheer volume of episodes and the endless filler. But I agree if you just take the more “important” episodes that matter to the overall plot, what you’d have is a really good series. It’s too bad the odds are this will run for another 100 years, though, because I’d love to see the final conclusion and Ran finding out Conan’s true identity.
Closure, is something I can’t even fathom. As the plot backbone stands, we probably are in the half, or not even there. Unless the members of the Black Org will be taken out all at once, I can imagine it will take a looooooooooong time until there will be closure. Thing is though, if you only take the good bits of the anime, you’d be in with, probably, 50-ish episodes which are fairly intense. (Well probably more intense for those weirdos like me who spent a little more time with these guys, and grew fond of them.)
Ya, I knew Conan for a long time from German TV too, but I simply can’t compare it. A lot of the puns, mysteries and solutions are based on the Japanese language (orthography and semantics) and their culture, which is relatively hard to translate and preserve the original meaning. But beyond that, German TV kinda sucks, rarely shows the entire OP/ED (dubbed), sometimes it’s censored, or 1 hr specials are shortened in order to fit the German time frame. I hate it. Actually, I initially had a rant planned about the way anime (not Anime, they might not experience that on TV any soon yet) is shown there, but I suppose as a foreigner I’m not really in the position to comment on that, and I am most likely not sufficiently informed anyway. (Finally, I hate dubs. Especially German seiyuus suck pretty hard IMO, in anime and many US shows. They’re massively inferior to the French in this aspect.)
Normal watching? Lmao, normal watching for me is watching a max of 3 ongoing series a week! I do the occassional marathons of finished stuff, my “worst” being 26 episodes in 2 days. That said, I really lose perception of place, time, and life when I marathon. Fun while doing it, not very fun “recovering” from it!
This year has been pretty “bad” for me, doing a whole load of “catchup” marathons on stuff I’ve previously dropped (Nodame Paris, Slayers Evo-R, Toradora, Zettai Karen), on top of the standard marathons (Lucky Star, Bamboo Blade, Nanoha x3).