#detco dvd saga

[marshmallowgoop]

DCMK Blu-rays

A list of Detective Conan and Magic Kaito content with physical HD releases.

This won't be comprehensive by any means; I'm going to be focusing on Japanese, German, and United States releases because these are the ones that I own and am most familiar with. I believe that many of the films are also available on Blu-ray in several countries, dubbed in several languages, but I don't have much concrete knowledge about that at this moment. Please feel free to add any information!

That said, the main thing to know about Detective Conan Blu-rays is that... they kind of don't really exist. The television series is (mainly, more on this later) released on DVD only in Japan, usually with the equivalent of four episodes per disc, sold at 4,620 yen each. They're grouped in "Parts," with up to 10 Volumes per Part, and the next release, on June 23rd, will be Part 31, Volume 3, containing episodes 1007, 1008, 1010, and 1013.

A handful of episodes are released on Blu-ray via collections in Japan; there are the Treasured Selections and Akai Family TV Selections. But with a series running over 1,000 episodes, it really is just a handful of episodes available in these collections.

Treasured Selections

With the Treasured Selections, you can get 67 episodes on Blu-ray:

1: "The Roller Coaster Murder Case"

2: "The Kidnapping of the Company President's Daughter"

54: "The Game Company Murder Case"

128: "The Black Organization: One Billion Yen Robbery Case"

129: "The Mysterious New Student"

176-178: "Re-Encounter with the Black Organization"

226-227: "Battle Game Trap"

230-231: "Mysterious Passenger"

258-259: "The Man From Chicago"

271-272: "Hide, Hurry Up, and Abbreviate It"

277-278: "English Teacher vs. Great Western Detective"

286-288: "Shinichi in New York"

307-308: "The Remains of Voiceless Testimony"

309-311: "Contact with the Black Organization"

338-339: "Four Porsches"

340-341: "The Hidden Secret in the Toilet"

343-344: "Convenience Store Trap"

345: "The Confrontation with the Black Organization: The Coincidence of the Two Enemies on a Night with a Full Moon"

346-347: "Look for the Mark on the Buttocks"

361-362: "Teitan High School Ghost Story"

425: "Black Impact! The Moment the Black Organization Reaches Out."

427-428: "Super Secret School Zone"

429-430: "The Point of No Return"

462-465: "The Shadow of the Black Organization"

484-485: "The Whereabouts of the Black Picture"

491-504: "Red and Black Crash"

507-508: "Blind Spot of the Karaoke Shop"

509-511: "Conan VS Double Code Mystery"

However, anything before 286 is not in HD; these are all traditionally animated episodes that were not especially remastered for these releases:

Episodes 286 and beyond (from Treasured Selection 6 to 18) are digitally animated, and these Blu-rays are more properly HD:

Akai Family TV Selections

With the Akai Family TV Selections, you can get 33 episodes on Blu-ray:

563-564: "The Detective Squad vs. The Band of Robbers"

578-581: "A Red Omen That Summons Danger"

675-676: "Not Even a Millimeter of Forgiveness"

699-700: "Shadow Closes in on Ai's Secret"

701-704: "Pitch Black Mystery Express Train"

724-725: "Thief Kid and the Blushed Mermaid"

779-783: "The Scarlet Return"

785-786: "Taiko Meijin's Match of Love"

836-837: "The Unfriendly Girls Band"

861-862: "Just Like a 17 Year Old Crime Scene"

863-864: "The Spirit Detective's Murder"

866-867: "The Traitor's Stage"

881-882: "The Magician of the Waves"

Other Japanese Blu-rays

Beyond these, the TV-original specials Episodes 804-805 ("Conan and Ebizo's Kabuki Juhachiban Mystery") and Episodes 965-968 ("Kaiju Gomera VS Kamen Yaiba"), plus the canon Episodes 927-928 ("The Scarlet School Trip"), are also available on Blu-ray.

Finally, special edition Blu-rays for Movies 17-25 include a second disc containing the movie's tie-in anime episode... but that second disc is likely a DVD, speaking as someone who doesn't own any of these but does own the Japanese special edition Blu-rays for Movies 14 through 16, where the second discs are, indeed, DVDs.

German Blu-rays

Outside of Japan, Germany is currently releasing boxed sets of the Detective Conan series starting from Episode 1. At this time, these are the only physical releases of the remastered footage (which make a big difference), and they include Japanese and German audio (but any German-dubbed songs are omitted). Three boxes are available now, covering Episodes 1 to 96 (or 102 with the international numbering); a fourth box is set to be released on May 19th, covering up until Episode 122 (or 129 with the international numbering).

Do note that these releases edit the name boxes in a way that can't be turned off, however.

Films, Specials, and Magic Kaito

In Japan, there are Blu-ray releases for:

Films 1-25

Both Lupin crossovers

The Disappearance of Conan Edogawa: The Two Worst Days in History

Episode One: The Great Detective Turned Small

Magic Kaito and Magic Kaito 1412

In Germany, all of the same content is available on Blu-ray. There's also a Blu-ray release for The Scarlet Alibi, and I believe that they're the only ones with a physical HD release of Gosho Aoyama's Collection of Short Stories as well.

In the United States, there are Blu-ray releases for:

Films 19-23

Both Lupin crossovers

Episode One: The Great Detective Turned Small

As far as I'm aware, there are no HD releases anywhere of the OVAs. They're available on DVD in Japan, either separately or via four "Secret File" compilations (though these only cover OVAs 1-9).

