'Detective Conan' Announces A Lengthy Hiatus

Fans of Detective Conan will need to find something to fill the void as the manga is going on a seven-week-long hiatus.

The series will be on a break from issues 33 to 39 of Weekly Shonen Jump, according to a report by Anime News Network. The nearly two-month haitus will give Conan's creator, Gosho Aoyama, a chance to conduct some research. Detective Conan will make a big return in this year's 40th issue of the magazine.

For die-hard fans, it is not all bad news. While the main title is on a break, Shonen Jump has announced that the spin-off series, Detective Conan: Zero's Tea Time, will have a serial run of its own. In general, the magazine intends to use issues of Zero's Tea Time to keep readers satiated whenever the main title needs a break going forward. The spin-off is helmed by Takahiro Arai, and will reportedly not be published unless the main title needs a break.

Detective Conan took a prolonged hiatus earlier this year in order for Aoyama to receive medical treatment. The 55-year-old needed a chance to "recharge," and ended up staying away from the book for months. The series returned on April 11, and has been going ever since.

Before that, Aoyama took another two-month research break in October of 2017, returning just at the end of November.

In the United States and other English-speaking parts of the world, Detective Conan is better known as Case Closed. The series was renamed so as not to be conflated with other comics featuring a hero named Conan, though Aoyama's protagonist is far from a barbarian. The series centers around an amateur detective who has been transformed into a child by an experimental poison.

While it never quite gained the same traction in the U.S., Detective Conan is one of the most successful manga series in decades. It has been running in Shonen Jump Weekly since 1994, and has a highly acclaimed anime adaptation as well. The show aired on Adult Swim in 2004, but it was cancelled before long due to low ratings. Still, the series is available to stream from FUNimation and Netflix.

With all this in mind, it's no wonder that Aoyama is looking for more time off. The creator has been going for more than 24 years in the mile-a-minute world of weekly manga. In October of 2007, he even suggested that he had an ending for the series in mind, but he was not ready to enact it yet.