Ah, I probably should have just waited a bit longer, then. ^^;

A lot would probably make more sense to entirely change if the tone were never allowed to get silly like in the beginning. I personally don’t like to change the story much, but I do pass off the gag to serious as time passing for Kaito. His pervy and jerkish behaviour died down later as well, so I always take it as half a year or more passing since he started going out at night as Kid. It actually wouldn’t be that hard to pass off in an actual anime, the manga itself has him taking a break for three months because he had tests and a cold to deal with, and that was just between two of his heists. (Of course, when Hakuba came in, they also said he’d done three heists in a row before the one the chapter focused on. His schedule as Kid is pretty lax, so long as everything is set before Pandora. After Pandora, both of those would be problems with how much danger he could possibly get in at any heist.)

There doesn’t need to be many plot changes to account for everything, really, just the anime really shouldn’t have sped up the plot process. Even if it’s for gag comedy purposes, the early Kid chapters were him taking up the costume with no idea of what he’s doing. He only has the vague knowledge that his dad was killed for being Kid, so having Kid come back might bring them out. There wasn’t any plan before that, so the random shenanigans that happened make sense, even in a plot perspective. It’s him getting used to the job, and sometimes using it outside of purely stealing and dodging police. Yeah, from a anime perspective it might be risky, depending on what people expect from the series, or the possibility of it not drawing interest without the central plot, but from a plot perspective, it’s really not a problem.

I don’t know, I feel like it’d work perfectly fine for an anime as is, if it were updated slightly to match the times. Like they adapted the most unneeded chapter, Ghost Game, in the newest anime as the first half of Akako’s second major appearance. It was a silly, generic, ‘check out the rumours of ghosts in the school after closing but it turns out to be nothing’ high school chapter, but they still kept it over the other more interesting chapter that actually had more material to work with.

Hakuba’s whole deal with being brought against Kid was because his father thinks his head is getting too big from all the cases he did solve. He wasn’t brought to help because they needed him, he was brought over because his father wanted him to get brought down, and Kid gives the police trouble, so if Hakuba did catch him, good, if he doesn’t, well, lesson is being taught, then. He’s supposed to be arrogant, until he has to plan more on how to deal with Kid. Kaito needed to up his skills as more and more trouble for him started coming up, and it makes perfectly decent character development for everyone in the series. (Except Aoko, because with her, it’s more like we see more about her, but she hasn’t changed at all compared to the rest of the main cast.)

…So it’s mostly that fish phobia that’s strange and never explained, never used for any real reason, the rest of the story isn’t too bad. …Except the org looking for Pandora never checking on the Kuroba house, that really doesn’t make sense when they knew the original was Toichi. At the very least, ask people around the family for information that might lead them to who Kid might be.