HOF Update: Shin Chan
We don't pay a lot of attention to things, I guess. Anyway, the anime we worked on will be given a trial run on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block starting August 19th. The show's called Shin Chan, which some of you might know as Crayon Shin Chan, one of Japan's most popular cartoons about a fairly stupid little brat who has a thing for public nudity and causing trouble. The show is based on a manga, which (the now defunct) Comics One released here. I found out about the Adult Swim airing by accident on the world wide interweb and Sarah had it confirmed by our producer friend at the CN. I did some checking on the web for a schedule and found this eye-blistering, tiny-typefaced Adult Swim schedule with "Where's Waldo"-like dates for Shin Chan airings: http://www.adultswim.com/schedule/index.html

Suffered through a lot of whiny/nutty anime message board posts to try to make heads or tails of the schedule and the news/info re: the series, which has apparently changed from a once-a-week short run to a very intensive blitz of six episodes aired in a week or so. If I'm following all this correctly. You look at the schedule, you figure it out. I couldn't find anything more straightforward. Eyes...hurty.

Anyway, I also found some clips of the dubbed show on the Funimation website. I can't really nail down my feelings about them...the project has a distancing quality to it, in that we only rewrote dialogue (and not all of it), and working on something like this is so...inorganic. Also, as Sarah and I knew, a lot of our perception of the show would ride on Shin's voice. In Japan, the character has a very specific, very funny voice/manner of speech, one that we're used to as we've seen a number of episodes (many provided to us by several readers of yore, thank you very much, readers of yore). The dubbed voice is jarring, because it isn't "Shin". I don't know if that will matter, ultimately. If you don't know the series, it won't pose a disconnect. Is the show funny? I dunno. I dunno about anything we work on, and in this case we weren't responsible for the plots or the overall execution, we reconfigured dialogue to be "funny" and/or logical based on script needs, localizing, timing, what we were given, what was called for. Anime purists will likely hate the dubbed version, but then again, anime purists probably shouldn't watch dubbed anime. It's never going to make them happy, especially if there are extensive rewrites or changes made. You might as well waltz into an Albanian sushi joint and bitch about the food not being authentic. So I suggest you wait for the subtitled DVD's, anime purists and otaku, and send the hate mail to the Tooth Fairy, because we're not reading it.

Anyway, take a look-see if you care to. Or wait for the DVD's. If they release them. I don't know. Either way, just wanted to tell you that we worked on Shin Chan and it's going to be shown on cable tv real soon. We like, sort of wrote stuff some people will see. Weird!

Quick update: there's an HOF gag panel in the September issue of Nick magazine, Dork #11 is coming down to the wire and mangling my drawing hand something fierce, Jill Thompson's work on the Dark Horse Book of Monsters story is shaping up beautifully (and if all goes well the dialogue revisions on that are done as of tonight, unless I goofed that up), the Bart Simpson strip I wrote is coming out this month (iirc), Sarah and I started work on a script for the Simpsons holiday special, the pilot bible rewrite is still riding our backs, Sarah's finishing up the rewrite on the last volume of President Dad for Tokyopop...and some other stuff is going on, too. We're overbooked, overwhelmed and under the gun...if I owe you work, be assured, it is coming, we're doing the best we can without neglecting the baby or basic personal hygiene. If I owe you a letter, I hope to deal with my backlogged mail sometime soon. If you're looking for regular posts here, uh, well, don't. Not right now, at least. Just hang on, dear readers and interested parties. I beg of you.