Something Hatched…
November 16, 2007 | Television | Shugo Chara
Every anime season, there’s at least one good show for which I’m late to the party. Being late isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however. After all, when a new season first begins, I have to sort through a ridiculous number of shows that catch my attention and make a decision on what to watch and what not to watch. There’s only so much time in the day, however, so I often end up passing on shows that interest me, resolving to watch them at some point in the future. But when the same cycle repeats itself every three months, what can I do? Well, let me show this long list of stuff I’ve been meaning to watch…
If I completely ignore a show from the very start, however, only to give it a try after I’ve decided what to watch otherwise, I’m more likely to give it my full and undivided attention. Because, by that point, there are no longer twenty different shows competing for space in my viewing schedule. It’s plenty easy to squeeze something in after the fact. And, quite often, shows squeezed in after the fact turn out to be something special.
This season’s special show is Shugo Chara.
I like mahou shoujo shows. I don’t know if I like them enough to call myself a mahou shoujo fan, but I do enjoy watching them. Unfortunately, there haven’t been many mahou shoujo shows worth watching the past few years. In the span of only six episodes, however, Shugo Chara has restored my faith in the genre. For that matter, it’s reminded me of how much I enjoy shoujo in general, magical girl flavored or not. I really need to get back to my roots and start watching more of this stuff.
Shugo Chara is wonderful, however, and I’m thankful for all the fans who have been talking up the show for weeks now. I don’t know if I would have revisited my initial, “Hey, this looks cute,” feeling, otherwise. And now, I’m wondering if I need to make space for the show in the upcoming Year in Review. Yes, I’m seriously enjoying it that much.
Why, though? Well, the writing is pretty damn good, for one. Mahou shoujo shows are rarely models of brilliant story-telling, but Shugo Chara has done an outstanding job thus far taking the standard “Believe in yourself!” and “Ganbare!” mahou shoujo themes and presenting them in a fashion that’s neither cloying nor overly saccharine. There’s almost something “adult” about the show; and I don’t mean in the ecchi sense (although, Amu is pretty easy on the eyes), but rather in the sharpness of the humor, the quality of the characters, and the great sense of style. It’s a lot like Cardcaptor Sakura in that regard, just a little more grown-up.
The animation is pretty stellar, too. I’ve always liked Satelight’s work, at least from an art direction standpoint. However, they’ve had some quality control issues with some of their recent shows, Kamichama Karin (another mahou shoujo show) being the most egregious example. Thankfully, Sugo Chara has yet to suffer from these issues. In fact, the animation quality has been consistently good from the very beginning. And that’s important, because the character designs deserve first class treatment. They’re very attractive.
And I’d be remiss not to mention the ridiculously catchy OP and ED. Now I understand why everyone watching the show keeps making “Hop Step Jump” jokes. The OP animation is particularly stylish; the shot swooping in on Amu lying in the grass impresses me every time I see it, much like the shot of the young girl running through the field of flowers in the Clannad OP. I must like that sort of thing.
So, even though I was late to the party, I’m really glad I gave Shugo Chara a try. And if rumors of a 52 episode run are to be believed, the party’s going to last for awhile.
I gave up on the show after the first episode, but after hearing some good buzz here and elsewhere, I think I’ll pick it up again. Thanks.
And of course it’s by the people behind Rozen Maiden, so I knew the potential for decent writing was there.
52 episodes?! That is a lot of drew draw drawn!
I think that Peach Pit does really well with the theme of discovering yourself in all their series. At least with a long season we won’t have to worry about a repeat of the premature cutoff in Zombie Loan.
The scenes of ballet and soccer were rather… oddly animated to say the least. Deformities galore. But I really find it odd that Amulet Spade and Amulet Heart have the same Limit Break.. the rail gun of love or something. In other words, Heart’s special ability is the increased atheleticism and flight while Spade’s ability is the power to THROW PAINT! Odd. But love the show nevertheless.
Don’t you think this trend of males getting way too much into a genre known for targeting younf girls is rather strange?
