Magic Kaito

The cover of the first volume of Magic Kaito released on May 15, 1988.

Magic Kaito (まじっく快斗 ,Majikku Kaito) is a shōnen manga series by Gosho Aoyama, about a thief named Kaitou Kid. Its publication started on May 27, 1987, with some chapters published in Weekly Shōnen Sunday and other chapters published in Weekly Shōnen Sunday Special Edition. After the first two volumes were released in 1988, the manga was put on hiatus as Aoyama started his new manga Yaiba (1988-1993), which was followed by Detective Conan (1994-present). Since then, more chapters have been published at irregular intervals during pauses of these works, and have been collected into a third, forth and fifth volume in 1994, 2007 and 2017 respectively.

Similar to how Detective Conan was heavily influenced by the Sherlock Holmes novels and other mystery stories, Magic Kaito was inspired by phantom thieves like Arsène Lupin and Lupin III.

Plot

Kaito Kuroba, a normal teenage high school student, stumbles across the secret of his father's death: his father was not only a magician, but the famous phantom thief Kaitou Kid, and was killed by an organization for reasons unknown. Taking up his father's mantle in an attempt to bait the killers, Kaito performs a number of thefts and eventually learns that his father died for interfering in the organization's quest to find the Pandora Gem. Pandora is said to glow in the light of the moon, and beneath the moon and a certain comet, will shed a tear granting immortality to whomever drinks it. Kaito then decides to search for Pandora as Kaitou Kid and destroy it, in order to prevent the organization from obtaining their goals.

There are also many other characters who seek to interfere with Kid heists. Inspector Ginzo Nakamori, the head of the Kid taskforce, is responsible for capturing and unmasking Kaitou Kid to bringing him to justice. His daughter Aoko Nakamori, Kaito's love interest and classmate, wishes to unmask Kid herself so that her father would not have to work as hard. Akako Koizumi, a witch and classmate, uses real magic to try to steal Kaito's heart. Saguru Hakuba, a high school detective from Britain and classmate, try's to unmask Kid through direct challenge. Later on both Akako and Saguru aid Kaito by giving him hints and warnings before heists to prevent him from being caught so they can catch him themselves.

Characters

See also: List of minor Magic Kaito characters

Protagonists

Picture	Name	Role
	Kaito Kuroba	Main character of the story. A high school student with a mischievous attitude and a knack for performing magic tricks. Kaitou Kid's secret identity.
	Kaitou Kid	Kaito Kuroba's alter ego. A master thief known to use magic tricks and send warning notes to the police before a heist.
	Aoko Nakamori	Kaito's childhood friend and love interest.
	Ginzo Nakamori	Aoko's father who's in charge of the Kaitou Kid taskforce.
	Saguru Hakuba	A high school detective from England determined to catch Kaitou Kid.
	Akako Koizumi	A witch currently at the same school with Kaito who wishes to win the heart of Kaitou Kid.
	Konosuke Jii	Toichi and Kaito's loyal assistant.
	Midoriko Nakamori	Public prosecutor. Ginzo's wife and Aoko's mother.
	Kaitou Corbeau	A mysterious thief that looks like Kaitou Kid in black clothing. He recently emerged in Las Vegas before coming to Japan to target the Midnight Crow.
	Chikage Kuroba	Kaito's mother. She was once a thief known as Phantom Lady.
	Toichi Kuroba	The original Kaitou Kid and Kaito's late father. He was a world-renowned stage magician.

Unnamed organization

Picture	Name	Role
	Snake	Primary antagonist of the story. A mysterious agent responsible for the death of Toichi Kuroba, he and his gang of subordinates violently target big jewels. According to Conan, Kid, and the Crystal Mother, he is internationally referred to as "Jackal", but this is unconfirmed in the manga.
	Magic Kaito Boss	The mysterious boss of the criminal organization, he/she seeks to obtain Pandora and achieve immortality. His identity is unknown. In the Magic Kaito specials, the boss is shown giving orders by email. Only the back of the boss' chair is visible and he/she does not speak, so this person's physical characteristics are completely unknown. He/she exists in the manga, but is only alluded to in speech as "ano kata".
	Magic Kaito Sub-boss	A chubby old man who is the second-in-command. He tells Snake which jewels to target.
	Spider	An anime special only character who works under their second-in-command.

