I never thought I would see the day that Detective Conan would get this kind of treatment. Detective Conan is probably one of the most beloved franchises in Japan, going on for over three decades and being one of the few shows that has more episodes than One Piece. Numerous attempts have been made to bring the franchise over to the United States, and I distinctly remember getting into the series when it was rebranded as Case Closed during the early Funimation days. Sadly, the series didn't seem to fully catch on back then, but now there seems to be a bit of a resurgence in the show's overseas popularity. Not only are the movies continuing to be brought stateside with their own English dubs, but now it looks like TMS is making a bit of an initiative to get more casual fans up to speed with some of the major plot points of the series.

There are two main narrative beats to the Detective Conan franchise. The first is the episodic mystery format. After the initial setup, Shinichi tries to live with his childhood friend's father, who works as a private detective and tries to use that as a means of getting involved in murder cases. The theory is that the more murder cases they get involved with, the more likely they will come across this Black Organization. Every week is supposed to be a different series of mysteries that Conan needs to solve, and some of these mysteries can take up to three episodes. While these episodic mysteries make up a majority of the franchise's episode run, most of them are anime originals.

So the majority of the anime franchise consists of filler cases with very few progressing the overarching narrative. I also find it funny that, despite specifically trying to stay close with a detective to get the jump on murder cases, sometimes just random murders will happen around Conan and his friends. The sheer volume of filler for Detective Conan does make it difficult to get into because, unlike One Piece, you could argue that a lot of episodes don't matter, even if it is impressive that there have been hundreds of cases written for these episodes. So why not prioritize the episodes that deal with the second main narrative beat of the series, the Black Organization?

That is a brilliant idea on paper, and it's honestly something that I wish a lot of other long-running franchises would do. The first batch of episodes in Conan vs. The Black Organization has a couple of standard-length episodes and one TV special. All of these episodes are canon, and almost all of them specifically focus on Conan's direct involvement with the Black Organization. The ones that don't involve characters who will most likely tie into the story later. At first glance, this is a great way of introducing newcomers to the franchise because, theoretically, you need to watch these episodes to get the bulk of the story. I also imagine it is a smarter and more cost-effective method because TMS is not trying to dub over a thousand episodes. That makes sense until you realize that they probably should've showcased more.

Focusing on episodes that specifically deal with the main overarching villains of the series is fine until I realized that they are cutting off so much of the meat with the fat. I am trying to catch up on the Detective Conan series as best I can, but even if I didn't, the show makes it very clear that it is cutting corners with the narrative to prioritize these episodes. Just because I'm watching episodes focusing on the Black Organization does not mean they are hitting all of the canon episodes that matter. Some of these episodes have plot points or foreshadow events that occurred in episodes that were not adapted in this format. It's very unsatisfying when a character says something or alludes to something that has happened before, but if your only exposure to Detective Conan were these episodes, you might feel lost. Plus, some characters were introduced in episodes that had nothing to do with the Black Organization at all, but made an appearance here. So even if a character is being built up as having greater importance down the road, their introduction to the series here lacks any definitive importance or fanfare.

If it were up to me, I would have prioritized episodes that were in the original manga rather than just focusing exclusively on the Black Organization. What's here definitely works well enough, but I still feel like I would need to show a casual fan at least two or three other episodes that weren't adapted this way just to make sure that they have the full context of everything that is going on. Maybe TMS is going to go back and adapt more episodes after seeing how well these are received, or maybe there was a restriction on how many episodes they could distribute this way? I don't know, but it is very lackluster despite being impressive that I'm getting something like this at all.

The organization themselves are one of the best parts about these episodes, even if its accomplishments don't amount to much at this point in the series. Not much is known about this organization outside of the fact that a lot of its key members are named after alcoholic drinks, and they seem to have an influence on a lot of major figures throughout the world. During the few times that I did see them, they seemed to be transferring information, threatening political figures, or stealing money. The main figurehead for the organization, Gin, is probably one of my favorite characters in the franchise because of how deliciously evil he is. This guy comes with his audio stings whenever he is on screen, and he is intimidating in every shot.

A lot of that comes down to Nick Huber's performance, who is chewing the scenery with every single line. Another performance that stands out is probably Alexis Tipton as Ai Haibara, who is undoubtedly given the most dramatic material and character work throughout these episodes, given the fact that she is a much more tragic character with ties to the Black Organization. Alexis skirts that line of being sassy and self-deprecating to act as a counterbalance to Conan. Conan's voice did take a little bit of time to get used to, considering how much more familiar I am with his other English performances, but I did eventually warm up to Molly Zhang's interpretation of the character. She sounds reasonably boyish and can pull off convincing a grade schooler that has the mind of a young adult. There was a part of me that would've liked to have seen more of the actors from the original Case Closed dub reprise the same roles that they had here. The dub seemed to have been done in Texas under Studio Nano, and a lot of the actors who worked on that old dub are still working today. Colleen Clinkenbeard, who played Ran in the early Case Closed dub, actually plays a member of the Black Organization here. She did a great job, and I just found it very funny the minute I heard her voice.

These episodes also look and sound good. The episodes seem to be using the remastered footage of the main series, and it's probably some of the best HD cel animation I've seen in quite some time. Everything looks fluid, the designs are charming, and I get to see some rather impressive animation cuts despite this being a series that isn't action-packed. It doesn't match the quality that I have been seeing in the movies, but I don't think it has to. There's also good quality sound with some of the most iconic music tracks in anime. The Detective Conan themes are beautiful, and the heavy use of saxophone throughout the triumphant moments gives the show an audible identity that I would argue still holds up to this day. There was a lot of tender love and care that went into making this series still be presented in the best way possible.

But this is a detective series about the cases themselves? Detective Conan has done a pretty solid job of interweaving murder mystery cases with the overarching plot. I like a lot of the cases that are presented in a vacuum, especially their use of different objects in the environment creatively. Plus, kudos to the English writing staff for being able to work around situations that try to use Japanese linguistics as a part of solving the puzzles. It would be nice if the series gave the audience a little bit more information so they could solve the case alongside Conan, but most explanations at least make sense when he breaks down the cases, and there is a certain type of satisfaction that comes with seeing all of the information pieced together.

I do wish that Conan's interaction with the Black Organization were the result of the cases themselves. Shinichi's first introduction to them is a case of “wrong place, wrong time,” but there is at least one or two other instances throughout these episodes where he just randomly comes across them on the street or something. It would be nice if Conan's detective efforts helped him track them down, considering how big the mystery angle is and how Conan declares that he is going after them. But a lot of the time, it just feels like he ends up randomly coming across situations relating to them and then loses them without a confrontation, so it's a bit unsatisfying.

I don't think I've seen a company explicitly attempt to repackage a long-running series into something more digestible since Dragon Ball Kai. However, I wish a bit more had been done. Getting a few episodes that explicitly focused on character growth or episodes that fleshed out ideas that these episodes flashed back to probably would've made the entire package feel a lot more organic. I still think it's a good idea to release Detective Conan in a more condensed format for casual audiences. Now, it seems as though more episodes are coming out, and I'm looking forward to what the next batch of episodes covers. Maybe things are a bit awkward during this first batch that covers the first chunk of the franchise. Only time will tell, but imperfections aside, this is arguably one of the best times to try to be a Detective Conan fan, and if this format gets more popular, then maybe I can see more episodes of the series being released in the future.