#AniWednesday Recommendation: Shugo Chara!

Now, my gateway anime may have been Sailor Moon, but that doesn't mean I got very far into the magical girl genre. I was “meh” for Magic Knight Rayearth, never watched Wedding Peach, kinda can't stand Pretty Cure, etc.

But then Shugo Chara! came around. I first picked up Del Rey's release of the manga, because I love its creators, Peach-Pit-- who you probably would most recognize as the duo behind Rozen Maiden, as well as Zombie-Loan and DearS.

And I couldn't stop reading it-- or watching it! Can I just say I've been thrilled to death that Crunchyroll is simulcasting the show? Even though it's mostly those single-ep storylines so common to these kinds of shows, even though a lot of it is fluff that didn't appear in the manga, I just keep watching.

The main reason for that is, of course, the heroine, Amu. I always liked her in the manga because she was so easy to identify with: she wants to do the right thing, but she doesn't always know what that is. She wants to be cool, but she wants to like the things she likes, too. She wants what anyone her age wants: to be seen for who she is and liked for just that and nothing more. (And she has cool clothes. What? I'm still a girl, okay?) Amu's unusually powerful heart turns this desire into “Shugo Chara,” or guardian characters, which she uses to transform and fight various evils, mostly baddies who try to steal kids' dreams, essentially.

The first thing that struck me about Amu in the anime was her voice-- namely that it wasn't shrill or irritating. She sounds like...a middle-school aged girl. Nothing more, nothing less. And not saccharine, as an amazing bonus. Her companions all have their own identities that are forced upon them and those that they choose for themselves, which sometimes come into conflict. And while some of the stories may be cheesy, it's nice once in a while to lift myself up from the muck and mire of darker shows into something that's just plain cheerful and optimistic. (Which is one of the reasons why Gurren Lagann was such a big hit with me, too.)

So, while I wouldn't offer a blanket recommendation of this show-- it IS still pretty damn cute and sparkly, even if a bit less so than your standard magical girl fare –I would definitely say that even those not usually fond of the genre might want to give it a shot, either in manga or anime form. You might just be surprised...