2021/05/22 The Gosho Waifu
Aoyama Gosho, best known as the writer for one of my favourite series, Detective Conan, is a man with a very particular waifu. Once you examine the waifus of his works, certain traits wrestle your attention which are both unique and fascinating since, after all, a lot can be told about a man after seeing his waifu. First, let’s see a selection of his waifus:
These four cover all of Gosho’s major works: the first two belong to Detective Conan (1995); the second to Magic Kaito (1987), Gosho’s first work; the last to Yaiba, another of Gosho’s major works, which has a 52 episode anime adaptation which I haven’t seen. Despite never having seen Yaiba, the plot synopsis sounds quite funny, especially when you find out they all take place in the same universe.
So what are their similarities? Let’s start with how they look. Hair in the front is generally messy, two characters - Aoko and Ran - opting for free-flowing hair, the other two, Sayaka and Kazuha, opting for high ponytails . From Sayaka’s design, you can kind of see how it diffracts into Ran and Kazuha, with the ponytail being donated to Kazuha and the horn being donated to Ran. The horn. Ran’s horn is truly a marvel of art. No other anime girl to my knowledge has such a magnificent horn.
Above we see the manga’s stub, evolving into a blunt, missile-shaped horn, evolving into the longer, sharp, piercing horn we see today, with the inevitable result on the far right.
Beyond physical comparisons, comparisons of character are where we see the similarities most clearly. All four of these characters have pretty much the same personality. For one, they’re all mild tsunderes, getting angry over menial things. It is worth noting, however, that they’re all more dere than tsun, owing to the fact that they’re all childhood friends with the protagonist. The pairings in every show have the same pattern of romance: tsundere osana najimi gradually opens up, even though they both clearly love each other already and all of their friends make fun of them since they’re ‘basically a couple’. The similarities grow when considering the two Detective Conan characters. Both Ran and Kazuha are: martial artists, Ran being the top highschool girl in karate, Kazuha being one of the best aikido practitioners; afraid of horror plots, like ghost stories and such; afraid of bugs and insects; strong spirited, willing to say what they think. Including Aoko as well, all three have policemen for fathers (albeit with very different fathers).
Granted, within Detective Conan many of the similarities were intentional, but looking more broadly, this is just what Aoyama-sensei likes. He loves tsundere childhood friends and I respect that. Beyond waifus, the protagonists are similar also: Edogawa Conan looks near identical to Yaiba; Kudo Shinichi looks the same as Kuroba Kaito with a similar personality to boot, albeit with a different moral compass. All four are smug yet just, romantically shy yet heroically brave - to Gosho, he is the coolest guy. Fun side fact: for a few years Gosho was married to the voice actor who voiced both Yaiba and Conan. The man clearly loves the characters he creates; his characters come from the heart, which is why he can’t help but tell similar stories with similar characters with similar looks. If you watch an episode of Detective Conan, or Magic Kaito, or even Yaiba and liked it, you will enjoy all the rest of it. His works are bathed in a sense of cool for the protagonists and cute for the waifus and I hope you give it a full watch to the end.
Congratulation Detective Conan for reaching 1000 episodes!
Originally written for the Uni of Nottingham Anime Society Zine.
These four cover all of Gosho’s major works: the first two belong to Detective Conan (1995); the second to Magic Kaito (1987), Gosho’s first work; the last to Yaiba, another of Gosho’s major works, which has a 52 episode anime adaptation which I haven’t seen. Despite never having seen Yaiba, the plot synopsis sounds quite funny, especially when you find out they all take place in the same universe.
So what are their similarities? Let’s start with how they look. Hair in the front is generally messy, two characters - Aoko and Ran - opting for free-flowing hair, the other two, Sayaka and Kazuha, opting for high ponytails . From Sayaka’s design, you can kind of see how it diffracts into Ran and Kazuha, with the ponytail being donated to Kazuha and the horn being donated to Ran. The horn. Ran’s horn is truly a marvel of art. No other anime girl to my knowledge has such a magnificent horn.
Above we see the manga’s stub, evolving into a blunt, missile-shaped horn, evolving into the longer, sharp, piercing horn we see today, with the inevitable result on the far right.
Beyond physical comparisons, comparisons of character are where we see the similarities most clearly. All four of these characters have pretty much the same personality. For one, they’re all mild tsunderes, getting angry over menial things. It is worth noting, however, that they’re all more dere than tsun, owing to the fact that they’re all childhood friends with the protagonist. The pairings in every show have the same pattern of romance: tsundere osana najimi gradually opens up, even though they both clearly love each other already and all of their friends make fun of them since they’re ‘basically a couple’. The similarities grow when considering the two Detective Conan characters. Both Ran and Kazuha are: martial artists, Ran being the top highschool girl in karate, Kazuha being one of the best aikido practitioners; afraid of horror plots, like ghost stories and such; afraid of bugs and insects; strong spirited, willing to say what they think. Including Aoko as well, all three have policemen for fathers (albeit with very different fathers).
Granted, within Detective Conan many of the similarities were intentional, but looking more broadly, this is just what Aoyama-sensei likes. He loves tsundere childhood friends and I respect that. Beyond waifus, the protagonists are similar also: Edogawa Conan looks near identical to Yaiba; Kudo Shinichi looks the same as Kuroba Kaito with a similar personality to boot, albeit with a different moral compass. All four are smug yet just, romantically shy yet heroically brave - to Gosho, he is the coolest guy. Fun side fact: for a few years Gosho was married to the voice actor who voiced both Yaiba and Conan. The man clearly loves the characters he creates; his characters come from the heart, which is why he can’t help but tell similar stories with similar characters with similar looks. If you watch an episode of Detective Conan, or Magic Kaito, or even Yaiba and liked it, you will enjoy all the rest of it. His works are bathed in a sense of cool for the protagonists and cute for the waifus and I hope you give it a full watch to the end.
Congratulation Detective Conan for reaching 1000 episodes!
Originally written for the Uni of Nottingham Anime Society Zine.