Funimation Productions, the company that brought the various Dragon Ball series, Yu-Yu Hakusho, Blue Gender, and Kitty Grade to the U.S market, has acquired the rights to Meitantei Conan (Detective Conan), the highest rated anime series in Japan.  Although the long-running Detective Conan series has well over 300 episodes, it still regularly beats other popular series such as Inu-Yasha and One Piece in the ratings race on Japanese television.  The acquisition fits perfectly with Funimation's strategy, which is based on picking the most popular series in Japan and then adapting them for American television.  Detective Conan may present some interesting challenges because it is the story of a teenage Sherlock Holmes who is poisoned by a pair of villains; however, instead of killing him, the poison merely shrinks him to the size of a 7-year-old.  The pint-sized detective then renames himself Conan Edogawa, a reference to both Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Japanese master detective author Ranpo Edogawa.  Though trapped in a child-sized body, Conan is no child and sets about solving all sorts of adult crime while living with his teenage girlfriend.  Although the demographics of Detective Conan's Japanese audience range in age from 8 to 40, this series appears to be a natural for exposure on the Adult Swim block here in the U.S.

 

The Detective Conan anime series, which is based on the manga that made artist Gosho Aoyama the highest paid manga-ka in Japan, was so popular that it quickly spawned a number of feature length releases.  Funimation will release the first two movies, The Time Bombed Skyscraper and The Fourteenth Target in the spring of 2004.  Funimation has also acquired the rights to the first 102 episodes of the anime series, with an option for the rest.  It is obviously too early to know where the anime series will be broadcast, but broadcasting does appear likely given the increasing sophistication of the American anime audience and the proliferation of venues on cable.  When Detective Conan does make it on American television it will have considerable staying power thanks to the 312 episodes already produced in Japan.