Detective Conan

Jimmy Kudo (Japanese name: Shinichi Kudo) is a high school detective who sometimes works with police to solve cases. During an investigation, he is ambushed and incapacitated by a member of a crime syndicate known as the Black Organization. In an attempt to murder the young detective, they force-feed him a dangerous experimental drug. However, instead of killing him, it shrinks his body to the size of an elementary school child.

Adopting the pseudonym Conan Edogawa, Kudo lives with his childhood friend Rachel Moore (Ran Mori) and her father, Richard (Kogoro Mori), who is a private detective. Kudo keeps his real identity secret from most people, but early on confides in family friend and inventor Dr. Agasa, who supplies Kudo with an array of spy gadgets. Throughout the series, young Kudo tags along on Richard's cases.

Case Closed was conceived when Gosho Aoyama was asked to create a mystery manga. This was during the rise of the genre in manga due to the publishing of The Kindaichi Case Files (1992). Aoyama cites the stories of Arsène Lupin, Sherlock Holmes and the samurai films by Akira Kurosawa as influences on his work. Wanting to have a unique element, he came up with "shrinking" a skilled detective.

In 2007, he explained that he does not get tired of the series because the mysteries allow him to portray a variety of genres. "If the criminal is an athlete, it feels like a sports story. If they're an actor, it feels like a stage drama. Every time I work with a different world, so it lets me draw things in a way that keeps the story feeling fresh."

The series has ranked on the "Book of the Year" list from Media Factory's Da Vinci magazine, where professional book reviewers, bookstore employees, and Da Vinci readers participate; it ranked fifth in 2012; eleventh in 2014; fourth in 2015; sixth in 2016; fifth in 2017; first in 2018; fifth in 2019; sixth in 2020; tenth in 2021; fifth in 2022; eighth in 2023; 13th in 2024; and 22nd in 2025. On TV Asahi's Manga Sōsenkyo 2021 poll, in which 150,000 people voted for their top 100 manga series, Case Closed ranked fourth, behind One Piece, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba and Slam Dunk.

In 2006, the Japanese government used Conan in campaigns to help promote crime awareness among children. Targeting the same audience, Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs used Conan and his friends in two pamphlets: one to promote the ministry's mission, the other to introduce the 34th G8 summit held in the country in 2010. Several characters in the series featured in the sixth installment of the Anime, Heroes and Heroines commemorative stamp series issued by Japan Post in 2006. Aoyama and his creations are celebrated in his hometown Hokuei, Tottori; a museum with exhibits of his work is located there, and several bronze statues of Jimmy Kudo, Conan Edogawa, and Rachel Moore are installed in various locations throughout the town. It also has other tourist attractions related to Detective Conan, including a Detective Conan themed airport and train station, and it is promoted as Conan Town.