DETECTIVE CONAN

by Primayanto Hadi Saputra Property Consultant

The story starts by introducing 17-year old (initially 16 years in the manga) high school student Jimmy Kudo (Shin'ichi Kudo) and his childhood friend and crush, Rachel Moore (Ran Mori). Jimmy treats Rachel to a trip to a theme park named "Tropical Land" and encounters a murder^[1]. After easily solving the case and showing off his detective skills, he notices two mysterious men wearing black. Telling Rachel to go on home, he tracked the men to a meeting place and witnesses an illegal deal. However, one of the men in black (known only as Gin) notices him and knocks him out. Instead of directly killing him, the two black men give him an untested poisonnamed Apotoxin-4869 (APTX4869), which was supposed to not only kill Jimmy, but also leave no trace of poison in Jimmy's body. However, Jimmy wakes to find that he is still alive, but has now been shrunk to an elementary school boy, around six years old.^[2]

Following the advice of Dr. Herschel Agasa (Dr. Hiroshi Agasa), Jimmy hides his real identity, lest the men in black find out that he is alive. When Rachel asks for his name, Jimmy spots books by Arthur Conan Doyle and Edogawa Rampoand comes up with the name "Conan Edogawa". Agasa says that "Conan" is a relative of his, but was too busy to take care of a young child, and suggests that Conan go live with Rachel, and both Conan and Rachel agree.^[3]

Rachel's father, Richard Moore (Kogoro Mori) is an incapable detective. Conan always solves mysteries in his stead. As Conan appears to be just a boy, police do not pay any attention to him. Conan instead uses Detective Moore by putting him to sleep with a "anesthesia gun-watch"^[4] and pretending to be Moore by using a voice changer disguised as a bow tie.^[5]

To maintain his cover, Conan goes to Titan elementary school (Japanese: Teitan Elementary School (å¸ä¸¹å°å¦æ ¡,Teitan ShÅgakkÅ^?)) and has made friends with three children at the school, George Kaminski (Genta Kojima), Mitch Tennison (Mitsuhiko Tsuburaya) and Amy Yeager (Ayumi Yoshida) who form the self-styled "Junior Detective League" å°‘å¹´æŽ¢åµå›£ (ShÅnen Tantei-dan,å°‘å¹´æŽ¢åµå›£^?) (Detective Boysin the Japanese anime and manga). Although Conan feels profoundly self conscious playing with them given his true age, the foursome have numerous adventures of their own and the trio have proved capable assistants to the detective for their age.

Jimmy was able to find out that Gin was working for a criminal organization, known as the Black Organization. In addition to Gin, other major members of the Black Organization that appears later in the story include his partner Vodka, Vermouth, Kir, Chianti, Korn, and a mysterious "boss" who has only been mentioned so far. Jimmy also meets the inventor of the APTX4869 and former member of the organization Shiho Miyano(codename "Sherry" within the black organization), who was also turned into a child after she took her own drug to escape the organization, and then lives with Dr. Agasa under her new name Ai Haibara.^[6]

Later on in the series, Jimmy meets with his parents, Booker (Yusaku) and Vivian (Yukiko) Kudo along with Harley Hartwell (Heiji Hattori), a rival detective from Osaka^[7] and his childhood friend Kazuha Toyama. Also appearing is the gentleman thief Phantom Thief Kid (Kaito Kid)^[8] , who also appears in Aoyama's other manga, Magic Kaito.