Detective Conan: Black Iron Submarine

Today I watched the 2023 Detective Conan movie, Black Iron Submarine. After watching the whole film, I felt nothing; it's the same old Conan-style sci-fi as always.

The story revolves around a Pacific buoy located near Hachijojima, which, relying on the latest technology from Interpol, can access surveillance systems in Japan and Europe to track criminals.

After many years, using the mysterious organization as the main content of the movie again can be considered a return to the main storyline. The organization's mission is to tamper with the All-Age Recognition System and delete their members from the system's facial recognition comparisons, although everyone has their own ulterior motives. However, watching the whole film, the organization's IQ is clearly insufficient. With the blessing of the protagonist's plot armor, various coincidences and instances of showing mercy make this plot, which forcefully tries to align with the main storyline, really not that impressive.

The film also introduces the recently popular concept of AI. Engineer Naomi created the All-Age Recognition System, which can create facial CG based on images from any age group and combine it with surveillance footage for facial comparison and tracking. This is also the important reason why Haibara was discovered by the organization to be Sherry. From this point of view, the production team isn't entirely doing Conan-style sci-fi. Given the current speed of AI development, this capability might exist in the near future.

A new organization member, Pinga, makes his debut in this movie and gets beaten up by Ran right at the start, hahahahaha. From the subsequent narrative, it's clear that he doesn't get along with Gin and absolutely despises him. But the consequence of going against Big Brother Gin is well known; he didn't even make it out of this movie alive.

Next, I'll mention some points to nitpick. Wall-scaling skateboards and blowing up submarines with handheld cannons are already standard Conan routines, so I'll only mention the parts that make no sense.

• Naomi's father, as a member of the European Parliament, knowing there was a sniper outside the window, still stuck his head out and got shot, ultimately leading to his death, leaving Naomi in self-blame;

• With so many computer experts in the base, not a single person could tell that the surveillance footage had been tampered with. Is Pinga really a genius?

• The base is about to be blown up, and not a single person from the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force comes to help... Is this a subtle jab at the poor efficiency of the Japanese police?;

• Kogoro slacks off the whole time and has zero presence. How could they treat Uncle Mouri like this~

• They really don't need to wait until Conan is almost dead every time before someone shows up to save him... It's truly speechless

• Finally, ShinRan fans really cannot accept such a scene happening, even if it was "returned" it's still not okay.

In the recent few movies, it feels like they are making movies just for the sake of making movies, forcefully patching up stories that aren't very reasonable. They lack the deduction of The Phantom of Baker Street, the warmth of Sunflowers of Inferno, the tension and excitement of The Private Eyes' Requiem, and the science and sensibility of Quarter of Silence.

Perhaps we have grown up and lost the innocence of our youth.