Meitantei Conan Movie 13: Shikkoku no Chaser

The High anticipated Conan Movie 13 is finally out on DVD and already subbed on the interweb.

First of all : After the biggest letdown movies nr. 10 and 11 - EVER - Conan finally came back with movies 12 and 13.
Nr 12 was already great in my opinion and i didn't think that the 13th would be as great. Boy was I wrong.
As many of you already know the Black Organization makes it move yet again in this movie, since we didn't get to see them at all since the 5th their impact is as huge as to be expected from an undercover-mafia-like-all-in-black-clothes-organization.

The Story : ... 10
Even before the actual story begins, the movie already gets you psyched right from the beginning. I got hooked in less than a minute. I couldn't even eat my popcorn properly and my drink was untouched ever since the beginning.

We have the usual twists, turnarounds in this story. I for my part liked the setup of the cases. Mysterious messages via Mahjong tiles, serial murder, love struck suspect. You got something for everyone.

The action comes up at the end to heighten the suspense and to mark the peak of the mountain (as in every Conan Movie) but nevertheless that's why i actually watch the movies. Conan-Suspense + Action = Pure Awesomeness

The Art : 9
The Art could have been better. Although i didn't get the chance to watch the Blue-Ray version yet. I'm going to make up for it and watch it later on and edit this Review.
Characters look as good as always and the action scenes sure got some smooth visual effects. (Loved the explosion near the end though :) )
All in all, the Art isn't much better than the art of the Anime in my opinion, but it has it's appeals.
But Meitantei Conan has never been known as the Hulk of Animation.

The Sound : 7
The Sound gets only 7 points from me. I love the Soundtrack of Conan very much. Great Tracks out there, but i think the producers could've made a far better job with usage of the songs.
What struck me most was that in the final scenes there were some parts where absolutely no background music was playing, even though it could've underlined the whole situation easily.
I for my part didn't feel quite comfortable with this fact, since the music could not support the visuals effectively.
When watching the movie you won't actually notice it except you concentrate on it. (which i did since i love the Soundtrack so much ;))

The Characters : 10
10 points, nothing much to say.
All big characters were involved.
Ran Mori finally gets something to do (since she has been degraded to a little crybaby in the Anime recently ... [Hey! I like her too, but give her some more attention GOSHO !])
Detective Boys make their appearence once again. (i am a little fed up by these little guys, instead of getting the audience harassed by them give some other character more airtime !)

and the most amazing thing : All Prefecturial Inspectors make their debut as a whole ! With "all" i mean ALL of them.

Enjoyment : 10
Big Time 10 points. Even though the music got me a little off in the final scenes it was nothing compared to the whole movie. Suspense was great. The whole story was built up neatly. It was fun as hell to watch this movie.
Without a doubt : MyTop 3 Conan Movies have to be rearranged, the 6th just got replaced by the 13th !

I Recommend this movie to everyone out there.
This movie is not only for die hard conan fans, but also for the "i-watch-random-episodes" and "i-only-watch-story-arcs"- types of viewers.
Enjoy this movie !

Side Note : I also recommend watching the Magic File 3. It will get you into the right mood and willl explain some minor details and get you familiar with the Mahjong plot.

So far your PSJ

Often, I am not a fan of movies with original stories based off of anime. They often are ridiculous and have some of the most pathetic and annoying characters introduced, for some storyline that the anime would never go near thanks to it's horrible cliches and terrible attempts to make you care about the characters introduced in the movies.

Detective Conan is a very popular shonen anime, and I had guessed before knowing there were movies based off of it that there were movies based off of it. However, unlike most anime, some of the movies have actually been pretty awesome. Perhaps it's because this anime ... doesn't have magic and avoids stories about annoying princesses that are protected by the protagonists and stuff like that. Or maybe because they are basically one big case in each movie, except with more explosions than a typical Conan case. (although I admit I haven't seen movies 8-11, which I've heard weren't that great).

Story: This story is very similar to some of the other Conan movies in that there are many people in danger and many people die because of a large case that needs to be solved. The other movies had other parts of the plot that were more relevent to the actual characters but this takes it to a new level. The Black Organization, the powerful, mysterious organization Conan has been trying to stop for a long time, ends up involved in this case.

Now, something I really hated about the 5th Conan movie is that the Black Organization was barely even seen in the movie and that the entire thing, at least a times, felt like an excuse for Conan to be an explosion-filled, dangerous situation. This movie avoided both. With the exception of the end, the movie felt very similar to Black Organization cases in the anime. They are unexpectedly involved in this, and we slowly but surely learn why. Of course, a little more than half way through the movie and it seems to avoid anything Black Organization related a bit too much, and quite honestly, the case itself, while certainly good, gets a bit boring (especially compared to the Organization, which I am always find entertaining). The ending is great, although I admit it was kinda silly.