The funky animation in the ballet and soccer sequences reminded me a lot of certain scenes in Noein. I think it’s mostly a Satelight thing, although I’ve seen a few other studios do it on occassion.
I don’t know if it’s all that strange for men to be interested in shoujo. After all, I can think of a number of Shonen Jump type shows that are popular among women (I know more female Naruto fans than I do male, for example). In my experience, a lot of “gender-specific” anime and manga has cross-gender appeal. Shugo Chara strikes me as one of these. It is Peach Pit, after all.
And, besides, anime fans are strange enough to begin with. It’s all relative.
Hee hee. I wonder if the OP will become this blog’s theme song now.
Speaking of which, just WHY is your blog named Hop Step Jump?
Oh, and personally? My favorite of the “catchphrases” is Chip! Syrup! Whip(cream)! It’s delicious. ^_^
Why is my blog named Hop Step Jump? Beats me. If anything, it’s a reference to the Diamond Dust Drops OP, but mostly, I just thought it sounded interesting. It was the first thing that came to mind when I was thinking of titles, so it stuck.
Obviously, it’s a phrase that pops up every so often in anime, so it’s not entirely out of left field.
Isn’t Hop, Step & Jump the names for the three OSTs from Battle Athletes…?
Anyways, I’ve been enjoying Shugo Chara! pretty much except that I’m getting a bit tired of the way the mahou shoujo-thing works in there. I still love everything else though :)
“the shot swooping in on Amu lying in the grass impresses me every time I see it, much like the shot of the young girl running through the field of flowers in the Clannad OP. I must like that sort of thing.”
These things give a fresh and youthful vibe, its a good thing to like. Shugo Chara! yes, its a good thing to like. I like how the music, specifically the OP theme, is placed in variations throughout the show. It’s a simple thing, but it still provides a cool attribute.
Mmm, males getting involved in a genre targeted at young girls… could it be getting in touch with an inner youthful [girlish] self? I can’t attest to that, but there’s an undefined attraction to watching mahou-shoujo. Could just be that it is easy to watch.
52 episodes? That would be interesting, nice, etc, but the producers would have to start winging it without manga backup material. I think the manga is only in 3rd or 4th volume. Yet, winging it has been done before, so I wouldn’t be surprised.
Yeah, the Battle Athletes OSTs were my first encounter with the phrase. Damn, that was ages ago.
Speaking of Noein, Kazuki Akane’s assistant director from Noein, Kenji Yasuda, is the director on Shugo Chara. That explains the explains the animation, along with Satelight working on it.
I can only imagine the awesomeness, if Kazuki Akane himself were doing Shugo Chara and going all out, as he did with Heat Guy J and Noein. :V
Do you blog about CCS at all?
52 episodes? Who comes up with these kind of rumors all the time? Anime News Network lists 13 episodes: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=8182
I mean when was there any anime with more than 26 episodes? They exist but they are rare (shows for kids aside) and recently the 13-episodes format seems to become popular. I’ve watched the first 6 episodes and I cannot imagine that this going to have a lot of episodes. I had already considered to ignore it after the first episode but after a couple of weeks I watched the next five episodes because many people seemed to like it a lot. It’s cute, yes, and I like Amu’s character but that’s it. I don’t really like the chibi/moe character designs which seem to be ubiquitous currently. The OP/ED are catchy at first but I think they’ll wear off pretty fast. The plot of the episodes isn’t too interesting and it gets repetitive after only 4 episodes. What’s interesting is that it seems to be a bit of a superficial Utena rip-off. Amu resembles a chibi version of Utena, instead of the duelists you have the guardians, the school looks like a castle too and the idea of human eggs was used in Utena too. Likewise the stories are about believing in yourself, growing up, becoming stronger, blah. Except this is the bubble-gum version and it does not really excel at anything except cuteness perhaps but even that is mostly limited to the main character, the rest of the cast seems to be fairly generic.
At least I could confirm that my initial impression was dead-on. This show isn’t really for me. “Shoujo” is not a problem for me. For example, I like Utena a lot and I love Marimite.
