Shinichi Kudo

**Shinichi Kudo** (工藤 新一 *Kudō Shin'ichi*) is the high school detective protagonist of the manga and anime Detective Conan. While on a date with his childhood friend and romantic interest Ran Mouri, Shinichi encounters two men from a secret criminal organization who force feed him a strange poison that causes his body to shrink back to first grade age. Shinichi takes up the alias Conan Edogawa and plans to use his immense skill as a detective to make Ran's bumbling private detective father famous in hopes that he will find a case involving the secret organization so he can expose its crimes and acquire an antidote that will turn him back into a teenager.

Viz romanized his original name as Shin'ichi Kudo while Shogakukan's website romanizes it as Shinichi Kudoh.

## Biography

At the beginning of the series, Shinichi brings his friend Ran Mouri to Tropical Land, a local theme park, to celebrate her victory in the Metropolitan Karate Championships. He later ends up solving a murder case there. As they are leaving, Shinichi witnesses a suspicious exchange between an unknown business man and a man in black in a secluded area by the ferris wheel. While spying on the suspicious men, Shinichi does not notice another man in black, who knocks him out from behind and forces him to swallow a new experimental poison known as APTX 4869. They then leave him to die. However, instead of killing Shinichi, a rare side-effect occurred. Shinichi's body shrunk back to that of his six-year-old self. In desperation and confusion, Shinichi heads back to his house and runs into his next door neighbor and close family friend, Professor Agasa. After a few attempts at proving he's in fact Shinichi, he finally succeeds in convincing the Professor. The latter warns him he must keep his identity secret as the Black Organization will surely try to kill him and others associated with him should they learn the truth.

## Appearance

Shinichi is a 174 cm (5'8.5") Japanese teenager with a thin, athletic build. He has pale skin and a dark brown/black hair with a cowlick in front and distinctive tuft in the back. Shinichi bears a striking resemblance to his father, Yusaku Kudo minus his father's mustache and round glasses. Shinichi has blue eyes in the manga (a trait shared by all the characters), and they are blue in the anime as well.

Shinichi is right handed and right footed, but he is good with both feet because of his soccer skills.

Shinichi often appears in his high school uniform, but he also wears a suit and tie or regular clothing depending on the occasion. When Conan turns back into Shinichi by using baijiu or a temporary antidote, Shinichi will wear whatever appropriately sized clothing he can find at the time. He was also very popular with the girls as he was handsome not to mention a high school detective.

## Personality

At the beginning of the series, Shinichi is already well-known as a brilliant young detective, the "Savior of the police force", for solving many difficult cases the professionals could not. He is extremely intelligent, and even from a young age was very intuitive and observant. Due to the influence of his father and the general laissez-faire environment at home, he has long been an incessant and persistent reader, especially of mystery novels. His father, Yusaku started taking Shinichi to crime scenes as a child, which inspired him to be a detective. Due to his bluntness and matter-of-fact manner, Shinichi can come off as rude and arrogant. However, he cares deeply about human life, unable to understand how any reason could be sufficient motive for murder, and is convinced that driving a culprit to suicide is no better than murder itself. The few times he has been too late to save a life haunt him throughout the series.

Prior to his transformation, Shinichi enjoyed being in the spotlight and was rather arrogant, reveling in making local headlines and receiving fan-mail. Throughout the series, Shinichi's predicament causes him to gain a sense of humility. Shinichi still keeps his flair for the dramatic (like his mother) that can be seen every time he sets out a deduction in pieces building to a climax.

Despite his popularity with the masses and his schoolmates, Shinichi has very few close friends. He is close to Ran and Agasa, and after deaging, he befriended Heiji, Haibara, and to some extent the other Detective Boys. Another reason for his lack of close friends was because his arrogant personality was a negative turn-off to many of his classmates and even teachers, making it hard to befriend him. Even with his close friends (one being older than him), Shinichi doesn't hesitate to call them "idiot", instead of calmly explaining his reason for doing or not doing something, sometimes causing arguments between him and Ran.

Shinichi also had a tendency, since elementary school, to have an air of being the "distant, cool guy". While he is a truly good and heroic individual, he doesn't make it known to others that obviously, and will make some "deductive reasoning" for why he did such a thing. His sensitive nature is also horrible, which was shown most prominently during the Holmes' Revelation Arc, when Ran started crying because she believed that Shinichi not telling her he was in London meant that he was indifferent to her feelings for him. However, instead of trying to comfort her, Shinichi repeatedly asked her about the strange woman she met, and told her to pull herself together.

Despite his intelligence, Shinichi is rather dense when it comes to love or romantic subjects, though perhaps not to the same extent as Heiji Hattori. He struggled to confess his love for to Ran, even after he knew her feelings (as Conan), and temporarily returned to his original body in the Desperate Revival Arc, he was about to confess to her, but chickened out at the last minute. After several failures, finally succeeded in London.

