I really love the whole "smart kid who assists the police in gruesome murder cases" shtick. I love this type of crime-solving story, even more so when there isn't some weird over-arching plot about some strange shadow organization cough cough case closed cough cough. Nothing against case closed (detective conan) of course, I absolutely loved watching the anime when I was younger and I'm thinking of picking it back up, maybe reading the manga, but I was really disappointed by the lack of involvement with Ran in the story. It seemed to constantly be building up to conan revealing the truth and a lovely romantic subplot with Ran, but every time something stopped it or undid his work and I just got frustrated with it.