Name: Detective Conan: The Counterfeit Case of Ultra 30
Director: Nobuharu Kamanaka
Genre: Animation, Mystery, Crime, Action
Released: 2026-09-25T00:00:00+00:00
Duration: 93 min
Cast: Minami Takayama, Akemi Okamura, Kappei Yamaguchi, Rikiya Koyama, Elaiza Ikeda

A forged ten-thousand-yen note turns up at a Tokyo murder scene, good enough that it takes a forensic examiner to confirm it is fake. It is the thirtieth counterfeit recorded in Japan, which is how the police come to call the case the Ultra 30, and before long the investigation has spread from the capital to banknote plants in Osaka, on the Shizuoka-Kanagawa border and on the Nagano-Gunma border. That is the set-up of Detective Conan: The Counterfeit Case of Ultra 30, the two-hour special made to mark three decades of the television anime. Its next stop is an unusual one for a TV episode: the cinema.

In Japan the special went out on Nippon TV’s Friday Road Show and then became a Netflix exclusive there. In South Korea, CJ ENM is opening it exclusively at CGV in a subtitled version and a Korean dub, the first Korean-dubbed Conan release in cinemas since Zero the Enforcer and, according to the distributor, the first time a Conan TV episode or compilation has reached Korean screens with local voices. Muse Communication follows in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Long-running shows have always known how to make an episode feel like an occasion. Selling one as a night out is a newer trick, and Conan has the audience to attempt it.

Screenwriter Takeharu Sakurai has been open about the design. “As a commemorative work for the TV anime, I thought this one should be a festival,” he told Cinema Today. “In that case, I wanted as many of the regulars as possible to take part.” A counterfeit ring, he explained, was a crime that could plausibly pull in police officers scattered across the country. So the roll call runs long: Heiji Hattori in Osaka, the Yokomizo brothers of the Shizuoka and Kanagawa prefectural police, the Nagano trio of Kansuke Yamato, Takaaki Morofushi and Yui Uehara, Public Security’s Toru Amuro and the FBI’s Shuichi Akai. The guest star is the actor Elaiza Ikeda, who voices Toko Satomi, a document examiner at the National Police Agency’s forensic research institute and the specialist who rules the note a near-perfect fake. Ikeda was born the same year the anime began. “I recently reached my own 30th anniversary, so it makes me really happy to think I’ve lived through the same era as Conan,” she said.

There is an old television habit behind that arithmetic. Procedurals that last long enough start marking their milestones by filling the room with every recurring face, and Sakurai knows the form from the inside. Alongside Conan features such as Black Iron Submarine and One-eyed Flashback, he has been one of the main writers of Kasouken no Onna, the forensic-lab drama whose scientist heroine is a close cousin of Ikeda’s document examiner, and he has written for the police series Aibou. Director Nobuharu Kamanaka, a current co-director of the weekly series, arrives from Wild Police Story, the anime of the Police Academy spin-off. The Korean release adds a lineage of its own. In the local version Inspector Megure has long been known as Inspector Columbo, an open nod to the American detective show, and, according to Newspim’s account of the dubbed trailer, the forged note becomes a new 100,000-won bill, a denomination South Korea does not actually print; its largest note is 50,000 won.

The cast also carries the weight of a show that has changed underneath its audience. Minami Takayama still voices Conan, with Kappei Yamaguchi as Shinichi Kudo, Rikiya Koyama as Kogoro Mouri and Megumi Hayashibara as Ai Haibara. Ran Mouri, though, is now voiced by Akemi Okamura, who took over the role in the TV series in March after Wakana Yamazaki stepped away for health reasons. Yamazaki, who had played Ran for some three decades, died in April at 61. A special conceived as a party arrives without the voice that anchored Ran for nearly the whole life of the show.

None of this turns a television special into a film, and nothing in the announcements from CJ ENM or Muse Communication points to new footage or a re-edit for theatres. The running time TMDB lists, 93 minutes, is roughly what a two-hour commercial broadcast slot leaves once the breaks come out, and Korean and Taiwanese fans will be paying for something Japanese viewers saw free on network television and can now stream. The all-hands premise has its own cost: with a cast list this long sharing a single case, the arithmetic suggests most of the guests on the poster will get a scene or two rather than a story, the usual bargain of anniversary television. And in South Korea it is the fourth Conan title in cinemas inside a year, after One-eyed Flashback, the first local theatrical run of The Last Wizard of the Century and Fallen Angel of the Highway. Appetite has not been the problem. Whether a festival still feels like an event on its fourth outing is the open question.

Conan Edogawa in a still from Detective Conan The Counterfeit Case of Ultra 30 (2026) — Conan in *Detective Conan: The Counterfeit Case of Ultra 30* (2026)

The Counterfeit Case of Ultra 30 is directed by Nobuharu Kamanaka from a screenplay by Takeharu Sakurai, with animation by TMS Entertainment, from the characters of Gosho Aoyama’s manga. Mai Kuraki, a long-time franchise collaborator, sings the closing theme, “Hallelujah”, and two real announcers from Nippon TV and Yomiuri TV voice newsreaders inside the story.

The special premiered in Japan on 25 September on Nippon TV’s Friday Road Show and is streaming there exclusively on Netflix. CJ ENM opens it in South Korea on 5 November, exclusively at CGV, in subtitled and Korean-dubbed versions, and Muse Communication releases it in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau on 6 November. No cinema or streaming release has been announced for the United States, the United Kingdom or other English-language markets.