No matter whether the audience is excited or tired when they see the familiar movie title again, the character himself can't help complaining, "What do you think I'm doing? Go and say your opening remarks" (Yuanzi's language), so…the melody sounded, He gestured, "There is only one truth!"

One film a year is inevitable, and the "Detective Conan" theatrical version is here again.

"The Fist of Cyanosis" is the 23rd installment of Conan's theatrical version. It became a hit before it was released and has plenty of topics. Japan changed its era name and the "Heisei Holmes" who had been called "Heisei Holmes" for twenty years disappeared. This is "the last Conan in the Heisei era." Movie"; the story stage leaves Japan for the first time, and "Death Schoolboy" will take his "murder physique" overseas; in Japan, it has already surpassed the box office of the previous theatrical version "Zero's Executor" with 9.1 billion yen record, setting a new milestone for the series to surpass itself for 7 consecutive years.

According to Maoyan data, the film is expected to have a box office of 150 million in mainland China. If it can be realized, it will be a record high. On the day of the release, Xiaoden rushed to buy tickets, but after leaving the show, he felt a little embarrassed. The actual quality of "Cyan Blue Fist" was definitely not up to par with its gimmick. It was like a hastily pressed sandwich, barely full in one bite, and each layer was barely cooked.

As Shizuno Kofumi, the last resident director of Conan the Movie, said: "Mystery, love, and action are the three indispensable elements of Conan's works." The latest "sandwich" is also matched and stuffed in this way. However, after kneading, the reasoning part The characters are demented and their motivations are a mystery. The love part is incomparable and creates a crisis. The action part is chaotic and the scenes are downgraded. The whole movie just tastes boring.

However, for an evergreen series, even if the quality of a certain work is overturned, it will not be a big deal. The more interesting phenomenon behind the scenes is why there is an argument that "Conan the Movie is getting worse as it is made" every year, but the film's financial power has not decreased but increased? The previous theatrical version was clearly praised, but the production model has gradually changed?

And the question that has troubled us for many years, that we both love and fear – when will Conan grow up, when will "Conan" end, and should it end?

20 years of theatrical version: three stages, three modes

In addition to the latest "Cyan Blue Fist" and last year's "Zero's Executor", Conan the Movie has always adopted the "director-in-residence system", which has gone through three complete stages since 1997.

Each director directed 7 works. If you arrange the first 21 movies in order, you will find that their Douban ratings form a three-level ladder that is very coincidental and neat.

We might as well trace back from the present to the past, and we can better see the origin of changes and the regret of declining quality.

M22 and M23 mainly rely on selling character charm and character relationships. The second protagonist of "Zero's Executor" is Toru Amuro, known as the "9 billion box office male god". "Cyan Blue Fist" focuses on the pair of Suzuki Sonoko and Kyogoku Makoto. CP, the movie style is roughly the same as the previous stage.

In recent years, the most prominent feature and the biggest quarrel of the Conan movie version is undoubtedly "strengthening the action scenes and weakening the reasoning plot". This shooting method was carried forward by the third director Shizuno Kofumi. He directed M15-M21, with an average rating of about 6.5. Among them, "The Sunflower of Karma" and "Pure Black Nightmare", which he collaborated with screenwriter Takeharu Sakurai, had the worst reputation.

Shizuno Kongfumi's career experience is rather unique. He went to the United States to study after graduating from high school and worked in the United States for several years. He is a rare returnee director in the Japanese animation industry. Under his leadership, the Conan movie version also parted ways with "real reasoning", gradually injecting the shooting style of Hollywood action blockbusters, with grand scenes, exciting car chases, exaggerated fights, multi-shot editing, and the protagonist is able to fly and do anything.

From 2011 to 2017, defying the laws of physics, football and stadium explosions ("The Eleventh Striker"), stealing military intelligence on Aegis warships ("Detective of the Distant Sea"), fireproof, bulletproof, impactproof, automatic rotation and self-acceleration skateboard ("Sniper from Another Dimension"), smash a wall with one kick, stop a plane with his thoughts, dodge unharmed in a mudslide on a landslide building ("The Sunflower of Karma"), fight with bare hands on a Ferris wheel, and shoot from the side of a helicopter ("Pure") "Black Nightmare")…The protagonists of Conan are all evolving into supermen.