There also aren't any HD releases of the Magic/Bonus files, but DVDs are included with the Japanese special edition versions of Movies 12-16. They're also available for individual purchase in Japan as well.

TV Specials 1, 2, and 4 (with 3 being the Lupin special, 5 being The Disappearance of Conan Edogawa, and 6 being Episode One) seem to be DVD only, too. Actually, I'm not sure if TV Special 1,"Time Travel of the Silver Sky," is available on disc at all? But TV Special 2, "Black History," is said to be included with the Japanese special edition DVD of the second live-action drama special, and TV Special 4, "Fugitive: Kogoro Mori," is included on the Part 24, Volume 7 DVD.

TV Special 7, "Love Story at Police Headquarters ~Wedding Eve~," might be included on Blu-ray in Japan with the special edition of Movie 25, but I can't confirm if that disc is a Blu-ray or DVD right now (and the same goes for The Scarlet Alibi, included with the special edition of Movie 24 in Japan).

The eight VHS-only Shogakukan Illustrated Encyclopedia Series tapes are obviously not available in HD, either.

Tl;dr?

So, in short, combining releases and eliminating the not-remastered Treasured Selections, you can find 186 episodes on Blu-ray right now (with more on the way with the fourth Detektiv Conan box). You can also get all of the films and Magic Kaito series, plus a few specials, in HD.

And I think that's all I've got! Feel free to add more information if you know any! I am desperate to physically own more HD DCMK content.

EDIT: I've done some more digging, and from what I can tell, starting with Movie 24, the Japanese special edition Blu-rays for the films changed the bonus second disc from a DVD to a Blu-ray instead. This means that Episode 1,002, "The Beika City Shopping Center Garbage Bin Mystery," included with the special edition of Movie 24, as well as Episode 1,039, "The Flying Jack-o'-lantern," included with the special edition of Movie 25, are available on Blu-ray, too. So, a more accurate number of episodes that have been released on Blu-ray (in HD) at this time is actually 188. Further, this confirms that The Scarlet Alibi and TV Special 7 are also available on Blu-ray in Japan.

Additionally, though I have provided a couple of links throughout this post, the Detective Conan World wiki deserves a bigger shout out than I initially gave; their "Collectibles" page, and particularly their "Japanese Blu-ray" article, were a huge help in compiling the information laid out here. Many, many thanks to the contributors.

And while I'm here, for those interested in English-language releases specifically, Magic's Detective Agency is a fantastically detailed resource for every DVD released by FUNimation (Volumes, Season Sets, and Films). They're not HD releases, true, but at the time, they're the only physical releases of any episodes and the first six films in English.

Finally, I also discovered that a fifth Detektiv Conan box is set to be released on July 21st! This should mean that remastered episodes up until 145 (or 155 with the international numbering) will be available on Blu-ray, and it bodes well for these releases to continue. Hopefully, there will be physical releases of the remastered footage in other countries, too!

[marshmallowgoop]

You know, I'd really like to be more into collecting manga, but I find collecting anime so much... well, easier probably isn't the right word, but I do prefer it, for a few reasons.

Space. Discs can be condensed. You can turn something ridiculous like this...

...into maybe a couple dozen actual cases on the shelf. I particularly like using 6-DVD cases; that's as many discs as you can comfortably fit into a standard 14mm DVD case, so you can shrink things down considerably and still display some of the original jacket art.

And, sure, grouping multiple discs together can be confusing (I keep a literal document to sort out where everything is) and mismatched (the Japanese Blu-rays of DetCo films that I'm pairing with the FUNimation English-language DVDs come to mind), but it's a space-saving method that can be done.

Books, on the other hand, can't exactly be made smaller once you have them. It's... pretty impossible.

2. Digital copies. So, sure, physical books can't exactly be made smaller, but you can get digital copies, right? This is true, but... I'm a sucker for physical media. The nice thing about DVDs and Blu-rays is that if you buy a physical copy, there might be a digital copy attached, and you can also make your own. But I don't know of any manga that comes with a digital copy if you buy the physical thing, and manga is also much harder to digitize yourself.

3. Languages. I like comparing the original text to its English translation, even if I hardly understand Japanese. With anime, if it's been released with an English dub, a DVD or Blu-ray will just about always have the original Japanese audio included as well. So, I can easily switch between the two, all in one convenient package.

But with manga, you can't exactly just change one option and suddenly have another language. I've bought some manga three times so that I can have a Japanese version, an English version, and a digital version, whereas with a DVD or Blu-ray, that could all be a single purchase.

But all this said... books might fall apart, but at least they don't break like DVDs and Blu-rays do and probably have a longer shelf life overall. So, there is that....

[marshmallowgoop]

So, I got the Japanese Blu-rays for every Detective Conan film that FUNimation dubbed in English (yay!), but making my own HD English dub versions is so much harder than I anticipated.

Because I thought I'd just have to push the English audio track forward a bit, right? FUNimation's releases only cut out those logos in the start, didn't they? I thought it'd be pretty quick and easy.

But I guess that was naïve. The videos don't match up all over the place.

It's ended up being a much more ambitious project than I thought it'd be, but I've HD'd 3/6 movies so far, and while they're all amateur jobs that might not be totally synced up all the time, having the English dub tracks paired with the remastered footage is so nice.

Would really like official HD English releases one day!

[marshmallowgoop]

Detective Conan Japanese DVD Covers | Conan Edogawa and Heiji Hattori

[marshmallowgoop]

Update to this post about where to find textless openings and endings for Detective Conan/Case Closed!

