The Detective Conan side of the crossover with Star Detective Pretty Cure! is interesting for a number of reasons, not just because it's a fun episode by itself, but because of how, as an anime original (i.e. material made up by anime staff and not adapted from the original manga, "filler") episode, it breaks a lot of the usual conventions and rules that such episodes have to follow in the Detective Conan anime.
In the June 2025 issue of Newtype, Yoshio Urasawa and Akira Yamatoya, episodic writers for the Detective Conan anime, did an interview regarding this specific topic.
The main limitation is what Detective Conan characters can be used in such episodes. Urasawa himself stated that, he prefers to use primarily Conan and Kogoro so as to not rock the boat, while Yamatoya says he wants to try writing for all sorts of characters from the series. Notably, Yamatoya is the writer for "The Gold-Star Answer," the Detective Conan episode that featured Cure Answer.
And this makes sense, if you look back at the last five years of the Detective Conan anime, if you chose a random anime original episode, you are most likely getting one where the main cast is: Conan and Kogoro (and maybe Ran), or Conan and the Detective Boys (and maybe Haibara).
A lot of this comes from the higher-ups, as Junichi Iioka, the story editor for the Detective Conan anime, seems to micromanage most of the anime original content, leaving writers like Urasawa and Yamatoya out of the picture.
The production of anime original content in Detective Conan was brought up again in the June 2026 issue of DIME, with the same caveats of limiting the pool of characters in an episode, keeping cases self-contained to one episode, etc.
Notably, this issue talks about how Gosho Aoyama, the original mangaka, is involved with anime original content. He usually has a more hands-off approach, not reviewing scripts anymore, but being asked if any specific questions arise.
So going back to the Detective Conan Ć Star Detective Pretty Cure! crossover, why is all this relevant?
It notably stands out as an anime original episode because Kaito Kid appears in it, his first time ever in an anime original episode, given what was established about limiting the pool of characters in such content.
Kaito Kid as a character also is in a weird state of limbo in the series at the moment, both the anime and original manga. Here's his most recent appearances across the manga, anime, and movies since 2018, thanks to etrangeres for the info:
"Fairy Lips" case (Manga - Aug 2018, Anime - Oct 2020)
"Fist of the Blue Sapphire" (Movie 23 - April 2019)
"Queen's Bang" case (Manga - Jul 2021, Anime - Dec 2023)
"Crown Trick" case (Manga - Sept 2022, Anime - Jan 2025)
"Azure Throne" case (Manga - Nov 2023, Anime - Mar 2026)
"The Million Dollar Pentagram" (Movie 27 - April 2024)
Basically, Kaito Kid hasn't appeared in the main manga since November 2023, and the anime episodes that adapted that most-recent appearance only just aired back in March. Looking at just the manga, we are likely going on three years since Kaito Kid last appeared, and if Aoyama were to write a Kaito Kid case in the manga today, we most likely wouldn't see it in the anime until around 2027-2028 at the earliest, given the anime is about two years behind the manga.
As such, his appearance in the Pretty Cure crossover episode acts as sort of a "stopgap" in providing a bit more Kaito Kid content for fans now that we are entering a "big drought" for his appearances. But also, him appearing was a necessity to make the crossover work.
In the lead-up to the crossover episodes, there was a series of roundtable interviews with staff from both Detective Conan and Star Detective Pretty Cure! about how they were able to make things work.
The Detective Conan staff showed the script of the crossover episode to Gosho Aoyama, who stated that "magic and fantasy" had no place in its world, which greatly limited how they could incorporate the fantastical elements of Pretty Cure, such as transformations, into the world.
So what they end up doing? Rather than have the actual Pretty Cure appear, they had Kaito Kid dress up as Cure Answer, and instead of actual magical powers, he used his usual "magic tricks" that were already established in the world of Detective Conan, which I think was a clever way of adhering to that series' more realistic nature.
Even so, as a Pretty Cure fan, I, and a few others, are sort of disappointed that Cure Answer was the only character to appear in the Detective Conan episode. The fact that Cure Mystique didn't appear is baffling, since in the actual Star Detective Pretty Cure!, they transform together, not separate (similar to what was the norm in the first few Pretty Cure seasons), while in Detective Conan, Anna transformed into Cure Answer solo. But I think there may be a reason why that was.
There was another roundtable discussion between staff members, this time as a video, released in joint by both the official Detective Conan and Pretty Cure YouTube channels. There's no transcript/translation of it yet, but in it, there's a part where they discuss how the Detective Conan team had to come up with the script for the crossover before Star Detective Pretty Cure! even began airing, i.e. they only had a few pieces of information to work off of.
Also, there's only one Kaito Kid, i.e. a character who can disguise himself as virtually anyone. I mean, maybe if you had Yukiko or Vermouth dress as Cure Mystique then...
On the other hand, for the Pretty Cure team, they had three decades worth of episodes of Detective Conan to work with, being very familiar with the material. That being said, the Pretty Cure side of the crossover does make some notable omissions. While it's the 18th episode of Star Detective Pretty Cure!, it omits certain parts of the narrative that have already been established, such as Pochitan being able to talk, no other attacks like the "Answer Hanamaru Sword," and no mention of Luluka/Cure Arcana Shadow. It seems like this crossover episode was made to be put it at any point in the season, and to be watched by non-Pretty Cure fans with little trouble.
Speaking of Cure Arcana Shadow, during the second part of the series of interviews I linked earlier, when the staff were asked if there were any more crossover-related ideas they wanted to try exploring in the feature (NOTE: this does not guarantee more crossover content), one of the producers for Star Detective Pretty Cure! mentioned how he wanted the team to face off against Kaito Kid, and for Conan to face off against Cure Arcana Shadow. The team also expressed interest in having the "police detectives" appear, which is a bit vague, but I assume they mean characters like Inspector Megure and Officer Takagi. The Detective Conan team mentioned how they wanted the other Pretty Cure to appear, as complicating to the narrative as that would be, and doing so would mean they'd have to do a two-part case so that each character could be fully developed. So their hands were pretty much tied.
Going back to the video above, the Star Detective Pretty Cure! producer mentioned how he wanted to have Haibara and Higo, characters from Detective Conan, appear in their crossover episode as well. However, specifcially in the case of Higo, who is a soccer player, since there's an upcoming collab between Detective Conan and J.League, Japan's national soccer team, that idea had to be shelved.
It's a long shot for sure, but I hope we see more parts of this collab later in the year.
(Thanks to DavidHolandaOne for the magazine info)
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