Detective Conan/YMMV

• Abusive Parents: Kogoro is not shy about whacking Conan in public. Heizo is even worse.
  • This is partially Values Dissonance — a smack to the head does not get the same reaction in Japanese culture as it would in American — and partially Played for Laughs with the cranial eruptions, especially in early stories and the anime originals compared to the later manga and manga adaptations. Additionally, Heizo's one punch of Heiji is used to discourage Heiji from going after a dangerous mob boss, and then uses the fact that Heiji's primary reaction is to get mad for the dismissal of his detective skills and continue investigating as a distraction to get the police force in place to catch the whole gang.
  • Not to mention, such things are only seen as "funny" when boys are at the receiving end. If Kogoro ever hit lifted a hand against Ran, then he'd be viewed in a much worse light. Of course he never would.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Akemi's anime death in Conan's arms was a huge Tear Jerker.
  • Also, Narumi Asai aka Seiji Asou.
• Alternate Character Interpretation : after all those times being put asleep, one may wonder if Kogoro really doesn't understand what's happening, or if he's just using Obfuscating Stupidity, letting Conan do the dirty work and enjoying his incredible detective reputation without having to do much.
  • Kogoro Mouri has been interpreted as having actually figured out Conan is actually solving the crimes for him and after awhile, just let him solve it for him while he receives the credit for it. Kogoro already isn't a bad detective; he's just got an extreme case of Tunnel Vision and wants things to be done as fast as possible, so he'll come to one conclusion a detective would, but then insist he's right until proven wrong. Whenever Ran or Conan are threatened, he actually becomes scarily competent. (Kinda like Inspector Gadget whenever he knows Penny & Brain are threatened) There have been several other times where he actually got it mostly right, and several times where he solved the case and only needed a couple hints from Conan, or in one occasion, not only solved it but got a couple details that Conan missed. (It also helps that he tends to be more streetsmart while Conan is more booksmart - Kogoro has more insight into peoples' emotions)
  • Shinichi Kudo = genius or selfish, immature Jerkass who places himself above the others and doesn't really get the meaning of death and for whom each dead person is nothing but challenge?
    • Some puts him somewhere between Intelligence Equals Isolation and Insufferable Genius.
    • You can make the case that he starts out as a selfish Jerkass, but as the series progresses and Character Development sets in, becomes more attuned to the human nature of the cases, especially after the Moonlight Sonata case since when Miyuki Hyuuga tries to kill herself and Conan thwarts it, Heiji explicitely asks why did he do that, and Conan says "a detective that allows a suspect to commit suicide is no better than a murderer", Moonlight Sonata flashback included.
• Angst? What Angst?: Every school girl and child seems to be completely unfazed by witnessing grisly murder scenes virtually every day of their life.
• Arc Fatigue: The main story. Started in Chapter 1, it was intermittently advanced for the first couple of years per the story premise, but the updates keep getting farther and farther apart, and its been almost two years since the last Black Organization Story.
• Badass Decay: Inverted by Gin. He started as a little non-genre savvy and... well, he's now a candidate for Magnificent Bastard.
• Base Breaker: Kogoro/Richard. He's either the funniest character on the show, or he's a Jerkass Small Name, Big Ego man who's prone to many Kick the Dog moments with Conan.
  • Ran and Ai, because of Die for Our Ship.
• Broken Base: A number of fans consider "anime original" episodes (episodes written specifically for the TV series by its own writers, rather than adaptations of issues of the single-author manga) to be of generally inferior quality.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: In a series this long, it's bound to happen from time to time. Since taking down any case can be one depending on the case, it's best to limit these to insane things such as in the 5th movie: The kids are stuck in a penthouse with a bomb about to go off. The only place they can escape to is the roof of a building about 60m away and 2m down. They have a car in the room with them, but it can't gain enough speed to make the jump. They use the explosion to boost the speed of the car by driving out the window right as the bomb goes off. Ayumi has to count down from 30 seconds exactly to time when the bomb will go off and when the car needs to start driving. Haibara decides she'll make a Heroic Sacrifice by counting down while sitting next to the bomb, but Genta jumps out and forces her into the car just in time to drive off. The explosion propells them far enough, but Haibara is falling out of the car because she wasn't buckled in. Mitsuhiko is able to grab her and hold on for the rest of the fall, but Haibara is out just far enough to be hit by some decorative pillars, so Conan takes the helmet he'd given Ayumi and super kicks it into the pillars, shattering them just enough for Haibara to graze by. They land in the car that lands in the pool and are safe.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Apart from being an awesome song in its own right, whenever "Kimi ga Ireba" (the vocal version of the movie opening theme) starts playing in one of the Non Serial Movies, something awesome is usually about to happen--most often, some unsuspecting baddie is about to receive the butt-kicking of his life. (Sometimes they use "Boku ga Iru" instead just for variety.)