To my knowledge, I now own every music album containing a bonus DVD with clean footage that's been released at this time (save for the Detective Conan edition of the "TRY AGAIN" single, since that content is also included in The Best of Detective Conan 5 and Mai Kuraki x Detective Conan Collaboration Best 21).

So, I can definitively confirm: across the nine DVDs, you can find creditless versions of 27/55 openings and 32/65 endings. You can also find clean movie endings for five of the films—5, 6, 7, 13, and 21—but there's a bit of a catch. For the two Mai Kuraki songs used both as TV and movie endings, "always" (ED 12, Movie 5) and "Togetsukyō ~Kimi Omou~" (ED 55, Movie 21), you don't get a textless version of the show ending. The videos depict the movie ending only.

That creditless OPs and EDs (generally) aren't included on the literal hundreds of volumes that the series is sold in, which each contain only the runtime equivalent of about four episodes and sell for 4,620 yen apiece, still baffles me. But given that one of Discotek Media's highlights for their recent Lupin the 3rd vs. Detective Conan: The Movie Blu-ray was "a clean opening sequence not available anywhere else," I guess providing this content just really isn't DetCo's thing.

And while I admittedly bought close to a dozen albums pretty much solely to get my hands on the textless footage included on a separate disc, you do of course also get a lot of music—a fact illustrated to me in crystal-clear clarity when I finished importing all of the CDs to iTunes:

Granted, these are some bloated stats; they also include The Best of Detective Conan 3, which I purchased to fill out the collection even though it lacks the bonus DVD, and there are 13 duplicates of Mai Kuraki songs if you buy every album pictured above. But subtracting all of that, there are still 77 Detective Conan or Conan-adjacent songs and about 5 hours and 24 minutes of music. If the 1,000+ episode count and 25 movies don't do it enough, these numbers put into perspective how massive this franchise is! Enough OPs and EDs that only a portion of them fill hours.

And make quite the fat stack:

Anyway, I can't say that this was my preferred method of picking up creditless footage—ideally, I would have liked it all included with the dozens upon dozens of Japanese Conan DVDs sitting on my shelves—but I am glad that you can purchase this content somewhere. Plus, you get loads of music, and the packaging can be quite cute, with some nice extras here and there, too.

For example, The Best of Detective Conan 5 comes bundled with three adorable music-themed prints; I think my favorite might have to be this one with Shinichi on guitar and Conan on harmonica (though the one with Ran playing piano and Conan singing is a close second!)

And for the "Countdown" single, there's a pin featuring one of three scenes from the opening sequence. Mine's this Heizuha moment, but I wonder what the other two are?

I also have to say that Mai Kuraki's stuff is wonderfully charming. The disc designs are pretty and pleasing; the "Barairo no Jinsei" and "Kimi to Koi no Mama de Owarenai Itsumo Yume no Mama ja Irarenai" album contains one disc adorned with a rose and another with the moon, fitting the lyrics of both songs:

And while "ZERO kara Hajimete" translates to "Start from ZERO," call me silly—I didn't make the connection to Shinichi's speech in the "Holmes' Revelation" arc until I saw the disc with the English translation and Conan's face next to it:

Also, what a cute back cover:

So, yeah! If you're looking for creditless DetCo OPs and EDs, buying these nine albums is one way to find a nice chunk of them—and get you a ton of music to boot!

[marshmallowgoop]

To get a copy of Episode 129 of Detective Conan/Case Closed on disc, it was cheaper to buy the fourth DVD selection containing it rather than the original volume that it was released on, back when I was picking up the Japanese DVDs individually. (Which I do not recommend. If you’re looking to fill in the 124-753 gap of episodes not available on Crunchyroll in this way, go for listings selling entire season(s).)

So, I wound up purchasing DVD Selection 4, which contains the Ai Haibara-focused episodes that are 129 (her introduction) and 178 (the final part of the “Reunion with the Black Organization” storyline), instead of Part 5, Volume 8 (which has 129 only). And an interesting thing about the DVD selection is its back cover, where it’s got extra art of Ai and Conan that, most notably, features Ai all dressed up with a floor-length gown and scarf.

That Conan stands beside her wearing his usual suit and sneakers rather than anything more formal is a bit disappointing, but my first thought was that their outfits there reflect what they would have worn to the mourning party they’re (kind of) at in Episode 178, had they had the time and information to prepare properly for it. Because I gotta say—watching them just waltz into the event in their street clothes (pictured in the bottom image above, on the cover art for Part 7, Volume 5, which contains Episodes 175-178) couldn’t help but be a little painful to me. But I of course eventually realized that the DVD Selection 4 outfits aren’t exactly appropriate for a mourning party, either.

So, I have no idea why that art is there on the back of DVD Selection 4; I don’t think anything in Episode 129 would necessitate fancy clothes, either? But I found it cute! Look at them being snazzy together.

[marshmallowgoop]

Another DetCo DVD saga post, I know, but, okay, I’ve almost finished collecting all of the original Case Closed volumes that FUNimation released! But since I don’t have endless space, I’m doing what I did with the Japanese volumes and sticking 4-6 discs into a single DVD case that’s got cover art that kind of reflects what’s inside and also has some number on the spine that kind of fits with the numbers next to it. So, 1.1 is next to 2.1 which is next to 3.1, just like 5-6 is next to 6-7 which is next to 7-8. There’s a lot missing in the middle there, but hey, the numbers still sorta work, right?

