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Forum - View topicREVIEW: Case Closed: Captured in Her Eyes
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Shay Guy
 Posts: 2351 |
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So who DID mandate the name changes (beyond "the Japanese"), and why? To make it easier for kids to get into? What does that matter when it's too bloody for a non-late-night timeslot in America?
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8503 Location: Penguinopolis |
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A well-written review, Hope. And not just because I agree with you, honest!
I love the climax of this film, in Tropical Land, especially the last bit, as hokey as it gets. Watching Conan skateboard down a ride is pretty fun. I do get a little concerned about the dub's treatment of the Japanese elements of the show, though. I mean, really, Funimation hasn't tried to place any of its other shows that take place in Japan in America, why does it do it for Case Closed, with some of its obvious Japanese landmarks and features? The names, too, of course, but trying to make it as if it takes place in the West of the United States is ridiculous. They even say Osaka is Canada in the series. I wonder how they'll handle one of the later movies wherein Mt. Fuji plays a role. |
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JacobC
ANN Past Staff
 Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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Well, I'll have to find a source for this, but I've heard over and over that it was actually a mandate from the studio, TMS, who wanted the series to do well in America and figured that was the best way. No, really! It certainly explains why this is the ONLY property that Funimation has done this with, as well as the exact same changes being made to the manga, although to a lesser extent. Yu Yu Hakusho, Blue Gender, and Fruits Basket are also early properties of theirs with fairly heavy Japanese influence and they suffered no such fate. (Well, okay, YYH's adaptive script is pretty freelance, but the changes don't aim to smudge out Japanese references unless there was a joke that didn't work, and Fruits Basket DID turn takoyaki and daifuku buns into...jelly buns...for some reason, but everything else stayed.)
Now they just kinda have to stick with it, I think. That's all I know. |
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penguintruth
Posts: 8503 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Well, I've read that it was a TMS thing, too, but I have my doubts. Though if it really is, there's not much that can be done! It's a weird thing to request, though.
Heh, but on the other hand, even in Detective Conan, there are a strange number of European-style castles in Japan. |
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jr240483
 Posts: 4473 Location: New York City,New York,USA |
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Even I wanted to know that when it showed on AS. Whatever the reason maybe is really pathetic cause all of these heavy edits and renaming from the series name to the names of some of the buildings is something 4kids would do. the renaming of the characters dont bother me at all even though there was no need for it. At least the dub is fun to watch,but those massive edits & the timeslot is the reason it bombed so badly on AS. Unless funi do some massive changes to the series to please the hardcore fans, the entire Detective Conan series is probably a lost cause and better off somewhere else. |
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eyeresist
 Posts: 995 Location: a 320x240 resolution igloo (Sydney) |
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Heh. "Mystery is cake to solve" sounds like a crossword clue.
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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I don't remember where I read about it, but I did come across something about FUNimation originally planning to show Detective Conan on ABC Family. It had already trademarked the name of the show and its characters when ABC Family decided to refuse FUNimation from airing it. (I guess the people at ABC Family actually sat down to watch what this show was about and realized it wasn't some cute cartoon about kids solving mysteries at school.) The Disney Company then kept these trademarks. FUNimation then aired Case Closed on Adult Swim with all the names changed, including that of the show, as a way of getting around those trademarks and loopholing the fact that ABC Family had prevented FUNimation from ever showing a series called "Detective Conan" on American television.
The Sherlock Holmes type of mystery show (where you're given the clues and you have to sort out the criminal) has rarely ever done well in North America, particularly animated ones. Scooby-Doo is the only instance I know of that became successful, which is probably because the mystery to solve is not at the forefront, but the group's personalities bouncing off each other. I know I watched plenty of Scooby-Doo and its various continuations when I was little and I never made any attempt to solve the mysteries. I just liked Shaggy and Scooby dressing up as weird stuff and messing with the supposed monster. Detective stories tend to do pretty well in novel form though. I'd guess they fall flat on their faces when put on TV because you can instantly go back in a book and flip to the page you want, but it's not as easily done on TV, much less on broadcast television. It could also be that people prefer passive TV viewing to active TV viewing. How else could Fillmore! have possibly flopped after one season? It was the smartest thing to come out of ABC One Saturday Morning! in some time. |
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fuuma_monou
 Posts: 1862 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
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The Animax Asia English dub was still called Detective Conan, complete with ready-made English credits from TMS (same font as Magic Knight Rayearth and Saint Tail). There's supposedly a legal reason why they can't use Detective Conan in the U.S., and the only thing that comes to mind is Conan the Barbarian's trademark. Doesn't explain all the other name changes, though. |
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nagato316
Posts: 306 |
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You realize of course what this might mean if the above is true. Yup, another franchise for the House of Hann...I mean Mouse to ransack...ahem, try to cash in on in the near future, by creating their own original movies/shows that use the names but may or may (most probably, what with all those murders) not stay true to the spirit of the original. Ugh.
