The tenth Crayon Shin-chan movie, elegantly titled Crayon Shin-chan: The Storm Called: The Battle of the Warring States (to be fair, without a good translator all Japanese titles sound lugubrious in English), is surely an obscure picture, as evidenced by its complete lack of an IMDb link. By all evidence, this movie doesn’t exist…except it does, because I just watched it. That is thanks to some of the seedier corners of the Internet. I know, I could have gone to Chinatown, to see if that mysterious store which sells the mogwais has a copy, but that’d be Region 2, and a big “if” anyway.
There’s a reason why so many anime franchises follow the Crayon Shin-chan method, and release movies each and every year – hence their obscurity through oversaturation. It’s especially odd to grant the “Crayon Shin-chan” TV show yearly action thrillers, as it (and the manga) are comedic deconstructions of domestic life first and foremost. But that’s what happened.
That’s because Japanese animation is largely an independent venture, with a great many studios competing. In the U.S., an animation studio never depends entirely upon a single property for their whole existence. In Japan, they do. Hence for Shin’ei Doga, the makers of “Crayon Shin-chan” (hell, it’s there in the studio name!), it makes sense to milk their titular 5-year-old’s name for all it’s worth, franchising it as much as possible.
Hence The Battle of the Warring States, while technically a Crayon Shin-chan movie, sees Shin’ei Doga trying to expand into totally different styles of storytelling. It plays far more dramatically than one would expect for a series best known in the U.S. for supplying countless jokes about penises and abortions and shotguns (that’d be the FUNimation gag dub from Adult Swim). I am assuming a reasonable amount of this film’s content, however, as it’s not dubbed in English – nor subtitled. Oh yeah, it’s wholly in Japanese, which I do not speak (I could only pick out the word “ninja”). That’s not a ginormous problem with such a visual medium, and I even grew up watching things like “Dragon Ball Z” and My Neighbor Totoro sans linguistic aid. And as Crayon Shin-chan is aimed at a young audience, the visuals have to carry a lot of the story – and the story has to be simple.
The central notion of The Battle of the Warring States (which is unwieldy, even as a shortened title – let’s go with CSC:TSC:TBOTWS) is that young Shin-chan, he of the world’s most astounding buttocks, travels back in time (via magic) to feudal Japan. This isn’t all that distinct from my recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III, and we know what I thought of that. It is wholly unfair to judge a movie I only sorta saw. Rather, a simple recounting…
The central Shin-chan attitude is effortlessly wacky and ridiculous, as exemplified by the stop motion credits – of Shin-chan doing inexplicable battle with a self-replicating pig monster for reasons having ultimately nothing clearly to do with the movie. This general wackiness informs every animation decision for Shin-chan and his Nohara family. Their designs are intentionally skewed and crude, but consistent in their hideousness. The acting is always to the rafters, eyes bugging out like a Japanese Tex Avery cartoon, and symbolically-loaded non-diagetic poses struck habitually.
Then there’s Shin-chan’s butt. What an odd thing to make the character’s central feature, a child proud of mooning at the slightest provocation. The kid must do oddly misinformed Kegel exercises, for his butt cheeks have more distinct muscles and superpowers than the Hulk.
But enough of the hero’s ass! How’s he get back to the time of Ran? Well, he goes home, the dog Shiro has dug a hole, and he goes in. This mechanism is very unclear, as the hole has a bottom (5 feet below the lawn, in fact), but a blue light I first mistook for a commercial informs us some vague magic transports Shin-chan, magic surely dwelt upon in the dialogue.
Feudal Japan as Shin-chan finds it is a far cry from his standard sketchy universe. It appears, even on first glance, to be a serious place, its residents actually vaguely resembling real human beings. They don’t look especially good, though, for Shin’ei Doga is trying their hand at a drawing style they are unfamiliar with (that being “anything other than Shin-chan”)…and it’s all done on the low TV budgets which don’t diminish the main program’s charm. Of course, as the film plays out in this setting, it seems less and less distinct, as though the animators grew tired of doing something far more stilted than their norm.
There’s basically no humor intrinsic to this area, as all comedy comes from Shin-chan himself, his anachronisms and his strangeness and his attitude. It seems Shin-chan isn’t meant to be a relatable character per se, let alone a role model. Rather, he is an odd duck we laugh at, but don’t identify with. This makes for a strange narrative, as far as I can tell.
Shin-chan wins over the shogun lords by performing apropos of nothing his “buri buri” dance – that is, his “buttocks frenzy” dance. Like a Japanese Cornholio with an even greater bunghole fixation, Shin-chan bears rear, raises as high to the heavens as possible, as he parades it in rumba style up and down in hypnotic fashion, all the while almost certainly singing “Butt butt butt butt!”
Shin-chan’s time is spent primarily in the company of a warrior, whom I name Warrior. His name’s probably Bob or Franklin or Mitsobushi or something, but I don’t know it. Warrior is in love with Princess, which is evident because of the standard romantic soundtrack whenever they’re together. (The Princess’ bog-standard anime longing glances clue us in too.) Forget Japanese (or Esperanto), music is the universal language. It also lets one know that Warrior has a back story, because nostalgic strings play as he speaks before the sunset. What that back story is, we can only guess: Happy childhood in a village, rampaging villainous warlords destroyed the peace, former family, possibly something paralleling Shin-chan’s home life, who knows?