But anyway, putting everything together made me realize that the Case Closed volumes are so... dark? Like, here’s a stack of Case Closed volumes against a stack of Japanese Detective Conan volumes:

And the Japanese ones are so bright! They’re pink and purple and beautiful-day-blue, with cute little illustrations and colorful Conan logos.

All while the North American ones look basically like my wardrobe. Deep greens, subdued oranges. Even when there are more vibrant colors, they’re absolutely splattered with black.

The differences really stuck out to me when I got this ultra-cute box that was originally paired with a special edition of the tenth Conan movie, The Private Eyes’ Requiem, and meant to hold the first ten films. Only the first six of those ten were released in English (so far!), so I got the Japanese versions of the rest, and, well...

Same story! Case Closed is always set against darkness and night, whereas Detective Conan is as colorful as a scarlet macaw.

(Also, as an aside, this box is adorable. Easily my favorite collector’s box in my collection. I did get it used, so it’s a bit worn, but the charm is still very much all there.)

(Lookit ‘em all holding up “10.” Precious!)

Anyway, anyway, tl;dr, tl;dr, Case Closed packaging is like 

💀🔪MURDER⚰️😱  

while Detective Conan packaging is like

🌞🌈MURDER🦋😊 

And I love it.

[marshmallowgoop]

Episode 425, Blu-ray Quality, and 10th-Anniversary Quiz Questions

Watched Episode 425 of Detective Conan for the first time recently, and it's a fun ride. Absolutely ridiculous—the FBI is really just taking this child along to stop multiple(!) assassination attempts!—but not without heart. It's got some great character moments (especially with Ai) and emotional drama (loved what we were shown of Kir).

But unlike Episode 345, the big, grand, showstopping 2.5-hour special prior to this one, there's some considerable bloating in regards to pacing here. A story that likely needed only a 2-hour timeslot to tell (at most) is stretched long and thin, with a laughable amount of repetition and recap. Perhaps most outrageously, there's a flashback to James Black's introduction case (specifically the second part, Episode 259) that's dragged out so unnecessarily far that it dawdles all over the screen for nearly a full two minutes.

(The timing of Episode 425 itself also strikes me as pretty funny. 345 has buildup, you know? 329 to 345 is practically straight plot. One hard-hitting, main-story case after another. Pieces are falling into place and threatening to collide constantly. There's a real sense of rising tension that culminates in the bombastic showdown that is the series' first 2.5-hour special.

(And this isn't just any anime. It's the 1,000+-episode, 25+-years-on-the-air, ginormous-barrier-of-entry monstrosity that is Detective Conan. Things proceed at a glacial pace here. The tiniest crumbs of crucial information are dropped at the speed of, like, three seconds every five episodes. Getting so much plot all at once is meaningful, something fitting for hyping up a big event that at least rattles the status quo, and while that Dutch-themed anime-original case in the midst of the 345 buildup (Episode 342) is of course wildly and ludicrously out of place, it's nothing compared to how out of place 425 feels.

(There's practically no setup here. The excessive recap makes it almost embarrassingly blatant that hardly anything main-plot relevant has happened since 345, and the episode prior to 425 is a filler—get this—called "Photo Email from the Clown."

(Yes, really. Only DetCo can build up to its super plot-heavy 2.5-hour special with a case featuring incidental characters we'll never see again and a dead clown. I love this show so much.)

But anyway, 425 is the only episode of the series that I own on Blu-ray, so I did actually appreciate the flashbacks for their visuals, if nothing else. None of the recounted episodes with traditional animation are of remastered quality, but there's definitely a clear difference between the DVD (top) and Blu-ray (bottom); as shown with this cap from Episode 177, the Blu-ray version has cleaner, sharper lines and colors:

And while I don't own a DVD version of 425 to compare how the episode itself looks between the two formats, judging from how much smoother and crispier (crunch) the digitally animated Episode 345 looks when recapped in 425 than it does on DVD, I think it's (probably?) fair to say that the same holds true for the Blu-raying of any digitally animated episode:

Regardless of anything else I could say about Episode 425, the evident jump in quality with the Blu-ray was dazzling, and it got me bummed that only a select handful of episodes have been released in this format! (At least in Japan, from what I know? Maybe other countries have more Blu-ray releases?) Sure the Black Organization and FBI-themed Treasured Selection Blu-rays (and the Akai Family TV Selections later) contain the Big Plot cases, and sure there are remastered versions of Episodes 1 to 123 up on Crunchyroll (in many countries) that do (in my opinion) have more elaborate and stunning HD'ing of traditionally animated episodes than what I see on my Episode 425 Blu-ray, but I'd love to own more high-quality Cone.

I've said in the past that it was a mistake to buy the Japanese DVD volumes individually—it's probably much less expensive in the long run to focus on listings selling entire season(s)—but there's certainly a silver lining here. The Black Organization and FBI 11 Treasured Selection that I purchased instead of Part 14, Volume 10 looks slick in Blu-ray quality, and I kind of want all the Japanese Blu-ray collections now.

But one thing about not having Part 14, Volume 10 is that I'm missing the first question in a 10-question quiz that commemorates the show's and movies' 10th anniversary and, fittingly, is a part of 10 episodes (starting with 425 and ending with 434). These short quiz segments before the openings are nothing out of this world or anything, but they're definitely cute, kinda like those "Who's that Pokemon?" spots. Loose translations are loose, but all the questions I do have are under the cut.

