Crayon shin-Chan: shrouded in Mystery! The Plants of tenkazu academy:  This crayon shin-Chan movie! This is the best crayon shin-chin movie. It kept you thinking throughout. The friendship between Shin-Chan and his friends was touching too!

It can almost 100% guarantee no matter how much you guess, and you can never imagine the answer to the Mystery!
It is funny, mad, and fits Crayon Shin-Chan’s comedic theme. He is five years old and yet acts overtly mature. He is generally brutally honest, highly curious, and has no shame whatsoever.

Many of the jokes in the series stem from Shin-Chan’s occasionally weird, unnatural, and inappropriate use of language and his inappropriate behavior. A typical gag involves Shin-Chan confounding his parents by using the wrong phrase for the occasion; for example, saying “Welcome back!” instead of “I am back!” when he comes home. At the beginning of the series, the TV show main base on the original manga’s storyline. However, as the show progressed, more and more episodes became anime-original.

Crayon Shin-Chan: Shrouded in Mystery! The Flowers of Tenkasu Academy

Crayon Shin-Chan was never a flop in Japan, but, like most long-running anime, its popularity waned as the years passed. While the Novara family’s naughty hijinks were famous in Japan, they were a cultural phenomenon in Spain, especially Catalonia.

 Is Crayon Shin-Chan Popular?

Shin-Chan’s name changed into “Shin Janggis, coined from his original Japanese name and the Korean word “janggi” for “protruding forehead.” In Korea, the animated version is severely censored compared to the original Japanese version. Nevertheless, it air on Korean TV channels such as SBS, Zooniverse, Quiney, etc. In 1997, South Korean VHS companies released the Korean dub of the anime series on home video and gained moderate success among South Korean kids.

Two years later, the anime series was aired on SBS in 1999, followed by Zooniverse, which has also aired the series and has since become the only channel to air the anime series in South Korea, with new episodes still dubbed and aired there. Most South Koreans consider it a kids’ c Cartoon since many toys and website centers represent an icon for childish fun there.

Japanese texts translate into Korean texts, the character names change to Korean sounding, and scenes revealing Shin-Chan’s genitalia are censored, except for a few scenes in which exposure is inevitable. Only a few scenes showing his buttocks remain.

In addition, some episodes explicitly displaying adult material are censored, and all mature-themed jokes in the original Japanese version are changed into family-friendly jokes to make the series more suitable for children, considered the primary audience in Korea. And they made their song for the opening and ending themes of the Korean season 1 to 6. However, the manga is primarily uncensored, labeled as “for 19 or above.” The new versions of Crayon Shin Chan in Korea are for ages 15 and up.

Crayon Shin-Chan Found Its Biggest Success

To be clear, Crayon Shin-Chan was never a flop in Japan but like most long-running anime, and its popularity waned as the years passed. While the Novara family’s naughty hijinks were famous in Japan, they were a cultural wonder in Spain, especially Catalonia. It could even argue that Shin-Chan is a bigger hit in Spain than in Japan.

Despite its raunchy humor, Crayon Shin-Chan won over Catalan and Spanish people viewers. Not only was the anime broadcast on some of the region’s biggest channels, but its movies performed well in theatres. Before he died in 2009, mangaka Yoshi to Usui thanked his European fans by capturing the Novara’s’ trips to Catalonia and Spain.

Why is Shadchan gaining so much popularity?

The basic grounding for its success it shares with other cartoons like Doraemon or Keiretsu: it has created a universe in itself, filled with a plethora of characters who are distinct in their ways, the same set of locations that are familiar to most of the viewers by now, and its loose structure in which one doesn’t have to follow the plotline throughout each episode ardently. This has given relative freedom for the ever-expanding fanbase to latch onto the show as the years’ progress.

But what makes it distinct from all the shows above is how grounded it is in reality. It needn’t introduce any fantasy element to garner interest, mainly focusing on menial tasks to drop its humor on. Since these tasks, say an episode about building a doghouse or playing hide and seek, are all but familiar to everyone worldwide, the show’s relatability increases exponentially.

Even when a break from the typical household is introduced, like the occasional episodes of time-traveling or the adventures of Buri Buri Saemon, they are in a deliberate pulp way to introduce an element of irony that permeates throughout and further carries the show’s utter irreverence towards any ‘change’ as such.

Another element would be that even the occasional characters say the saleswoman, who is constantly mistaken for a criminal due to Shinchan or the workers at the library talking in sign languages, always make an impact and are never underdeveloped to just be the butt of a joke.

Shrouded in Mystery! The flowers of Tenkazu Academy

The show also shows an exemplary talent in actual joke writing, filled with liners rather than mere situational comedy. It also stays true to its one-joke format while constantly breaking the mold with completely surreal sequences and pop culture references, distinguishing it from Doraemon, which always needs a Nobita to cry to make us laugh.

And the final and most crucial element is humanity and Shinchan (and the two are rarely indistinguishable). Rarely is any character introduced as merely to snide. The show develops itself knowing that every human has his reasons. While engaging in stereotypes (not a negative connotation, since everything from Don Quixote has resorted to it), it never fails to throw light on the redemptionary aspect of life. A constant ridicule of upper-class snobbishness and prim & proper society is also done to open themselves to middle or lower class norms, never as a class critique.

Shinchan itself is a Huckleberry Finn character. He is often derided as vulgar and anarchist-like, but there is never a point in the show where Shin-chan does anything he knows will harm/hurt someone. All his mischiefs and remarks are all that he genuinely believes to be correct.

Throughout the show, we see that he always is on the side of humanity, helping others and creating a farewell song for Kasama when he plans to leave for America. When it rains for his mother, carrying an umbrella mall and jumping in front of a truck to save a frog, Shinchan tries to do the right thing. However, this limited his understanding of what the right thing may be. We sympathize with him because it reflects our reality of trying to do what is good for others while constantly trying to figure out what good itself means.