Shin Chan: Season One - Part One DVD Review - IGN (original) (raw)

When Crayon Shin-chan aired on Japanese television many years ago, the show created something of a scandal. Parents' groups and PTAs and lots of other think-of-the-children organizations threw back their heads and howled at the thought of what effect the show might have on Japan's impressionable kiddies.

One wonders, then, what they'd say if you showed them the American edition. Adult Swim's re-dub took an already crass cartoon and made it an order of magnitude more offensive than the original. It's arguably more funny, too, but be warned that more sober viewers might not think so.

Shin-chan began life as a comic strip and TV cartoon about a kindergartner, Shinnosuke Nohara. Shin-chan (for short) is like a Japanese Calvin with a barely-controlled exhibitionist streak, a holy terror to every adult and authority figure in range. Even before Funimation got its hands on him, he got his kicks stripping down, waving his buttocks around, and hollering "BURI BURI!" at onlooking strangers. (There's also his infamous "Zo-san" dance, which is basically impossible to describe on a family-friendly website.)

This would have worked on Adult Swim without any changes to the original dialogue, but Funimation and the Cartoon Network decided to amp things up a bit anyhow. Cartoonist Evan Dorkin (famous for Milk & Cheese and his Dork! anthology comics), fellow indie comics fave Sarah Dyer (Action Girl) and other American writers hopped on board to add a little bit more edge to the series.

The result is like an incredibly vulgar version of what Woody Allen created in What's Up Tiger Lily? If you're a hardcore cult film buff, it might remind you of Dynaman – where the Kids in the Hall redubbed several episodes of a _Power Rangers_-style sentai series – or old-school anime parody dubs like Dirty Pair Does Dishes. The new script fires off gags as fast as the original lip-flaps allow, and there are very few depths to which it's not willing to sink.

A lot of anime fans got thoroughly outraged over the changes to the American version, because that's what anime fans do. They're hard-wired to blow up the second they hear the word "edit" – it's just one of those Pavlovian things. The fact of the matter, though, is that the difference between the two editions is only a matter of degree. Unlike Dynaman or Does Dishes, this isn't an outright parody. Shin-chan was already enthusiastically scatological before Dorkin, Dyer and company got their hands on the show. The fruit of their labors merely turns things up a few notches.

While funny is in the eye of the beholder, anyone with a reasonable sense of humor beholding this is probably going to find it pretty funny. The jokes come so fast that even if one falls flat, it'll quickly wind up trampled under the three or four that come rushing up behind it. If you ever enjoyed the Beavis & Butt-Head, Farrelly Brothers school of non-stop affront to decency, this ought to be right up your alley.

True, it's too bad that this box set doesn't also have the original Japanese episodes, with the original audio and video. Maybe some business shenanigans or what-have-you prevented their inclusion, but otherwise surely it wouldn't have been too hard to commission an English subtitle script and spare some bits for a second audio track. Even if it meant adding extra discs and a higher asking price, it would have been worth it -- the original series is pretty funny in its own right, and watching a translation of the original dialogue over the English-language audio would have been pretty interesting in a Dada-ist kind of way. As it is, the extras selection includes one original Japanese episode for comparison, but it's a far cry from getting to see all 13 episodes before they underwent their trans-Pacific metamorphosis.

Nevertheless, what you get from this set is a whole lot of yucks for the asking price. It's rude, crude, puerile, and liable to tick off most major racial, cultural, and socioeconomic groups, but nobody ever said polite drawing-room witticism was the only way to make people laugh.

Score: 7 out of 10
Video and Presentation

The video here is about as good as you're going to get given the age and quality of the source material. While the simple character designs mask the amount of effort that went into the animation – there's lot of motion and variation in most of the shots in this show – it's still a kids' cartoon made 15-plus years ago. It's a little grainy, the colors look washed-out from time to time, the picture shakes a bit on occasion, and once in a while you'll see dirt or marks on the original film pop up. Still, this isn't bad for something this old, especially considering that the 13 episodes fit on only two discs. When the American version makes the occasional change to the video (swapping in new messages on a sign, for instance), the edits blend in just fine with the original visuals.

Score: 6 out of 10

Languages and Audio

There's just the one English-language stereo track here. It's clear enough for the demands the show makes of it – you won't have trouble picking out any of the rapid-fire dialogue – and that's about all there is to say. Once again, the original Japanese audio would have been a nice bonus, but there's no sense crying over spilled subtitles.

Score: 5 out of 10

Packaging and Extras

The two discs come in a nicely-designed slipcase (with Zo-san splashed all over one side of the inner cover) and the interior gatefold opens up to show off a triptych of the entire cast. On the discs themselves, we get the following extras:

That first item is a 10-minute collection of bloopers, outtakes, and other bits from the cutting-room floor. The one commentary track, meanwhile, features director Zach Bolton, line producer and lead actor Laura Bailey, and recording engineer Peter Hawkinson, who have plenty to say about the technical aspects of dialogue replacement and the process of mutating Shin-chan into his American incarnation. It's too bad we didn't also get a chance to hear from some of the American screenwriters as well, but the three still have a lot to say about where some of the new gags were born.

Score: 7 out of 10

The Bottom Line

Purists, of course, will happily stick with their 10-year-old bootlegs from Hawaiian TV. The Funimation version of Shin-chan is a good laugh in its own right, though, and this is a well-produced set with a decent collection of extras to go with the show.