Question 2 says, "52 volumes of the original manga are on sale now! If you stacked all the books horizontally, how tall would the pile be in centimeters?" The three options for answers are だ (da), 70 cm; ぢ (ji), 90 cm; and づ (zu), 110 cm.

Question 3 asks, "How long is the show's opening narration in seconds?" The three options for answers are あ (a), 5 seconds; い (i), 15 seconds; and う (u), 30 seconds.

Question 4 asks, "In the year 2005, how many hours of Conan were broadcast?" The three options for answers are さ (sa), 10.5 hours; し (shi), 15.5 hours; and す (su), 20.5 hours.

Question 5 asks, "What episode number is the current episode?" The three options for answers are か (ka), Episode 379; き (ki), Episode 429; and く (ku), Episode 479.

Question 6 asks, "How many openings and endings has the Conan series had?" The three options for answers are あ (a), 41; い (i), 31; and う (u), 21.

Question 7 asks, "What is Conan not good at?" The three options for answers are ら (ra), soccer; り (ri), karaoke; and る (ru), swimming.

Question 8 asks, "What's Shinichi's favorite food?" The three options for answers are が (ga), lemon pie; ぎ (gi), sweet potato pie; and ぐ (gu), apple pie.

Question 9 asks, "What is the color of Dr. Agasa's car?" The three options for answers are つ (tsu), red; て (te), white; and と (to), yellow.

Question 10 asks, "What is the name of the drug that shrunk Conan?" The three options for answers are あ (a), APTX 1996; い (i), APTX 4896; and う (u), APTX 4869.

How'd you do? Personally, I found it amusing how the questions could range from difficult (for me, anyway!), like the manga-stacking question that is Question 2, to something more obvious, like Question 7 asking about what Conan's bad at.

Question 5 also cracked me up because the answer is super easy if you're watching on DVD, but, you know, on that note... the Japanese DVDs actually tend to not have their episodes ordered completely chronologically. For example, Episode 426 is included as the final episode on Part 14, Volume 9, even though Episode 425 makes up the entirety of Part 14, Volume 10. This is done so as to not split up multi-part cases across different DVDs, but it also means that, say, if I'm watching Episode 424, the next-episode preview at the end will be for Episode 426 (which comes next on DVD), and the episode preview for Episode 425 is included at the end of Episode 426, which chronologically takes place after 425! And let me tell you, so many of my subtitle files don't work for the previews because of this.

The DVDs thus encourage you to watch the episodes not in chronological order but in DVD order, and yet, the second quiz question is still included with Episode 426, not Episode 425, so you should be watching them in chronological order after all?

Ha, I don't know, but the answers, revealed at the end of each episode, are as follows:

2: だ (da), 70 cm

3: い (i), 15 seconds

4: す (su), 20.5 hours

5: き (ki), Episode 429

6: あ (a), 41 (specifically, 17 openings and 24 endings)

7: り (ri), karaoke

8: が (ga), lemon pie

9: と (to), yellow

10: う (u), APTX 4869

(Which, can I just say that Question 8 is cute? When I saw it, I knew that the answer had to be lemon pie because of its significance in Episodes 100-101, but I didn't realize that lemon pie was Shinichi's favorite food! That makes it so much sweeter that he loves Ran's first try at lemon pie so much, aw.)

Conan: Yummy!

And if you put all the hiragana (and katakana) of the answers together...

You get, "Thank you for loving Conan!"

Aww.

[marshmallowgoop]

Messed up my DCMK collecting and wound up with not one but two duplicate DVD boxes....

[marshmallowgoop]

Detective Conan Japanese Video and Script for Episodes 77-78 (Left) versus Case Closed English Video and Script for Episodes 77-78 (Right)

[Image descriptions: Two scenes are compared. In the first, in Japanese, Heiji says, “I said ‘Kuro’! As in, ‘thanks for your hard work!’” As he says this, the words “kuro” and “gokurou,” written in Japanese (くろう and ご苦労), appear beside him. In English, this is localized as, “Oh, ho! No! I didn’t say ‘Kudo!’ I said, ‘Judo!’ Because I started taking lessons!” As he says this, the words “Kudo” and “Judo” appear beside him. In the second scene, in Japanese, Heiji says, “No, I said ‘Kudoi (annoying)!’” As he says this, the word “kudoi,” written in Japanese (くどい), appears beside him. This is localized in English as, “What? I didn’t call Conan ‘Kudo’! I said ‘Kiddo’! Kid-do!” As he says this, the word “kiddo” appears beside him. End image descriptions.]

I mentioned a bit ago that I inadvertently purchased bootleg copies of FUNimation’s S.A.V.E. Case Closed DVDs and have been working on replacing the fakes with genuine releases.

And here’s something interesting: several of FUNimation’s original art box sets for the series include both Japanese and English video options for the actual episodes, not just the title cards, logos, and ending credits. This means that, for select episodes, you can watch with name boxes and other Japanese text translated/localized into English:

[Image descriptions: A comparison between the Japanese video for Episode 1 of Detective Conan and the English video for Episode 1 of Case Closed. In the Japanese version, Ran’s introduction is accompanied with a blue box that includes her name in Japanese, as well as the fact that she’s a second-year student at Teitan High. In English, the box is a darker color and only includes her localized name, Rachel. End image descriptions.]

