Magic Kaito 1412
This is so pointless, but we're all fools for love.
Magic Kaito 1412 is an adaptation of a late eightes/early nineties manga of the same name. It is mostly interesting today because its protagonist would become a ridiculously popular recurring character in the much more famous Detective Conan. Magic Kaito 1412 tells his story as it is told in the little-known manga, and as it is not told in Conan.
Our dashing hero would be Kuruba Kaitou. Kaitou is a budding stage magician who at sixteen (of course) discovers that his dead father (of course) was murdered (of course) when trying to steal a jewel rumoured to grant immortality. Kuruba Senior, you see, was the man behind Kaito Kid, an infamous gentleman thief. So Kaitou - of course - decides to don his father's old top hat and monocle, and to use his skills as an illusionist to hunt that jewel and hope he'll draw out the men who killed dad.
So if you're really into gentleman thieves, you might want to give it a try. But mostly, Magic Kaito 1412 is probably aimed at Detective Conan fans who want to know what's going on in Kaito Kid's head.
To summarise 20 of the 24 episodes: Kaito Kid sets out to find some jewel, runs into trouble, outsmarts the police, gets the jewel, then gives it back when it turns out it was the wrong one. And, since Kaito Kid is a regular in Detective Conan which will probably still be running the day Pokémon ends: the finale is a lacklustre affair that resolves preciously little of the attempts at an overarching story.
Magic Kaito 1412 is very much a spinnoff that isn't good enough to carry much weight if viewed independent of the Conan universe. Where Detective Conan delivers passably entertaining detective fiction if you're into stuff for kids, Magic Kaito is mostly a straight adaptation of a manga written by a lesser skilled Aoyama. It shows. Sure, Conan copes with the help of gadgets delivered by the resident Mad Professor, but at least his use of them follow the rules of logic. Kaitou's trickery is handwaved and then some. This is a problem.
There is suspension of disbelief, but I'm unwilling to do that all the time Magic Kaito is so closely tied to a series where everything, no matter how ludicrus, happened because of actions that are discovered and then explained in thorough detail. It's jarring when we're suddenly asked not to question how Kaitou can somehow disguise himself as people twice his size and perfectly imitate any voice; there is stage magic and then there is the points where Kaitou relies on his not-girlfriend's inability to notice that he put an inflatable doll in his seat during the film. It's one thing for Kaitou to be established as clever, and aŋnother thing entirely for him to flawlessly see through any attempt at tricking him and being prepared for exactly that method. Sure, Detective Conan has a chemical that defies the laws of physics, but it is set in a universe which firmly establishes that this is within the reaches of science. The entire premise of Detective Conan is that everything can be explained by science and logic. Magic Kaito 1412 has a resident witch with real magical power.
Another problem that follows along with a much too faithful manga adaptation, is the characters. Inventive personalities and psychological realism was never Aoyama's forte, but this would've been a golden chance to give some of them a bit more colour than the manga ever gace them. They had twenty-four episodes to play with; they could have made Hakuba appear in more than two or three of them, they could have made Aoko someothing more than Ran Mouri Light. Most jarringly, there is preciously little insight to Kaitou himself. Sure, those who didn't know about the manga know about his motivation, but Kaito never gets to grow out of the revenge motif. Since the personal motivation for doing what he's doing never is challenge and never is resolved, the story just becomes... well, a row of twenty-minute bouts of not very good entertainment. The writing is meh, the animation is nothing to write home about, you should all just watch Conan instead, it's better.
That said, the anime is better than the manga - that's always something. The best episodes are the ones involving Conan on the set, probably because Shinichi is the only person around to pose a real threat to Kaitou and also because Conan Edagowa = instant mystery for all involved. I probably wouldn't recommend this to anyone else than hardcore Detective Conan fen. Hardcore Conan fen won't be too conserned with quality anyway. I should know: despite my being less than impressed, it took me two weeks of casual watching to finish this.
