Detective Conan: The Million-dollar Pentagram Review

Detective Conan: The Million-dollar Pentagram contains plenty of wacky setpieces and entertaining characters, but lacks a particularly interesting plot.

Much to my surprise, I actually ended up being somewhat right. The Million-Dollar Pentagram has left me desperately wanting to go out and read more “Case Closed”, but not because of the film’s quality, instead as a result of its shortcomings.

For those, like me, who went in only knowing the basic premise of the series, Detective Conan: The Million-dollar Pentagram does a great job getting us mostly caught up. Yes, there were a few moments where I was a bit lost on who exactly was who, but that’s my fault, not the film’s. The basic set-up, as told to us in the opening credits, is that Shinichi Kudo (Minami Takayama) is a teenage detective who finds himself shrunk down into the body of a young child thanks to an experimental drug given to him by a shady crime syndicate. Blessed with an extreme, Sherlock-esque intellect and knack for solving mysteries, Kudo changes his identity, adopts the name “Conan”, presumably after the talk show host, and attempts to try and figure out how to get his original body back. 

As one would expect from a show with over 1000 episodes, it seems like Conan spends a lot of his time getting side-tracked by various other mysteries, like the one featured in this The Million-dollar Pentagram. The story begins with Kid the Phantom Thief (Kappei Yamaguchi), a remarkably well-dressed master of disguise, declaring that he plans to steal a Japanese sword. It turns out that the sword is linked to a large, mysterious treasure, which various groups of characters all start trying to track down. It’s a plot that begins simply enough, but very quickly nosedives into a level of complexity and incoherence I wasn’t quite expecting. At a certain point, I lost track of the specifics of the ongoing mystery and instead just chose to try and enjoy the various nonsensical setpieces.

One thing I admire about Detective Conan: The Million-dollar Pentagram is how it isn’t at all afraid to truly indulge in what makes anime so distinctive. Just off the top of my head, I can recall seeing super-powered footballs, sword-fights on planes and a gun that shoots playing cards, all of which are the last thing I would expect to see in a detective show. It’s almost like the film is dedicated to giving you as much tonal whiplash as possible, constantly surprising you with wacky set piece after wacky set piece. I am ultimately very glad it goes down this route, as it helps paper over the fact that the storyline just isn’t that compelling by itself.

Pulling off a good mystery is perhaps the hardest thing any writer can do, so I don’t want to get too frustrated by the fact that I just couldn’t get into The Million-dollar Pentagram’s story, but what it did mean is that whenever the film tried to pull me in to another 5 minute exposition scene, my mind just temporarily shut off. As a result of trying to make the characters come across as geniuses, they frequently pull answers out of nowhere, which means that the story is less a mystery and more a theme park ride, as we are relegated to simply just watching them have non-stop “sparks of inspiration”.

I’m sure that someone who has been a fan of Detective Conan for a while would already know to expect this, and so they might be slightly less interested in the film’s central narrative and more so just wanting to see what’s going on with their favourite characters. In that respect, I understand the appeal. There’s an awful lot of characters, as you would expect from any show that’s lasted this long, but the core group all have unique personalities and designs. I found myself particularly entranced by the horrifically named Kid the Phantom Thief, partly thanks to his before-mentioned gun that shoots playing cards, but mostly thanks to just how brilliant his design is. He’s a thief, a role that you wouldn’t associate with stealth and being sneaky, but he wears the most extravagant outfit I’ve ever seen, combining a blazing white suit with an equally as white top hat and cape. From the second I saw him, it was true love.

Ultimately, I came out of Detective Conan: The Million-dollar Pentagram frustrated. In terms of the characters and the setpieces, I think it can be a really entertaining time. It embraces a certain level of stupidity that I think is key to making this kind of rollercoaster ride work, and at its best, it’s a lot of fun. At the same time, however, any film where I care about the core narrative this little has unfortunately done something wrong. I don’t care how many supercharged footballs you make Conan kick, I’m still not going to be too engaged with anything going on, especially not in any emotional sense. 

Easily the best thing I can say about the film is that it made me want to check out the series in some other form. The combination of the wacky cast and heighted tone make me feel like, with a different plot, there could be some incredibly entertaining episodes. As an almost two-hour movie, though? With this choice of story? Unfortunately, it just didn’t come together for me.

Detective Conan: The Million-dollar Pentagram will be released in UK and Irish cinemas on September 27, 2024. The film is now available to watch on Crunchyroll in the US and select countries.