Are There Any Detective Conan Spin-Off Series Worth Watching?

The response blew up online in ways I didn't fully expect. At first there was the immediate surge of shock — people posting the clip of 'duke injures detective to avoid prison' with captions like "did that really happen?" and edits that turned the whole sequence into a meme. A bunch of fans made reaction videos, creators dissected the scene frame-by-frame, and somewhere between outraged threads and laughing emoji threads, a surprisingly large group started theorizing about legal loopholes in the story's world. That split was fascinating: half of the conversations were moral debates about whether the duke could be redeemed; the other half treated it like a plot device ripe for fanon reinterpretation. Then deeper content started to appear. Long thinkpieces compared the arc to classic tragedies and cited works like 'Hamlet' or crime novels to show precedent. Artists painted alternate-cover art where the detective survives and teams up with the duke. A few fans even launched petitions demanding a follow-up episode or an in-universe trial, while roleplayers staged mock trials in Discord channels. For me, seeing how creative and persistent the community got — from critical essays to silly GIFs — made the whole controversy feel alive and weirdly energizing, even if I had mixed feelings about the ethics of celebrating violent plot turns.

Totally obsessed with how 'Memories' lands — the writing credit goes to Conan Gray himself, and the production is handled by Daniel Nigro. I love how Conan’s voice and sensibility come through clearly in the lyrics; he’s credited as the songwriter which explains the intimate, diaristic feel of the track. Production-wise, Daniel Nigro gives it that warm, punchy pop-rock sheen without drowning the vocal in effects. The arrangement sits nicely between stripped-down vulnerability and polished pop, which is exactly Nigro’s sweet spot. Listening to who did what makes the song click for me — Conan’s pen for the emotional core and Nigro’s production to frame it sonically. It’s one of those collaborations where both roles are obvious, and I still catch little production flourishes on every play.

I got hooked on 'Master Detective Archives: Rain Code' pretty quickly, and one of the things that kept me replaying it was how many different conclusions you can reach. Broadly speaking, the endings break down into a few clear categories: multiple bad endings, a set of character-specific epilogues, a proper 'true' ending, and at least one extra/secret finale you can only see after meeting specific conditions. The bad endings are spread throughout the story — choose poorly in investigation or interrogation sequences and you'll trigger abrupt, often grim conclusions that close the case without revealing the whole truth. Character epilogues happen when you steer the narrative to focus on a particular partner or suspect; these give personal closure and alternate perspectives on the same events. The true ending is the one that ties all mysteries together, usually unlocked by gathering key pieces of evidence, completing certain side interactions, and making the right pivotal choices. Finally, there's a post-game/secret ending you can only access after finishing certain routes or meeting hidden requirements. I loved how each route felt like a different novella's finale, and hunting them down was a delightful rabbit hole for me.

If you're wondering whether 'Master Detective Archives: Rain Code' got an anime, here's the short scoop: there wasn't an official anime adaptation announced as of mid-2024. I followed the hype around the game when it released and kept an eye on announcements because the worldbuilding and quirky cast felt tailor-made for a serialized show. The game itself leans heavily on case-by-case mystery structure, strong character moments, and cinematic presentation, so I can totally picture it as a 12-episode season where each case becomes one or two episodes and a larger mystery wraps the season. Fans have been making art, comics, and speculative storyboards imagining how scenes would look animated. Personally, I still hope it gets picked up someday — it would be a blast to see those characters animated and the soundtrack brought to life on screen. It’s one of those properties that feels ripe for adaptation, and I keep checking news feeds to see if any studio bites.

Wildly enough, the televised version does preserve the core of the 'duke injures detective to avoid prison' scene, but it feels reshaped to suit the show's pacing and tone. They staged it with a lot more ambiguity than the source text: the injury is framed as a scuffle that escalates, not a cold, calculated strike. The duke’s desperation is emphasized through close-ups and a slower score, which makes his moral fall feel messier and more human. The detective's arc changes subtly — instead of immediately going public, the show makes them wrestle with leverage, blackmail, and the cost of exposing a noble. That prolongs the tension across several episodes and gives the supporting cast more to react to. I liked that choice because it turned a single shocking moment into a thread that tightened the whole season, even if purists might grumble that the raw bluntness of the original was softened. For me it worked: I ended up hating the duke even more, and that lingering discomfort stuck with me for days.

