Meitantei Conan ~ Kudo Shinichi e no Chousenjo

As I've never read the manga or watched the anime of "Meitantei Conan", I have no idea how the story goes or the traits of the main characters. In view of this, I approached this story without any prejudice and thought of this as a mere detective story. Frankly speaking, after watching this SP, I don't feel any interest with regards to finding out more on the original story since the adaptation doesn't impress me that much after all. That's not to say that the SP is badly done, it's just that I've seen much better stories from Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo and Tantei Gakuen Q so I find the case presented in this SP not as challenging. The suspects are easy to spot so that only leaves how to figure out the tricks to lead to the truth. Maybe the general consensus that Kindaichi fans and Conan fans cannot see eye to eye on which story is better, does hold true.

With regards to the cast, I think the lacklustre story did not provide them with too many chances to shine. I have no idea how the original characters are supposed to be so I don't have any basis for comparison. I'm not sure whether the problem lies with Oguri Shun or rather the fact that Kudo Shinichi's tendency to put on a kakkoii front irks me very much but you can be sure that I don't have any liking for this lead character. In fact, I find the supporting characters like Mori Kogoro (Jinnai Takanori) and Megure (Nishimura Masahiko) more interesting since they add a lot of humour to the storyline. Otherwise, I really think none of the cast members caught my attention in a good way since I was practically dozing off until they got to the resolution segment.

Judging from the way the SP ended and how they went to lengths to use the anime and describe how Shinichi became Conan, I guess there is a high possibility that NTV may do another SP or full-length series which means that it's impossible for Oguri to play this role again. Seems like NTV has the tendency to use drama SPs as a form of testing to see how the viewers react before investing heavily in a regular season drama and this looks like a good method by far. Given that Conan has been going on for at least 10 years, there should be a strong fanbase to tap on which could lead to a regular pool of viewers tuning in if there's a drama adaptation.