After watching Shugo Chara Party, I was horrified in more ways than one. Instead of once again becoming an even more awesome anime than ever, it turned into a really big commercial advertising songs and stuff, and is laced with a whole much of ads about Shugo Chara licensed toys, accessories, clothing and all sorts of other things. The ads weren't that big of a deal since they were already there since the beginning, but it seems now they are enroaching onto the anime's territory as well.

First thing you see now is two OKAY girls standing next to a hot live action Amulet Heart whose hair isn't pink. They look like primary school kids too. I can't help but wonder why they act so awkwardly and so unnaturally when they are perfect for that kind of character. I think they are just planning to put a price on those costumes sometime after the show has finished.

Next up are two episodes of Shugo Chara Pucchi Puchi which stars primarily the Shugo Charas, and no one else. Why this all of a sudden? The Charas already get loads of screen time in the anime, why another miniseries? To sell more toys and DVDs no doubt.

I'd bet there's going to be a toy that looks just like this, with removable Charas and a cloud with exchangeable faces. Available in stores near you soon.

Then there's this other opening theme of the entire program that's live action too. Wth is up here... Shugo Chara is an anime, not some live action sesame street clone. The girls have not-black hair and very large eyes, not 20-odd year olds dancing in uniforms that simply don't go on them. Not to mention they are the wrong color too. Another single here to sell?

And then finally after 15 minutes into the precious time slot, Shugo Chara Dokki Doki finally starts. The heart of the show is reduced to a 10-minute omake at the end of blatantly shameless advertising and cheap live action shows with girls that before this never had anything to do with the story.

Heck even the ending is live action. Did anime suddenly become too expensive to produce that they reduced the amount of animation they had to pay for and instead replace it with what amounts to a mediocre children's variety show?

Even the OP was laced with reused scenes from the two previous seasons and simply framed in a nice screen with a scrolling background, and is full of still pictures tweened back and forth.

The drawing too has gotten a little lazy. Gone are the action packed high octane moves in the sky and large wide swipes that all characters with long weapons do. Instead, we get paintbrushes that don't even bother going around a static object and simply draw on the canvas that was in front of Amu.

The super sentai transformation scenes are still the same as the ones in Doki, except with frames too. But that's fine, I like familiar stuff.

But I guess they would be fools not to take advantage of the product's position now that it has it. It's a shame really, I was really getting excited about how well this show was executed over the past two years. Oh well, as long as I can watch my beloved Amu, I guess I can live with it.

written by astrobunny \\ advertising, blatant, chara, doki, dokki, fail, mediocre, new, op, party, pucchi, puchi, reused, scenes, season, shameless, shugo