  • The Detective Boys, usually scrappies, have some in Non-Serial Movie 5 too.
• Die for Our Ship: Ran from the Conan/Haibara fans, as already mentioned. Surprisingly, the Shinichi/Heiji shippers are more respectful, or at least leave her out.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Many, depending on how you define "dark." One one hand, people as recurring as Ai.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • A particular fan theory is that Eri's cat, Goro, is the Boss of the Black Organization. Or Yusaku. Or Dr. Agasa.
  • See also the Wild Mass Guess page for this series.
  • As for Subaru, There are two main theories in fandom about his identity: he either is the high-ranked Organization member Bourbon (always alluded to, and hinted to be very powerful and dangerous), or Shuichi Akai who is now Faking the Dead.
  • As for Sera, The fandom wonders if she's related to Shuuichi Akai.
  • Now there's the recently introduced Tooru Amuro. Perhaps he is Bourbon?
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: The Non-Serial Movie of April 2001 happened to be about a Twin Towers being bombed. The conspiracy theorists make this one worse as it was a controlled explosion by an undercover organisation - which happens to include evil politicians amongst its membership - that pretty much get away with having any suspicion pointed towards them.
  • Oh, it gets worse. A few days before the 2011 earthquake, they released a trailer for Quarter of Silence... which had the clip of the ginormous amount of water from the damn advancing on the village and violently taking out the bridge. The movie itself came out about a month after the earthquake, in a sort of Reverse Funny Aneurysm Moment in a different way from Hilarious in Hindsight.
• Ho Yay: Has its own page.
• Internet Backdraft: Due to the Ran/Ai shipping wars, anyone should check their favourite forums' rules for discussions on these pairings. In many places comparing the pairings or even comparing the two as characters would get you banned even you're being neutral.
• Jerkass Woobie: There is a murder in which a business tycoon is killed on a boat (the infamous Hatamoto Family case). One of the suspects, his eldest granddaughter Akie, is an absolute Rich Bitch, surpassed in obnoxiousness only by her husband Tatsuo. She becomes a Jerkass Woobie when Tatsuo says terrible things about why he married her (Akie's little sister Natsue turns out to be the heiress, so Tatsuo openly says he only married her for the money much to Akie's horror), but then she cries heavily when he becomes the next murder victim. She's even seen cradling Tatsuo's lifeless body in her arms.. As much of a bitch as she is, well... no one deserves that.
• Magnificent Bastard: Many.
  • First of all, "Ano Kata".
  • His operative Gin is heading towards this.
  • Narumi/Seiji from the Moonlight Sonata case, who nearly gets away with everything.
• The Masochism Tango: Kogoro and Eri, so much.
  • Kogoro acts like a Lovable Sex Maniac, always chasing after pretty women and maintaining a crush on Idol Singer Okino Yoko, but never actually seems to take the act further than ogling or, at most, platonic dating. This behavior always takes a sudden turn for the worse whenever Eri is around, which causes Eri to get about ten degrees colder whenever Kogoro is nearby.
  • On the other hand, they actually try to do nice things for each other once in a blue moon. (In one manga issue, Kogoro actually bought Eri a birthday present--except that he got the day wrong and accidentally gave her the wrong gift box, and some White Day chocolates (though Kogoro claimed he just didn't want to waste Yoko's present, Conan observed they were in a different wrapper than the ones Kogoro had been carrying around for her).) And sometimes Eri has been known to make Kogoro dinner (too bad she's a Lethal Chef).
  • And both Kogoro and Eri have turned Papa Wolf and Mama Bear respectively when the other has been suspected of murder.
• Misblamed: No, sorry, it wasn't Funimation or Viz Media that changed it to "Case Closed". That change was actually requested by the Japanese editors to avoid copyright infringements/confusions with another Market-Based title: Conan the Barbarian.
• Never Live It Down: It seem Heizo Hattori's only memorable character trait is punching Heiji.
• Nightmare Fuel: As a mystery drama, there has to be a few. In their own page now!
