Surprisingly, the title of this year's Detective Conan film doesn't do that thing where you have to read a kanji combination as an English word. I wonder why they didn't have you read the combination that means "Fallen Angel" as "Lucifer", or why they didn't use the kanji combination meaning "highway" and have you read it as the English word...
Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway is the 29th(!) animated feature length film in the long-running series Detective Conan originally created by Aoyama Goushou. Starting in 1997, a new Detective Conan film, with a completely new story not featured in the original comic, has been released in the theaters practically every year (COVID messed up the schedule...) and now we're at installment 29. The scriptwriter for this film is mystery author Ookura Takahiro, who wrote 2017's The Crimson Love Letter (probably my favorite of the "modern" films), The Fist of Blue Sapphire (2019), Bride of Halloween (2022) and The Million-Dollar Pentagram (2024), alternating years with the other film scriptwriter Sakurai Takehiro (so he was responsible for last year's One-Eyed Flashback). As have been the trend since about ten years, these films have become highly character-drama focused films, with specific characters from the manga becoming the main characters of the film. What is important to note is that while the manga creator Aoyama Goushou doesn't write these films, he does provide ideas to them, and the films, especially nowadays, all feature backstories, reveals and character relationship developments that are then incorporated back into the manga. This means that these films basically expect you to be more-or-less up-to-date about the characters in each film, and vice-versa, the manga eventually also expects you to have seen these films as certain character-related details are only explained in the film. Fortunately, Detective Conan: The Fallen Angel of the Highway doesn't require that much homework: Chihaya, first appearing in the collected volumes in 2022, hasn't been featured in that many stories yet, and while her plot relevance is also dependent on the fact she's the older sister of a character who has already died in the line of duty by the time this series starts, basically just knowing that is enough to get into the film. The other focal character, Inspector Yokomizo of the Kanagawa police, doesn't have that much of a backstory anyway.
So I'm explicitly naming Chihaya and Inspector Yokomizo now, because unfortunately, it is clear this film, as it is now, was not the film envisioned when the film first went into production. This is due to the tragic death of the voice actresss Tanaka Atsuko, who originally played Chihaya. Tanaka is best known for her role as Kusanagi Motoko in the legendary Ghost in the Shell, and it just so happens that Inspector Yokomizo is voiced by... Ootsuka Akio, the voice actor of Batou, Kusanagi's right-hand man in Ghost in the Shell. Casting Tanaka in the role of a squad leader, and having her team up with a grumpy middle-aged second-in-command with a soft spot for her voiced by Ootsuka is of course no coincidence and it is clear from everything, Chihaya and Yokomizo in Conan were supposed to mirror Kusunagi and Batou (with their voice actors), the same this series did with Amuro and Char from Mobile Suit Gundam in the characters of Amuro and Akai, who were also voiced by their original voice actors. However, Tanaka passed away in 2024 and ultimately, it was decided Sawashiro Miyuki would take over the role of Chihaya. And as good as Sawashiro does the role in Fallen Angel of the Highway, one can't help but feel this film would have been so much funnier if we could have heard Tanaka and Ootsuka taking on roles close to their famous Ghost in the Shell characters, but in a rom-com setting. That layer is now completely gone and what's left are just thoughts of "What if...".
But even without the voice actor issue playing, I think Fallen Angel of the Highway had some difficult obstacles to deal with. Picking Chihaya as the main character already limits the kind of mystery this film could bring, as she's not a homicide detective (which would give endless possibilities), but a traffic police officer, with her trademark being her police motorcycle, so of course this film would be about motorcycles and chases and all of that. The fact there haven't been that many Chihaya stories also meant a lot of the film is used to firmly introduce her and the characters related to her. This results in a film that feels much slower than the average Detective Conan film and also one that has a very small cast of film-original characters. Ultimately, the mystery of who the mysterious motorcyclist Lucifer is and how they got to use a motorcyle similar to the prototype Angel is just too small-scale to really make an impression, as the focus is very clearly more on casting the spotlight on the focal characters and see *how* they react to the events that transpire in this film, rather than focusing on the process of solving the case. It doesn't help most of the crimes feel... less "deliberate" than actual murder. Sure, intentionally chasing after someone on a motorcycle and making them crash is nothing less than an attempt at killing them, but it still feels different from someone actually stabbing the victim with a knife, or something like that. For me personally, the threat of the culprit felt not as serious as probably intended, so I had trouble getting really invested in the mystery and the solving of the case.
Of course, a lot of the more recent Conan films have relatively simple mystery plots, but they usually throw enough explosions at me to still leave me satisfied as I leave the theater, but it seems they also dialed down the action this year. Perhaps it's because a lot of the set pieces revolved around chases in cars or motorcycles, but there weren't really grand ones this time (compared to previous years) and even "Conan or one of his allies figure out a clever trick to turn a literally explosive situation around" scene in the climax seemed very subdued and less... "oh, that's a clever way to get out of that tight spot" compared to previous entries. Perhaps the setting of Yokohama didn't help much either: of course, if you want to feature Chihaya, you'll have to set the story in Kanagawa, and mainly Yokohama, but visually, it's not like it's that different from Tokyo, while in previous years we had Hokkaido, the mountains of Nagano, the sea, Singapore, an amusement park....
So I can't say I'm a huge fan of Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway. This is partially because it couldn't be what it originally set out to be due to unfortunate circumstances, but looking solely at the mystery and the spectacle I expect of a Conan film, I found this year's entry a bit lacking. If you're really into the characters featured in this film (Chihaya, Yokomizo, Chihaya's brother and his bestie), you'll probably find some cool character drama developments here, but otherwise I think it's my least favorite Conan film until now written by Ookura. As always, the film's credits are followed by a short teaser that confirm there's a new Conan film coming next year around the same time that give a hint as to what the film'll be about. The little shown at least has a lot of potential,so I'll be in the theaters next year too of course, especially as it's the thirtieth film then!
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