No alternate video options are carried over into the full-season sets released later, which I think is a huge shame. If you’re watching the English dub, which heavily localizes various instances of wordplay across the show, there are many times when the Japanese video makes absolutely no sense with the English script. Episodes 14, 21, 116-117, and 123 especially come to mind, which is also a huge shame because none of these cases were among those select few that did have an alternate video option in the earlier releases.

Also, as a subtitler who is passionate about subtitles, I love that the discs with alternate video options come with separate subtitles for the English dub script, too. This is much better accessibility for any translated show, but it’s particularly great in Case Closed, which can differ significantly from Detective Conan.

Plus, this makes it so much easier to share some of my favorite dub lines. Sad that I’ll never have a genuine screenshot of the “pizza bagel” bit, though.

In any case, I learned all this information from MagicBox, at Magic’s Detective Agency, which is an absolutely fantastic resource for all things Case Closed. There are script comparisons, detailed DVD descriptions, and a wonderfully hilarious account of Case Closed 101, along with other valuable commentary about Conan’s English-language scene. You can read more about the original FUNimation volumes here, and the seasonal sets are described here.

I really wish I had known about the site sooner! Though my seasonal set was a phony, it is a close copy of the real things, and just as the real things, with those, I only had access to the (mostly) Japanese video, without any other options. I wrongly assumed that all the DVDs were like this and made my own edit of the scenes at the top of this post—I desperately wanted to see how it would have looked with properly matching visuals. I’m thrilled to know that pros did a fabulous job, but I’m also sad that I was so unaware. If only I did my research before, I could have been saved a painstaking edit that doesn’t even hold a candle to the real deal!

However, one thing I will say about the particular volume that includes these episodes—Case 5, Volume 4: “The Phantom Thief Kid”—is that, unlike other volumes with alternate video options, there are two entirely different video tracks here as opposed to two separate angles. This means that if you select the English dub, you can only watch with the edited English video, and in the same way, if you select the Japanese audio, you can only watch with the Japanese video. And maybe that’s reasonable; after all, I have been talking about how nonsensical the English dub can be when paired with the original Japanese footage.

But it’s a bit of a bummer for me because my preferred, most favorite way to watch this show is with the English dub and English subtitles translating the original Japanese script. This way, I get to enjoy the charming dub without missing anything adapted out of it. With the two separate video tracks, I can’t mix and match like I can in other volumes. You only get English dub subtitles for the English dub and English video, and you only get the Japanese script subtitles for the Japanese audio and Japanese video.

I’m sure I have some .srt or .ass files I could use somewhere in my 5GB-and-7,000-files “DC Subs” folder, but I’m still disappointed that it isn’t all integrated like previous volumes. I realize that’s a really personal complaint, though.

Anyway, tl;dr, the original volumes were pretty great, and I wish that the seasonal releases included more of their content. It was wonderful to see such a nice edit of the wordplay here.

[marshmallowgoop]

I’ve spent the last year-ish collecting Detective Conan/Case Closed on DVD and Blu-ray, and it’s certainly been a Process. I made my bank account cry with the outrageous and ultimately avoidable shipping and service fees attached to the first volumes I imported from Japan, my English-language copy of Countdown to Heaven splutters and glitches out seemingly only on my go-to Region 1 DVD player that’s easily accessible and not attached to my dying laptop from 2012, the S.A.V.E. Case Closed seasonal sets I’d placed lovingly on my shelf turned out to be bootlegs, and my initial replacement for Season 4 held Season 5 discs in Season 4 packaging, which maybe wouldn’t have been so bad, but I thought I’d already purchased a solid, genuine Season 5 replacement, except I found out later that it actually wasn’t because it was disc rotted to heck and wouldn’t play properly, and so I sent back the Season 5 that I thought was Season 4 and sent back the Season 5 that was actually Season 5 but was broken, and I wound up scouring even more listings to buy replacements for the replacements.

And there were also more minor boo-hoos, like how the cute CoAi cover (Part 7, Volume 5) is one of the most crinkled, beat-up rental-drop artworks in my collection, or how the special-edition DVD for The Private Eyes’ Requiem I won in an auction was seemingly supposed to come paired with a storage box for the first 10 films but actually didn’t so I bought the box separately because gosh dang I wanted that box, or how Part 10, Volume 4 is the only non-rental-drop Japanese volume I own and so is fancier but contains a 2-hour special (263) that hurt my heart so much I have half an essay drafted about why.

And that’s not even getting into the subtitle struggles....

But besides the whole bootleg situation, I think my biggest disappointment with the buying process is how I got an old rental-drop copy of Part 14, Volume 8 that was supposed to come with just the jacket and disc... but came with the disc only.

And it’s not like I’m displaying every jacket, anyway (do not have room for 150+ DVDs!), and 14-8 isn’t one I even intended to display, but I do stick all the cover arts I’m not using in a binder, kinda like an anime-obsessed middle schooler I swear I remember reading about in a Tumblr post or something.

[Image description: A photograph of the binder where I keep Detective Conan jacket art that’s not in use. Pictured are the covers for Part 12, Volume 5, depicting Conan and his mother, and Part 12, Volume 6, depicting Conan running. End image description.]

And I left a space for 14-8!

[Image description: A photograph showing that next to the cover art from Part 14, Volume 9, depicting Conan and Dr. Agasa, there is a blank space. End image description.]

And it’s empty!

[Image description: A screenshot of the “If I Had One” meme, where Timmy Turner’s dad from the Fairly Oddparents screams in anguish about how he’d put a trophy in the spot behind him, if he had a trophy. End image description.]

