Ask John: Why Hasn’t Crayon Shin-chan Been Successful in America?

Question:
Why hasn’t Crayon Shin Chan caught on in the U.S.? It’s got the same low-brow humour of a Ken Akamatsu series – albeit with more a sophisticated take; it occasionally embraces popular shonen fantasy tropes; and the FUNimation re-write of the dub has gotten positive reviews. My theory for why the manga never took off with Comics One is that the newer casual fans never heard of the series, and that, looking only at the covers, they thought it was for little kids. But it baffles me why it didn’t do well with CMX – at least judging by their recent announcements. Is it the simplistic art? The age of the series? The fact that it’s a gag manga, and not a wish-fulfillment series? Personally, I don’t feel it’s aged as bad as some older titles like St. Seiya, but that latter manga at least finished its U.S. run. So what’s kept Shin from being a success here?

Answer:
Crayon Shin-chan is a perfect representative of the of the fundamental dissimilarity between the interest in and perception of anime in Japan and America. While that alone would probably be enough to explain the show’s tepid American reception, it’s not the only circumstance affecting the franchise in America. American otaku typically don’t embrace Crayon Shin-chan because the franchise doesn’t exude the modern and mature vogue that American anime fans demand of anime. Mainstream viewers haven’t embraced the series because it’s too foreign. And I’m sure that there are some purist American fans, such as myself, that refuse to purchase the heavily Americanized domestic Crayon Shin-chan manga and DVDs. I do like Crayon Shin-chan. I’ve watched numerous Japanese TV episodes and the first 17 motion pictures. But the American DVDs are the American adaptation “Shin-chan,” not the Japanese program “Crayon Shin-chan.”

Whether or not they like to admit it, or whether they’re even consciously aware of it, the majority of America’s anime viewers are as much, if not more so, interested in the mystique of anime. For countless American viewers, anime represents trendy action, violence, humor, provocative narrative development, and striking visuals. In other words, for many Americans, anime is and must be innately cool, and it’s furthermore cool because it’s so unlike conventional American entertainment. However, none of those characteristic attributes appear in Crayon Shin-chan, despite the best efforts of American editors to insert them. There are American otaku that perceive and admire anime as a representation of Japanese pop culture. It’s largely these cultish fans that have popularized Crayon Shin-chan in America to the degree the franchise has been popularized. But the natural integrity and uniqueness of particular anime are typically important to only the most hardcore of American fans – fan translators that devote hours and effort to anime, fans whose devotion to anime drives them to anime community websites and forums. For every one American fan that enjoys and respects Crayon Shin-chan as an amusing example of Japanese animation, there are probably a dozen or more American viewers that perceive the franchise as entirely lacking the trendy and captivating attributes that they expect and demand from anime.

True to its name, Crayon Shin-chan is rendered with simplistic design that almost resembles children’s drawing. The fact that the manga and animation don’t exhibit the sleek, stylish visual design of typical manga and anime discourages a lot of Americans. It’s difficult for teens and young adults to assure themselves that they’re watching provocative, alternative, intelligent animation when the show stars a naughty five year-old and looks like it was drawn by a child. FUNimation has attempted to punch-up the mature appeal of the animation by inserting adult language and extra risque gags in its English dub. Publishers Comics One and later CMX have both liberally adapted the manga translation to make it more accessible to American readers. The attempts have frustrated a handful of American fans, like myself, and have largely failed to compensate for the title’s innate lack of appeal to Americans. Mainstream American viewers may have a difficult time relating to Crayon Shin-chan. Despite being called the Japanese equivalent of The Simpsons, the slower pace and far more mild comic antics depicted in Crayon Shin-chan may make the series less interesting to average American viewers. The Crayon Shin-chan television series doesn’t have the casual violence found in The Simpsons or South Park. Shin-chan exhibits a playful libido while the young boy protagonists of The Simpsons and South Park have little interest in girls. Crayon Shin-chan doesn’t have the uniquely suburban American lethargic beer-guzzling attitude of American cartoons like King of the Hill, Beavis & Butthead, or Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Crayon Shin-chan doesn’t have the bizarre, non-sequiteur humor of Family Guy or American Dad. Extrapolating from this analysis, the Crayon Shin-chan franchise may have encountered better American reception had its more wacky motion pictures reached America instead of the more grounded television series. The TV series just has little to interest mainstream American viewers.

It’s ironic that mainstream America seemingly finds little of interest in Crayon Shin-chan while the franchise is one of Japan’s most popular anime. Children’s anime, or perceived children’s anime, have never been especially successful among conventional American anime viewers because the very notion of children’s cartoons opposes the image of anime being provocative, intelligent, cutting-edge alternative entertainment. The Pokemon franchise may seem like an exception, but it’s been massively successful in America primarily among mainstream consumers that don’t consciously perceive it as anime; its popularity within the American otaku community has been very limited. A May 2010 survey conducted by the Tokyo Polytechnic University found that average Japanese citizens consider the children’s anime series Doraemon an ideal representation of Japanese animation. Japanese society, which has evolved alongside anime, embraces and respects mainstream family animation. Children’s shows like Doraemon and Crayon Shin-chan, and family features from Studio Ghibli, top Japanese charts and represent anime in the consciousness of Japanese residents. But the perception of anime in America is completely different. Crayon Shin-chan has had great difficultly penetrating American consciousness. Doraemon is practically unknown in America, and more importantly, Americans aren’t interested in Doraemon at all. Characteristics including Crayon Shin-chan’s visual design, the mild but very domestic Japanese tone of its humor, and its presentation as a family oriented series all disincline Americans to embrace the series. Mainstream Americans find very little to relate to in the anime. The manga may be a domestic comedy starring children, but by American social standards, it’s quite a bit more provocative and even potentially offensive than Bill Keane’s Family Circus comic strip. Crayon Shin-chan contradicts everything that average American otaku desire in and from anime and manga. American otaku don’t want merely entertainment that’s uniquely Japanese; American otaku want entertainment that adheres to their idealized subconscious perception of what anime is and should be. American otaku may realize that children’s anime exists, and may rationally concede that anime is largely a medium for children, but American otaku don’t want anime and manga that obviously appear to be childish.