Detective Conan anime 2016 appreciation thread
Posted: October 3rd, 2016, 9:50 pm
This is a thread I've been wanting to make for a while. I feel like I'm one of the only people...well, talking about the anime at all, first of all! But I sincerely wanted to make this thread, because I have been so happy with the anime for the past...year I guess. Now, I genuinely like the series quite a bit even now, but in the past I have sometimes been overly kind towards certain episodes. Shouldn't have done that honestly. Because the anime has certainly had its issues, especially since I caught up with it.
For a long, looooooong time, the anime only cases have been very easy to skip, even if you watch this series specifically for the episodic cases. And especially once the Bourbon arc began, the 1 episodes AOs in particular had become really lacking. Even if there were good elements, it was so hard to care and it just felt like people making boring, poorly paced versions of what Gosho does. And in a series as long and formulaic as Detective Conan, this was a gigantic mistake. But it doesn't matter because the series will go on being popular in Japan and people will get their money. Outside of basic quality necessary to not make that audience actively want to stop watching it after watching it for years and years, they can just lazily write the same formula with some new elements. Clever enough, but continuing on just so the series can continue to exist and adapt Gosho's work. Basically, the series being 1/3 of a Simpsons, Family Guy, Spongebob type zombie of a series that exists just to exist and make some people money.
But, out of nowhere, sometime around the end of the Bourbon arc, it felt like they either got new writers or people just wanted to try more. Because the AOs have been really good for at least the past year. It really feels like they try new things for cases and even characters, and do things to make you legitimately care about what's going on. They want the series to feel like a complete series and not just filler between the "worthwhile" parts of the series. This has also been helped by the fact, that for the first time in ages, more than one of Gosho's adapted cases fully lived up to his past work in the same year (The Darkness of the Prefectural Police and the Zombie case). If we had these long breaks between manga cases in previous years, it would've been pretty bad, but this year, it never really bothered me. I mean, yeah, my patience for plot going somewhere has dwindled because of how stupidly long the Bourbon arc was, so even less of that is a shame, but otherwise, it's been great. And I say this as someone who cares about the plot and characters far more than the cases usually.
But they've even implemented those elements in recently! Not only did the last case focus on Kogoro's fear of heights, established in MOVIE TWO, but there's also been recent cases that have actually properly taken advantage of Conan's bizarre situation and used that to tell interesting stories that are relevant to his character. It's like the good AOs waaaaaay back in the early days of the series where it would be different every time. And I never thought this would happen. NEVER. I wrote a long post (RIP) about my frustrations with Ran as a character and how Gosho has failed with her, and even that I think has a reasonable chance of being fixed someday maybe. But I just assumed AOS were never gonna be consistently good again. I had no reason to assume otherwise. And for the most part, I was totally wrong. I don't know why this happened, but I am so happy it did.
This is the best year for the anime since 2008. Now, it's obviously not as good as that since that was mostly Gosho and mostly Gosho at his best with a crap ton of plot. AOs aren't gonna top that. But otherwise, best year since then. Great work, keep it up.
also this is the only time I will ever make a "2016 appreciation thread" :V
For a long, looooooong time, the anime only cases have been very easy to skip, even if you watch this series specifically for the episodic cases. And especially once the Bourbon arc began, the 1 episodes AOs in particular had become really lacking. Even if there were good elements, it was so hard to care and it just felt like people making boring, poorly paced versions of what Gosho does. And in a series as long and formulaic as Detective Conan, this was a gigantic mistake. But it doesn't matter because the series will go on being popular in Japan and people will get their money. Outside of basic quality necessary to not make that audience actively want to stop watching it after watching it for years and years, they can just lazily write the same formula with some new elements. Clever enough, but continuing on just so the series can continue to exist and adapt Gosho's work. Basically, the series being 1/3 of a Simpsons, Family Guy, Spongebob type zombie of a series that exists just to exist and make some people money.
But, out of nowhere, sometime around the end of the Bourbon arc, it felt like they either got new writers or people just wanted to try more. Because the AOs have been really good for at least the past year. It really feels like they try new things for cases and even characters, and do things to make you legitimately care about what's going on. They want the series to feel like a complete series and not just filler between the "worthwhile" parts of the series. This has also been helped by the fact, that for the first time in ages, more than one of Gosho's adapted cases fully lived up to his past work in the same year (The Darkness of the Prefectural Police and the Zombie case). If we had these long breaks between manga cases in previous years, it would've been pretty bad, but this year, it never really bothered me. I mean, yeah, my patience for plot going somewhere has dwindled because of how stupidly long the Bourbon arc was, so even less of that is a shame, but otherwise, it's been great. And I say this as someone who cares about the plot and characters far more than the cases usually.
But they've even implemented those elements in recently! Not only did the last case focus on Kogoro's fear of heights, established in MOVIE TWO, but there's also been recent cases that have actually properly taken advantage of Conan's bizarre situation and used that to tell interesting stories that are relevant to his character. It's like the good AOs waaaaaay back in the early days of the series where it would be different every time. And I never thought this would happen. NEVER. I wrote a long post (RIP) about my frustrations with Ran as a character and how Gosho has failed with her, and even that I think has a reasonable chance of being fixed someday maybe. But I just assumed AOS were never gonna be consistently good again. I had no reason to assume otherwise. And for the most part, I was totally wrong. I don't know why this happened, but I am so happy it did.
This is the best year for the anime since 2008. Now, it's obviously not as good as that since that was mostly Gosho and mostly Gosho at his best with a crap ton of plot. AOs aren't gonna top that. But otherwise, best year since then. Great work, keep it up.
also this is the only time I will ever make a "2016 appreciation thread" :V