• Portmanteau Couple Name: Loads and Loads of Characters, loads and loads of these, from Shinran (for Shinichi/Ran) to some of the very obscure pairings.
• The Scrappy
  • The Detective Boys, usually written off as annoying kids, mostly due to their apparance in the fillers.
  • Kogoro--not as much as the Detective Boys, but plenty of fans hate him either because of his Small Name, Big Ego attitude, or the fact that he hits Conan and recieves no visit from the social worker. This is partially a matter of Values Dissonance, as mentioned under Abusive Parent above.
• Ship Mates: If you support the same format, then Shinichi/Ran, Heiji/Kazuha, and Kaito/Aoko is for you. To get Haibara out of the way, pair her up with Mitsuhiko. You might also include non-related ships like Eri/Kogoro and Satou/Takagi along with Shiratori/Kobayashi and Genta/Ayumi.
  • Alternatively, for Conan/Ai shippers, they just kill Ran off or pair her up with everyone else.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Not in the English fandom, but Chinese fansite forums have very specifically banned threads comparing Shinichi/Ran and Conan/Ai.
  • One English-language forum keeps the Shinichi/Ran and Conan/Ai shippers to their own separate threads. Sometimes, you can't even discuss the Ran or Ai as stand-alone characters without the thread dissolving into a shipper war when either character's relationship with Shinichi is brought into the discussion.
• Sympathetic Sue: Ai was frequently accused to be this, coming from Ran/Shinichi rabid shippers.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Eisuke. Hell, Satou looks more like a guy than him...
  • Lampshaded when Ran mentions "a student who looks a LOT like Mizunashi Rena" and Kogoro expects to meet a girl. Of course, he's soon disabused of said belief.
• Villain Decay: Inverted by Gin to an extreme. Gin gets progressively more evil and intelligent the longer the series goes on.
• What an Idiot!: In the 15th Non-Serial Movie, Quarter of Silence, the culprit develops an elaborate scheme involving blowing up a train in Tokyo as a diversion, then blowing up a dam in order to drain the lake behind it and get at stolen treasure that was buried there before the dam went up. He could have kept things much quieter and simpler, and completely avoided getting Conan and company involved, if he'd just used scuba gear instead. What an idiot.
• What Does She See in Him?: In one case, a man tries to kill his bride at a wedding. She notices his intention, but three years later, she marries him anyway..
• Woobie: Shinichi-Conan, Ran and Ai can be woobies at some point (certainly the OPs and EDs delight in depicting Ran as being all sad and torn up because she's been kept from Shinichi for so long).
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Hiroki of the sixth Non-Serial Movie, his circumstances is extremely Woobie-- the problem is, did he intentionally cause the Holodeck Malfunction?
    • There're too many one-off woobies to count.
• Woolseyism: In Billionaire Birthday Blues, when the first victim is found leaning over the fountain he was drowned in, Kogoro says "Hey, this is no place to be sleeping". In the English Dub, Richard wonders if he's feeling sick, which (To westerners at least; unless Japanese people are able to fall asleep with their heads hanging over something like that) looks more like he's vomiting into the fountain at a glance.
  • This is also something that would have been Lost in Translation otherwise, but there's a part in which a fashion designer is surprised when she finds out that Ran's father is Kogoro Mouri. You'd think that before asking her presence and planning to help use her as an alibi, she'd make sure that she's not related to a local celebrity with the same surname, right? In the dub, it makes a little more sense why she'd be surprsied because "Mouri" is changed to "Moore", a very common surname in western (Especially English) countries. It's probably a very minor thing.
    • Mouri isn't an uncommon surname in Japan either. It'd be weirder for her to make the connection, seeing that Kogoro and Ran look about nothing alike.
  • A bit of a minor wallbanger in the Stalker episode. (#73/71 dubbed) The part about the shy woman possibly getting a lighter sentence since the stalker was planning to kill her isn't mentioned. Yes, we can all presume it won't be a plain by-the-book court case, but still, the omission of any dialogue leaves you with the bizarre impression that she got like a 20 year sentence for defending herself.
    • Conan via Moore did say perceived threat is at most a mitigating factor.
  • In the June Bride case; the bride is chastized for drinking "Lemon Tea" in the sub because "it was for kids" and it was localized as "Lemon Punch" in the dub. This actually makes a lot more sense in the dub; where she is insted chastized for drinking punch. In western world, Tea is usually marketed towards teens and adults, whereas punch is usually marketed towards kids.