Shin-chan falls in with a crowd of children just as grotesquely drawn as he is – because they’re perfect stand-ins for his regularly appearing chums from 2002! One feature on the boys is very unusual to Western eyes: Each one has a water symbol somewhere on his face, say tears or sweat. And their ringleader has a mighty snot dangle eternally gracing his face, a curious thing since, as an anime character, he has no nose. Shin-chan takes an instant lighting to this crowd of grotesques, without ever having to bear gluteous maximus to do so (sadly, as the film grows seemingly self-serious, Shin-chan forgets his love of public indecency).
The youths travel to a forest glen, the setting somehow tied in with time travel. It’s also where Princess comes to be wistful about something or other. So she’s there too.
Where there is Princess, there are bandits to rob her. And where there are bandits, there is Warrior. When Warrior and Princess are together, there is romance. And where there is romance, there is the family sedan casually idling here in the 15th century – Wait, what?!
Okay, so Shin-chan’s parents Hiroshi and Misae are themselves now in the past, having intentionally parked their Honda Civic directly over the dog’s pathetic hole for an indeterminate amount of time. This is good, because Shin-chan’s feudal schtick was starting to wear thinner than grandma’s underpants.
Rather than the Noharas banding together and returning to 2002, possibly because it’s presently impossible to work the time mechanism or some such, they travel to the castle of the good guys, gaping all the way. One thing that separates, er, CSC:TSC:TBOTWS from most other unambitious one-time-period-only time travel movies is that the ancients never react in terror at the travelers’ modern technology. Never once is their car stereo treated as a possessed magical demon, or any such B.S. The only strange reaction is that a group of soldiers get their hands on Hiroshi’s beer cans. They get drunk and pass out. Which is what Hiroshi had planned to do anyway. Though he doesn’t handle his beer’s disappearance too well…
There’s lots of talk going on, lots of exposition concerning goodness only knows (the soundtrack doesn’t help me out with this stuff). Then an enemy army appears outside of Princess’ castle, meaning this is probably what all the chatting was about.
War is at hand, a chance for the animators to mostly do serious and unengaging battle scenes from here on out. It’s Warrior vs. Villain, Villain being another new non-namer. But what of our regulars? With all this sudden danger, it’s not like Shin-chan and Hiroshi are going to be caught taking a piss.
Actually, that’s exactly what they get caught doing! Bless Crayon Shin-chan’s adherence to bawdiness.
The battle wages, and leave it to Japanese animation to never pass up a chance to stretch such events far beyond their appropriate length. Of note, this being a family film, there are actually many battlefield deaths shown. From one perspective, this is as would be, but one doesn’t expect it in a butt movie. I can’t remember now if the overall battle sequence really was very long, or if I just took a lot of screen caps during this segment. At any rate, there is an odd ratio of images to things I have to say. Thus, two images at once.
Those actually sort of work together, as it sums up the Noharas’ reaction to Villain. They make the eventual dramatic decision that, even though it’s likely they can already go home, they’d rather help their friends win this war first. The Turtles did the same thing in their equivalent film. At least the Turtles are warriors. All the Noharas have is a low horsepower, low-cost Japanese sedan – perfect for committing hit-and-runs against samurais. More oddly, Hiroshi seems to think the car’s antenna makes a perfect sword; this doesn’t work out. Victory comes of Shin-chan’s actions of course – He walks directly underneath Villain’s legs, and jumps upwards. That ricockulously big head of his thus eradicates Villain’s ball sack. Ah, the groin shot, that most noble of cinematic traditions!
Victory is at hand, and the opposing army hasn’t the heart to fight with their leader’s manhood mangled. Epic music of epicness makes it doubly clear, as Warrior leads a triumphant procession back towards –
Never mind, Warrior just dropped dead. What of? I dunno! Maybe some errant bullet struck him, though there’s the slight hint that Shin-chan murdered him (unlikely). A touching though maybe pointless death scene follows. Princess weeps. The soldiers weep. It’s anime, so these are not subtle tears either. Then the bad guy army forfeits their weapons, even though they already ceded the battle.
Farewells are said, though forgive my Japanese ignorance for thinking this scene had already passed a few times before. The Noharas drive off into some reeds near that forest glens when –
Suddenly they’re back parked over their dog’s metaphysical ditch, in a most understated way. All seems over, when a moth flies out of Shin-chan’s ear (?!) and up into a white cloud. I wouldn’t point this out, but the music makes a remarkably big deal out of it, as though ‘twere the destruction of the One Ring. There’s a hint this moth is the spirit of Warrior, so…yeah, sure, I’m going with that. It seems an appropriate ending.
Well, there it was, a one-off Shin-chan that wanted to be a historical drama. That’s hard to align with the standard mode of the show, except…eh, movies are a different beast. Perhaps these theatrical features were Shin’ei Doga’s way of experimenting with new forms – almost certainly that’s the answer. This kind of seriousness and low fantasy has nothing to do with “Crayon Shin-Chan” as created by Yoshito Usui. But if a studio needs to franchise, to milk their cash butt dry, I guess it’ll do.
RELATED POSTS:
• Series introduction
• No. 13 Crayon Shin-chan: The Legend Called Buri Buri 3 Minutes Charge (2005)
• No. 16 Crayon Shin-chan: The Storm Called: The Hero of Kinpoko (2008)
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