Like you said, this makes no sense for anyone because Conan's still a ratings draw (at least as far as anime goes, although anime has a whole has been down since the peak years where Conan often had a top 3 rating for all TV). But I disagree that having fewer episodes would give the animators "more time to work". The poor animation quality is likely more due to budget reasons than anything and having fewer episodes would mean the animators would be doing crunch for some other YTV show that's replacing Conan rather than YTV investing more money into Conan.kkslider5552000 wrote: The first one being to simply air less episodes. I mean, the simplest answer, if there’s less episodes there’s less filler and more time spent on the filler there is. Presumably it would also give the animators more time to work on these episodes as well. But I really, really doubt that will actually happen. None of these complaints matter to most of its fans in Japan since Conan is consistently one of the most popular series there. In fact, the one time I heard about ratings going down was because of them airing less episodes for about two years, so it would be counter productive to ratings. It’s clearly never happening.
A filler arc is doable I guess, but idk, do people really like the filler arcs in Bleach or Naruto? A filler arc is still filler so I don't really see a Conan filler arc being that exciting, not to mention there will be heavy continuity considerations. If a filler arc introduces a new BO member or anything related to the main plot, then it's going to be a nightmare sorting it out with the manga. There's a reason why all the BO originals in the movies die before the movie ends. That said, as I've stated in an old topic, if the Conan manga ends and YTV still wants the anime going, they will eventually be forced to test out the water on filler arcs. One idea I've always liked is an Eri themed courtroom arc. They've done these in the past (which I can barely remember whether they were good or not since it's been decades), but it could potentially be a twist on the usual but still preserving the murder mystery aspect.kkslider5552000 wrote: The second idea would be to make the cases longer. The one time they put out a 3 part case a few years ago, it ended up being great. So it makes me wonder why they don’t do it more often. In theory at least, it makes sense as you would have more time to focus on a smaller amount of murder mysteries and thus could do a better job with them. Maybe you could even make a story arc with original characters, like a legit filler arc. I dunno, maybe they’ve just been unable to make something that works for longer than two episodes. But I would appreciate the effort.
We already got Zero's Tea Time and it would not surprise me if it eventually gets an adaptation that replaces regular Conan for some time.kkslider5552000 wrote: And this ties into problems I have with the franchise as a whole. Yes, at the end of the day it is a murder mystery series. Murder mysteries are and should be the focus, that is without any doubt. But when it is truly unending like this and when it airs 40 episodes, at 20 minutes each (taking away the Opening and Ending), every year, and when so much of it feels like a pointless repeat of a better story you’ve seen in the same series, I think something else beyond cases would be for the best. I’m not asking for it to become absurd or contradict everything we know (though pulling something like OVA 1 could be amazing), but taking a slice of life sort of look at the characters or putting them in situations that are pretty different could do a lot for the series.
Ultimately, I think it all comes down to the cases sucking recently and I do agree. The cases do suck, but that should be expected for a murder mystery series that has 900+ episodes. I mean there's only so many ways you can kill people with household objects without it getting ridiculous and it's exponentially harder now to come up with anything decent that's somehow also novel. As for AO, I suspect a lot of them have ulterior motives like being ads for their sponsors, so I don't really think they care that much as long as it continues to bring in the ratings.
As for the posts commenting on the shipping or character aspects, yeah they are often cheesy as hell, but I guess I'm just not that bothered by it. Conan is predominantly a mystery series and the romance is just in the background.