Magic Kaito 1412 is an adaptation of a late eightes/early nineties manga of the same name. It is mostly interesting today because its protagonist would become a ridiculously popular recurring character in the much more famous Detective Conan. Magic Kaito 1412 tells his story as it is told in the little-known manga, and as it is not told in Conan.
Our dashing hero would be Kuruba Kaitou. Kaitou is a budding stage magician who at sixteen (of course) discovers that his dead father (of course) was murdered (of course) when trying to steal a jewel rumoured to grant immortality. Kuruba Senior, you see, was the man behind Kaito Kid, an infamous gentleman thief. So Kaitou - of course - decides to don his father's old top hat and monocle, and to use his skills as an illusionist to hunt that jewel and hope he'll draw out the men who killed dad.
So if you're really into gentleman thieves, you might want to give it a try. But mostly, Magic Kaito 1412 is probably aimed at Detective Conan fans who want to know what's going on in Kaito Kid's head.
Click to viewTo summarise 20 of the 24 episodes: Kaito Kid sets out to find some jewel, runs into trouble, outsmarts the police, gets the jewel, then gives it back when it turns out it was the wrong one. And, since Kaito Kid is a regular in Detective Conan which will probably still be running the day Pokémon ends: the finale is a lacklustre affair that resolves preciously little of the attempts at an overarching story.
Magic Kaito 1412 is very much a spinnoff that isn't good enough to carry much weight if viewed independent of the Conan universe. Where Detective Conan delivers passably entertaining detective fiction if you're into stuff for kids, Magic Kaito is mostly a straight adaptation of a manga written by a lesser skilled Aoyama. It shows. Sure, Conan copes with the help of gadgets delivered by the resident Mad Professor, but at least his use of them follow the rules of logic. Kaitou's trickery is handwaved and then some. This is a problem.
There is suspension of disbelief, but I'm unwilling to do that all the time Magic Kaito is so closely tied to a series where everything, no matter how ludicrus, happened because of actions that are discovered and then explained in thorough detail. It's jarring when we're suddenly asked not to question how Kaitou can somehow disguise himself as people twice his size and perfectly imitate any voice; there is stage magic and then there is the points where Kaitou relies on his not-girlfriend's inability to notice that he put an inflatable doll in his seat during the film. It's one thing for Kaitou to be established as clever, and aŋnother thing entirely for him to flawlessly see through any attempt at tricking him and being prepared for exactly that method. Sure, Detective Conan has a chemical that defies the laws of physics, but it is set in a universe which firmly establishes that this is within the reaches of science. The entire premise of Detective Conan is that everything can be explained by science and logic. Magic Kaito 1412 has a resident witch with real magical power.
Another problem that follows along with a much too faithful manga adaptation, is the characters. Inventive personalities and psychological realism was never Aoyama's forte, but this would've been a golden chance to give some of them a bit more colour than the manga ever gace them. They had twenty-four episodes to play with; they could have made Hakuba appear in more than two or three of them, they could have made Aoko someothing more than Ran Mouri Light. Most jarringly, there is preciously little insight to Kaitou himself. Sure, those who didn't know about the manga know about his motivation, but Kaito never gets to grow out of the revenge motif. Since the personal motivation for doing what he's doing never is challenge and never is resolved, the story just becomes... well, a row of twenty-minute bouts of not very good entertainment. The writing is meh, the animation is nothing to write home about, you should all just watch Conan instead, it's better.
That said, the anime is better than the manga - that's always something. The best episodes are the ones involving Conan on the set, probably because Shinichi is the only person around to pose a real threat to Kaitou and also because Conan Edagowa = instant mystery for all involved. I probably wouldn't recommend this to anyone else than hardcore Detective Conan fen. Hardcore Conan fen won't be too conserned with quality anyway. I should know: despite my being less than impressed, it took me two weeks of casual watching to finish this.