Conan's Essential An unofficial "Detective Conan" website Contents Main Story Characters Comic Cartoon Pictures Guestbook Downloads Links Credits The Story Shinichi Kudo is a high school student who, by using observation and deduction, is good at solving mysteries. While investigating one, he is caught by the criminals who are always in black clothes (MIB ?) and forced to take an experimental drug, which had never before been tested on humans. Thinking that he is dead, the criminals disappear. Instead of killing him, however, the drug turns Shinichi into a little kid. Shinichi's parents spend most of their time abroad and have no idea of what has happened to him. The only one Shinichi can turn to is his neighbour, Professor Agasa. After much convincing, Shinichi gains the Professor's trust and together the embark on the mission to expose the underground organization and find an antidote to the poison he was fed. To preserve the illusion of his 'disappearance', Shinichi adopts a new name based on his favorite author (Arthur Conan Doyle and Edogawa Ranpo) and becomes Conan Edogawa. Ran Mouri, his (actually Shinichi's) girlfriend takes this little boy under her wing and brings him to her home. Conan now lives at a detective agency run by Kogoro Mouri, Ran's father, but his mind is as keen as ever and he continues to solve mysteries, always allowing Ran's father to take all the credit. As far as everyone's concerned, Conan is just a little kid anyway, even to Ran. This is extremely frustrating to Conan since nobody will listen to a 'little boy'. In spite of this, Conan has a mission, to find the criminals who did this to him and get the antidote to that drug. This is, first and foremost, a mystery series. This is only the beginning...   The part in the story when Shinichi becomes Conan (Volume One Chapter 4) Shinichi went to an amusement park with Ran. After solving a murder case at the park, he followed two suspicious men in black. He witnessed a criminal transaction by one of them (Vodka). When trying to gather more evidence, he was striked down by Gin, and given an untested drug in order to kill him. The drug failed to kill, but contracted him instead. Fearing the worst, he went to his neighbour, Professor Agasa's house for help. "If they know the truth which Shinichi Kudou is still alive, they might do harm to person around you!" Agasa advised. At the same time, Ran, worried of Shinchi's safety, came to Agasa's house to look for him. She found this little boy trying to hide himself. When Ran asked his name, he retreated to a bookshelf with detective stories by Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes's author) and Edogawa Ranpo (famous Japanese writer). "Conan, my name is Edogawa Conan!" There it goes! Some of Conan's Tools... 1. Voice Changing Bowtie Allows Conan to change his voice to anybody's. Extremely useful he needs to impersonate Kogoro, or anybody else, when solving cases. 2. Stungun Wristwatch The primary tool for Conan to put his "detective target" to sleep. This causes the "victim" (often Kogoro) to go into a state of unconciousness, and allows Conan then to use the bowtie to imitate the victim's voice to solve cases. 3. Power Shoes For emergency use only! When lives are threatened, a touch on the button of the shoes will allow Conan to kick up to many times stronger. Conan has used it to stop many killers killing again. Comparison between "The Case Files of Young Kindaichi" and "Detective Conan" "The Case Files of Young Kindaichi" and "Detective Conan" share many similarities. At the same time, they do have different traits too. Both are successful manga (Japanese term for comic) and both follow the same formula. The hero of the stories are both high school students whose interest is in solving head-cracking cases. However, while the Kindaichi cases are relatively longer and more gory, the Conan cases are shorter and many a times, may not involve murder at all. Both the stories have been adapted into cartoon TV series and movies. The unique feature in Conan is his transformation from a 17-year old teenage into a 7-year old boy. As Conan always mention on the cartoon series, "even when the body is small, the brain remains as good," and that "there is only one truth in every case!" The other feature that seperates Conan from Kindaichi is that Conan uses lots of imaginery gadgets (powerful sneakers, voice-changing bow-tie, spectacles that double up as trailing device, etc.) in his cases. These come in useful when Conan has to fend off bigger criminals. At the present moment, Kindaichi's and Conan's comics are available in most bookstores. The first season of Kindaichi has concluded (27 books in all), while the second season has started (3 cases to date). As for Conan, the latest to hit the bookshelves is volume 23. Is there any possibility of a tough case involving Kindaichi vs Conan? This has been my fantasy ever since I read their stories! Detective Conan is a creation of Gosho Aoyama. The story is currently running in appears in Weekly Shonen Sunday magazine (Japanese comic weekly). This website has no affliation with Mr Gosho Aoyama, Detective Conan and all other publications mentioned. It is purely an unofficial site.