FUNimation continues with its release of Case Closed (or Detective Conan as it's known in most of the world) with volume 1.2, the second disc from the first season.  Having previously release seasons four and five, the company is now going back and putting out the earlier stories.  This time around Conan has his work cut out for him as he faces a cursed piano, has to save a friend who's been kidnaped by a serial killer, and encounters someone who claims to be Kudo's girlfriend.  The pint-sized detective also gets some new gadgets including a solar power skate board.  With an ample six episodes included on the disc, this is a fun release.

The Show:

Shin'ichi Kudo (Jimmy Kudo in the English version) 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 Ran Mouri (Rachael Moore.)  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.

Ran discovers the little Shin'ichi wandering around and takes him home with her.  So that his true identity will remain a secret he tells her his name is Conan Edogawa, taken from his idol, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (the creator of Sherlock Holmes.)  Ran's father, Kogoro Mouri (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; Ayumi, Mitsuhiko. and Genta (aka 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:

This time around we get to see Conan tackle five new mysteries, including an hour-long adventure.  The disc starts out with an odd case that gets Conan/Kudo in some hot water.  A woman arrives at Kogoro Mouri detective agency and wants to hire him to find her lost boyfriend:  Shin'ichi Kudo!  Of course Ran is quite upset that Kudo was fooling around on her, but Conan is even more astounded because he's never seen this woman before.  It's an odd mystery, but what does it have to do with the soccer game that's being played on TV?

Things get a little dicey in another episode when one of the Junior Detective League, Amy, hides in the trunk of a car while playing hide and seek.  When the car starts moving, she finds a severed head and a bag full of money in the trunk with her and realizes that she's in a serial killer's car.  Can Kudo find her before the killer stops?

One of the better episodes in the series was the hour long Moonlight Sonata Murder Case.  In this adventure Edogawa, Ran, and Kogoro travel to an island off the coast of Japan when Kogoro gets hired by a mysterious man.  As soon as they arrive however, they discover that the man who hired them has been dead for 12 years, having killed himself and his family after playing a cursed piano.  When other people start turning up dead after having played the piano it's up to Conan to find out what's really going on and discover who is behind the dead bodies.

This special had everything that makes the show enjoyable; a baffling mystery, a preponderance of likely suspects, and just a dash of humor.  The mystery had a lot of twists and turns, with red herrings, and false leads popping up frequently, but it was also more eerie and suspenseful than other shows in the series.  The hour long format really gives the show room to craft more interesting stories and I wish they would use it more often.

Be sure to watch the show past the ending credits. After they are done rolling, there is a short extra scene that are usually humorous and sometimes wraps up a subplot from the show that was dropped.

This disc contains an ample six episodes on a singled sided DVD.
 
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.

Unfortunately, there were no subtitles for signs only.  There are several important clues that are in Japanese, but they are only translated if the English subtitles are on.

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, and the lines were a bit on the soft side.  Digital defects were minimal with a little aliasing present in most episodes.  An average looking show.

Extras:

Unlike the releases of seasons four and five, there are no extras included in this set.

Final Thoughts:

This is an enjoyable, light weight detective show.  Yes, some of the mysteries are a little convoluted an unnecessarily elaborate, but that's the nature of murder mysteries.  It's still fun to see Conan solve a case while he's hamstrung by being a kid.  Just the right touch of humor and some fun characters makes this a show worth catching.  Recommended.