40 Fun Facts About Crayon Shin-chan

Which name, meaning sunflower in Japanese, did viewers rather than the creator choose for Shin-chan's baby sister?

Himawari was chosen by the show's viewers rather than by the creator, which makes the youngest Nohara a fan-named character. Fittingly, her brother's kindergarten class is the Sunflower Class.

What did the city of Kasukabe grant the fictional Nohara family in 2004 to mark its 50th anniversary as a city?

A special resident certificate put the Noharas on Kasukabe's books at a made-up street address, a publicity stunt for the city's golden jubilee. The creator himself lived in Kasukabe and went to school there.

In 1993 Shin-chan sang one of his theme songs as a special guest on which NHK New Year's Eve music contest?

Kōhaku Uta Gassen, NHK's year-end singing showdown, booked the cartoon kindergartner for its 44th edition in 1993. Few anime characters have ever shared that stage with Japan's top singers.

What is the name of the white Maltese puppy Shin-chan adopted after finding him abandoned in a cardboard box?

Shiro is often the cleverest member of the Nohara household, showing logic that outstrips his owners, and has learned to forage because the family keeps forgetting to feed him.

How old is Shinnosuke Nohara, the mischievous kindergarten pupil whose antics drive Crayon Shin-chan?

Five is Shin-chan's age as a kindergarten pupil in Kasukabe, and the whole series turns on a five-year-old behaving in ways a five-year-old should not. He has stayed that age since 1990.

Which actress voiced Shin-chan from 1992 until June 2018, having also played Relena Peacecraft in Gundam Wing?

Akiko Yajima gave Shin-chan his voice for 26 years and was also the Japanese voice of Spyro the Dragon in the PlayStation games. Her final episode aired on June 29, 2018.

Which network has aired the Crayon Shin-chan anime since April 1992 and, since 2010, owned the studio that makes it?

TV Asahi has carried Shin-chan for well over a thousand episodes and in 2010 bought the studio behind it outright, the same house that animates Doraemon.

Besides Japan, which country counts Crayon Shin-chan among its most recognised anime ever and its 2001 film a classic?

South Korea treats Shin-chan as a household name, and there the 2001 film about adults fleeing into nostalgia is rated among the best animated films ever made, not just the best of the series.

Which Indian channel launched a Hindi dub of Shin-chan in June 2006 that grabbed up to 60% of its market share?

Hungama TV, then a Disney-owned kids' channel, found the dub so dominant that the Indian government banned the show in 2008 until fans lobbied for a censored return.

Which artist created Crayon Shin-chan after attending a technical high school in the city where the series is set?

Yoshito Usui lived in Kasukabe and graduated from its technical high school in 1977, thirteen years before the strip that made his name first appeared.

The creator of Crayon Shin-chan died in September 2009 after falling from a cliff on which Gunma mountain?

Mount Arafune is where searchers found the cartoonist a week after his family reported him missing from a hike; his recovered camera's final frame had been taken from the cliff top.

Crayon Shin-chan debuted in 1990 in which seinen anthology, which passed the strip to a monthly stablemate in 2000?

Weekly Manga Action, a magazine aimed at adult men, is where a kindergartner's antics first ran, and the strip stayed there until 2000 before moving to the monthly Manga Town.

Which collective of the late creator's staff has drawn the continuation New Crayon Shin-chan since 2010?

UY Team is the byline on New Crayon Shin-chan, which began in the monthly Manga Town in August 2010 and has since left print for its own website.

Roughly how many copies of the Crayon Shin-chan manga are in circulation, putting it among the best-selling series ever?

148 million copies is the combined count for the original run and its continuation, a total built over 50 tankōbon volumes plus the ongoing sequel series.

Crayon Shin-chan began as a spin-off of a boy character from which earlier comic by the same artist?

Darakuya Store Monogatari featured a boy named Shinnosuke Nikaido, and that character was spun out into the kindergartner the world now knows as Shin-chan.

Before drawing manga, the creator of Crayon Shin-chan joined a company called POP in 1979 in which line of work?

Advertising paid the bills for the future cartoonist from 1979, two years after he left a technical high school in the Saitama city he would later make famous.

In October 2019 Crayon Shin-chan and Doraemon moved together from Friday nights to which evening of the week?

Saturday evenings became the pair's home in 2019, returning Shin-chan to a day it had last occupied some 15 years earlier during a brief shuffle in the early 2000s.

Which Chiba-born actress took over as Shin-chan's voice in July 2018, having studied her predecessor's voice for years?

Yumiko Kobayashi called the part a heavy responsibility, because a nationally known character had been defined by one voice for 26 years, and she debuted in the role on July 6, 2018.

What do Shin-chan and his kindergarten friends, four boys and one girl, call their gang in Crayon Shin-chan?

Kasukabe Defence Force is the grand title the gang gives itself, borrowed from the Saitama city the series calls home, and its one girl member is outnumbered four to one.

Which of Shin-chan's kindergarten friends, a keen footballer, secretly envies him for having a sister and a dog?

Toru Kazama hides his love of cartoons and comics to seem grown-up, and looks down on the Noharas' means while quietly wishing for a little sister and a pet of his own.

