Bryce's Blog

It looks like things are progressing smoothly on going through the old stuff in my collection. With two of the Detective Conan (Case Closed) movies out of the way, only four remain, since movies 7 and later have not been dubbed. Today, I am going to review another of the movies, which is called Case Closed: The Last Wizard of the Century.

As I gave a series synopsis in an earlier post, I will not go over it again.

Everyone has their eyes on a rare item that the Sebastian group has in their custody. Even Phantom Thief KID seeks it. Jimmy Kudo says that KID mainly targets gems, but when KID is shot in the eye and somebody else comes to investigate the item, the game changes. What is so special about the item and why was KID shot?

Even though it has been a while since I last saw this, I still enjoyed this movie. Things have gotten better quality-wise, since this did feel slightly closer to a movie than the last one. I found it funny how Jimmy thought Rachel would find out that he and Conan are the same person. However, that is not what actually happens first. I also kind of liked the scene where Rachel and Serena ask about their names in Chinese. I do not think anybody would recognize it unless they followed the Japanese version of Detective Conan though. When I saw this originally in Japanese, Rachel essentially found out that her name was pronounced quite similarly in Chinese and Japanese. Because of the name changes that took place for the US release, this scene is kind of changed a bit. However, I kind of think that is kind of referencing her Japanese name here, which is Ran Mouri. I also liked how this seemed to be the first movie that incorporates some history, more particularly Russian history. It may take some liberties towards it, just like other movies out in the world, so it may not exactly be accurate. The thing that was the most interesting though is that this is the first time in my memory that KID helped out Jimmy Kudo, but supposedly the first time is actually episodes 132-134 (Japanese count). For all those wanting to see Haibara, this is her debut in the US, since to this day, FUNimation has no plans to dub episodes 124+ (Japanese count). It was also nice that the culprit here is not as obvious as the first movie. The movie is interesting with some history focus, though may be inaccurate, and the fact that this is the movie debut of Haibara and KID. With the fact the culprit was not so obvious, it also has a good mystery.

Although I enjoyed the movie, there are a few downsides. First, one of the characters say that they have not spoken Japanese for a while. It kind of bugs me because they are speaking English and I have heard Japanese before. However, this does not really take it down that much, considering that such things happen in translations of various media anyway. The other bad thing that comes to mind is that the TMS edited masters are used again, which is confirmed by MagicBox. I have already covered much of the problems with this in the review of the last movie. As with the review of the previous movie, it is not really big deal, unless one prefers to watching subs over the English dub. However, I will tell you guys that they do severely affect the quality of at least one of the first six movies, so do not go thinking that I will still label this as a minor issue forever. Except for those, I cannot really think of anything else wrong with the movie, and they are just minor issues that may only affect subtitled anime fans.

Despite the issues that only really affect those that prefer subs, I can say that this was definitely worth watching. I recommend this to fans of Detective Conan and mystery. For everyone else, the film does not rely a whole lot on knowing the series, so this would probably be a good introduction.

What are your thoughts on Case Closed: The Last Wizard of the Century? Do you agree or disagree with my views? Do you have anything to add? Feel free to comment.