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marshmallowgoop · 2 years

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Episode 425, Blu-ray Quality, and 10th-Anniversary Quiz Questions

Watched Episode 425 of Detective Conan for the first time recently, and it's a fun ride. Absolutely ridiculous—the FBI is really just taking this child along to stop multiple(!) assassination attempts!—but not without heart. It's got some great character moments (especially with Ai) and emotional drama (loved what we were shown of Kir).

But unlike Episode 345, the big, grand, showstopping 2.5-hour special prior to this one, there's some considerable bloating in regards to pacing here. A story that likely needed only a 2-hour timeslot to tell (at most) is stretched long and thin, with a laughable amount of repetition and recap. Perhaps most outrageously, there's a flashback to James Black's introduction case (specifically the second part, Episode 259) that's dragged out so unnecessarily far that it dawdles all over the screen for nearly a full two minutes.

(The timing of Episode 425 itself also strikes me as pretty funny. 345 has buildup, you know? 329 to 345 is practically straight plot. One hard-hitting, main-story case after another. Pieces are falling into place and threatening to collide constantly. There's a real sense of rising tension that culminates in the bombastic showdown that is the series' first 2.5-hour special.

(And this isn't just any anime. It's the 1,000+-episode, 25+-years-on-the-air, ginormous-barrier-of-entry monstrosity that is Detective Conan. Things proceed at a glacial pace here. The tiniest crumbs of crucial information are dropped at the speed of, like, three seconds every five episodes. Getting so much plot all at once is meaningful, something fitting for hyping up a big event that at least rattles the status quo, and while that Dutch-themed anime-original case in the midst of the 345 buildup (Episode 342) is of course wildly and ludicrously out of place, it's nothing compared to how out of place 425 feels.

(There's practically no setup here. The excessive recap makes it almost embarrassingly blatant that hardly anything main-plot relevant has happened since 345, and the episode prior to 425 is a filler—get this—called "Photo Email from the Clown."

(Yes, really. Only DetCo can build up to its super plot-heavy 2.5-hour special with a case featuring incidental characters we'll never see again and a dead clown. I love this show so much.)

But anyway, 425 is the only episode of the series that I own on Blu-ray, so I did actually appreciate the flashbacks for their visuals, if nothing else. None of the recounted episodes with traditional animation are of remastered quality, but there's definitely a clear difference between the DVD (top) and Blu-ray (bottom); as shown with this cap from Episode 177, the Blu-ray version has cleaner, sharper lines and colors:

And while I don't own a DVD version of 425 to compare how the episode itself looks between the two formats, judging from how much smoother and crispier (crunch) the digitally animated Episode 345 looks when recapped in 425 than it does on DVD, I think it's (probably?) fair to say that the same holds true for the Blu-raying of any digitally animated episode:

Regardless of anything else I could say about Episode 425, the evident jump in quality with the Blu-ray was dazzling, and it got me bummed that only a select handful of episodes have been released in this format! (At least in Japan, from what I know? Maybe other countries have more Blu-ray releases?) Sure the Black Organization and FBI-themed Treasured Selection Blu-rays (and the Akai Family TV Selections later) contain the Big Plot cases, and sure there are remastered versions of Episodes 1 to 123 up on Crunchyroll (in many countries) that do (in my opinion) have more elaborate and stunning HD'ing of traditionally animated episodes than what I see on my Episode 425 Blu-ray, but I'd love to own more high-quality Cone.

I've said in the past that it was a mistake to buy the Japanese DVD volumes individually—it's probably much less expensive in the long run to focus on listings selling entire season(s)—but there's certainly a silver lining here. The Black Organization and FBI 11 Treasured Selection that I purchased instead of Part 14, Volume 10 looks slick in Blu-ray quality, and I kind of want all the Japanese Blu-ray collections now.

But one thing about not having Part 14, Volume 10 is that I'm missing the first question in a 10-question quiz that commemorates the show's and movies' 10th anniversary and, fittingly, is a part of 10 episodes (starting with 425 and ending with 434). These short quiz segments before the openings are nothing out of this world or anything, but they're definitely cute, kinda like those "Who's that Pokemon?" spots. Loose translations are loose, but all the questions I do have are under the cut.