## Abilities

Shinichi is very skilled as a detective, often earning him comparisons to Sherlock Holmes. Shinichi has acquired various nicknames because of his prowess, such as the "Heisei Holmes" and the "Detective of the East". He has a keen eye for details, and can spot any unusual aspects in a case that most people tend to ignore or not take into account. He repeatedly demonstrates the ability to recall every detail of an investigation or other topics he cares about, and may have a photographic memory to manage such perfect recall so consistently. Shinichi's fastidious attention to detail allows him to notice minor inconsistencies in crime scenes and suspect testimony, and using astute logic he uncovers the reasons behind those inconsistencies in order to link them to the crime. Shinichi has extraordinarily broad and deep knowledge of many subjects and trivia that help him solve cases, something he likely acquired from incessant reading as a child. Only his father Yusaku Kudo, and the current Kaitou Kid, Kaito Kuroba, regularly surpass him.

Besides intelligence, Shinichi also has an amazing athletic ability, partially derived from playing soccer, his favorite sport. Shinichi is an extremely skilled soccer player, having been professionally scouted while only in middle school, but he chooses to stay at the amateur level. He initially played to hone his reflexes and often juggles a ball to clear his mind, but he is also an enthusiastic fan of the sport in its own right.[9] In order to defend himself and others from criminals, Shinichi has perfected a signature, powerful precision kick to knock out criminals using soccer balls or whatever substitute is handy. Shinichi's kick is accurate over long distances and he is capable of mentally reckoning the angle of impact necessary to rebound a soccer ball off a wall and strike an attacker from behind. He is also good at skiing and snowboarding.

Aside from soccer, Shinichi exhibits a knack for handling firearms due to his father taking him to shooting ranges from time to time. During the Clocktower Heist, Shinichi is able to shoot and dislodge the support beam of a giant projection screen, which Kaitou Kid had placed in order to fool a crowd of onlookers, with a single shot from a moving helicopter. Additionally, in Movie 2 Conan shot a gun at Ran and the criminal holding her hostage with impeccable accuracy; in doing so, he reminds her of Shinichi.

Shinichi is nimble as well as strong. In the manga, he is capable of considerable acrobatics, jumping great distances and swinging from tree to tree to escape onlookers. The anime and movies augment Shinichi's athletic abilities in addition to what is shown in the manga. He has been able to skillfully dodge a kicking assault from an angry Ran, something very few have ever managed.

Shinichi cannot sing on key in the slightest so he is often accused of being tone deaf. Despite being a hilariously awful singer, Shinichi has perfect pitch and can identify notes accurately even in difficult contexts like the sound of phone button presses forming a melody. Also, to be like his favorite detective, Sherlock Holmes, he plays the violin. This was confirmed in movie 12 Full Score of Fear when he played "Amazing Grace" for Ran. However, he is stumped on what Ran meant when she said, "He has a funny habit when he plays."

Shinichi is well-educated in English, as he once conversed with and translated for an American diplomat, and later solved a case in London without evidence of any language barrier. Shinichi also knows some German, at least how to count. Shinichi is not familiar with Italian.

## Relationships

* **Inspector Megure**

Inspector Megure has worked together with Shinichi to solve many cases. During Shinichi's first case on the plane to New York, Megure seemed irritated that Shinichi was poking his nose into a murder case. Since then, because Shinichi has proven himself solving cases one after the other, Megure has grown to respect Shinichi and his deductive abilities, thanking him for his assistance.
## Etymology

Shinichi's given name is a pun on "one truth". The "ichi" (一) means "one" and "shin" can be read as truth (真), however the kanji actually used for "shin" (新) in Shinichi's name means "new". Shinichi's family name "Kudo" comes from the fictional detective Shunsaku Kudo created by Nobumitsu Kodaka. The ON-readings of the kanji for "Kudo" mean "craft" or "construction" (工) and "wisteria" (藤). "Shinichi" may also have come from "Shinichi Suzuki", a famous violinist. (Shinichi Kudo plays violin)[citation needed] His English name, Jimmy, rhymes with Shinichi.

## Trivia

* Shinichi has been mentioned and parodied in many other anime series.
* He was used as a character to promote people to follow the law in Japan, due to the popularity of the series.
* Shinichi seems to have plane narcolepsy, as mentioned in Episode 162 and Chapter 204. This shows up when he is Conan as well.
* Shinichi, along with Heiji Hattori, Kaito Kuroba and Saguru Hakuba, are sometimes referred to as 'The Four Geniuses' or 'The Gosho Boys' by fans.

## References

1. ↑ Conan Drill Page 41
2. ↑ *Detective Conan* Episode 1: Roller Coaster Murder Case