There are more and more explosions, the reasoning is getting weaker and weaker, and the functions of the three-piece suit of skateboard, suspenders, and football are becoming more and more outrageous. When the screenwriter has limited control over the story, the director implements the new concept and directly upgrades the "action scene" part. It became a "science fiction film". This was the transformation that Shizuno Kongfumi made for the theatrical version, and it is also the "legacy" he left behind. In 2018, Conan's football can change the trajectory of satellites, and cars can rely on trains to travel smoothly on the rails.

Compared with the popularity of Shizuno Kongfumi, the work style of the second director Taiichiro Yamamoto is more moderate. Taiichiro Yamamoto has a deep connection with "Detective Conan". He joined the production team when the TV version started airing in 1996 and has directed more than 300 episodes. He has also participated in each theatrical version to varying degrees. M8-M14 served as directors, with an average rating of about 7.5.

List of ratings for the theatrical version directed by Yamamoto Taiichiro

What can also be seen from his career experience is that from 2004 to 2010, Yamamoto Taiichiro's seven works often gave people the feeling of "extended TV series".

He expanded the stage of the story, and airplanes ("The Magician of Silver Wings"), cruise ships ("The Conspiracy on the Horizon"), islands ("The Coffin of Blue"), and airships ("The Shipwreck in the Sky") appeared in turn, but The presentation of the "three elements" is not as exquisite as the previous one. The most memorable point in the audience's mind is probably Conan who is tone-deaf but has "absolute sense of pitch" in "The Trembling Score".

The formula of "reasoning + love + action" has actually been established since the first seven theatrical versions. The key lies in which one to focus on and whether the distribution is appropriate. From 1997 to 2003, M1-M7 directed by Kodama Kanetsuji was recognized as the pinnacle of the Conan movie version, with an average score of about 8.5.

The cooperation model between Kodama Kanetsugu and screenwriter Kazunari Furuchi basically takes a self-consistent detective story as the core, embellishes it with reasonable action scenes, and finally uses delicate emotional scenes to bring resonance.

In addition to "Dead Man on Baker Street", which has been cited by CCTV and involves artificial intelligence and virtual reality, the poker serial murder in "Target 14", and the castle puzzles and mechanism warmth in "The Magician of the End of the Century", The confession line "I like it more than anyone else on earth" in "The Assassin in the Pupil" and the Japanese-style "Crossroads of the Labyrinth" that brings everything to a climax have become classics that have never been surpassed.

Struggling to convert: trap the core or expand the audience

It is not difficult to find that Conan the Movie often repeats itself. Some of the creative points were even exhausted in the first 7 parts.

M21 "Tang Hong's Love Song" is a companion piece to M7 "The Crossroads of the Labyrinth", and M10 "The Detectives' Requiem" reuses the amusement park of M4 "The Assassin in the Pupil". Since Kaitou Kidd appeared in M3 "The Magician of the End of the Century", he has reappeared as a publicity point every few years. Similarly, after the appearance of M5 "Countdown to Heaven", the black organization will come to the rescue every few years. At the end, one of the CPs will be in trouble, and then a hero will rescue the beauty (mostly Xinlan). This routine has not changed since M1's "Exploding the Skyscraper"…

Classic section of "Exploding Skyscrapers"

Regardless of domestic or Japanese, the top 7 works are the most highly rated. However, Kanetsugu Kodama, the "hero of Conan" who was also the director of the first 250 episodes of TV, resigned, screenwriter Kouchi Yiichi grew older (unfortunately passed away in 2016), and Nao Nozawa, who had only served as screenwriter for M6, hanged himself… Limited creativity, main creator No longer, under various objective conditions, it is difficult to reproduce the classic model, but the movie version will always continue to be filmed.

Just as Conan is faced with the eternal problem of red and white roses, the production team of the theatrical version may also have to struggle with this set of choices – whether to retain the flavor of the original work as much as possible, use reasoning as the axis, emotion + action assistance, or change the formula and find another way out ?

At the same time, the external environment and audience of "Detective Conan" are also changing. When it was born in the 1990s, its opponent was "Kindaichi Shounen Chronicle" with more authentic reasoning and darker painting style. It not only had to not fall behind in terms of hard power, but also had to take a differentiated route. Therefore, compared to Kindaichi, Conan's The readers are more teenagers.

But more than twenty years later, Conan can still carry his schoolbag and go to Teidan Elementary School, and the audience is already older than Shinichi.

This means that the original audience must be lost year by year. Taking care of the core audience or attracting casual fans is a trade-off that all IP movies have to make. The "excessive longevity" of "Conan" has brought another special feature: some of the former "core" have also begun to become "passerby". It's good to have a high level of reasoning, but seeing Heiji Kidd acting cool and Shin-chan throwing sweets is enough to buy a movie ticket.

