Age Rating: Older Teen
Genre: Mystery
Price: $9.99
Series Description: When ace high school detective Jimmy Kudo is fed a mysterious substance by a pair of nefarious men in black--poof! He is physically tranformed into a first grader. Until Jimmy can find a cure for his miniature malady, he takes on the pseudonym Conan Edogawa and continues to solve all the cases that come his way.
Volume Description: Volume 29:What Ms. Saintemillion SawConan isn't sure whether to trust Jodie Saintemillion, the American high school teacher whose ditzy blonde exterior conceals a calculating mind. When a bus is hijacked by desperate criminals, Ms. Saintemillion turns out to be cannier than Conan ever imagined, revealing a head for crime solving and a body for kicking butt. But Anita can't help noticing that wherever Conan's beautiful, mysterious new ally goes, the Syndicate never seems to be far behind…
Volume 30:The Kaido Kid Game--Long ago, Sunset Manor was the site of a gruesome massacre...and an unsolved mystery. Now six master detectives have been invited to the manor to play a deadly game hosted by Japan's greatest phantom thief. A lost treasure, an impossible poisoning, a message in blood, ominous images of crows; it's all part of a puzzle not even the sleuths can solve, especially after they start turning on each other. The only one who can win the game and stop the deaths from piling up is the uninvited seventh detective: Conan!
I’ve skipped a few volumes, but I found it easy to drop back in on Conan and his pals. Again, the set-up, though high concept, is no-muss, no-fuss: Conan was a young super-sleuth (think blue from Death Note) who was transformed by the mafia into a “mini-me”, a first grade version of himself. Super-sleuthing combined with wacky hijinks ensue. As far as boots-on-the-ground what’s happening in volume 29? Most of it is consumed with a multi-chapter bus hi-jacking, ala Speed, which forms the backdrop for character intrigue—has the mafia discovered the nature of Conan and his fellow super-deformed companion, the ex-mafia operative Anita? And will Conan and Anita discover that there is more to the ditzy new teacher than first meets the eye? And with volume 30, Aoyama pulls out all the stops with an awesome gathering of detectives (like the movie Murder by Death) which forms the centerpiece of the volume.
With these two collections, Aoyama’s mastery of plot and character really shine. He knows how to put together a great “murder of the week” mystery, and the ones contained in these two books are great fun. He also knows how to use the situations to get lots out of his characters—the bus hijacking is less interesting for the nail-biting terrorists on a bus scenario than it is for the added problem of Conan needing to pull off a solution in a tightly confined space without giving away his or Anita’s true identity, while being closely watched by a new threat in the demon beneath the ditz, teacher Jodie Saintemillion.
But beyond all this, what truly shines is the way Aoyama takes familiar elements (see the comparison to movies above) and lines them up in fresh and electric ways. I loved loved loved “The Kaido Kid Game” storyline, which took a fun and familiar idea—the world’s greatest detectives are brought together to solve a mystery and escape death traps—and really turned up the heat. First, one of the drawbacks of reading only a few late volumes, I could tell that several of these detectives were ones we’ve seen before in early volumes because the scenes with them hummed with a vibe I could sense but didn’t understand. But the story was so great, it dominated the volume. When I returned to the book to review it before I wrote this, I was surprised by how little actual pages it occupied. Before, I enjoyed Case Closed. Now, I’m a big fan. So, what’s the problem now?
Last time I reviewed a volume of Case Closed, I wrote that I enjoyed it, but that I wasn’t sure it was worth keeping up with every volume, or worth going back and picking up old volumes (I began with vol. 26). But now I’ve read 3 volumes, and I love it. How, then, do I get the 27+ volumes I’m missing? I can’t drop $300 bucks on this series! And, even if I could, on-hand quantities at a major book distributor are pathetically low to non-existent. Online, you can find them discounted and used, but to optimize your discount, you have to comb through the lists of a million different booksellers on websites like abebooks.com and amazon. How frustrating. Here’s where a manga library system would really shine. In Japan, as I understand it, there is a very well established system of lending libraries for manga. Whereas, here in my hometown of Decatur, Georgia, a city nestled in the crook of downtown Atlanta? I’ve searched the library systems of three counties, the city of Atlanta, and the University system of Georgia. I came up with a grand total of two volumes, numbers 16 & 18, both in the City of Atlanta system. Patheti-sad, really.
I guess I’ll just have to be satisfied with the new volumes as I go forward, and keep bugging my local librarian that this is a series worth stocking.
8.5