Manga

Volume 1-5

You can also view this list as Magic Kaito Manga Listed By Heist.

Vol.	Chapters	Japanese		English		Plot
		Release date	ISBN	Release date	ISBN
01	1-6	April 18, 1988 August 5, 2011 (Treasured Edition)	ISBN 4-09-122081-9 ISBN 4-09-123276-0 (Treasured Edition) ISBN 4-09-941723-9 (Treasured Edition w/ DVD)
02	7-13	October 18, 1988 September 16, 2011 (Treasured Edition)	ISBN 4-09-122082-7 ISBN 4-09-123277-9 (Treasured Edition) ISBN 4-09-941724-7 (Treasured Edition w/ DVD)
03	14-20	September 17, 1994 November 18, 2011 (Treasured Edition)	ISBN 4-09-122083-5 ISBN 4-09-123317-1 (Treasured Edition) ISBN 4-09-941727-1 (Treasured Edition w/ DVD)
04	21-28	February 16, 2007 December 16, 2011 (Treasured Edition)	ISBN 4-09-121005-0 ISBN 978-4-09-123318-9 (Treasured Edition) ISBN 978-4-09-941726-0 (Treasured Edition w/ DVD)
05	29-36	July 18, 2017	ISBN 4-09-127764-0 ISBN 978-4-09-127769-5 (Treasured Edition)

Chapters not yet included in a Volume

• File 37: Green Dragon (Part 1) (グリーン・ドラゴンの巻(前編) ,Gurīn Doragon no Maki (Zenpen))
• File 38: Green Dragon (Part 2) (グリーン・ドラゴンの巻(中編) ,Gurīn Doragon no Maki (Chūhen))
• File 39: Green Dragon (Part 3) (グリーン・ドラゴンの巻(後編) ,Gurīn Doragon no Maki (Kōhen))

Anime

Magic Kaito TV Specials logo

Magic Kaito: Kid the Phantom Thief

The manga was first adapted into a series of TV specials titled Magic Kaito: Kid the Phantom Thief (まじっく快斗: KID THE PHANTOM THIEF ,Majikku Kaito: Kid the Phantom Thief). Animated by TMS Entertainment, it's debut episode aired on April 17, 2010 on Animax before reairing on Nippon Television Network a few days later. The remainder of episodes aired irregularly between August and December of the following two years in Detective Conan timeslot (Saturday at 6.00 p.m. JST).

Magic Kaito 1412 TV series logo

Magic Kaito 1412 TV Series

In celebration of Detective Conan's 20th years manga serialization, Shonen Sunday announced a new anime adaptation of the Magic Kaito manga. It began being broadcast on October 4, 2014 at 5.30 p.m. JST. It was animated by A-1 Pictures. It was also stated that it will be a "completely new work". The show's official website is http://www.ytv.co.jp/magickaito/. The production company's website for the series is http://a1p.jp/works/magickaito/.

Collectibles

Different Magic Kaito 1412 goodies.

Games

There have been no direct Magic Kaito games so far, but Kaitou Kid/Kaito Kuroba regularly appears in the video games of Detective Conan, often in a role important to the respective plot. Ginzo Nakamori (Detective Conan: The Magician's Challenge Letter!, Detective Conan: Prelude from the Past) and Saguru Hakuba (Detective Conan: Mystery Town) from this series have appeared in those games, too.

Other merchandise

There has been a lot of purchasable goodies about this series, mostly in the vein of the Magic Kaito 1412 anime, featuring its logo or the characters in artwork from the anime on office supplies, keychains, bags, puzzles and candy. Several original soundtracks and character albums have also been released on CD. A copy of Kaitou Kid's top hat and PVC figures can also be bought, including a Figma of Kid. Like most Kid-only merchandise though, the latter was released under the Detective Conan brand.

Kaitou Kid Café

Gosho Aoyama drawing autographs on the walls of the Kaitou Kid Café.

