English Dub Review: Detective Conan: The Culprit Hanzawa Season One

Based on the Japanese Manga series, written and illustrated by Takahiro Arai and a spin-off of the Case Closed/Detective Conan anime/manga franchise by Gosho Aoyama, with Aoyama supervising the project, and is this time around focused on the black-silhouetted “criminal” that appears in the main series to represent the mystery culprits and told from the perspective of one moving to “Beika Town” named Hanzawa voiced by Max Mittleman of “One Punch Man” fame.

On the technical side, this was produced by TMS Entertainment and directed by Akitaro Daichi, with character designs handled by Fū Chisaka, and music composed by Jun Abe and Seiji Muto. The opening theme song is “Tsukamaete, Konya.” by Leon Niihama, and the ending theme song is “Secret, the voice of my heart” by Mai Kuraki.

Compared to the other spin-off series Case Closed/Detective Conan had with “Zero’s Tea Time“, This is slightly longer with many of the jokes relying heavily on fish out of water/slice-of-life scenarios filled with cliché moments that mostly interrupt the titular Hanzawa’s mentality of actually committing a crime. When I previously covered “Zero’s Tea Time” I had no idea, the shadowy figures represented culprits or blatant criminals, but I never expected a Manga/Anime that focused on one specifically.

Although each episode is only 10 minutes long, the pacing is so fast it’s hard to know how long each episode is, in combination with the fact that every episode has a comical post-credits scene. We’re only told he’s assigned to assassinate a person in a crime-filled town called “Beika Town” but the plot doesn’t pick up until the last two episodes when it’s hinted who he’s supposed to kill.

Overall, while this wasn’t a mandatory watch for longtime Detective Conan fans, it wasn’t terrible. But the show heavily relies on its viewer being previously exposed to the Detective Conan franchise before this, At times the show works as a self-contained plot, but much like “Zero”, the biggest problem comes from those who have never watched or at least followed the Case Closed/Detective Conan anime/manga franchise to connect the narrative dots. At the very least, the plot was both easy to follow and enjoyable when it went into wacky physical comedy territory mixed with some lighthearted moments of wholesomeness here and there. But if you’re an actual fan of Detective Conan/Case Closed franchise and you enjoyed Zero as a character, you might also enjoy this from a villain’s perspective.