Change did not happen overnight. The theatrical version swung between left and right in the second seven years, which led to mediocrity. In the third stage, it was simply a giveaway. It still had the same three ingredients, but the priorities were reversed, and it ran all the way on the Hollywood action movie model. .

Facts have proved that after Shizuno Kofumi took over, the Conan movie version really had a better response in the market. Each of M17-M21 directed by him independently broke the box office record of the series. M22 and M23, which followed his model, exceeded 9 billion one after another. Yen, "Cyan Blue Fist" has risen to the top 50 box office in Japanese film history.

In addition, contrary to the domestic audience's perception, on Japan's largest rating website, the reputation of the series did not drop visibly like 8, 7, and 6, but rather Kodama Kaneji > Shizuno Kongfumi > Yamamoto Taiichiro.

It is foreseeable that since a business model has been proven to be feasible, future theater versions will continue to be filmed in this way. "The return of the classic theatrical version" is probably just a delusion that will never come true.

Conflicting feelings: Should Conan end?

With 23 theatrical versions, 23 years of TV broadcasts, and 25 years of comic serialization, "Detective Conan" has long become the sentiment of a generation. Whether he continues to follow updates or just watched it before, his childhood TV set always has a memory that belongs to him.

You may have forgotten some of the bizarre killing techniques in the early years, and the wooden door that creaked open in the middle… But you will always remember these old jokes that are revealed every year: "Hanging Conan", "Black Shadow Lord", "Hawaii Technical School" , "Gin is too difficult", "Don't mess with me, I watched more than X00 episodes of Conan"…

"Conan" is no longer just an animation work, but has become an important part of popular culture.

Things have changed over time. In reality, as we age, Conan is also changing unknowingly. For example, the faces of the characters are comparable to plastic surgery. For example, the mobile phones used in the show have changed from big brother to candy bar to smart phone. Screen… It may be difficult to find another work that simultaneously records the times and adheres to the "accompanying positioning" for such a long time.

It is this virtual companionship that makes "parting" particularly difficult. All viewers will have this kind of ambivalence – on the one hand, we often joke about "lifetime" and hope to see Conan grow up and see the finale of the showdown with the black organization. We especially hope to see how several emotional lines will end. On the other hand, if that day does come, it will most likely be accompanied by a sense of panic and a feeling of loss, which represents another piece of memory being sealed.

In recent years, we have bid farewell to "Naruto", "Bleach", and "Gintama"… those well-known long-form comic series. Now only "Conan" and "One Piece" are still going strong, which makes this "hope and fear" The ambivalence is amplified several times.

But now, "Detective Conan" is indeed a bit overwhelmed. The increasing commercialization of theatrical versions is just a sign, reflecting the fact that the quality of the entire line of works has declined.

After all, the strong green hills cannot withstand the erosion of time. When he announced his long-term suspension in 2017, he made countless audiences at home and abroad worried, making everyone realize that the author's physical and mental strength was no longer sufficient to support high-intensity output. In fact, "Detective Conan" has been frequently updated in the past two years. From 2019 to now, the TV version has only 4 episodes with comic plots, which is far lower than the normal frequency in the past.

There is insufficient support for the original work, there is still a long industrial chain downstream, and there are countless staff who rely on IP to make a living, so a change in the style of the theatrical version is inevitable. And the basic market is already large enough, so the practices of "gnawing at the laurels" and "selling feelings" have become more and more obvious.

If "Conan" is delayed for a few more years, let alone Shinichi, the age of the first batch of viewers will be close to "Uncle Maori". How much sentiment will we have left to welcome the ending of Conan?

The voice actor of Mouri Kogoro was changed ten years ago, and the "Big Boss" that has been speculated on the Internet for many years has been revealed by the author at the 1000th chapter.

Perhaps it's time for Conan to say goodbye to the people who accompany him, and it's time for the theatrical version to release a "final chapter".

Natural and man-made disasters such as the Honshu earthquake and the KyoAni fire will never happen again. There is another hidden worry that is more terrifying than the ending: the ending. Perhaps no one would want to see "Detective Conan" drag on and fail to end in an ideal way, followed by "dog tails" like "Boruto" and "Dragon Ball Super", and a "Kudo" Lan" story.

Of course, until that day comes, Xiaodianjun will accompany everyone to continue waiting.

/ Welfare/