After the success of the "Detective Conan Café(s)", there were also "Magic Kaito Cafés" opening in Tokyo and Osaka for a limited time, featuring characters like Kaito Kuroba, Aoko Nakamori and Saguru Hakuba as accessoires and prints on dishes, food and interior.

Production

Gosho Aoyama dreamt about becoming a mangaka or an animator from an early age and, being a fan of phantom thieves like Arsène Lupin and Lupin III, always wanted to tell a story about a "high school phantom", which he considers one of the main reasons he wanted to become a mangaka. When he studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Nihon University in Tokyo, he joined the local manga club, the Nekketsu Manga Konjō-kai, and drew some short stories the leader of the club back then, Yutaka Abe, saw and liked, telling Aoyama that he indeed should try to become a mangaka instead of an animator. Aoyama then took the idea he kept for all his life up to this point in 1986 and created another short story, Nonchalant Lupin, about a sneaky high school student called Kaito Lupin and his best friend Aoko Holmes, already taking inspiration from the phantom thief and detective archetypes he liked so much. He submitted this story to a contest between newcomers at Shōnen Magazine, which he didn't win, but earned him a Kasaku (kind of an honorable mention for an outstanding work including some price money). He wanted to publish at Magazine, but the editor in charge of him soon left and was replaced by another person who didn't like Aoyama's art and writing style, telling him that it doesn't fit into Shōnen Magazine, with another editor telling him that he should change it or look elsewhere for a publisher, which he soon found in the Shōnen Sunday.

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  Arsène Lupin, as drawn by Gosho Aoyama himself.

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  Arsène's grandson Lupin III in one of his own anime series.

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  The cover of Nonchalant Lupin, the prototype to Magic Kaito.

Based on his short story, he created the concept for Magic Kaito in 1987, slightly remodeling his two protagonists and renaming them Kaito Kuroba and Aoko Nakamori, as well as levitating his more low-key story about a conspiracy at a high school into a more complex plot revolving around the legacy of the phantom thief Kaitou Kid, who was seemingly killed eight years ago by a so far unnamed organization while trying to snatch away a mystical gem granting immortality before they could get their hands on it and his past assistant, Konosuke Jii, as well as his son, Kaito, taking over his mantle as the second and third Kaitou Kid respectively to avenge his death.

Aoyama again drew inspiration from a lot of things he liked and knew from real life, like giving Kaito his own birthdate, blood type and measurements from back then (June 21st, B, 1.74 m/5'8.5" and 58 kg/128 lbs) and modeling and naming Aoko after a popular idol of this decade, Akina Nakamori, who probably inspired her character to a certain degree too, being known for her brash and tomboyish behavior, which was rather unusual for a japanese idol at the time. They later on get joined by Akako Koizumi, who in turn got influenced by Akina's rival Kyōko Koizumi.

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  Akina Nakamori, the model for Aoko Nakamori.

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  Kyoko Koizumi, who inspired Akako Koizumi, on the cover of her 1986 single CD fittingly called "Majo" ("Witch").

He also integrated the places he, his senior Yutaka Abe and some fellow students who assisted him with the creation of this manga lived at during this time, like the Ekoda Area, where the campus of the Faculty of Fine Arts is located, and the Senkawa district of Toshima Ward, where Aoyama moved to shortly after, which is neighboring the aforementioned area. The characters attend Ekoda High School, named after a once real educational facility which is defunct since 1976 and serves as a university building of Musashi University close to Nihon University's Ekoda campus nowadays and is modeled after the building #3 of Musashi in its modern incarnation, which has also been used as a high school in the past. The protagonists take a ride on the Seibu Ikebukuro Line, leaving at Ikebukuro Station in Toshima to get home, with the Nakamori residence explicitly being located in that ward. Aoyama reinforced all this by once saying that his characters are "moving with [him]" and that he always tries to reflect the atmosphere of the surroundings he's currently living in.

