Shin-Chan (Season 2)
Anime DVD Review
Take The Simpsons and Family Guy, mash it up with Robot Chicken and South Park, and then turn the dial up to eleven maybe even twelve if you can get it. The frequency is a bit fuzzy but you'll be near what Shin-Chan is.
Shin-chan, aka Shinnosuke Nohara, is a kindergartener. Think of him as a younger version of Bart Simpson. In his family, you got his mother, father, baby sister, and a dog. His mother, Misae, is like Marge Simpson on steroids and with a sadist streak while his dad, Hiroshi, is just as clueless as Homer and as well meaning as Peter. The baby sister, Himawari, is...well..that's all that she is, a baby; nowhere near as intelligent as Stewie, Maggie, or even Brian but like most females, she was born with an innate lust for shiny objects and brand names. They skipped the middle child and adopted a dog, Shiro, instead. Poor thing is so neglected that he resorts to foraging for food instead of waiting to be fed.
 Sad to say, Shiro, is probably the only character that I like visually, so cute and white and fluffy. I can eat him up like a manju bun. The way the main characters were drawn turned me off this series at first. They remind me of badly drawn versions of Suneo from Doraeman. The oddly shaped head and weirdly placed face and those eyes, oh my god, those eyes! How weird and strangely hypnotic can they get? They're so huge that you'll swear you can drown in the dark black pits of swampy dead pool water called their eyes.
BUT all of that is forgiven because Shin-chan is so flipping bleeping funny! There is nothing too sacred, nothing too vulgar, nothing too weird, nothing too X-rated that Shin-chan won't touch. I only watched two episodes of it and then I had to shut it off because I couldn't watch it with my parents and brother around. The shenanigans that go on transcend language barriers, generational barriers, and age gaps. It's as bad as watching porn in front of your parents! It's hard... no...it's impossible, to explain why two grown men are holding their light sabers with their thighs and fighting each other in a PG-13 way. They took SpaceBalls "His Schwartz is as big as mine" schtick and brought it to a whole new level, verbally, visually, mentally, and any other -ly you can think of. Everyone knows that Star Wars is all about sex, right? We're not talking about just Princess Leia's bikini costume, you know? If you didn't, watch Shin-chan's parody/version of it and then sit back and think about it, Han Solo.
 If that wasn't enough, Misae cons Hiroshi into attending Shin-chan's Parents Day by telling him that he'll be the only guy among all these hot young mothers and they LOVE men that show they care about their kids. Anyone see something wrong with this picture? Then, somewhere along the way Shin-chan gets a new toy called the "Vibrating Bastard Shaft" that mommy just loves and daddy just keeps getting hurt with. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Oh, let's not forget the Happy Pills, transgender mother and son day, the "I need a scandalous secret to be a politician" thing, drinking, karaoke-ing Lucky Star style, incest, porn, backdoor porn, name-calling, and maybe a bit of Lord of the Rings parody thrown in for fun.
Once you get over the shock that Shin-chan was originally made for family nights in Japan (those sick, sick people), go get a box of tissue and start watching this anime. You'll need it to wipe up anything that comes out of you after laughing so hard.
Reviewed by Carolyn Whu, July 2009
Below: Promotional artwork for the anime series Shin-Chan
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