Case Closed, <onlyinclude>also officially known as , is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Gosho Aoyama. It has been serialized in Shogakukan's manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Sunday since January 1994; its chapters have been collected in 108 volumes as of April 2026. Because of legal problems with the name Detective Conan, several American English language releases were renamed Case Closed. The story follows the high school detective Shinichi Kudo, whose body was transformed into that of an elementary school-age child while investigating a mysterious organization. Generally, he solves a multitude of cases by impersonating his childhood best friend's father and various other characters.
Case Closed is licensed for English-language release in North America by Viz Media, which has published the manga in print since September 2004. It also publishes the series in English on the Viz Manga digital manga service, with the series' chapters receiving simultaneous English publication in North America as they are released in Japan. Shogakukan Asia publishes the manga in English in Singapore and in the Southeast Asian region. It has been adapted into an anime television series adaptation produced by Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation and TMS Entertainment, which began broadcasting in January 1996.
The volumes of the manga had over 270 million copies in circulation worldwide by January 2023, making it one of the best-selling manga series of all time. In 2001, the manga was awarded the 46th Shogakukan Manga Award in the category. It has received a positive response from critics for its plot and cases.
Plot
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. Kudo typically solves them, revealing the culprit by sedating Richard with a tranquilizer dart from his wristwatch and copying Richard's voice with a bowtie gadget. This ruse helps Kudo maintain his cover, but also gives Richard the reputation as a brilliant but narcoleptic detective. Kudo also enrolls in Teitan Elementary School, where he makes friends with a group of classmates who form their own Junior Detective League (Detective Boys). While he continues to dig deeper into the Black Organization, he frequently interacts with other characters, including his neighbor, Dr. Agasa; Rachel's friend Serena Sebastian (Sonoko Suzuki); a fellow teenage detective, Harley Hartwell (Heiji Hattori); assorted police detectives from different regions; and a phantom thief called Kaito Kid.
Kudo later encounters an elementary school transfer student, Anita Hailey (Ai Haibara), who reveals herself to be a former member of the Black Organization under the code name Sherry and the creator of the experimental drug that shrunk him. She too ingested it to evade the pursuit of the organization. She soon joins the Junior Detectives. During a rare encounter with the Black Organization, Conan helps the FBI plant a CIA agent, Kir, inside the Black Organization as a spy.
Production 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." An online database of all the cases from the manga was launched that year.
Each case spans several chapters (except for a handful of shorter cases that span only one) and is resolved at the end, when characters explain the details of their solutions in simple terms. Aoyama researches and conceives of the "tricks" to the cases together with his editors, which includes testing some of the science experiments and magic tricks himself. His older brother is a scientist who also helps him with the "gimmicks" in the series. With the story and trick determined in meetings with the editors, Aoyama then spends hours in isolation by himself, thinking of the best way to show them in the storyboard. When he starts drawing a rough draft, he considers how much romantic comedy, mystery and human drama to include. When scripting each chapter, he ensures the dialogue remains simple and spends an average of four hours for each new case and twelve for more complicated ones.
In 2007, Aoyama hinted that he had planned an ending but did not intend to end the series yet. Aoyama and his staff decided to computerize their manga creation process in early 2011, although he still draws with a pen and paper. The change began with the final page of chapter 760. In 2015, Aoyama was hospitalized for a surgery, resulting in Case Closed going on its first lengthy hiatus in 21 years. The following year, he reduced his workload by less than half. As of 2023, it took Aoyama two months to create a 64-page story spanning four chapters, with him working 18-hour days. In 2026, Aoyama revealed that he had already drafted the thumbnail layouts (name in Japanese) for the final chapter.
Media Manga
Written and illustrated by Gosho Aoyama, Case Closed started its serialization in Shogakukan's manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Sunday on January 5, 1994. Case Closed became one of the longest running manga series, with over 1,000 chapters released in Japan, and the first series with over 1,000 chapters published in Weekly Shōnen Sunday. Shogakukan has collected its chapters into individual volumes. The first volume was released on June 18, 1994. On October 18, 2021, the series reached one hundred volumes; One Piece author, Eiichiro Oda, whose series achieved the same feat a month before, sent congratulations to Aoyama. As of April 8, 2026, 108 volumes have been published.Viz Media announced its acquisition of the series for North America on June 1, 2004. Following Funimation's localization, Viz released the series as Case Closed and took their character names to keep consistency between the two media. Viz Media released the first volume in September 2004 and began releasing digital editions in 2013. On May 9, 2023, Viz Media launched their Viz Manga digital manga service, with the series' chapters receiving simultaneous English publication in North America as they are released in Japan. In June 2026, Viz Media announced that it will release the series in a 3-in-1 omnibus edition starting in Q2 2027, using the original Detective Conan title and character names.
