Detective Conan, Gosho Aoyama Has Already Prepared the Manga's Ending

Gosho Aoyama already knows how Detective Conan will end and has even prepared the storyboard for the final chapter. The mangaka revealed this during an interview for the Japanese TV special 24-Hour Television Latest Information SP, without, however, providing any indication of when the series will actually conclude.

The statement was reported by Oricon News, which covered the interview conducted in Aoyama's studio by singer Chanmina and Taiga Kyomoto of SixTONES, both fans of Detective Conan. When asked if he thought about the end of his career and the series, the author explained that he had already created the "name" for the final chapter, a term used in the manga industry to refer to a draft composed of panels, dialogue, and page structure.

Aoyama even joked, asking the two interviewers if they wanted to see it, adding only that the ending would be "interesting." No story details were shown, and, most importantly, no date for the manga's conclusion was announced. Therefore, it would be premature to talk about an imminent ending: the news concerns the existence of an already defined structure for the final chapter, not the start of the serialization's concluding phase.

During the same interview, Aoyama recalled that he never expected such immense success. At first, he thought Detective Conan would end quickly and indicated the release of the first theatrical film as the moment he truly understood the series' popularity.

The manga has been published in Weekly Shonen Sunday since 1994 and is still ongoing today. The official website of the publisher Shogakukan currently indicates 108 volumes published, while data released by the company reports over 270 million copies in circulation worldwide.

For a story that has accompanied readers for more than thirty years, knowing that Aoyama has already put the endpoint on paper is significant. How far away that point is, however, remains one of Detective Conan's unresolved mysteries for now.