Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway review – motorbike whodunnit cranked up to top speed

The half-pint sleuth investigates another mystery with the franchise’s usual gorgeous cityscapes, sharply sketched characters and general brio

Coming hard on the heels of last year’s One-Eyed Flashback comes the 29th cinema outing for Conan Edogawa (voiced by Minami Takayama), the gumshoe forced to occupy a kid’s body. In the meantime, the franchise seems to have turned into Akira: the first 10 minutes opens not only with a seemingly phantom headless biker riding past Conan’s gang in the countryside, but then three more choppers tearing up a Yokohama freeway like an urban wall of death.

The half-pint sleuth and pals are on their way to a motorcycle convention, where the star of the show is Chihaya (Miyuki Sawashiro), the auburn-tressed elite bike cop who was pursuing the felons. The real torque of the town, though, is the mysterious black superbike that harries other two-wheelers; Conan tags on surreptitiously in wide-eyed-schoolboy mode, as he does, while Chihaya continues her investigation. On one street corner, she makes a pitstop at a floral tribute where her old unit chief Asagi (Yuko Sanpei) caused the death of another suspect.