I've always found Gin to be one of those deliciously cold villains who shows up in a story and makes everything feel instantly more dangerous. In 'Detective Conan', Gin is a top operative of the Black Organization — mysterious, ruthless, and almost ritualistically silent. The core of his canonical backstory that matters to the plot is straightforward and brutal: Gin was one of the two men in black who discovered Shinichi Kudo eavesdropping on an Organization transaction and forced him to ingest the experimental poison APTX 4869. That attempt to silence Shinichi backfired horribly (for the Organization) and gave us Conan Edogawa. Beyond that pivotal moment, the manga deliberately keeps Gin’s origins, real name, and personal history opaque; he’s presented more as an embodiment of the Organization’s cruelty and efficiency than as a fully revealed man with an origin story. There are a few concrete threads where Gin’s actions directly shape other characters’ lives, and those are worth pointing out because they’re emotionally heavy. One of the most important is his connection to the Miyano sisters: Shiho Miyano (who later becomes Shiho/Ai Haibara after defecting) and her elder sister Akemi. Akemi tried to leave the Organization, and Gin hunted her down — Akemi’s death is one of the turning points that pushes Shiho to escape, take the APTX 4869 research she’d been involved with, and eventually shrink herself to become Ai Haibara. Gin’s cold willingness to eliminate even those tied to the Organization demonstrates the stakes and the lengths the Organization goes to cover its tracks. He often works alongside Vodka and interacts, sometimes tensely, with other high-tier members like Vermouth, Chianti, and Korn. Those relationships give small glimpses of his place in the hierarchy, but never much about his past. What fascinates me as a fan is how Aoyama uses Gin’s scarcity of backstory to make him scarier. When a character is given a full life history, you can sympathize or at least humanize them; with Gin, the unknown becomes the weapon. He’s the kind of antagonist who commits atrocities with clinical detachment — the manga shows him executing missions and making cold decisions without melodrama — and that leaves readers filling gaps with their own theories. Fans sometimes speculate about whether he has any tragic past or a soft spot, but the text of 'Detective Conan' gives almost no evidence to soften him; instead he remains a persistent, existential threat to Shinichi/Conan and to anyone who crosses the Organization. All in all, Gin’s backstory is mostly a catalogue of brutal, plot-defining acts plus an intentional lack of origin details. That scarcity is part of why he’s so iconic: he’s not simply a villain with a redemption arc or a sorrowful past — he’s the sharp edge of the Black Organization, always reminding you that some mysteries in the world of 'Detective Conan' are meant to stay cold. I love how Aoyama keeps him enigmatic; it keeps me on edge every time Gin’s silhouette appears, and that’s exactly the kind of thrill I read the series for.

I get a little giddy talking about voices, so here's the straight scoop from the perspective of a long-time fan who loves dissecting vocal performances. In the original Japanese broadcast of 'Detective Conan' the cold, gravelly member of the Black Organization known as Gin is voiced by Keiji Fujiwara. Fujiwara brings that unsettling, whispery menace to Gin: a smooth, dangerous tenor that can switch from conversational calm to instant threat with one breath. That low, controlled delivery is a big part of why Gin feels so ominous in the series; it’s subtle acting choices—pauses, tone, and micro-phrasing—that sell how casually ruthless the character is. For Conan Edogawa himself, the child detective, the Japanese voice is Minami Takayama, whose bright, clipped voice balances intelligence and youth in a way that makes the character believable even when he’s doing deduction after deduction. In English, the dubbing history is a bit spotty because different companies handled the show at different times, but in the more widely known Funimation English dub Gin is voiced by Dan Woren. Woren gives Gin a harder, raspier edge in English, leaning into menace in a way that complements the Japanese portrayal but with a different timbre—more growl, less whisper. As for Conan in English, Jerry Jewell is often credited for the lead in the Funimation dub; his voice hits that difficult sweet spot of sounding childlike while carrying a surprisingly mature cadence for the character’s intellect. If you listen to a scene where Conan and Gin are in the same tense room, the contrast between Takayama/Fujiwara or Jewell/Woren choices is fascinating: each pair captures the same power dynamic but through different vocal textures. If you’re interested in hearing the differences side-by-side, I like to watch a few key confrontations in both languages and focus on how line delivery changes the feeling: Japanese leans toward understatement and menace through breath control, English tends to be more overtly dramatic. Both ways are compelling, and I often find myself appreciating different small creative choices in each dub—so if you’re into voice acting, it’s a fun study. Personally, Fujiwara’s Gin still gives me chills, and Jerry Jewell’s take on Conan is so likable that I rewind scenes just to savor the delivery.

I get a thrill every time a detective treats a mystery like a math problem, so here’s a roomy list of novels where the sleuth is basically a rationalist — someone who leans on logic, evidence, and careful inference rather than hunches or melodrama. Start classic: you can’t go wrong with Arthur Conan Doyle’s early novels like 'A Study in Scarlet' and 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' — Sherlock Holmes is practically the template for the rational detective, obsessed with observation and deduction. Wilkie Collins' 'The Moonstone' is an early English novel whose investigator, Sergeant Cuff, uses methodical inquiry and forensics. Umberto Eco’s 'The Name of the Rose' is a favorite of mine: William of Baskerville is a former inquisitor turned inquisitive rationalist who applies logic and Occam’s razor to unravel monastic secrets. For science-flavored detectives, check out Isaac Asimov’s 'The Caves of Steel' (and its sequels) where Elijah Baley and the robot R. Daneel Olivaw use sociological and logical tools, and Keigo Higashino’s 'The Devotion of Suspect X' (part of the Detective Galileo threads) where scientific reasoning and math-minded problem solving steer the plot. Contemporary options include 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time' — Christopher Boone is autistic and approaches the mystery with strict logical rules — and China Miéville’s 'The City & the City', where Inspector Tyador Borlú investigates by carefully parsing social and legal boundaries with cold attention to evidence. If you want forensic realism, look at Jeffrey Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme books or Kathy Reichs’ novels; they’re more applied science than armchair theorizing. Each of these gives you a protagonist who treats truth like something you can get closer to by asking the right questions and eliminating bad hypotheses — which, honestly, is my favorite kind of reading company.