And, like, yeah, I could just buy another one for like 100-300 yen, but I didn’t account for having an extra 14-8. And I have a system!

[Image description: A screenshot of the Word document for my DetCo DVD organizing system. Case 14, with the art of Part 14, Volume 2 (showing Conan looking unamused at a cellphone), contains six DVDs: 14-7, 14-8, 14-9, 15-1, 15-2, and 15-3. 15-3 is highlighted to indicate that this volume’s cover art (showing Conan leaning against a Poirot Café sign advertising coffee) is displayed on the next case, Case 15. End image description.]

And the art for 14-8 is cute!!

[Image description: Cover art for Part 14, Volume 8, image courtesy of the Detective Conan wiki. Conan and Shinichi read books together, looking tired. Conan yawns, while Shinichi drinks from a mug. End image description.]

Sigh.....

[marshmallowgoop]

Japanese Detective Conan Part 5, Volume 5 DVD (Left) versus FUNimation’s Viridian Collection Case Closed Season 5, Disc 4 DVD (Right)

Minor thing, but if you buy all of FUNimation’s English-language Case Closed DVDs and then continue on with the Japanese Detective Conan DVDs, you will end up with two copies of “The Sealed Bathroom Murder Case,” Episodes 121 and 122 (or Episodes 128 and 129 using the international numbering). I thought my Japanese DVDs looked slightly different, and I wasn’t wrong; it appears that FUNimation’s version ever-so-slightly upped the color saturation in the episodes, making the footage look grainier as a result.

Interestingly, the opening animation has colors that are much more saturated, perhaps comparable to how all the German-dubbed episodes look on Crunchyroll. However, at least for Episode 121 (or 128), FUNimation’s colors are far brighter and more saturated than the German-dubbed version, as shown below.

[marshmallowgoop]

But you know, speaking of attaching subtitles to things, I recently picked up special edition Blu-rays of Detective Conan movies 14-16 from Japan, kinda largely for the Magic/Bonus Files included with them, but also because it’d be nice to have high-quality versions of the films to watch with English subtitles right on the video. Going to Crunchyroll Germany and having the English translations open in another window as I follow along certainly works, but it’s not exactly the most ideal viewing experience, lol.

But for whatever reason, when I add the .ass subtitle file in Leawo, they start halfway into the film??

[Image description: A screenshot from the 15th Detective Conan movie, Quarter of Silence. It’s an opening logo, and there is no dialogue spoken, but the subtitles erroneously say, “‘And stabbed 51-year-old company president Misuzu Eiko to death with a sharp blade.’” End image description.]

If I’d known it would be such an issue, I probably would have just gotten the DVD versions instead. I don’t have these kinds of problems with VLC.

Being an English-speaking Detective Conan fan is suffering....

[Image description: A screenshot from the video game Detective Conan: Prelude from the Past, footage courtesy of Daszto Lio, found in this video here. Shinichi lies on the floor of a room. Beside him, there is a fallen-over chair and a table with two filled mugs on it. End image description.]

[marshmallowgoop]

So don’t mind me, but my orders of Detective Conan DVDs from Japan all came in, and I spent more time than I would like to admit thinking about how I would, like, store all 119 of these discs...

And eventually I decided to get these 6-disc cases from Maxtek. I think that’s as many discs you can put in a single case while keeping the size the same as a standard DVD case. So, I was able to pop in six DVDs and display some of the jacket artwork.

And I think it worked really well for condensing the collection?

I went from potentially having 119 cases to only having 31—which is a number that could actually be a lot smaller! Part 10, Volume 4, the Treasured Selection, and all of Part 16 came with their own cases that I just left them in, so I actually used just 21 of the 6-disc cases.

Conan stuff still takes up a whole lot of my shelves, and some cases don’t have jacket art right now ‘cause I’m being super picky about which ones to use and don’t yet have all of the ones I’d like to display, and yeah I got some duplicates in Part 16 ‘cause I foolishly bought three volumes separately before realizing that it’d be cheaper to buy a whole ‘nother complete set than hunt out the ones I was missing, but I’m still really pleased with how this worked out?

I guess I probably sound like Maxtek is my sponsor or something, and this is Tumblr, so I swear they’re not, lol, but these cases really worked wonders at making this mass of discs more manageable. Would recommend multi-disc cases if you’re also drowning in discs in an effort to legally watch a 1,000+-episode TV show that never got fully localized in your country.

[marshmallowgoop]

But on a more serious note, would anyone really recommend the 11th Detective Conan OVA, “A Secret Order From London”?

At this point, I’ve collected most everything DC that’s been released on disc that I’m interested in owning (and am mainly just holding out on getting movies 17-19 and 23- in the hopes that they’ll get official physical releases in English). But I don’t have the 11th OVA, and I’m kind of wondering if I should even bother? While I love Ai and that it’s (seemingly?) focused on her, it also looks... skeevy. Which is beyond disappointing and gross.

Since OVAs 10-12 were never released in “Secret File” bundles like OVAs 1-9, you do have to get them separately, which tends to mean more service fees and shipping costs. Plus, in my experience, these three OVAs are also simply way more expensive than the “Secret Files,” running around 3,000+ yen each as opposed to, like, 400 yen for the multiple-OVA “Secret Files.”

I’m kind of a completionist so just sorta figured that of course I’d get all the OVAs, but I don’t know. Is this really worth it? At least with the much-derided 11th film, Jolly Roger in the Deep Azure, I was able to pick up an 800-yen old rental copy for completion’s sake. But “A Secret Order From London” will probably be multiple times more. Would I miss anything super good if I skipped out?

