Yusei Hamabe was just shy of 10 years old when his father took him to see a film he describes as “one of the most important experiences of my life.”
That film was 2014’s “Detective Conan: Dimensional Sniper,” the 18th in an annual anime franchise based on Gosho Aoyama’s “Detective Conan” manga. The experience inspired the young Hamabe to join a legion of dedicated fans who have made “Conan” one of the bestselling manga series of all time and whose yearly cinema pilgrimages have turned the film series into a box-office phenomenon. The 29th entry in that series, “Fallen Angel of the Highway,” is set to hit screens in Japan on April 10, and there is little doubt it will become one of the top-earning films of the year.
“Detective Conan,” also known as “Case Closed” in some territories, was first serialized on Jan. 5, 1994, in the pages of manga magazine Weekly Shonen Sunday, where it still runs today. It revolves around a detective named Shinichi Kudo who becomes stuck in the body of an elementary school child, and who surreptitiously solves crimes under the pseudonym “Conan Edogawa” while living with his childhood friend and her father, a private investigator.
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