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Case Closed #4.1:
Funimation
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Case Closed puts me in sort of a strange position to write about it. See, our good buddies over at Funimation combined their powers with the masters of the current anime market, [Adult Swim] and went off to swim through large piles of golden coins, just like Scrooge McDuck, the miserly but kind main character of the charming animated children's show Duck Tales. But I've told you all of this before. It's nothing that bears repeating. It's also patently untrue. Case Closed doesn't appear to be the hit that those kooky cable guys wanted it to be. It enjoyed a brief few months on the late night anime block before being shuffled so late into the night that it was practically morning. From then on the only way I could get my Conan fix in was after a long night of drinking at either an abandoned warehouse party or at local after-hours bar "The Pit" (appropriately named, I assure you) because those were the only two places that would keep me out and awake until FIVE THIRTY IN THE MORNING. |
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Aware is another matter, and let me tell you... after fifteen or so beers, you will have some freaky dreams watching those two cartoons right before you go to bed. A strange byproduct of this relationship between two anime "giants" is that Case Closed's release scheduled is all messed up. I don't know if it's been corrected recently, playing a hundred hour long RPG basically eats up whatever non-work/non-OTHER-work/non-drinking time I have, but a year ago they released the first disc of the first season and then shot right to the fourth season without a second word. I believe this is because those kooks over at Adult Swim optioned the first three seasons and for some reason the two could not exist in the same space on two different media formats. It's like in Ghostbusters when Egon warns them not to cross the streams but then they do it anyway and it totally saves the world. |
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Now that I think about it, It's probably a lot less like that, actually, but I still don't understand the exact reasoning behind it. Case Closed has remained much the same over these three seasons as it was when it first began, as if that could be much of a surprise. I guarantee you if I watched episode 1-5 of Inu Yasha and then skipped right ahead to episode 149 I could tell you just about everything you needed to know about these things. Long running series, such as Detective Conan's 300+ (and counting!) episodes, just don't offer a whole lot in the way of variation. When we come in at the opening of the fourth season Conan is still small, he's still solving cases, and he's still using the same rope-a-dope trick with the microphone bowtie and the sleeping dart watch to do it. Oh Conan, it's like we never left you! |
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Because of all that, though, it just doesn't make a lot of sense for Case Closed to be something you invest in for the duration, which is why I'm resoundingly disappointed that the show never found any purchase on that Adult Swim thingy. As we discussed last time, I love shows like Magnum P.I. and Hawaii Five-O with more passion and fervor than some men devote to the fairer sex and, yet, I would never purchase something like that on DVD form. What's the point? So I can watch eight seasons of Magnum wearing short shorts and Higgins getting miffed? There are some shows you just wanna watch on TV after a long day, you don't wanna marry them. As much fun as Cased Closed is, it's too much effort to try and keep up with what's already out there. Fun when it's on the boob tube, but as a purchase? Probably better to leave that to the hardcore fans. i.e.: Me. :( |
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