Hi Everybody

[chimpoozle]

Hello. Just wanted to introduce myself. Nice to finally be part of these forums.

I'm a 33 year-old male from the US. I never watched a second of anime until I was about 20 when a friend forced me to watch Full Metal Alchemist. Despite that, mostly everything I like out of Japan, whether it be anime, manga, video games, live-action tokusatsu, movies, etc is from the 1980's - early 2000's. There are, of course, works from outside that time period that I enjoy as well.

I have a special affection for slice-of-life and comedy anime, as opposed to fighting/sci-fi/fantasy stuff that a lot of people are into. I own more than 200 Crayon Shin-chan DVD's and developed a fondness for Maison Ikkoku in 2015 when it became the first anime I watched all 90 episodes of without subtitles and was able to understand it. Currently in the middle of a daily search for old Japanese manga magazine back issues and Crayon Shin-chan KIKU-TV tapes (searching for next episode previews and missing episodes!). I'll be posting about these on the buy/sell forums!

I hope that wasn't too long of an introduction. Looking forward to hanging out with you all!

Matt

[Valand]

Hi and welcome! I like this genre as well, though I haven't seen a whole lot. Partially because I don't pick much on my own these days (I go to four hours long weekly anime screenings of various themes and for me that's usually enough).

I haven't gotten around to Maison Ikkoku yet, but I definitely will. The art style is enough to make me want to. I've went through Kimagure Orange Road which I feel is somewhat similar and it's one of my favorites.

I did watch an episode for Crayon Shin-chan recently and it seemed promising, but I decided to go ahead with Chibi Maruko-chan first.

[chimpoozle]

My situation is the reverse, where I've seen Maison Ikkoku, and Kimagure Orange Road is on my very short list of series to get to. Just can't decide whether I should read the manga or watch the anime first!

When it comes to Shin-chan, you might be restricted on what you can watch depending on whether or not you are relying on subtitles. I watch it raw, so I'm not super familiar with what is out there, but I know there are groups who make English subtitles that are translated from the Spanish dub. I'm against that practice for multiple reasons, but to other people it is better than nothing.

Restrictions aside, if you want to get into Shin-chan, I feel that the golden era of the show was under the first show-runner from 1992 - 1996 (essentially up until Shin's sister Himawari enters the series.) That's the time period where I think it was at its best/funniest/freshest/most out-of-control. Though a lot of fans, Japanese fans in particular, seem to regard the 2nd era of the show, directed by Keichi Hara, to be the best. He has directed other shows like ESPER Mami. For Shin-chan, he brought some more human elements to the series, as well as experimental concepts, all while the humor stayed intact. He ran the show from 1996 - 2004 and I feel it was still great for that whole time period. However, once the third (and current) show-runner took over in late 2004, the quality started to drop. The modern show suffers from heavy network censorship, which cripples it from being funny. The manga author died in 2009, and there have also been some cast changes (in fact Shin's original VA is leaving at the end of this month after 26 years.) It's at the point where I can't find anything of value left in the show. But it had at least 12 really great years spanning hundreds of episodes, and the original manga by Yoshito Usui lasted 20 years, so there's plenty there to enjoy.

Hope that's helpful for anybody interested in Shin-chan!

[mbanu]

I think a lot of folks who maybe didn't grow up with Shin-chan are becoming interested because a lot of really talented animators grew up there. Masaaki Yuasa of Devilman Crybaby, for instance, did a lot of his early work on Shin-chan. Tsutomu Mizushima of Shirobako as well.

[Valand]

I have yet to read the KOR manga, but it's also on my list. I couldn't say which one is the best to start out with.

I have studied Japanese at the university for a bit, though it wasn't my main thing. And I agree on the translation. I even boycotted manga and anime for about five years previously because I was fed up with poor translations directly from Japanese. So settling for a tranlation where there has been a third language in the translation chain is out of the question for me.

Actually it was at one of the aforementioned screenings that I watched the Crayon Shin-chan episode. The theme was something along the lines of "family long-runners airing daytime in Japan". We also watched Chibi Maruko-chan, Sazae-san and Anpanman etc that time. And it was the very first episode that we watched.

[usamimi]

Welcome to the forum!

[PinkAppleJam]

Welcome!!

Though I love both Maison Ikkoku anime and manga, the manga has an arc that wasn't animated, so maybe you'll get more from it? Maybe try a few eps on YouTube!

I love the KOR anime too, and I'm still waiting for my Kickstarter books (lol), though f you get change definitely watch the TV series, then OAVs, then I Want to Return to that Day film (but skip the New KOR OAV ~ And, at the beginning of Summer/Summer's Beginning, it's a poor epilogue IMO )

And let us know what you think! <3

[Daniel]

Welcome, glad to have you!

[DKop]

Welcome to the club!