Conan Edogawa
From Detective Conan
Conan Edogawa is the main character of the anime Detective Conan, a top high school detective trapped in a child's body after being poisoned. He is voiced by Minami Takayama in Japanese and by Alison Viktorin in the Funimation English dub.
About Conan Edogawa
Conan Edogawa is the hero of Detective Conan, a famous high school detective shrunk to a child's body by a criminal organisation's poison. Living with the Mouri family under a borrowed name, he solves murders wherever he goes, usually letting the bumbling detective Kogoro take the credit while he hunts for the men in black who changed him. His mind is a teenager's; his height is a first grader's.
Appearance
Conan looks like a boy of about six or seven, small for his age, with messy brown hair, big blue eyes and oversized round glasses that serve as part of his disguise. He usually wears a blue blazer with shorts or trousers, a white shirt and a red bow tie, which is secretly Professor Agasa's voice-changing bow tie, along with red sneakers that hide his power-enhancing kick shoes. His expressions swing between innocent child and serious detective, and the adults around him rarely notice the switch. When he is thinking hard he touches his chin or adjusts his glasses, habits carried over from his life as Shinichi Kudo.
Personality
Conan is brilliant, confident and completely obsessed with solving cases. He notices details everyone else misses, remembers everything and cannot resist a puzzle, even when it puts his secret at risk. Around adults he performs the role of a sweet, curious child, but the act slips whenever a case excites him. He is brave to the point of recklessness, regularly running into danger to save people, and he holds a strict moral code: a detective who lets a culprit die, or drives one to suicide, has lost. His weak spots are music, where he is famously tone-deaf, and Ran, the girl he loves and has to lie to every single day to keep her safe.
Background & Story
Conan was born Shinichi Kudo, the son of a famous mystery writer and a former actress, who grew up reading detective novels and became a celebrated high school detective helping the Tokyo police. At an amusement park he followed two men in black, members of a criminal organisation, and was caught, beaten and force-fed an experimental poison, APTX 4869, meant to kill him without a trace. Instead of dying, his body shrank to that of a small child. On Professor Agasa's advice he hid his identity, invented the name Conan Edogawa from Arthur Conan Doyle and Ranpo Edogawa, and moved into the home of his childhood friend Ran Mouri and her father, a private detective. From there he solves cases through the sleeping Kogoro, gathers information on the organisation that shrank him, and waits for a way to get his real body back.
Powers & Abilities
- Deduction: His true power: a mind trained on thousands of cases and novels, able to reconstruct a crime from tiny traces and expose the one truth behind any trick.
- Voice-changing bow tie: Professor Agasa's invention lets him mimic any voice, which is how he delivers his deductions through the unconscious Kogoro, the famous Sleeping Kogoro routine.
- Tranquilliser watch: Another Agasa gadget: a wristwatch that fires a tiny sleeping dart, used to knock Kogoro out before a deduction and to stop criminals in emergencies.
- Power kick shoes and turbo skateboard: Shoes that stimulate his muscles for football kicks strong enough to stop vehicles, and a solar-powered skateboard for chasing suspects his small legs could never catch.
- Stun and smarts: From criminal profiling to codes, lock-picking knowledge and first aid, Shinichi's education does the work his body cannot.
Key Relationships
- Ran Mouri: His childhood friend and the love of his life, who believes Shinichi is away on a long case. Protecting her, and hiding the truth from her, is the emotional centre of Conan's double life.
- Kogoro Mouri: Ran's father, the lazy detective whose reputation Conan secretly built. Kogoro calls him a brat, but the two have saved each other's lives more than once.
- Professor Agasa: The inventor next door who knows his secret, builds his gadgets and covers for him. Agasa is the closest thing Conan has to family in his shrunken life.
- Ai Haibara: The organisation's former scientist, also shrunken, who knows the poison better than anyone. Their bond mixes trust, teasing and a shared understanding of living as someone you are not.
Quick Answers
Is Conan Edogawa really Shinichi Kudo?
Yes. Conan is Shinichi Kudo, shrunk by the poison APTX 4869. Almost nobody knows: Professor Agasa, his parents, Ai Haibara and a handful of others share the secret, while Ran and Kogoro do not.
Why does Conan hide his identity?
If the Black Organization learned that Shinichi Kudo survived their poison, they would kill him and everyone close to him. The Conan disguise, and the lie that Shinichi is away on a case, protect Ran and his family.
Who voices Conan in English?
Alison Viktorin voices Conan in the Funimation English dub. In Japanese, Conan has been voiced by Minami Takayama since the series began in 1996.
How old is Conan?
His body is that of a six or seven year old first grader, but his mind is his real age: Shinichi Kudo was 17 when he was shrunk, and he keeps all of his intelligence and memories.