News from Neo-Venezia

As a detective story, Conan is rather contrived, with elementary-school-level mysteries that tend to be solved with a major deus ex machina clue. Reminds me of the Hawkeye and Amy Sunday comic strips I used to read as a kid, where the entire police force are stumped until kid detective Hawkeye whips out his sketchpad, draws the crime scene, and exposes the critical clue. (Later on in the series, Amy got an Instamatic to equalize things, although it took away that extra level of how Hawkeye would figure out the mystery while he was drawing. But I digress.) However, the blood and violence (and actual death! hoo!!) in Conan makes it unsuitable - at least in the Yoo Ess Ay - for those whose level the mysteries are written for.

Still, its 1 am airtime is TOTALLY unjustified, considering that the lead-in is kicked off at 11pm by a lineup including Family Guy, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and Sealab 2021 which are MUCH more inappropriate for youngsters who are more likely to be up at that time. (Cartoon Network is one of the most schizophrenic networks. How can a network responsible for Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends also have such boneheaded programmers? Does the programming department consist completely of inbred relatives of the programming director? But I digress again.)

The English dub acting is tolerable - I've never seen the Japanese and so am unqualified to speak of quality - though the relentless Americanizing of character names is a little jarring. Signs, newspapers, labels go untranslated, and the dialogue pretty much establishes the show in Tokyo. But then people have names like Richard and McKinney and Elizabeth (and "Jimmy Kudo"). I guess murders only happen to gaijin. As far as I can tell, Chibi Conan is the only one who gets to keep his name.

Anyway, juvenile plots and bizarre translation decisions aside, Conan is a fairly decent show, nothing particularly special about it. The animation is clean and consistent - although everyone has oddly oversized ears.gif"> - and it's cute that little Conan comes up to about knee level of most of the show's grown-ups (one scene had him tugging on someone's skirt hem to get her attention). As detective stories go, though, I actually prefer the Kindaichi Shonen no Jikenbo series, but Conan is as good an introduction to the mystery anime genre as Yoo Ess Ay viewers are likely to get at this point.