As the series grows longer and longer it gets more and more dependent on various cliches that grow old very, very quickly. One of it's greatest flaws is it's padding. Each episode is dragged out far longer than it needs to be, by adding constant exposition (usually given by Sonoko, who has at this point has almost been completely devolved into an exposition machine. I feel that she is used far too much, and it seems that lately she is being used to solve mysteries far more often than the great Sleeping Kogoro... but I digress). All padding hurts, and this series has some really deep hurting. Recently almost half of every episode consists of useless exposition about the suspects/victim or constant repetition of information regarding cases that we already knew.
Sadly having seen far too much of the series certain patterns begin to emerge, and it becomes hard to take the series serious anymore. At this point it's almost devolved into a drinking game, where I see how many cliches I can spot in a single episode. Almost always you can figure out who the victim will be with a few minutes of them being introduced. Each victim is always the biggest douche bag of the group, and the show puts far too much effort in to making them seem as such. I understand why a story would paint a victim as a jerk, but it destroys any sense of suspense and dramatic tension when you can tell that they are just going to die as soon as they are introduced. A victim who is actually sympathetic does have us emotionally involved in finding the culprit, not indifferent because the dead person was a poorly written asshole whose death doesn't really deserve justice. Also the trend of making the motivation being that the victim was somehow responsible for the death of someone who is in one way or another related to the murderer is really getting old, especially when we only find out about it when they are revealed as the murderer.
Additionally I have some other complaints, the biggest and most infuriating one being Kaitou Kid. When he was introduced early in the series, he was possibly one of the coolest characters in all of anime. He was Lupin, minus all the terrible bullshit that plagued that franchise. I was in love, I wanted to see him show up as much as possible, and wanted a great rivalry to develop. This sadly never came. Instead Kaitou Kid became AWOL for roughly two hundred episodes, and then whenever he showed up the episode would be inevitably terrible. Once Sonoko's uncle shows up, all hope is lost. Kaitou Kid can never be cool again, the character is pretty much ruined, which saddens me to no end. I suppose I should have given up hope early on, when in a special they had pre-Conanized Shinichi matching whits with Kid. This could have been interesting, and set the stages for their rivalry, except for the fact that it's COMPLETELY NONCANON. Kaitou Kid became Kaitou Kid when he was introduced, before that he was just a normal... well weird high school student, but not a thief. He began his life of crime after Shinichi shrunk, thus making that entire special not fit into the series in any was, and since it was terrible anyway, it marked Kaitou Kid's slow and tragic death.
My last complaint is one that I know is pointless, but I still feels need to be made. A series with this long a run, and with no real end in sight will obviously have it's main love story go no where. The problem is that they keep trying to make it a central plot element, but we know nothing will happen. If it were kept in the background this wouldn't bother me, but when something we know will go nowhere become a primary focus I can't help but be annoyed. The series keeps trying to make up care, but because we know it will never go anywhere I can't help but care. There is no tension, I know what will happen, and it will be an anticlimactic cop out.
With all that said, Detective Conan is a very good series. For the first few hundred episodes it is amazing and does do many things right. It starts to fall apart after the Vermouth plot arc, which is by far the best part of the show. I won't give any spoilers, because it's something that really needs to be seen, but I do have to make the observation that a certain other character is the actual main character, and after that plot arc it becomes clear that Conan has little impact on the real plot of the show. The change in quality starts around when the animation style starts to change. When it made the switch to digital animation, it started to look worse and it's quality started to make a gradual slide in the negative direction.
What the series does right (when it's not having the god damn kids going on another fucking camping trip. Seriously how many times are they going to have the plot of Professor Agasa goes on a camping trip with the kids, some sort of even causes them to be in someone's house, someone gets murdered and the kids are annoying for forty minutes. For Christ's sake the kid's have seen more dead bodies than most coroners are going to see over the course of their career... but anyway), it does very right. As mentioned before when it bothers to have a plot it tends to be pretty good, at least through the Vermouth plot arc. After that it starts becoming a bit predictable, but still interesting. Oddly enough the thing I like the most about the series is it's side characters.
Although I find the primary love story to be completely pointless and annoying the other love subplots are almost always entertaining. The Satou and Takagi love arc is one of my favorite pairings in all of anime, and it actually develops over time. Whenever a “Metropolitan Police Love Story” episode showed up I would always get excited because those never disappointed. Also Kazuha and Heiji are characters I always have fun with. Primarily this is because Kazuha is played by Yuko Miyamura and anything with her doing a Kansai accent is automatically amazing. The fact that the series insists on having their relationship never go anywhere is rather frustrating, but it shows up rarely enough to never get annoying. Truthfully I that Heiji had his own spinoff series, it certain would be better that the Kaitou Kid one, that just serves to put even more nails into a coffin that at this point has more sharp steel than wood left.
Overall Detective Conan is a series that is very much worth watching, but not worth keeping up with. My suggestion is get up to the Vermouth plot arc and then keep going until you start to get annoyed. Once it starts getting old, it doesn't get any better and just ages rapidly from there. The series will probably go another decade or so, but it most likely won't get any better. It's a series that has ran out material. The material it had was amazing, but there are only so many murders you can pull off with a combination of locked rooms, fishing line and packing tape. It set up a good formula at the beginning, but once Sleeping Kogoro stopped being the primary method of solving crimes, it lost it's magic.