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  Ekoda Campus of Musashi University

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  Ekoda High School

Even though he was steadily releasing chapters now which grew in popularity with readers, first chapter 1 and 2 in an interval of three months on the pages of the regular Weekly Shōnen Sunday and chapter 3-6 on a monthly basis in the special issues, his new editor didn't like this series either and told Aoyama that he would treat him something if the sales of the first volume surpass 100,000 copies, which they actually did very quickly. This made it possible for Aoyama to continue as a mangaka, trying out new concepts in other short stories, one of them leading to his first weekly series Yaiba one year later.

The commitment to such a rapidly released series also forced him to put Magic Kaito on the back burner, releasing new chapters for it in a very irregular manner. Despite this, he tried to keep it alive by loosely interconnecting his two major works at the time, by making Keiko Momoi and her black-haired, fox-eyed friend classmates of Yaiba deuteragonist Sayaka Mine and letting her transfer to (an alternate version of) Ekoda High School in the final chapter, integrating one of the deactivated RZ-04 mini robots in one chapter, as well as including namedrops of Kaitou Kid, Kaito Kuroba and Aoko Nakamori. There was also a special short story called K∀ITO (a portmanteau of Magic Kaito and Y∀IBA) released for the 30th anniversary issue of Shōnen Sunday in 1989, depicting a direct crossover between both series, which Aoyama himself officially deemed non-canon to either series, though. This short story was later rereleased as a bonus chapter in Magic Kaito Volume 3, counted as the 18th chapter of the series by the western fandom.

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  Kaitou Kid vs. Yaiba in the K∀ITO short story.

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  Keiko and her friend accompanying Sayaka to high school in Yaiba, talking about Kaito and Aoko.

Shortly after Yaiba wrapped, Gosho Aoyama started his next weekly series, Detective Conan, which also began to interconnect heavily with Magic Kaito from the early chapters until today, even greatly surpassing the character's "on-panel time" in their own series. More about that below. The series itself settled down on a release interval of roughly 2 to 3 chapters every 3 to 4 years since "Red Tear" in 1995, one year into the creation of Detective Conan.

In the meantime, Magic Kaito got two animated adaptations: The TV specials Magic Kaito: Kid the Phantom Thief (2010-2012) and the syndicated series Magic Kaito 1412 (2014-2015), adapting the original chapters, but influencing the manga, too. Chikage Kuroba's full name and the new design/architecture for the Kuroba residence were first revealed in the TV specials, which Aoyama in turn adapted as canon for the manga. For Magic Kaito 1412 he collaborated with the anime staff in the creation of Kaitou Corbeau, teasing him at the end of the first episode while featuring him in a three chapter story arc of the manga that same month (October 2014) before the adaptation of the latter found its way into the anime series with the penultimate and final episode respectively. He also took over the idea of Konosuke Jii and professor Hiroshi Agasa being friends from the TV series for the "Sun Halo" manga chapters, a relationship which even found its way into Detective Conan with Haibara's Lost Phone Strap Case.

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  Chikage Kuroba's full name was revealed in the TV specials first.

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  The design of the Kuroba residence from the TV specials is now its official look in the manga, too.

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  Kaitou Corbeau was created in sync with the Magic Kaito 1412 staff.

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  Jii's and Agasa's friendship from Magic Kaito 1412 found its way into the manga and Detective Conan.

During all his time as a mangaka, Aoyama devloped a fixed process for creating chapters, which he demonstrated with chapter 34 of Magic Kaito (first chapter of "Sun Halo") in a documentary released in 2017. After proposing an idea for a new plot with his editor, he creates a very rough storyboard, called a "name" (ネーム ,nēmu), on a block of lined paper most of the time, which serves as a plan of how the panels are organized on the page and indications of how the composition will be. When this is done and the editor is okay with the feel of the chapter, he starts drawing the rough pages, called the "draft" (下書き ,shitagakagi) or pre-manuscript, with his assistants, which gets attached with design sheets for new characters and settings, height relation charts for all characters featured in the respective chapter and similar conceptual artworks. At this stage, changes can still be made, before everything is finalized by inking (ペン入れ ,pen'ire) the draft, making it a finished manuscript. In the past, Aoyama inked everything with actual pens and ink before switching to PIGMA Micron markers because of a risk of tendinitis caused by too much pressure he put on the pens. By now, everything is inked digitally on a WACOM tablet, a process fellow Sunday mangaka Kenjiro Hata introduced in Aoyama's studio.

