somewhat sille, that's me!

Ah I have never been so let down!

I was really excited when I was browsing through the movies playing this weekend and stumbled upon this. Like SUPER CRAY CRAY CAN'T KEEP IT IN excited. I've loved Conan since forever, a remnant from my teenage years (I've this weird crush on him, or more appropriately, Shinichi - the 17-year-old who Conan really is before he was poisoned by the Black Organisation and reduced to a 7-year-old boy). Whodunit + manga = perfecto.

Along the way, I stopped reading when left home.. until I discovered online manga. I am still very far behind from catching up, but it's so fun to re-read the old cases and remembering all the details -- for someone with my kinda memory, I think it's pretty remarkable how much I have retained.

So yeah, by the time I saw the ad, I realised that it was going off screen by next week, and that I only had yesterday to go watch. It was only showing once a day in Pavilion and MV GSC cinemas, but only MV's timing was good so I was pretty determined to brave through Friday's rush hour traffic to catch it. Got A to go with me, but I was so excited I would have gone alone. For some reason, I've never bothered with the anime (I've always preferred manga) so this was actually my first time seeing it in this format.. :)

But argh, this show just didn't do it for me. The plot was uninteresting - it was like watching a normal procedural drama on TV, and there was hardly any smart detective work, and there were too many new characters (FBI la, Ran's classmate lah, that Silver Bullet guy la.. I suspect they are from the previous shows - this being the 20th installment, but they just diluted the plot further), and the English lines were really, really bad (there was this line "say hello to Hunter in hell" that the writers must have thought was so amazing that they had the character repeat it, like what?! -___-"), and when the killer was revealed, I was like "huh?" than "wow!", and there were so many physical law-defying stunts, and the ending was kinda contrived and unimpressive.. I really didn't like it lah - and I had really wanted to. Sigh. A told me he fell asleep towards the end - yup, I don't blame him. Bleh.

Anyway, the plot, from wiki:

After participating in the opening ceremony, Conan, Agasa, Ran, and the Detective Boys are enjoying the view from the observation deck of the 635-metre tall Bell Tree Tower. Suddenly, a bullet breaks through a window and strikes a man's chest, causing everyone to panic. Conan stays calm and uses the zoom function on his tracking glasses to follow the path of the bullet to its source. At the other end, Conan spies a black shadow. "But sniping from so far away is impossible, it can't be--!" Conan and Masumi Sera pursue the fleeing sniper on Masumi's motorcycle, but the chase takes a violent turn when the suspect attempts to blow up police patrol cars. Even the FBI get involved in the chase, but the culprit and the mysteries of the sniping end up vanishing into the ocean.

The investigation turns up a connection to the special United States Navy squadron, the Navy SEALS and other former US military officers working in Japan. However, the first sniping was just the beginning; as more people are shot, the citizens of Tokyo panic! What is the meaning of the rifle case and dice left behind? As his investigation progresses, Conan soon finds himself in the sniper's crosshairs, only to be saved by Masumi who intervenes and takes the bullet in his stead. And, in the background, Subaru Okiya begins to make his move...