Ask John: Why Don’t Americans Like Crayon Shin-chan?

Question:
What’s your opinion on Kureyon Shin-chan? While the show remains listed as one of the last TV programs in Japan for parents to have their children watch, the movies are highly and critically acclaimed. When _Moretsu Otona-Teikoku no Gyakusyu_ (“Like Anything! The Empire of the Grown People Strikes Back”) was released in 2001, some critics ranked it higher than Miyazaki’s _Spirited Away_. Shinchan the movies, however, are seldom mentioned in the U.S. anime fan community.

I saw Otona-Teikoku last month for the first time and thought it was hard to share fun and sentimentalism of it with foreigners because it’s very difficult to explain what Osaka World Exposition or Osaka Banpaku in ’70 really means to us. For example, Otomo talked in an interview that he had directed _Steam Boy_ thinking of EXPO70.

Answer:
Crayon Shin-chan is one of the clearest examples of the fundamental differences between Japanese and Western anime fans and viewers. Even though I’m aware that Japanese polls report that Japanese parents consider Crayon Shin-chan a bad influence on their children, presumably because the show encourages bad behavior and lack of respect for parents and authority figures, Crayon Shin-chan is a children’s anime. Anime for children and families, like Crayon Shin-chan, Sazae-san, Chibi Maruko-chan, Doraemon, Anpanman, and many others, are consistently the most watched anime series broadcast on Japanese television. But they remain virtually unknown to the majority of European, Australian, and American anime fans. One of the main reasons for this, I believe, is Western fandom’s antipathy to overt children’s anime. “Kodomo anime” are just not popular with the vast majority of English speaking fans. I believe these types of shows aren’t popular because English speaking anime fans are hesitant to even attempt to like them. For Western viewers, animation is thought of as merely children’s cartoons, so many Western fans gravitate toward anime titles that contradict that stereotype, and avoid anime titles that seem immature or are associated with children. The Crayon Shin-chan television series premiered on the Fox Kids network in the U.K. in 2002 and is still airing today. Subtitled episodes have aired on Hawaii’s KIKU TV network, but have never been broadcast in the continental United States. Comics One published numerous volumes of Crayon Shin-chan manga in America, but the series was largely overlooked by American manga consumers. So even though there have been attempts to introducing English speaking viewers to Crayon Shin-chan, none of the attempts have achieved any influential, lasting success.

I’ve been a fan of Crayon Shin-chan since first discovering the show in the late 1990s. I’ve watched numerous TV episodes and five of the motion pictures (specifically movies 3, 4, 6, 9 and 12). Based on my experience with the series, I can guess why the TV series receives less praise and support than the theatrical movies. The Crayon Shin-chan television series is a domestic comedy that presents a humorous look at everyday events. It’s often referred to by Americans as a Japanese version of The Simpsons. The theatrical movies, on the other hand, deal with far more exaggerated, fantastic stories: time travel, feudal Japan, giant robots, cowboys, aliens, international spies, magic, and so forth. The movies are also typified by unusually fluid, high quality animation that’s often overlooked because the art design of Crayon Shin-chan is so childish. The television series is mundane and mildly funny. The motion pictures are wildly inventive, exciting, and exhilarating adventures that any viewer can thoroughly enjoy. (Personally, my favorite film is movie 3, “Unkokusai no Yabou.”) Spirited Away is a marvelous family friendly animated film. But it has a heavy, somber atmosphere, and I’ve heard numerous critics say that Chihiro’s personality isn’t illustrated clearly enough. The “Otona Teikoku no Gyakushu” movie has a much lighter tone and a sense of fun that’s not present in Spirited Away. At the same time, the ninth Crayon Shin-chan movie is an adventure movie for children that also has a sweet, nostalgic feel specifically designed to appeal to (Japanese) adult viewers. I think that Spirited Away is the more impressive film, and as a foreign viewer I think Spirited Away has a more easily accessible universal appeal than the 2001 Crayon Shin-chan movie, which seems more precisely targeted at Japanese viewers. But I do also think that “Otona Teikoku no Gyakushu” is an excellent anime film. It’s just a film that’s more difficult for non-Japanese viewers to fully appreciate.

I suspect that many English speaking viewers approach anime with the goal of having anime fulfill their own demands and expectations. English speaking fans that want to watch animation that deals with mature characters and themes gravitate toward those type of anime titles. There are, I think, far fewer English speaking fans that watch anime because they want to watch entertaining Japanese art in whatever form it takes. Put in another way, there aren’t very many English speaking fans willing to watch anime that doesn’t fall into the typical genre categories that Western viewers prefer. Kodomo anime doesn’t fall into one of the categories preferred by Western fans, so many English speaking fans ignore it or refuse to expose themselves to it. Even though Crayon Shin-chan movies may be more entertaining and better animated than many other anime, a majority of American and European viewers will still choose to watch other anime before willingly watching a “children’s anime” like Crayon Shin-chan.