Detective Conan

In the last few weeks, I have been watching Japanese anime Detective Conan (名探偵コナン).

This is a story about a high school detective who, after being poisoned, transform into a kid. Since then, he has taken the name of Edokawa Konan (江戶川コナン). As you might be aware, the character is named after the author of Sherlock Holmes.

Detective Conan runs over hundreds of episodes. In one episode, The Last Wizard of the Century, Konan/Conan was going after a female assassin. The assassin always shot her victims at their right eyes. When our hero finally confronted her, she again pointed her gun at his right eye. She had only one bullet left, and she didn’t realize that Konan was wearing bullet-proof glasses…

There are a few interesting things which I observe…

When I was a kid, my favorite manga was Doraemon. In this story, Nobita and his pals played baseball, which was considered the national past time of Japan. Detective Conan, on the other hand, plays soccer.

In every episode, towards the end of the theme song, we see Konan pointing his finger forward, and uttering, with full of confidence, “There is only one truth.” (See the picture above.) In the real Japanese society which values conformity, a person who speaks with such confidence will probably be viewed with suspicion. But really, as the Land of the ‘Setting’ Sun sinks into decades-long slump, what they need is leaders with strong character.