After this, screen tone gets used for textures and shadows and everything is ready to be sent out for lettering and printing.

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  Creation process of the first panel of page 10, chapter 34 (from left to right: storyboard, draft and inking).

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  The finalized tenth page of chapter 34 with tones and lettering.

Magic Kaito in Detective Conan

Kid and Conan regularly encounter each other in the latter's series.

According to Gosho Aoyama, he always wanted to throw in a phantom thief like the Fiend with Twenty Faces (from the Kogoro Akechi novels by Edogawa Rampo) as a one-time adversary for Conan Edogawa in the manga of Detective Conan and then remembered that he already has a character like that: Kaitou Kid from Magic Kaito. Proposing to his then-editor to include him in a special guest appearance, since he loved collaborations like Mazinger Z vs. Devilman since he was a child, he was against the idea at first, but relented later on. In the end, Kid proved to be so popular with readers that he went on to become a recurring character. There were early hints to their meeting one day long before the encounter, like the shared setting of Tropical Land, the movie franchise Gomera featured in both manga, professor Hiroshi Agasa owning one of the RZ-04 robots and Magic Kaito books found in some cases.

Since their first battle, he and some of his entourage have become a mainstay in the world of Conan, encountering numerous of its own characters and having two stories being direct tie-ins between both series. Yusaku Kudo was made the inventor of the "Kid" name in-universe, Toichi Kuroba served as mentor in the art of disguising to Yukiko Kudo and Sharon Vineyard and Magic Kaito character Shintaro Chaki debuted in Detective Conan. Saguru Hakuba also appeared, independent of Kid, during a competition of high school detectives. The existence of Chikage Kuroba's identity of Phantom Lady was first teased in a Detective Conan case. Besides those, inspector Ginzo Nakamori, his daughter Aoko Nakamori and Kid's assistant Konosuke Jii became characters who are canon to this franchise. The latter's establishment, the Blue Parrot Pool Bar, appeared in a case too, with a character unique to this series called Yuzuki Fukui serving as barkeeper and Aoyama confirming that it's supposed to be the exact building from Magic Kaito.

There even was a direct interference in the events of the main plot by Kid during the "Mystery Train" story arc (Manga: 818-824, Anime: 701-704), which Aoyama said was just because it's been a special occasion and that he wants to separate the series more again. He already draws the line in not depicting the everyday life of the Magic Kaito characters in Detective Conan and officially declaring Akako Koizumi and everything related to her as non-canon to Conan's world, also saying that real magic doesn't exist in it, explicitly placing the series in parallel universes sharing characters and some events. Despite this, there was at least one subtle allusion to Pandora by Kaitou Kid saying in the "Twin Bets" case (Manga: 862-864, Anime: 746-747) that this gem isn't the one he's looking for, hence giving it back. Aoyama also denied the Black Organization and the unnamed organization from Magic Kaito being one and the same.

Kaitou Kid also appeared in original spin-off media of the Detective Conan franchise, like OVAs, movies and games (see above).

Trivia

Shiratori's original character design from a Magic Kaito manuscript.

• The plot of the first Detective Conan movie, The Time-Bombed Skyscraper, was intended as a story arc for Magic Kaito for a while. Gosho Aoyama said that he already wrote the plot back in school, and considered it for Yaiba once, but it didn't fit the kind of story it was, and then for Magic Kaito, but there wasn't any opportunity to integrate it. When he got told that Detective Conan was getting a movie adaptation, he proposed the plot for this project, but says that he regrets it by now, since Teiji Moriya, the main antagonist, was based on James Moriarty and he would have preferred to tell a story like that in the manga. Because of this, Ninzaburo Shiratori was originally designed as a character for Magic Kaito before transitioning him to Detective Conan together with the plot he debuted in.
• Kaito Kid is cited in episode 34 of Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon anime series, aired on December 4, 2021.

See also

• Nonchalant Lupin
• Detective Conan
• Detective Conan Manga
• Yaiba

External links

• Magic Kaito on Wikipedia.