Detective Conan: The Culprit Hanzawa review: Fun little parody with adorkable protagonist

Detective Conan (Case Closed): The Culprit Hanzawa follows the titular shadowy suspect who moves into Beika Town with aspirations of becoming a criminal and killing a certain someone.

Story

Hanzawa is a dark silhouetted figure and a brash young man, who moves to the feared Beika Town with dreams of becoming a criminal and murdering a certain someone.

A series of adventures and misadventures arrest him from moving about to achieve his dreams though, as he finds himself struggling to own an apartment. When he does get a shared living space, though, he has trouble adjusting to the fun-loving, constantly partying adults at the apartment.

Then come the dangers of Beika Town, when he gets scammed and ripped off, following which he sets out to get a job. His first job knocks him out and he wakes up on his bed three weeks later.

The second job is seemingly normal until he finds that the manager is murdered and that his co-workers are all brilliant detectives. However, he sticks to the job, which provides him with stability, but also a rather busy work week and a pet Hawk that he needs to look after.

As if that’s not enough, he can’t help himself buying another pet, this one an adorable little pomeranian pup. Later, his mother visits him and after breaking her heart a little and sending her away, Hanzawa runs off to save her when he hears that she might be in danger.

Finally, he focuses on tracking down the man he came to Beika to kill, praying to the gods to improve his luck so he can find him. After a couple of failures and some community service later, he finally spots the man he wants to kill.

Alas! This one turns out to be a dud when he finds out that the man just resembles his target a lot. The search continues, and Hanzawa remains steadfast in his resolution to find and kill that certain someone as The Culprit Hanzawa season 1 comes to a close.

Performances

The absurd humor of The Culprit Hanzawa requires plenty of opportunities for the voice actors to completely goof out.

Shōta Aoi succeeds in exploiting all those opportunities as he flexes his vocal cords for all the subtle and over-the-top expressions that define Hanzawa’s aloof activities.

Positives

Substantively speaking, since there really isn’t much in the premise, the byte-sized episodes enable the series to not overstay its welcome and make the whole affair feel like a fun-filled breeze of silly humor and comfort.

While the series protagonist revels in his grim fantasies of killing people over the most trivial things, there’s a lot of heart here too, plus the fact that Hanzawa never really acts out his fantasies, or is prevented from doing so by his conscience.

The characters from the original series are a delight whenever they make an appearance, including Conan himself, who’s often tailing Hanzawa with Hattori, resulting in some really funny moments.

Negatives

Detective Conan: The Culprit Hanzawa doesn’t make most of its 16+ rating, with many opportunities where it can lean more into the gore and grimness of the Beika Town madness and frequent crimes.

There are moments when a creepy, atmospheric tone can lead into the subversive twist of hilarity, wherein both of these tones are not sufficiently committed to.

Verdict

Detective Conan spin-off, Case Closed: The Culprit Hanzawa is mostly a joyride with a quality that is reminiscent of a lot of classic comfort animes of the 90s.

At the same time, the untapped potential within this parody leaves a lot more to be desired.

---

Also Read: Detective Conan: The Culprit Hanzawa ending explained: Who does Hanzawa want to kill?