Uh, 52 episode series aren’t all that uncommon. Especially for this sort of show in a Saturday morning time slot on TV Tokyo. In fact, the time slot held by Shugo Chara previously belonged to Pururun! Shizuku-chan, which began in October 2006 and ran for a full year (and now has a sequel airing on Sunday morning). I don’t know where the 52 episode rumor originated, but I’ve seen it in a number of places and consider it plenty believable, so that’s why I passed it along. The pacing for the first six episodes definitely suggests a longer run than 13 episodes.
I don’t put any special faith in ANN episode counts, since fans keep those pages updated. They have access to the same information I do. Without any confirmation of the episode count, you can assume it will be at least 13 episodes (give or take an episode) and list it as so.
Zombie Loan, the other recent series based on a Peach-Pit manga, had only 11 episodes even though the manga consists of 8 volumes so far. Shugo Chara has only 5 volumes whereas the last volume has just been released. I don’t know how closely they follow the manga or how much is covered of it per episodes. The manga is still being released so a conclusive ending is unlikely unless the anime production comes up with their own plot.
Zombie Loan also aired at 2:40 AM in the middle of the week on TV Asahi. Short episode runs are typical of that sort of timeslot. Saturday morning on TV Tokyo is another story entirely. As far as episode count is concerned, the Peach Pit connection is irrelevant, in my opinion. You have to look at the timeslot, the genre, and the target audience.
I understand that the Shugo Chara anime series only has so much manga material to work from, but anime series outrun their original material all the time. A lack of original material is rarely a hard limitation on an otherwise well performing series. And when it comes to a mahou shoujo show like Shugo Chara, it’s plenty easy to pad the episode count until the manga has a chance to catch up (or the scriptwriters come up with a suitable alternate storyline). You can get a lot of episodes out of “Monster of the Week”.
As far as how much of the manga is being covered each episode, I haven’t read it, so I can’t say. Hinano has, however, and her posts on the subject seem to indicate that the anime series is only loosely following the manga. If she’s reading, perhaps she’ll chime in at some point.
Oh, and I should be clear here… I could be completely wrong about the show being 52 episodes (or whatever length). I’m just explaining why I think a long episode run is perfectly reasonable.
So, did you get one of the Odex/Comcast nastygrams, since Shugo Chara is one of the series they’re fretting about?
Nope. I’m curious to see if I will, though. If I do, I’ll just disregard it; however, I might start grabbing new episodes of the show via IRC just to save myself the heartburn.
Even prior to this Odex development, people have been complaining about Comcast throttling BT bandwidth (among other things), but I haven’t had any trouble. I only average about 30 GB of total bandwidth usage per month (BT and otherwise), however, and I do very little uploading, so I figure I’m flying under their radar. As much fansubbed anime as I watch, I suspect I’m a pretty casual downloader compared to a lot of other people. Six or seven new episodes per week doesn’t add up to a whole lot.
yes yes i recently started watching this series, and wow! kiddie show it might be, but maybe that’s the best part about it. kinda like otogijuushi akazukin before it, some of these shows aimed at younger audiences focuses on accomplishing one thing - to have FUN! - and they do a fantastic job of it. add on top of that some slapstick moments, solid animation, and GREAT voice acting (amu-chan!!!) for a show that just makes you smile over and over again.
I also see how it’s possible for them to stretch this series to 52 episodes (though the rumor is yet to be confirmed). With the past filler episodes, I’d say we can have more of the “Evil Egg of the Week” episodes, or some “Adventures of the Shugo Charas / Guardians” fillers as well. It’s so easy to pad more episodes for this one because of the number of characters they can dedicate a certain filler episode to.
Personally I like this series. I like Ikuto and Yoru. But where did you find the 52 episodes rumour? I heard there was only going to be 26. Also the 13 episodes rumour isn’t true sence the new ending comes out on that episode.
i was just wondering do you happen to know when the new season starts??
yeah it’s either 51 or 52 eps. it’s true. NOT a rumour. now on crunchyroll it’s up to … i can’t remember… shibai… D: oh it’s up to ep 42. 43 RAW is on veoh laready. :D it’s very good. hop step jump is ran’s catch phrase.. right?