The last of the original Sherlock Holmes short stories have just entered the public domain, Moriarty the Patriot's second season is on the way, and Case Closed is still plugging steadily on even after passing the thousand-episode mark: it's a great time to be a Holmes fan! The great detective has inspired many characters in media, and manga and their subsequent anime adaptations are no exception.
Whether it's an interpretation of Holmes himself or a character based on Holmes' famous mannerisms and eccentricities, many manga characters pay tribute to the famous detective.
Shinichi Kudou - Case Closed
Shinichi Kudou might only be seventeen, but he’s already gained a reputation as the “Heisei [Era] Holmes” for his habit of helping the police solve crimes with his genius-level intellect, in one of the longest anime of all time. But when criminals try to poison him in revenge, he is transformed into a small child instead of killed. Keeping his identity under wraps to protect himself, Shinichi continues to solve cases while he looks for a cure.
Both in-universe and out, Shinichi is inspired by Sherlock Holmes. When forced to assume a new identity to solve cases as a child, he takes the name Conan Edogawa: “Edogawa” for Edogawa Ranpo, creator of Japan’s premier classic detective Kogoro Akechi, and “Conan” for Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes.
Sherdog - Sherlock Bones
Many anime characters have loyal canines who help them in whatever they pursue, but this manga has a truly unique case: both the dog and his person are not only the reincarnations of a pair of friends but the reincarnations of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson themselves!
Takeru Wajima feels a strange attachment to a dog he finds at the pound and adopts the lonely-looking little puppy. However, when Sherdog picks up an heirloom pipe, he informs Takeru that he is the reborn Sherlock Holmes, and he intends to keep solving crimes with Takeru’s help. Takeru, coming from a long line of police, is fully on board with this plan.
Kiyotaka Yagashira - Holmes of Tokyo
In this novel series adapted into both a manga and an anime, Aoi moves to Tokyo and begins work in an antique shop, where the proprietor, Kiyotaka, has powerful deductive skills. He mostly uses this talent to tell fake antiques from real ones, but like Sherlock Holmes meeting any new person, as soon as he lays eyes on Aoi he deduces everything about her in seconds.
Kiyotaka finds his nickname of Holmes to be ridiculous, but it’s still very accurate. He never misses a detail about any person or object, though he is often puzzled by more abstract emotional experiences like romance. Also much like Holmes, he’s generally easygoing, but can be quite cutting when he encounters somebody he doesn’t like.
John H. Watson - Empire of Corpses
While Holmes naturally takes the lead in the original Doyle stories, Watson steadily picks up on how Holmes comes to his accurate deductions and learns to make some of his own. So it’s only natural that in one manga and its film adaptation, Watson takes the lead in Holmes’ role.
Holmes technically does appear in this, but only at the very end, when all the action is largely over with. Before he shows up, Watson has to deal with hordes of hostile zombies as he searches for Victor Frankenstein’s reanimation technology for the British Secret Service, all the while also piecing together the mysteries of recreating a soul and of Frankenstein’s original creation. It’s that kind of manga.
Heinrich Lunge - Monster
Matching one of the smartest anime antagonists of all time (though he doesn’t realize exactly who he’s up against until late in the game), Inspector Lunge takes Holmes’ occasional insensitivity and difficulty with emotion and ramps it up by a thousand, living only for his work and feeling nothing for others, to the point where he doesn’t care at all about his wife and daughter leaving him for the neglect he’s shown them.
His belief that Johan doesn't exist and that Dr. Tenma is the murderer he’s after is no defect of his intelligence or profiling skills: Johan is simply that inhuman, and Lunge is horrified to realize just how little of a trace he leaves. Like Holmes, he’s not ashamed to admit when he’s been wrong, and from that point on aids Tenma in the pursuit of Johan.
L - Death Note
This iconic detective is the source of many of Death Note’s most unexpectedly funny quotes, being fairly out of touch with other people as a result of devoting his life to solving impossible cases since childhood. Case in point: L is the only one the police can turn to to when they can’t track the serial killer Kira.
L is considerably more awkward and less put together than the gentlemanly and quite sociable Holmes, but his genuine anger at Kira and all those who cause chaos and death thinking they won’t face consequences is very like Holmes when confronted with those who abuse the innocent. As with Holmes’ pursuit of Moriarty, L has to work through a web of mysteries until he can get close to Kira.
Hajime Kindaichi - The Kindaichi Case Files
Kindaichi is the hero of one of the most popular manga of the 1990s. Like Holmes, this teen genius doesn’t solve cases for personal gain and doesn’t mind when others underestimate him or his intelligence, and though he may be carefree in his free time, he never messes around when there’s a mystery to be solved, and lives at stake.
While Holmes pointedly doesn’t talk about his family, save for his brother Mycroft, Kindaichi is proud to admit that he gets his skills from his detective grandfather, Kosuke. Furthermore, he even has a sworn nemesis, like Holmes’ Moriarty, in Yoichi Takato, who is exactly as smart but far more malicious.
Sherlock Holmes - I Am Sherlock
Even in a bleak science-fiction future, the duo of Holmes and Watson are sure to find each other. John Watson has got no job, no place to live, and not much hope for the future, but all that changes when a stranger called Sherlock Holmes invites him to be his roommate. Upon arriving, he discovers that Sherlock is not another human, but an incredibly advanced and intelligent android.
Naturally, Watson stays despite his surprise, and he and his new robotic friend continue their traditional team-up to solve the many convoluted cases they’re presented with. While many of them are in line with the original Doyle stories, the futuristic setting allows for some creativity and twists on the classic mysteries.
Sherlock Holmes - Moriarty The Patriot
In one of the best anime based on classic literature, a young William Moriarty begins his life of crime. He has noble intentions — disgusted by the aristocracy he was raised in, he seeks to better Britain by burning the whole upper class down — but his sadistic streak quickly sends him down a slippery slope.
While in the original stories, Holmes is cagey on the specifics of how he became aware of his greatest enemy, this manga’s Holmes is Moriarty’s friend and only intellectual match, who is unaware of his true identity as a criminal. He has the same goal as Moriarty but is unwilling to harm people to achieve it, even if he’s not exactly as polite and polished as his friend.
Edogawa Ranpo - Bungou Stray Dogs
While Ranpo takes his name from the aforementioned Japanese author and creator of a different famous detective, his inverness cape and deerstalker hat, as well as his sky-high confidence in his intelligence, are all very Sherlock Holmes. (The other members of the Armed Detective Agency don't play Watson very well, but it's not like he minds.)
Unbeknownst to Ranpo, he is the only member of the Agency without any special Ability: his fast and infallible powers of deduction are innate, yes, but they are entirely mundane. Ranpo, however, believes that he can only unlock his powers by donning the glasses that his boss Fukuzawa gifted him, so the only way to hinder him is to take them away.