Presentation
The box art is actually pretty well done, with a simple white background and a portrayal of Shin and two of the girls “pimping out” in front of the gold and logo of the show’s title. This actually does a great amount of justice to what the show is about, young boy and girls discussing very inappropriate (and sometimes humorous) things around or to each other. The back of the box contains other various characters with amusing expressions or costumes. The inside box has a great excerpt that makes fun of Lord of the Rings from one of the episodes in the series. If you’re watching this show expecting fantastic modern animation, then you’ll be let down. The show follows similar animations styles of Speed Racer and Astro Boy, though it is slightly better in quality overall. The character designs tend to add overall to the comedic affects of the situation. The music is also really fun. It’s incredably catchy and impossible to get out of your head once it’s in there. There’s no real opening theme to speak of, but the ending theme is perhaps the guiltiest of being addictive. The one really shocking thing about this anime is that it’s Dub only. No Japanese voices at all. It’s an all American cast. Granted the voice work is still pretty decent, but it’s extremely rare (in my experiences) when an anime has no Japanese cast whatsoever. This series isn’t particularly difficult to follow and you can pretty much watch any episode without having seen any of the others. I, however, would very STRONGLY advise against watching this when any children are present. There is a LOT of adult humor in it.
Extras
This DVD set is chock FULL of extras. Perhaps it’s to make up for the lack of a Japanese cast. You’ve got a whole section dedicated to Alternate Takes, Bloopers, and Songs. They’ve also got commentary for Episode 28 which enhances the humor of the episode at least two-fold as the voice actor of Shin and the director are hilarious. There are also storyboards for the episode Shin Chan as well as Karaoke AND Sing-Along for the closing song. Also add in an amazing amount of trailers finishes up the total of all the extras. Definitely quite an impressive list for a DVD set.
Overall, I felt this Anime would be best suited for people in their late teens or early twenties. It’s definitely the type of humor I enjoyed at that age. It’s very well-suited for basically anyone who wants to sit back and just listen to rather amusing jokes about people’s body parts and bodily functions all day long. It’s even pretty nice to have on just in the background if you’re working on other projects as the jokes aren’t too terribly distracting and the music is pretty nice. I’d recommend this to anyone without kids or don’t plan on having kids over at their house anytime soon.