Gollancz licensed and distributed 15 of Viz Media's volumes in the United Kingdom before ceasing publication of manga. (Viz Media has since re-released them). In 2014 Shogakukan Asia began its own English localization of the series for Singapore and other Southeast Asian countries as Detective Conan. - Go to "Detective Conan A Modern Day Sherlock Holmes " - - Release date 6 June 2014 Laura Thornton of CBR.com, citing the common Japanese ownership in both Shogakukan Asia and Viz, described the Singapore version as, compared to the Viz one, "completely identical, word-for-word, even -- save for the names and the Detective Conan logo".
Spin-offs
Gosho Aoyama's assistants have written an anthology series of Case Closed which are released irregularly.
A spin-off manga series, titled Case Closed: The Culprit Hanzawa, by Mayuko Kanba, began in the July 2017 issue of Shogakukan's Shōnen Sunday S, released on May 25, 2017.
Another spin-off manga series, illustrated by Takahiro Arai with supervision by Aoyama, titled Case Closed: Zero's Tea Time started in issue #24 of Weekly Shōnen Sunday on May 9, 2018. The story centers on the agent Toru Amuro/Rei Furuya. New chapters of the manga are only published when Case Closed is on hiatus.
Another spin-off manga series by Arai, titled Detective Conan: Police Academy Arc – Wild Police Story, was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Sunday from October 2, 2019, to November 18, 2020. Spanning 13 chapters, it again focuses on Amuro/Furuya during his years in the police academy with his colleagues.
Anime
An anime television series adaptation, produced by Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation and TMS Entertainment, premiered on January 8, 1996. Over 1,200 episodes have aired in Japan, making it one of the longest anime series.
A total of 29 films have released each year since 1997 (excluding 2020), with the latest film Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway premiered in Japan on April 10, 2026. Each film features an original story, rather than being adapted from the manga.
Video games
Case Closeds expansion into the video games industry followed behind its foray into animation. On December 27, 1996, Detective Conan: Chika Yuuenchi Satsujin Jiken was released for the Game Boy. Since then, 24 games have been released. Currently, the majority of the games have only been released in Japan, though Nobilis has localized Case Closed: The Mirapolis Investigation for the PAL region. All dedicated Detective Conan games released for the Game Boy, Sony's consoles, the WonderSwan, and the Nintendo DS have been developed by Bandai. Banpresto developed the Case Closed titles on the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance while Marvelous Entertainment developed Case Closed: The Mirapolis Investigation.
Audio CDs
Katsuo Ono composed and arranged the music in the Case Closed animation; his works have been released on several CDs. Two image albums, comprising several songs sung by Japanese voice actors of the characters in the animation, were also released. Several theme music were performed by pop musicians such as B'z, Zard, and Garnet Crow. The first four theme music were released by Universal Music Group and all releases thereafter were by Being Inc.
The Best of Detective Conan and The Best of Detective Conan 2 albums collectively sold over 2.2million copies, while singles from The Best of Detective Conan 3 collectively sold over 1.6million copies. On July 25, 2017, the singer Mai Kuraki was awarded a Guinness World Record for singing the most theme songs in a single anime series, having sung 21 songs for the Case Closed series, starting "Secret of My Heart" (2000). On September 27, 2026, Kuraki broke her own Guinness World Record for "Most Theme Songs Sung by the Same Artist for an Animation Series", having sung 30 theme songs for Case Closed.
Live-action drama
Four live action drama TV specials and a TV series were created by Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation and TMS entertainment based on the series. The first two specials aired in 2006 and 2007 featuring Shun Oguri portraying the teenage Jimmy Kudo and Tomoka Kurokawa as Rachel Moore. The third and fourth TV specials aired in 2011 and 2012 featuring Junpei Mizobata as Jimmy and Shioli Kutsuna as Rachel. The cast used for those TV specials were used for the television series which aired between July 7 and September 29, 2011.
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