Shinnosuke and His Devilish Red Crayon
Since most places I’ve been to that’s centered around Anime and Manga have zero clue on who this child is (because if I’m gonna be dead honest, a huge chunk of those shops clearly only like bootlicking One Piece and later Dragon Ball and… yeah, that’s pretty much it), I’d have to do the honors of explaining in front of the class. So, this is Shin-chan (or going by the full title mainly used for the Manga, Crayon Shin-chan), one of those weird animes from the early 1990s that never quite figured out who it’s targeted towards. It’s around an absolutely dysfunctional family at it’s raw core. A very loving family shockingly, but one where everyone are special nutcases in their own selves. From Misae, the mother who has a worse violent temper than a chimpanzee to Hiro, the breadmaker of the family who either is a surprisingly responsible and caring father figure or a complete woman-lusting basketcase who always takes the chance to tease his wife who he surprisingly ACTUALLY loves (He’s still an alcoholic though, so baby steps here. This ain’t gonna FULLY destroy every 2000s adult animated sitcom trope by itself), to their little baby daughter, Hima, who’s… ALSO a model lusting nut who’ll grab ahold onto anything shiny and clearly hasn’t reached the stage of “think before you act”. But the main son, Shin, is the prime example of how unearthly everyone in that house is. He takes the crown for one of the WEIRDEST kids ever written, especially when it comes to how he is towards anything he likes; He shoves entire boxes of japanese cookies down in one gulp, he one minute will go completely bonkers over a woman (are you seeing a pattern here?), but then the literal next second will cross-dress and does anything to seduce his male friends in school, he swings his dick around and calls it an elephant out in public (which actually ended up being a MAJOR problem when it came time to localize the series to other countries), he bare-ass dances around and somehow makes him run faster, I’m like 95% confident he has some kind of ADHD due to how he’ll switch his focus on like 5 different things in the matter of seconds.
Now, this might sound like a recipe for disaster for a series, but the most surprising thing is… I really REALLY love this show. I adore the absolute unfiltered attitude everyone will randomly have to make as many amazingly solid jokes and gags as possible, I love the crudely modeled yet surprisingly fluid animation, this being a popular series from Japan to the surprise of nobody turns out as many off-the-wall weirdness and near Looney Tunes-like wackyness as possible which is ALWAYS a plus to me, but I think what I love the MOST about this whole thing is how surprisingly well-written everyone is. It’s one of the more realistic portrayals of a chaotic family that to the outside world would never work as a group that would even want to live with each other, but in reality, very does care for one another. All of them are weird heavily flawed people yet they still know they wouldn’t want to leave each other for anyone. It’s something most pieces of animation aimed at adults fail at time and time again, and this is (depending on the dub) mainly aimed towards children.
Now, the question of do I like the regular version more than what most people think of when they hear of Shin, which is the late 2000s heavily jokeified-dub done by Funimation… Yeah, I prefer the original. Early season 1 of the Funimation dub has its fair share of solid jokes newly written, but after season 1 and towards season 2, it REALLY outstays it’s welcome, especially since they decide to do the amazing idea of making the actual uniquely written family just like EVERY OTHER FUCKING FOX SITCOM FAMILY! Because we CLEARLY don’t have enough of those and it CLEARLY won’t ruin the chances of these characters ever getting a comeback in the states since Funimation couldn’t calm it the hell down with the writing. You think Disney’s gonna save their asses?! They straight up REJECTED the tamer dub made in the early 2000s despite it being cool with literally every other country. Same company that made Brandy and Mr. Whiskers around the exact same time by the way.
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