First Date: Shugo Chara!
- Title: Shugo Chara!
- Studio: Satelight
- Genre: Mahou Shoujo
Ratings (out of 5):
- Story: ♥♥♥
- Animation: ♥♥♥♥
- Characters: ♥♥♥♥
- OP/ED Themes: ♥♥♥
- Overall: ♥♥♥½ (A date so cute I got cavities.)
Thoughts:
I’ll admit, this is one of the shows I was closer to excited about– I think Peach-Pit does some really fun manga, and the first two volumes of Shugo Chara! (released by Del Rey) were great. Not to mention I’m a bit of a fan of Rozen Maiden (desu).
So. Shugo Chara!’s heroine is Amu, a girl whose outside appearance is that of a cool, punk-y badass sort of girl. In reality Amu is shy, but her reticence and occasional bluntness is taken for hardcore-ness by her classmates. She feels stuck in the persona she’s been given and wants to bust out.
Shugo Chara!’s handling of the idea is undoubtedly cutesy and occasionally cheesy, but on the other hand, it’s the sort of issue most people can really relate to. As with other Peach-Pit works, though, it’s really the characters that carry the series. In particular I really like Amu; not ALL of that caustic exterior is false. I also like that most of the time, she doesn’t sound like a freakin’ three-year-old; her normal (non-SD, non-big reaction) voice is amazingly realistic when I compare it to the voices of female heroines in so many other shows.
Oh, right, back to plot. So, one night she wishes for the courage to be ‘reborn’ as her true self. When she wakes up the next morning, she finds three eggs (which she laid?)– pink plaid, blue plaid, and gree plaid. (No, really.) She takes them with her to school to keep them warm and safe, and then finds herself confessing her love to her crush, the school “prince”…except she does it in front of an auditorium full of students. Oops! Wonder if those eggs had something to do with it. *cough*
The aesthetic of Shugo Chara! is closer to punk than Victorian gothic, and honestly, I find a lot of the art more pleasant to the eye than Rozen Maiden’s; I think it’s the use of lots of blues and greens and pinks, whereas RM used a lot of very strong yellows and reds that could be a bit glaring at time.
Not all Rozen Maiden fans will like Shugo Chara!, I gather. I think a lot of people liked the dark feel of RM, which is pretty lacking in the lighter Shugo Chara!. But I really enjoyed the episode myself. Then again, I have a fairly high tolerance for Cute…
Tags: fall-2007, first-dates, Shugo-Chara!
October 10th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
I watched it last night and I loved it. I really relate to Amu as well and I love the cute, fun factor of the show. But who knows, maybe it’ll turn dark later on, but this is shoujo, so who knows. I’m going to pick up the manga later on, but this one for me is a keeper. It’s really colorful and fun. It’ll be cool if all of peach-pit’s works are contained into one universe. but that’s a pipe dream lol XD
October 11th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Gotta agree. This one is pretty cute. I may just have to watch some more of it.
November 4th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
do u know wer i can find ol of the episodes of it cause i can’t really find them in crunchyroll.com or youtube.com pls. pls. pls. trll me.