Case five of Detective Conan, known as Case Closed here in the States, wraps up with the fifth volume.  This DVD has only three stand alone episodes, but they are some of the best shows in the season involving some fun mysteries and good detective work.

Series background:

Jimmy Kudo is a teenage detective who is one of the best investigators around.  The police often solicit his advice on their toughest cases, and he's taken all of the business away from the city's other private eyes even though he's still in high school.  All of that changes one night while Jimmy is out at an amusement park with his girlfriend Rachael.  He sees a crime going down and investigates only to be caught by a pair of thugs.  They give him a new experimental poison so that he won't talk, but the poison doesn't kill him.  Instead it causes him to become younger, much younger.  When he wakes up he's a little kid.  He still has his razor sharp intellect, but no one wants to hire a ten year old detective.

Rachael discovers the little Jimmy wandering around and takes him home with her.  So that his true identity will remain a secret he tells her his name is Conan, taken from his idol, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the creator of Sherlock Holmes.  Rachael's father, Richard Moore, is an incredibly incompetent detective, and Conan soon starts tagging along on Richard's cases.  Using some nifty inventions his friend Dr. Agasa invented, and the aid of the Junior Detective League; Amy, Mitch, and George, Conan is able to solve the cases without anyone knowing that he's the real brains of the operation.  The downside is that with just about every case he solves, the bumbling Richard Moore becomes more famous.

This volume:

The disc starts off with a fun locked room mystery.  Jonathan Hyde is a small time loan shark who locks his office door every evening to count the day's receipts.  One evening when he doesn't show up for a Mahjong game, Hyde is discovered dead, locked in his office, laying on top of his money.  The office security system proves that no one enters or leaves the building at the time of Hyde's murder too.  It's up to Detective Conan to figure out how Hyde was killed, and determine who killed him.

The next episode has another interesting case involving a bank robbery.  Conan and Rachael stop into a bank at the end of the day just in time to be part of a robbery.  When one of the bank employees jump the robber and accidently kill him, it seems like an open and shut case.  Not to Conan though, he sees a larger crime that the police have overlooked.

In the final episode the Junior Detective League gets into the act once again.  When the League accidently hits a hobo with an errant baseball, they meet an artist who is suffering from amnesia.  The next day the artist turns up dead, and the League uses the images in his sketchbook to track down the house he used to live in, and his killer.  But can they get anyone to listen to them without any proof?

This was the best volume in series five.  All three stories were interesting and a lot of fun, and featured some good mysteries.  While the Agatha Christie estate doesn't have to worry about book sales slumping due to this show, these cases are entertaining even if they aren't very realistic.   A lot of the charm is in the way that Conan reveals the solution to the case.  Since he doesn't want anyone to know that he's really a detective mastermind, Conan has to drug someone in the area and change his voice to reveal the true solution to the case.  A fun, light show.

Audio:

This disc offers the choice of the original stereo Japanese soundtrack, or an English dub in 5.1 or stereo.  I alternated tracks between episodes, and I enjoyed the original audio a bit better.  The English dub was good though, with the actors doing a good job.  There weren't any phoney accents, something that I really dislike.  The audio quality was fine, there wasn't a lot of range, but there weren't any defects either.

Video:

The full frame video was okay but not outstanding.  The program was made on a budget and the animation isn't that great.  The colors were just a bit dull, but the lines were fairly tight.  Digital defects were minimal.  An average looking show.

Extras:

As far as bonus items goes, there are a few character profiles, and a file of Conan's gadgets with explanations of how they work and links to video of them in action.  There is a textless opening, and some trailers too.

There is also an episode of Mr. Stain on Junk Alley, a short but fun CGI show that FUNimation is planning on releasing later this year.

Final Thoughts:

This was the best volume in season five.  The three stand alone episodes were fun and entertaining, and featured some interesting mysteries.  The locked room puzzle in the first episode is the best, and closest to a traditional mystery story, but the latter two installments also feature some good plots.  If you've enjoyed the previous volumes, you'll like this one too.  Recommended.