Meitantei Conan Movie 16: 11-ninme no Striker

I'll admit, when I saw that this movie was about soccer, I kind of knew going in that I wouldn't exactly be a fan. But really, that's not even the movies main problems. Does Detective Conan: The Eleventh Striker hold up?

Story (5/10): When a mysterious bomb threat is issued, it appears to be targeting the J-League, leaving a mystery in the hands of our little Great Detective: why target soccer, who is this bomber, and what does a seemingly unrelated incident have to do with it?

I hope you like soccer and the J-League, cause booooy are they prominent here. My limited knowledge of soccer helped ... me get most of what was being said, but man there is just too much worshiping of the J-League here. There are a (I'm assuming) slew of actual soccer stars here, and they just completely flew over my head. Like to the point where I said "OK movie I get it, J-League is the bestest, just stop!".

But honestly? A lot of this movie just seems tacked on. While the mystery itself and the execution of the bomb threats is actually pretty entertaining, the rest of the story just seems rather boring. I really can't go into more without hitting spoilers, but a lot of the movie feels way too artificially structured and has no real natural flow to it. It's just average at best.

Art (8/10): Here is where the movie shines, since the soccer matches were really well animated. The whole movie actually looks really good, with action sequences being the highlight. Other than that it just looks good and holds the trend of the movies having better art than the series.

Sound (7/10): It's a Detective Conan movie. It plays the same music as always. And it's good. (Help, I'm running out of lines to talk about the music. :V)

Character (5/10): This movie just kind of juggles characters around and doesn't use them well at all. Conan, Ai, Professor Agasa, and the police characters come out OK, but everyone else is just...there, I guess.

The movie cast is also stupidly huge (seriously). There are a ton of soccer player characters, and I'm not really sure why we needed to spend time with only 2 of them for like 4 minutes at most. I guess it was to help set up the climax, but it's really a waste. Plus half of the initial suspects just poof away after the midway point, so they were basically just there to be red herrings. (And while that's normally forgivable and such, the movie tries to hold onto them far longer than needed.)

The final culprit is also supremely whiny and while his motivation would kind of drive a person to the notion of a personal attack, I'm not sure to it makes sense in the scale of the story. Also they start going crazy at the end for...reasons? I dunno, everyone here just felt weak (and funnily enough, sort of mirror the last movies cast. Huh.)

(Also the Detective Boys are at their most annoying, since apparently the story really needed them to throw a soccer ball at Conan in the most contrived way possible, along with not listening to anyone (as usual).)

Enjoyment (5/10): I gotta be honest. This movie was boring. All the random soccer people showing up was almost overwhelming and everything just feeling stilted made this not fun to sit through. I will give the movie credit that beginning at the first bombing action scene and going to prior to the last confrontation, it was fairly fun. But the beginning and final climax were just not as fulfilling.

The end gag about Rans' story was also just dumb. Come on show, you've done better.

In the end, Detective Conan: The Eleventh Striker was a somewhat average movie, though part of that relies on how much you like the movie cast and all the J-League praising. (Oddly enough the soccer explanations are actually pretty interesting.) The action scenes are really fun and the mystery engaging, but the actual cast is fairly boring and the payoff is kind of unsatisfying. I would only recommend it to the DC fans to just watch it to get out of the way if you want to watch all the movies, but otherwise I'm very hesitant to recommend it.

5/10 = average at best, boring as hell at worst; hope you like the J-League, cause it's just nonstop praise for them, though the soccer aspect is actually pretty interesting; mystery is fun, but the characters are boring; DC faithful might be bored, or at least I was;

This Conan movie brought to you by J-League! Play Soccer kids!
In this movie Mouri Kogorou murders a small child in drunken confusion. I shit you not. He stops an ambulance and that may have lead to the death of a small child. Which is kind of important to the plot, but HE certainly doesn't dwell upon it.
This is also the movie where Conan messes up all over the place and gets sloppy. I don't know if they were trying to be a little more realistic, but he seems to have trouble making the jumps and perfect landings. As such the ending takes a bit more ... time to end how you expect it to end... with Conan kicking a soccer ball into something to stop the timer. If you couldn't guess that's what was going to happen, you must be new here.

Overall this movie is about soccer. It's officially sponsored by J-League, whose team members actually show up in the movie. The whole plot is pretty much copy pasted from the previous. We have bombs going to go off and Conan has to stop it. Only this time it's soccer themed. Really it's getting boring. I kind of remember Conan movies having a bit more mystery and intrigue. Also it seems some of the hints they give are kind fo disjointed as they don't give you the other clues and have you put them together.

It's hinted the next movie has a cruise ship in it. I can only hope it hasn't been rigged up with bombs that Conan has to stop.