Crayon Shin-Chan

Crayon Shin-Chan, which is also known as Shin-Chan in the United States, is an anime based on a manga series written by Yoshito Usui. The anime is produced by Shin’ei Doga, and has been directed by Mitsuru Hongo, Keiichi Hara, and Yuji Muto. Crayon Shin-Chan first premiered in Japan on April 13, 1992, and is still on the air today; at least 600 episodes have been produced. The series airs on Animax and TV Asahi. FUNimation Entertainment holds the licensing rights to Crayon Shin-Chan in the United States, and the series airs on Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" block.

Crayon Shin-Chan follows the antics of a five-year-old boy named Shinnosuke “Shin” Nohara. These antics tend to include Shin’s parents, neighbors, and friends. The series is set in Kasukabe, Saitama Prefecture, Japan. In the Japanese version of the series, many of the jokes come from Shin-chan’s occasionally weird, unnatural, and inappropriate use of language. The jokes also come from Shin’s inappropriate behavior.

FUNimation Entertainment acquired the license to Crayon Shin-Chan in 2005. When FUNimation produced the American dub of the series, the company took a lot of liberties with the original source material. Since the original Japanese series lacks a sense of continuity, FUNimation has taken advantage of this by producing the episodes out of their original order. However, FUNimation’s approach has caused some characters to be introduced earlier in the series than they were in the original Japanese version. The American dub also created new, previously non-existent backstories for the characters. FUNimation has also given very different personalities to some of the characters.

Another thing FUNimation did when they produced the American dub of Crayon Shin-Chan was to make it an adult-oriented series. There is a bit of swearing (from both the children and adults in the series), there are numerous sexual references, and dark humor. There are also references to current popular American culture; for example, a couple of episodes reference the failed Presidential bid of Rudy Giuliani.

Most episodes of Crayon Shin-Chan have received a TV rating of TV-14, although a few have actually received a TV-MA rating. Crayon Shin-Chan is definitely not an anime property being aimed at young children, even if the title character is a five-year-old boy. Personally, I would recommend this series to anime viewers who are fifteen or sixteen years of age and older that appreciate “gross out” humor, dark humor, swearing, and sexual references.