B'z -- Don't Wanna Lie

It's an irony that is worthy of any of the plots on this anime, but in all of the years that I was in Japan, I never saw "Meitantei Conan"（名探偵コナン...Great Detective Conan） over there, but I have ended up watching the long-running adventures of Conan Edogawa and his buddies every Thursday night on TV Japan over here in The Great White North under its official English title of "Case Closed". My parents and I have been enjoying it although my overall impression is that it never really caught on all that much in North America for some reason (maybe those 10 minutes of the shrunken pipsqueak explaining how he cracked the case were just too much for anime fans).

I'm not quite sure about how successful that other long-running adventure caper, "Lupin The Third", has been here, but the one thing that probably did strike pay dirt was the legendary theme song. In the case of "Conan", however, the series has usually relied on ever-changing theme songs by folks like Mai Kuraki（倉木麻衣）, Zard and Garnet Crow.

Then there is B'z. Y'know...I never took Koushi Inaba and Takahiro Matsumoto（稲葉浩志・松本孝弘）to be anison guys, but apparently they have been providing theme tunes for "Meitantei Conan" since 1999 with "Giri Giri Chop"（ギリギリchop）. And the one I've been hearing for the past several weeks on the family TV is their 49th single from June 2011, "Don't Wanna Lie".

Inaba wrote the lyrics and Matsumoto provided the melody. It's definitely a B'z tune with the blistering guitar and it's appropriately heroic as well. There's almost something operatic as well which has me comparing it to some of the more dramatic Queen songs from my youth such as "Bohemian Rhapsody". And according to Inaba (via J-Wiki), that was his intention for the overarching theme for the song: Don't lie to yourself at that important time in your life. In fact, the temporary title before its release was "Moment of Truth".  After reading this and listening to the song in its entirety, I simply want Conan to come clean and tell Ran-chan who he really is. Not that it's going to happen any time soon or ever.

"Don't Wanna Lie" debuted at No. 1 and hit Platinum. By the end of the year, it was the 28th-ranked song. The song also was a track on their 18th album, "C'mon" from July 2011. Not surprisingly, it also hit No. 1 and was the 11th-ranked album of the year. It also got onto "The Best of Detective Conan 4", an album of the various theme tunes from the series.