Shugo Chara [S1]

Hello,

I don’t often watch children anime but seeing as this is among GoHand’s first works I decided to give it a try. They’re known for very over the top animation but that’s to come later, I guess.

The series stars Hinamori Amu, a cool and spicy 5th grader at Seiya academy. She's cool on the outside but inside she's pretty shy and normal although she struggles to express her true feelings. One night she wishes to change and that gives birth to her guardian characters. Because of that she joins the guardians in the school, and together they go and purify the rampaging x eggs which cause their owners feelings to run rampage, and which were brought out by our resident baddies Easter Corp.

It’s a pretty straight forward idea, and works well for the episodic format. Throughout the series you get to see Amu progress from being this “i don’t care about you” type of character on the inside to someone who actually cares about others. The only problem I guess would be that the series has too many characters (though I guess you can focus on main characters only). The story moves nicely with every episode, but there is a lot of filler, and even worse, lots of recap episodes.

The animation in this show is pretty mid. Let's say, while some other GoHands works notably the recent depressed cat animne would be like buying nice rechargeable batteries for something you care about, shugo chara is like going to your local supermarket and mindlessly buying a pack of aa's for random clocks or remotes around you house. It does the job, but it feels cheap is what I'm trying to say. Lot's of animation reusing (although it has decent cgi from time to time when I noticed it), and sequences repeat pretty often (though that's not something alien to a lot of magical girl anime). There are times when the animation can get pretty decent, though it feels very obviously different from the rest. It sticks out in a bad way. Kind of like Nanoha's first episode, which feels like you just ate a gold bar, and spent the rest of the series eating moldy bread from the dumpster. What I'm saying is, it's pretty serviceable.

The music isn’t that memorable, though maybe I’m just dumb. I only remember songs that really stand out in shows like Gatchaman or .Hack, so I’m not surprised. However the first season’s OP songs and the first ED are really nice. There are some standout insert songs though by Nana Mizuki, specifically “Meikyuu Batafurai” and “Black Diamond”. These are worth listening on their own, especially if you’re a fan of Nana Mizuki.

Overall it’s a decent show, however the filler can get pretty boring and repetitive even if it feels like a canon episode. The 2nd season seems to deviate even more from the manga than the first, but the animation seems fine in the first few episodes that I’ve gotten to. If you have time to waste on 50 episodes of a children anime, it’s really not a bad watch. It has its own ups and downs like every other anime, but overall it’s enjoyable.

Now give me half a year, and I’ll write about the 2nd season.