Another thing worth mentioning is the amazing continuity. Sometimes people who make a story for an anime that isn't based off of the manga can do a horrible job at remembering why people liked it in the first place. One of the many reasons I enjoy Conan is the amazing use of continuity and how so many of the cases are at least briefly mentioned eventually. I can think of no less than 10 references to older cases, and all of them are awesome to anyone who actually remembers those cases (and one of those references was only in the manga at that point).

Art: I don't have much an opinion of the art for this anime, but I did really enjoy the art I guess. It looked better than normal anime episodes since this is a movie and since the anime art works best when the setting isn't a normal, sunny day, the parts when it was night or evening were pretty great. But other than that...I thought it was really good. That's all.

Sound: Like the anime, the voice acting was great. I love all of the voice acting and it was nice to hear Kamiya Akira as Kogoro one more time (this was the last thing translated before we got Kogoro's new voice actor). Not much else to say, the voice acting for all of the characters is always amazing. Especially the Black Organization members. When they talk, I almost automatically think that something awesome is going to happen because of their voice acting.

The music is...ok. There was some good music but way too often they played this annoying song in the background that, according to the official soundtrack I heard, was actually like 30 very slight variations of the same song. It was not enough to ruin anything in the movie but it was still very annoying.

Character: I should point out that I think that about 95 percent of the recurring characters in this anime are really awesome. But there was more than the usual characters in this movie. In the anime, while Megure, Takagi and others are in many of the cases since they are in that area, there are a number of other inspectors and detectives that have appeared when they have gone to other prefectures. Almost all of them appeared and the interaction between them was amazing to most Conan fans. Gunma's idiot Yamamura interacting with the recently introduced serious, and badass Nagato Inspector, Yamato was hilarious because of how different their personalities are. Even better was the amazing "deduction" Kogoro did later in the movie and how his two fanboys, the loud but fun Sango Yokomizo and Yamamura reacted to it made me laugh. The continuity also helped and the characters felt much more in character than I would expect (not that I care for the movies as long as they aren't absurdly out of character). However, something was wrong with Gin. He seemed way too happy. Not even in typical "Gin is going to kill someone" happy that I would expect, but more of a bizarre happy. And some of the things in the ending were kinda silly.

Enjoyment: I enjoyed this movie. Most other Conan fans probably will too. I think others can enjoy it as another random movie instead of actually watching the entire series, but a lot of the things in the movie make me think that even Conan fans who never pay attention to anything that isn't in the manga would enjoy the interaction between characters and the amazing continuity.

Overall: 9

If you saw some of the trailers, it made it seems that there would be some close calls with Gin and Vodka. However that's only from a dream Conan has in the first 5 minutes of the movie. Overall the story is less about the Black Organization and more about people dying in a hotel fire. This really feels like it's just one big episode with a two part special at the end involving the Black Organization. Why the Organization in involved is apparently someone that survived the fire and then was killed in the "murder of the day" and had a memory card. They ... are not a major player at all and the Organization just wants the memory card back. That's it. The ending scene with the helicopter just feels a bit overkill and nothing about the memory card is ever said after Irish drops it. Also this is probably the first movie where they start damseling Ran. As you know in previous movies when it seems that she was captured and there was no hope left. She'd whip out her karate and BAM! It was always a nice twist that for a few times you were like "Oh No!" and then there it was! Here however they decided after trading blows she would freeze when Irish's disguise is torn which taking karate myself, is a fallacy. If she is that much a master then she knows to be ready for anything. They do this to get her out of the way so Conan can save the day. Yes the 7 year old kid saves the day over a 17 year old girl. This is a kind of slap in the face. There were other ways of getting her out of the way, like not putting her there in the first place.
There's also another side plot that's related to the Tanabata murders, where the Shounen Tantei find beetles with tape on them. The sheer extrapolation needed to see these clues as a call for help is just..
First you have to know English, next have to know who the Beatles were to care enough to know what the names of their albums were, have to know that V means 5 and not.... V, have to know that kabutomushi are called "beetles" in english, have to have a person walking along who cares enough that the bugs had tape on them in the first place much less able to find them. After ALL of this then MAYBE someone would understand the message. It's just too contrived and the fact that Agase has to be there for this to work is pretty much deus ex machina style asspull.
Really this movie is skipable. All you need to know from this movie is that Irish breaks pretty much all of Conan's devices and the extendo suspenders were introduced so if/when they get to that in the TV series you know what happened.
Really it was a big let down and didn't nearly have as much action as it promised.