Question 2 says, "52 volumes of the original manga are on sale now! If you stacked all the books horizontally, how tall would the pile be in centimeters?" The three options for answers are だ (da), 70 cm; ぢ (ji), 90 cm; and づ (zu), 110 cm.

Question 3 asks, "How long is the show's opening narration in seconds?" The three options for answers are あ (a), 5 seconds; い (i), 15 seconds; and う (u), 30 seconds.

Question 4 asks, "In the year 2005, how many hours of Conan were broadcast?" The three options for answers are さ (sa), 10.5 hours; し (shi), 15.5 hours; and す (su), 20.5 hours.

Question 5 asks, "What episode number is the current episode?" The three options for answers are か (ka), Episode 379; き (ki), Episode 429; and く (ku), Episode 479.

Question 6 asks, "How many openings and endings has the Conan series had?" The three options for answers are あ (a), 41; い (i), 31; and う (u), 21.

Question 7 asks, "What is Conan not good at?" The three options for answers are ら (ra), soccer; り (ri), karaoke; and る (ru), swimming.

Question 8 asks, "What's Shinichi's favorite food?" The three options for answers are が (ga), lemon pie; ぎ (gi), sweet potato pie; and ぐ (gu), apple pie.

Question 9 asks, "What is the color of Dr. Agasa's car?" The three options for answers are つ (tsu), red; て (te), white; and と (to), yellow.

Question 10 asks, "What is the name of the drug that shrunk Conan?" The three options for answers are あ (a), APTX 1996; い (i), APTX 4896; and う (u), APTX 4869.

How'd you do? Personally, I found it amusing how the questions could range from difficult (for me, anyway!), like the manga-stacking question that is Question 2, to something more obvious, like Question 7 asking about what Conan's bad at.

Question 5 also cracked me up because the answer is super easy if you're watching on DVD, but, you know, on that note... the Japanese DVDs actually tend to not have their episodes ordered completely chronologically. For example, Episode 426 is included as the final episode on Part 14, Volume 9, even though Episode 425 makes up the entirety of Part 14, Volume 10. This is done so as to not split up multi-part cases across different DVDs, but it also means that, say, if I'm watching Episode 424, the next-episode preview at the end will be for Episode 426 (which comes next on DVD), and the episode preview for Episode 425 is included at the end of Episode 426, which chronologically takes place after 425! And let me tell you, so many of my subtitle files don't work for the previews because of this.

The DVDs thus encourage you to watch the episodes not in chronological order but in DVD order, and yet, the second quiz question is still included with Episode 426, not Episode 425, so you should be watching them in chronological order after all?

Ha, I don't know, but the answers, revealed at the end of each episode, are as follows:

2: だ (da), 70 cm

3: い (i), 15 seconds

4: す (su), 20.5 hours

5: き (ki), Episode 429

6: あ (a), 41 (specifically, 17 openings and 24 endings)

7: り (ri), karaoke

8: が (ga), lemon pie

9: と (to), yellow

10: う (u), APTX 4869

(Which, can I just say that Question 8 is cute? When I saw it, I knew that the answer had to be lemon pie because of its significance in Episodes 100-101, but I didn't realize that lemon pie was Shinichi's favorite food! That makes it so much sweeter that he loves Ran's first try at lemon pie so much, aw.)

Conan: Yummy!

And if you put all the hiragana (and katakana) of the answers together...

You get, "Thank you for loving Conan!"

Aww.

#detective conan #case closed #ramblings #shut up goop #detco dvd saga #ish #this probably sounds more negative than i meant but i had a lot of fun with episode 425 haha #it just totally came out of nowhere #also it didn't really fit but i swear i've heard it mentioned that some of the blu-rays #crop the 4:3 aspect ratio to fit into the modern 16:9 ratio?#not the case with 11 here but idk about the other ones #anyway blgh afraid my rent's gonna go up like 200 a month #and i messed up the shipping for one of my detco orders (the clean op/eds!) by using a po box when they don't ship to po boxes #so now reshipment fees are in my future and there goes 3800 yen....#so anyway here's something that's fun (i hope)#i can't believe i like detco so much but it makes me laugh

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