100 Posts!!! New series- Daily Geek Rants!

100 posts already and it only takes me about 2 months!  That's how dedicated I am to this blog, and how much I love my readers.  To celebrate the event, I decide to start a new category/series called Daily Geek Rants.  Ever Monday to Friday, I will blog about a geeky topic where I will just ramble on with my thoughts about said topic.

For the first topic, I'm gonna rant about Case Closed/Detective Conan!  One of my favorite manga series as a young boy.

Detective Conan, or Case Closed for U.S. audiences, because we're so special, is a weekly manga from Weekly Shonen Sunday since January 19th, 1994 by author Gosho Aoyama.  The manga is about high school detective Shinichi Kudo got turned into a small child by a mysterious drug from a mysterious crime syndicate called Black Organization.  A+, on naming the syndicate by the way.  What gives you the idea, do they all wear black suits?

Black clothing: Check!

Anyway, after Shinichi Kudo got turned into a kid, he decides to guise himself as Conan Edogawa (after Conan Doyle and Edogawa Rampo, both famous mystery novel authors).  He then lives at his girlfriend- Ran Mori's house because her father is a detective, and it should be the easiest way to find out who these Black Organization people are.  Fail-proof ideas!  While living with Ran and her father Kogoro Mori, Conan has to help Kogoro solving mysterious cases and using special gadgets such as Voice-Changing Bowtie or Stun-Gun Wristwatch.  Let's see: cool kid who gets to live with his girlfriend and uses awesome toys to solve mystery cases?  What a perfect formula for a successful series!  However, after almost 20 years and 850 chapters later, a wonderful series will grow stale and become boring as well.

A few elements that hook the readers since the beginning are: 1) Will Conan ever return to his full-size again?  2) Who are the Black Organization  and what do they want?  3) Will Ran ever find out that Conan is actually Shinichi?  And of course, 4) The fun, and mystery cases.  While all these are great elements for readers to come back weeks after weeks, but if the same thing happen over and over and over and over again, no one cares anymore.  I still remember the first time Conan return to his Shinichi self.  It was awesome, and it was one of the best story ever.  Few volumes later it happens again, and it was still pretty cool.  And it happens again, and I was like "oh, again?  I guess..."  After that it just keeps on happening over and over until I just don't give a shit anymore.  The whole series is about this guy who got turned into a little kid, so when he finally gets to return to his original self, doesn't matter the duration of the time, it should be a meaningful event, not something to be abuse with as plot devices.  Something cool becomes cheap shots.

It's hard to pinpoint what exactly does the Black Organization want.  It seems like they're creating drugs that prevent people from aging, but at the same time they're targeting the video game industry.  What does the two have to do with each others, only Aoyama can tell us.  While many can argue that the reason Aoyama didn't tell us what exactly Black Organization wants is because by doing so, the series will end soon.  I think the reason he didn't reveal what they want after almost 20 years of publishing is because he doesn't know what they want either.  I'm a writer myself, and I know the only reason I'm stalling on a story is because I have no idea where I'm going with it.  I also hate how he keeps making us guess if a new character is a member of Black Organization or not.  During the time when we guess if Jodi was Black Organization and she turns out to be FBI was cool.  But when another character pops out and he turns out to be CIA, and another turns out to be.... I don't even care anymore.  All I know is Aoyama must be a shampoo master, because he likes to rinse and repeat.  

"Ran's about to find out who Conan really is" is a package deal with Conan returning to his full-size.  Every stories that have Ran about to find out Conan is Shinichi, Shinichi will make an appearance to stop her suspicion.  After the same thing happens about dozens of time, I come to the conclusion that Ran is just a fucking moron.  The first time she accused a little kid secretly being an adult, shame on the kid.  The second time she accused a little kid secretly being an adult, she's a moron.  I mean, how many times can you accuse someone something and failed before feeling stupid?

And then the mysterious cases... it's one thing when Aoyama shows us ridiculous murder methods, but it's a whole other thing when the motive becomes cheap as well.  The motives for murders used to be somehow "justified" as the victims killed the murderer's family members, or the victims know some secrets about the murderer, so the murderer has to silence them... Aoyama then gets lazy  with motives becoming something stupid like "He laughs at me" or "He looks at me funny."  Well, maybe not THAT stupid, but you got the idea.

One thing that bugs me the most is Gosho Aoyama's English.  Enlarge the images below, and ignore the Chinese and just read the English part:

For crying out loud!  What the heck is he trying to tell us?  I know that it's not fair to expect foreigners to speak perfect English, but god damn it!  My father doesn't speak English either, but he writes perfect English.  My problem really isn't the fact that he writes poor English, but the fact that he likes to show off his horrible English.

Holy Jeepers Batman!  4 pages full of English and none of them make one dame sense.  Who teaches him English?  His own dick?

I'm sad that a great manga series becomes a really sad and depressing never ending story.  Especially when there's a perfect way to make this series better- forget about how much money the series make you, and just end the story already Aoyama.