Only a handful of anime can claim to have reached 1000 episodes. One Piece is often joked about as having an absurdly high episode count but not even that's managed to reach the big 1K just yet. As of last month, the hugely popular mystery series Detective Conan became the 16th anime to join the 1000 episode club.
Detective Conan, also known as Case Closed outside of Japan because legal reasons, follows a high-school detective named Shinichi Kudo, whose body gets transformed after ingesting poison during a run-in with the shadowy Black Organization. Now with the appearance of a child, Shinichi adopts a new detective monike: Conan Edogawa - "Conan" from Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle and "Edogawa" from Japanese mystery author Edogawa Ranpo, as he solves crimes while tracking down the Black Organization so he can return to his original form.
The 1000th episode was the first in a two-parter, which in turn was a remake of an older arc called The Moonlight Sonata Murder Case, where Shinichi and his allies follow a letter for help to an island where a haunted piano lies at the center of a string of murders. Pianist Aimi Kobayashi performed the titular arrangement, while a new opening theme by Mai Kuraki debuted to commemorate the milestone.
The original manga by Gosho Aoyama began in 1994 and is still ongoing with 99 volumes so far. The anime adaptation from TMS Entertainment started in 1996 and is also going strong in its 29th season, which will end with episode 1006. Not to mention all the manga spin-offs, video games, anime movies, live-action TV specials and other offshoots that have appeared over the years. Watching just the anime alone from beginning to end would take over 16 and a half days - keep that in mind if you're planning to marathon the series.
It might not be the longest-running or most prolific anime out there but it's still a seriously impressive achievement by any means, and it looks like this case is far from being closed anytime soon.
Are you a fan or Detective Conan/Case Closed? How long do you think the series will keep going? Leave your thoughts below!
