I Am Shin Chan

There’s a kid in Shin Chan who doesn’t understand shame. He grabs asses. He lifts skirts. He says whatever crude thing is in his mouth without filtering it through any social decency. He’s five years old and he’s the most honest thing on screen. And somehow he’s the character I’ve most wanted to be, which says something I’m not sure I want to examine too closely.

Shin Chan is in good company with the anime I actually loved—Sailor Moon, Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion, the ones that stuck. But this one’s different. It’s not pretending to be anything. The kid’s a little asshole and he knows it. The whole family is kind of a mess. There’s no arc to iron everything out, no lesson that fixes the dysfunction. They’re just these people, crude and sexual and embarrassing and present.

The German dub is the right version, which I know sounds weird. I tried the original Japanese with English subtitles once and it felt flat, neutered somehow. The dub has this aggressive cartoon logic that matches the show’s rhythm. It’s not trying to be faithful to some sacred source—it’s committed to being funny in its own language, and that’s better.

People get weird about the sexual content, but Shin Chan isn’t interested in making anyone comfortable with it. The early episodes are thick with it, and there’s no winking about it, no oops, isn’t Shin Chan naughty framing. It’s just there, casual, part of how this small pile of chaos moves through the world. Shin Chan isn’t softening the edges for anyone.

I keep coming back to these episodes, and I think it’s because the character has something I don’t—this absolute freedom from caring what anyone thinks. He’s five. He’s a cartoon. But he’s more himself than most people manage in a lifetime. That’s probably the whole thing right there.