Detective Conan: The Million-Dollar Pentagram

Synopsis

The 27th Detective Conan theatrical film, released in April 2024, represents the franchise's contemporary strategy of rotating focus across its supporting cast rather than centering every entry on Conan himself. The narrative brings together Heiji Hattori — the Osaka high-school detective whose rivalry with Shinichi Kudo is one of the series' most beloved dynamics — and Kaito Kid, the phantom thief whose cat-and-mouse relationship with Conan supplies the franchise's comic-adventure register at its most playful. The two characters are drawn into a treasure-hunt narrative spanning multiple Japanese regions, built around an ancient sword of extraordinary value surrounded by murders and false identities that test both protagonists' deductive limits independently of Conan's central role. The film's decision to develop Heiji as lead allowed the screenplay to advance romantic storylines between Heiji and Kazuha that the television series can never resolve, satisfying long-running audience investment in the supporting cast. The Million-Dollar Pentagram became one of the highest-grossing Japanese animated films of 2024, extending the franchise's commercial streak across nearly three decades of annual theatrical releases.