[marshmallowgoop]

Maybe it’s foolish, but I am so desperately hoping that Crunchyroll adding remastered versions of the first 123 episodes of Detective Conan/Case Closed means that they’ll eventually host the entire show on the site. Or Discotek Media will sell English-subtitled Blu-ray or DVD sets, maybe like the German ones or FUNimation’s old seasonal releases, with 20-30-ish episodes per box.

Or something. Like literally any way I could get my hands on the hundreds of episodes that have never been officially subtitled in English and/or released for home video.

Because goodness gracious. I am struggling right now.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t regret importing over 150 Detective Conan DVDs from Japan. It’s kinda amazing to physically own more than 750 episodes of the same anime and have that on my shelf. 

And I am constantly beyond impressed by the English softsub files that Conan fans have put together over the years. As someone who captions videos as part of her career, I am continually astounded by what fansubbers have accomplished. The beautifully timed and formatted karaoke for openings and endings, the fantastic English-text edits right in the caption file... it’s absolutely stunning. I wish I could subtitle like that!

[Image descriptions: Screenshots from Detective Conan episodes with English softsub files attached. The first screenshot, from the opening to Episode 168, has the song’s lyrics written in romaji for viewers to sing along to. The current part of the song is in a bigger, glowing white font, while parts of the song that have already passed are in light blue, and parts to come are in red. An English translation for the lyrics are at the bottom. In the second screenshot, from Episode 134, a chat room conversation originally written in Japanese is translated to and animated in English. End image descriptions.]

However, the gap between English-subtitled episodes on Crunchyroll right now—from Episodes 124 to 753—is huge. There are only so many English softsub files in existence, and many were created via OCR, Optical Character Recognition, using the officially(!) English-subtitled footage from United Television Broadcasting (UTB), which aired the series years ago in Southern California.

And I am very grateful to have any English subtitles at all for my Japanese DVDs! But OCR is far from a perfect process, and I dread when my only English subtitle option for an episode is an OCR’d UTB file. While episodes such as those contained in “The Desperate Revival” have been quality checked and edited, going from something like this...

[Image description: A screenshot from Episode 189 of Detective Conan, with an OCR’d English subtitle file attached. Heiji sits on Conan’s hospital bed, holding a bouquet of flowers, and Conan speaks to him. His dialogue is written as, “I’m askin ou a ain...” End image description.]

To this...

[Image description: The same screenshot from Episode 189 as above, though a different English subtitle file is attached. This one reads, “I’m asking you again...” End image description.]

The majority of these files have not been vetted. I’ve watched dozens of cases using .srts riddled with errors.

And I do want to stress: the translations are still largely understandable. I am glad to have them. Sometimes, they can even elevate otherwise dull fillers because I have a horrible sense of humor and find some of the mess-ups hilarious. No joke, I have genuinely fallen to the floor and cried with laughter at a few of the more outlandish goofs in the subtitles.

Okay, maybe that was more tiredness than anything. But still. For unimportant episodes, I generally don’t really mind if the English translation is a bit wonky, even if comprehension is occasionally severely impacted, like below:

[Image descriptions: Screenshots from Episode 283 of Detective Conan, with an English OCR’d subtitle file attached. In the first screenshot, Inspector Yokomizo says, “Ayaka! Please tell us the truth.” In the second screenshot, Ayaka’s response is written as, “LO LL Le aru, vin, ov dainiuiiiila 5 tiauguniet.” End image description.]

I totally understand, Ayaka.

But that said, it is painful to use such unreliable translations in crucial, plot-related episodes, and it’s especially painful when I do have stronger captions available... but they’re for remastered versions of the cases, which often cut or add scenes, and are thus usually totally incompatible with my DVD footage without enormous amounts of editing. 

And I did edit remastered captions to better fit my DVD once before, with Episodes 217-218, “Megure’s Sealed Secret.” But even though the remaster was near identical in terms of content to the original, it did cut out the tiniest little things, like characters repeating what another character had said, and as a result, the timing was just slightly off all over the place. The editing I had to do was so intense that I basically spoiled the entire story for myself just messing with the captions in Subtitle Edit. I decided then that such drastic editing wasn’t something I wanted to do anymore, at least not before watching an episode.

Now, the next case up for me is “Contact with the Black Organization,” Episodes 309-311, and it’s the same scenario: the remastered subtitles don’t work at all with my old DVD footage, and so I’m left with the OCR’d UTB .srt. And it kills me because, as shown above, sometimes you can’t tell at all what’s supposed to be said!

So, like, tl;dr, I love having the show on DVD, and I’m so thankful for and impressed by the folks who put English softsub files out there, even the OCR’d UTB ones! But it’s undeniable that accessing this series in English hasn’t been the easiest, and even with what I already own, I would buy any official English releases for the missing episodes in a heartbeat. Translations already exist into the early 400s! I’m absolutely dying for them to be put on DVD or Blu-ray or Crunchyroll or wherever! And I so hope that Crunchyroll adding more Case Closed, and Discotek Media announcing more Blu-rays, means that they will.

Please I am struggling.

[Image description: A screenshot from Episode 288 of Detective Conan, with an OCR’d English subtitle file attached. Ran and Shinichi, holding umbrellas, look up. Shinichi speaks, and his dialogue is written as, “See, it’s caught on the railing O 10Sses airs a wie ng.” End image description.]