Kudos and brownie points to you, dragon, for a deserved shout-out to an undeservedly obscure series. I _loved_ how Fillmore felt like a tongue-in-cheek yet still sincere homage to old-school TV mystery shows. IIRC, there was even a bit of pseudo-noir feel about the proceedings, seeing as how the titular--hall monitor, right? It really _has_ been quite a while since seeing Fillmore--had "a past" for which he was seeking redemption or something, or at least as much of a past as one could get in grade school. FWIW, Hope, I've never gotten into Conan/Kindaichi as of yet (I know, gross oversight on my part). Given that this movie ties back to the 1st episode of the series as you stated, would this standalone be a good point to "jump into" the franchise, seeing as how the backstory is kinda sorta "there" in this feature? Despite your reservations, it sounds intriguing...compelling character interaction/dynamics is always win in my book, after all. Last edited by nagato316 on Sat Jan 23, 2010 12:29 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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belvadeer
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I saw this in Korea too. Too bad I missed a good chunk of the beginning
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matthewlow
 Posts: 147 Location: San Ramon, California |
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Actually, all of the recent movies (3-5) all reference Japan landmarks without changing them. Mt. Fuji, Osaka, Tokyo Tower... they're all intact. In case you're wondering, movie 5 (the one you're referencing) was released on Tuesday, and many people have had it for a while now. It's done very well, outside of one name change that could actually be still fixed. Remember that seasons 1-5 were adapted and dubbed a really long time ago when name and dub changes were the norm. Movies 3-6 seem to have been done much more recently, and they seem to be following Funimation's new standard of keeping to the original. It seems that Funi has to keep some requirements for the on-screen text for some names, but a lot of names have been kept as of late. Officer Chiba keeps his name, as well as some of the incidental characters like Hara in movie 5 (well, just his last name). So really, you can't say that Funimation is doing all that much changing because they're really not anymore. As a company, they've made many changes in they way they do scripts and it really shows in movies 3-5. I applaud Funi for this and not having a problem with doing things like keep "West Tama City", even though they named it "Lily Valley West" in movie 1, or calling the city they live in "Beika", even though it was "Baker" in the series/movie 1. It's a healthy change, and one that I'd be confident they keep if the series continues in the States under Funi's control. ************* I must be horrible at figuring out who the killer was because I had absolutely NO clue at all. I thought it was very cleverly designed and was worthy of being a movie. The movie was AMAZING, one of the best so far. And for me, I really like how the culprit is a shadowy figure until it is revealed... great for the first time watch when you're desperately guessing. That's what makes Conan so much fun to watch. Even if I suck at guessing the culprit. Highly recommend Conan to any mystery buff. Or anyone who likes logic puzzles, with great characters and a backstory to boot. And Conan the Barbarian is the reason why it is called Case Closed here. Apparently it was confirmed by Funi at a panel somewhere. |
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The Human Spider
Posts: 334 |
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With a lot of the earlier episodes it's easy to eliminate some suspects based on who initially has the best alibi or who Mori suspects did the crime. But while I can sometimes guess who did it I have a harder time figuring out the criminals' tricks/alibis. A few times I could figure out the trick but not who did it. I thought the 4th movie was the best plotted out of all the DC movies. The chase at the amusement part was one of my favorite DC scenes. |
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Kalessin
 Posts: 931 |
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The worst offender for making it seem like they weren't in Japan was almost certainly the story where they go to visit Harley/Hatori in Osaka - it becomes Alberta. On top of that, they seem to act like Alberta is a city rather than a province. The name changes are one thing, but trying to make it seem like they aren't even in Japan is just downright disconcerting. Fortunately, the manga doesn't do anything of the sort (it just changes the main characters names), so you can get the correct information there even if you watch the dub rather than the subs.
As for these most recent films, they definitely toned down on the changes. The main characters names were still changed, of course, and some of the others were, but as matthewlow pointed out, they didn't try and act like they weren't in Japan. So that was a definite improvement. Hopefully these movies do well though. Maybe that will lead them to licensing more of them and possibly more of the series as well. Apparently the sales for the TV series haven't done so well, so they haven't licensed any more. As for the mystery in this one, I certainly suspected the correct person fairly early (due to the whole "pick the least suspicious tertiary character" bit), but I didn't see enough actual evidence to support that before the reveal. So, the reveal didn't surprise me particularly, but I couldn't nail them as the prime suspect based on the evidence. They did pick a different English name for Ai though than Viz did for the manga. So, there's pretty much no way to have consistent names when sticking to the official releases. The dub names mostly match Viz's release of the manga, but not entirely, and naturally, if you watch the subs, they don't match at all when it comes to main characters. The big thing that surprised me in this movie though was that Rachel didn't really spoiler[suspect that Conan was Jimmy in the end. There were all kinds of points towards the end where Conan was doing a very Jimmy-esque thing and she saw Jimmy overlaid on Conan in her head, and yet it doesn't even appear to have occurred to her that they might be one and the same. She did so on much weaker clues in the previous film]. But maybe we're supposed to attribute that to her memory problems. All and all though, it was a great film. |
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