Crayon Shinchan

In researching Crayon Shinchan, I came across a few reviewers who suggested Crayon Shinchan was on par with Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes in terms of originality, brilliance and accuracy in the nature of being a child.

I must have missed something.

Created by Yoshito Usui, Crayon Shinchan is currently one of the most popular anime in Japan. Each half hour episode is divided into short segments from the life and antics and Shinchan, a five-year-old boy who raises Hell for his much suffering mother and father. Before it made television headlines, Crayon Shinchan, like most anime, started as a manga in a weekly magazine. ComicsOne has started releasing this series in collections for the English reading audience.

Within this trade paperback is a series of short stories told in the same vein as comic newspaper strips. The stories are only a few pages long and stand on their own. This makes Crayon Shinchan suitable material for sporadic periods of reading. You read a story, put it down, and then come back to it when you have a chance without needing to worry you've forgotten something. And this is exactly what I did. I couldn't fully immerse myself in the humour of this collection and so I found myself reading one or two stories and then walking away. I had no real burning desire to find out what terrible things Shinchan would do next.

Shinchan is five years old, and yet he has his own firm opinions on matters such as the opposite sex, parenting, relationships, and he also has a strong grasp of the spoken word. This latter characteristic I can live with because we've seen similar in cartoons and comic strips throughout the ages. What I didn't find particularly funny was his crass talk, disrespect for his parents (especially his mother) and off-the-wall behavior.

I was also a little shocked at the reams of physical abuse heaped on Shinchan by his mother. She is constantly slapping, pinching and hitting Shinchan, even for the smallest infraction. Indeed, Shinchan is often seen with lumps on his head or a tanned arse. Even when Shinchan is behaving himself he is presented as an annoyance or inconvenience for his parents. On the other side of the coin, Shinchan continually berates and insults his parents, especially his mother. Both parents and child never express a genuine feeling of affection for one another.

The ebb and flow of the words and images just didn't create the laughs. Usui is treading a lot of the same ground explored with Bart Simpson and the kids of South Park. Crayon Shinchan lacks the innovation of The Simpsons' scripts and falls short of the potty mouth and extreme antics of South Park. Crayon Shinchan falls somewhere in the middle, a place where only an occasional chuckle resides.

If this collection fails in the writing department, then it has to work extra hard in the area of art to keep me focused. You won't find whimsical, charming cartooning within Crayon Shinchan, however. The art is very simplistic. The characters are little more than sketches. The backgrounds are as good as nonexistent. It is, in total, lacking for any saving grace in the art department.

Crayon Shinchan may be one of the most popular anime and manga being released today, but I fail to see the attraction.

Source : http://www.comicreaders.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=25