Which girl among Shin-chan's kindergarten friends vents her anger by punching a stuffed rabbit shared with her mother?

Nene Sakurada is the only girl in the gang, and the battered rabbit doubles as a punching bag for mother and daughter alike whenever Shin-chan's antics get too much.

Which 24-year-old teacher runs the Rose Class at Shin-chan's kindergarten and feuds with his own class teacher?

Ume Matsuzaka says she dislikes teaching at the kindergarten and plans to move somewhere better, yet turns down a higher-paying post elsewhere, and once dated a chiropractor obsessed with bones.

Why do strangers keep misjudging the principal of Shin-chan's kindergarten, a man who is actually kind and optimistic?

His yakuza-like appearance makes the principal look like a mob boss, which the English dubs ran with by renaming him Enzo and, later, Bernoulli Ench.

Which vegetable does Shin-chan famously refuse to eat, his one declared dislike amid a love of sweets and superheroes?

Green bell peppers are the one food the otherwise greedy Shin-chan will not touch, in a profile that also lists his devotion to a masked TV hero and a toy robot.

Which snack does Shin-chan forever beg for in Crayon Shin-chan, as much a fixture of his life as his masked-hero show?

Chocobi is the snack Shin-chan is forever angling for, and the show's profile of him lists it ahead of even his masked hero and toy robot.

Which Shin-chan character fell silent when actor Kaneto Shiozawa died in 2000, until Hiroshi Kamiya took over in 2016?

Buriburizaemon went sixteen years with barely a speaking role, surfacing only as a set of evil clones in the SHIN-MEN episodes, before his 2016 'Revival Chapter' episode brought him back for good.

Shin-chan's father Hiroshi, a Waseda graduate, comes from a village near Omagari in which northern prefecture?

Akita is Hiroshi's home prefecture, a long way from the Kasukabe house where the stereotypical salaryman puts in eight-hour days and frequent overtime.

Shin-chan's mother Misae grew up in Aso, a volcanic caldera region of which prefecture on Kyushu?

Kumamoto is where Misae comes from, and her retired-teacher father holds standards of public decorum far stricter than anything on the Nohara side of the family.

Which voice actor played Shin-chan's father Hiroshi from 1992 until 2016, when Toshiyuki Morikawa took over the role?

Keiji Fujiwara voiced Hiroshi for 24 years, meaning the Nohara father and son both changed voices within two years of each other, in 2016 and 2018.

A 2015 spin-off manga, adapted as an anime series in 2025, follows Shin-chan's father doing what?

Eating his lunches is the whole premise of Nohara Hiroshi Hirumeshi no Ryūgi, a salaryman's meal-by-meal diary that ran in Manga Town for eight years before moving online.

What does Shin-chan's salaryman father do with his entire take-home pay each month, after all that overtime?

Gives it all to his wife, and it is Misae who then runs the household budget, frugal with everyone except herself and the baby. The stereotypical salaryman works eight-hour days plus frequent overtime.

Which Nohara grandfather's loose public manners keep him arguing with Misae's strict retired-teacher father?

Ginnosuke, Hiroshi's father, shares his son's and grandson's weakness for flirting with women, which is exactly the conduct the stricter maternal grandfather cannot abide.

Which 2002 Shin-chan film is the only one in the series to win the Japan Media Arts Festival's animation Grand Prize?

The Battle of the Warring States was the last Shin-chan film painted on traditional cels, and its story was remade as the 2009 live-action romance Ballad.

Which Doraemon alumnus, later the director of Colorful and Miss Hokusai, made the 2001 and 2002 Shin-chan films?

Keiichi Hara became the series' director in October 1996, and the 2001 film about grown-ups lost in nostalgia raised his profile enough to launch a career in feature films.

Which studio has released every Crayon Shin-chan film since 1993, most of them timed for Japan's Golden Week holiday?

Toho has handled every Shin-chan film from a July 1993 debut pitting Shin-chan's masked hero against a leotard-clad villain, through to the recent 3D CG outing.

In which city, capital of a prefecture famed for green tea and Mount Fuji views, was Crayon Shin-chan's creator born?

Shizuoka City is the cartoonist's birthplace, though he spent his life in Saitama's Kasukabe, whose technical high school he left in 1977.

In which year did Crayon Shin-chan release its first 3D CG feature film, Battle of Supernatural Powers ~Flying Sushi~?

2023's Battle of Supernatural Powers ~Flying Sushi~ took about $23.65 million, and its computer-animated look was a first for a series drawn by hand for three decades.

Shin-chan first aired in Spain in April 2001 on the channel K3, which broadcasts in which regional language?

Catalan audiences made Catalonia the region where Shin-chan was most successful in Spain, so much so that one film was screened in cinemas there only in Catalan.

Funimation's English dub of Shin-chan, which wrapped with a third season in 2011, aired on which US late-night block?

Adult Swim carried a dub that rewrote the scripts with darker, more mature jokes, and the English manga later borrowed that dub's style of humour.

Which DC Comics manga imprint acquired Crayon Shin-chan in 2007 and issued an uncensored, Mature-rated English edition?

CMX put out the first volume in February 2008, and One Peace Books later reprinted that same translation in omnibus form from 2012.