Detective Conan: Fallen Angel Review: Clues at Full Throttle

Is Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway worth watching?

Yes, with reservations. Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway is a slick, confident franchise entry that puts a real mystery back at the centre and surrounds it with superb motorcycle action. Director Takahiro Hasui stages highway chases with a clarity that many live-action films would envy, and the case itself gives viewers something to chew on. The reservations are familiar ones: the solution leans on explanations that arrive late and in bulk, and the film assumes a working knowledge of a very large cast.

What is Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway about?

Conan Edogawa, the teenage detective trapped in a child’s body, travels to Kanagawa with the Mouri household for a motorcycle festival. A series of deadly crashes on the region’s expressways looks at first like bad luck, but Conan soon notices a pattern that suggests the accidents are being orchestrated. His investigation leads him towards Chihaya Hagiwara, an ace officer in the traffic division, and towards a conspiracy built around the highways themselves.

Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway is the 29th feature in the long-running Japanese anime series based on Gosho Aoyama’s manga. It is in Japanese, runs 109 minutes, and brings back the franchise’s regular voice cast, with Minami Takayama as Conan, Wakana Yamazaki as Ran, Rikiya Koyama as Kogoro Mouri and Megumi Hayashibara as Ai Haibara. It became one of Japan’s biggest box-office hits of 2026.

A mystery that remembers to be one

Some recent Conan films have treated the case as an excuse for spy-thriller spectacle. This one is more disciplined. The crashes are set up as a genuine puzzle rather than a pretext, and viewers who enjoy playing along have real material to work with, at least until the final stretch. The motorcycle festival setting is used cleverly, giving the story a crowded, noisy backdrop in which details are easy to miss.

Chihaya Hagiwara gives the film its emotional anchor. A traffic officer with ties to the wider Conan mythology, she brings a human dimension to a case about roads and machines, and her presence lends the investigation more weight than Conan’s usual professional curiosity. Longtime fans will pick up on connections that newcomers will miss, but the film does not make them essential to following the case.

Chase scenes with legible physics

The action is the highlight. The motorcycle sequences are staged with a strong sense of geography, so it is always clear who is chasing whom and what the road ahead holds. The integration of computer-generated bikes with hand-drawn characters is smoother than the series has sometimes managed, and the speed and weight of the machines come through vividly. These scenes are among the most exhilarating the franchise has produced.

The film’s pacing keeps the chases and the detective work in balance for most of the running time, with the usual comic interludes from Kogoro and the supporting cast providing breathers between set pieces.

Where the formula takes over

The weaknesses are baked into the franchise template. When the solution arrives, much of it comes through long explanatory speeches, with information that the audience could not have pieced together earlier. The climax escalates towards the large-scale peril these films always seem obliged to include, trading some of the earlier procedural tension for spectacle. And newcomers facing dozens of named characters with years of history may feel a step behind throughout.

Who should watch Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway?

It is an easy recommendation for Detective Conan fans and a reasonable entry point for mystery lovers curious about the franchise, especially those who enjoy action with their deduction. The violence is mostly crashes and peril rather than anything graphic, making it suitable for older children and teenagers who can follow a fast-moving plot with subtitles.

If it works for you, try these next:

• Demon Slayer: Mugen Train, another record-breaking anime feature that turns a long-running series into a big-screen event.
• Jujutsu Kaisen 0, a franchise film that, like this one, rewards fans most but can stand on its own.

The verdict

Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway is a well-oiled franchise film, with a proper mystery, a strong new focal character and some of the best action animation the series has delivered. Its late info-dumps and familiar escalation keep it from greatness, but fans will find it one of the more satisfying recent entries.