Manga
Case Closed: Volume 1
Story and Art by: Gosho Aoyama
Published By: Viz
Reviewed by Justine Manzano
I’ve been taking a lot of reading recommendations from my friends lately and
they always seem to turn out well for me so I guess I’ll keep running with
them. This particular recommendation came from a Manga loving friend who
decided I must read Case Closed by Gosho Aoyama. Now, I’m no Manga expert, but
I do enjoy it and this has been one of my favorites to date.
Case Closed follows the adventures of Jimmy Kudo, a junior in High School whose love of the great mystery novels, most especially Sherlock Holmes, has made him into an expert detective at a very young age. Jimmy is trusted by the Police Department and is very good at what he does. He takes pride in this fact, even though his best-friend and pseudo-girlfriend Rachel Moore mocks him about it. Then, one day, Jimmy can’t resist the urge to follow up on a dangerous hunch. Following this hunch leads to him being beaten and force-fed a strange fluid meant to kill him. But it doesn’t kill him. What it does is turn him into a six-year-old boy or at least he appears to be one.
It doesn’t take him long to realize that nobody will take him seriously in his new body. Enlisting the help of his next door neighbor, Dr. Agasa, Jimmy tries to track down a cure for his new condition, all the while continuously searching for the men who did this to him. Jimmy changes his name to Conan Edogawa and goes to Rachel for help, claiming that he is a relative of Dr. Agasa and needs to stay with her. She agrees and Conan plans to use her detective father’s contacts to help find the culprits. However, as he soon discovers, Rachel’s father isn’t very good at what he does, and may need more help from the six-year-old boy than he’ll ever admit. So, on the road to unlocking the mystery of his new age level, Jimmy er….Conan must help solve Detective Moore’s cases and rebuild his contacts-or else he won’t have anywhere else to look.
This story is excellently written and drawn. This author was obviously a fan of Sherlock Holmes and it shows in ever mystery that pops up in Volume 1 of this series. The mysteries keep the reader guessing but that’s only half the fun. Jimmy and Rachel have a hilarious relationship. They are both in love but never quite able to share it. Detective Moore is the ultimate bumbling detective and it’s a surprising amount of fun to watch the tiny Conan bail him out of bad situations time and again; very reminiscent of the old Inspector Gadget cartoon series.
All in all, this is a very fun book. It’s sweet, and the mysteries are interesting. The drawings are adorable, especially little Conan. But the biggest surprise for me was how much I felt for Jimmy. For a story involving events that aren’t physically possible, it wasn’t hard at all to understand Jimmy’s frustration at his transformation. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t still remember what it was like to have someone tell them they were “too young to understand” and Case Closed taps into that feeling. Plus, mysteries are just plain fun.
For feedback, visit our message board or e-mail the author at justine@g-pop.net.