Manga Review: Shugo Chara Volume One

The English translation for Shugo Chara came out earlier this year (not sure when…), and the original Japanese came out in 2006, so I am really late blogging this volume, but, seriously, this blog is really empty, and I really want it to have more in it so I can actually feel like a real blogger. Besides, I’m probably not the only one. Oh, and by the way, if I do get any manga this Christmas (and I probably will), I’ll be blogging that too, if it came out ten years ago or not.

By the way, this is just going to be about translation differences, manga/anime differences, and stuff I liked. No point going on about what happened, because if you’re reading this, you probably know…

Del Rey did do a good job translating… they kept in the honorifics, it’s in right to left, and plus, there are even translation notes. However, despite it being the title, ‘Shugo Chara’ became ‘Guardian Character’. So Ran says ‘I’m your Guardian Character’, which, is the right translation, but I think it would have been better if it remained ‘Shugo Chara’.

Anime/Manga Differences

• When Amu falls down the hole in the manga, Ikuto is there, however in the anime, he was cut out of the scene.
• In the anime, just after Ran was born, Amu did Character Change for no apparent reason.
• Just after Su was born, Utau shows up, however in the anime she appears four episodes late, and her first encounter with Amu is seven episodes late.
• The… ‘prince’ episode happens after Amu sneaks into Tadase’s house in the manga, when they’re all at a meeting, however in the anime, that all is squeezed into one episode.
• Utau is said to be an idol in this volume – in the anime, we’re eleven episodes in, and still haven’t found out. I assume in episode twelve, which is out tomorrow, we’ll find out.
• In the manga, Amu is given the lock by the Guardians, when in the anime, Ikuto sort of… loses it to her? Well, it flew to her from Yoru.
• Amu does Character Change first with Ran on the last page of this volume.

Translation Differences

• ‘Cool and spicy’ becomes ‘cool and hot’.
  ‘Shugo Chara’ becomes ‘Guardian Character’, which I don’t mind as much, but if they were gonna change it, why didn’t they just change the title.
  ‘Shugoi Chara’ becomes ‘dollies!’ or ‘dolly kyara’ (this is when Ami finds out about them, but I really don’t mind at all, because it was difficult to find an English counterpart).

I think Del Rey is on the way to being one of my favourite publishers in terms of manga. Sure, there are others, and Tokyopop still has a place in my heart, but when they translate things like Fruits Basket brilliantly, they ruined Tokyo Mew Mew, to the extent where I was bored reading it because ‘yen’ became ‘dollars’ and things like that. What I didn’t like was that we didn’t get those funky postcards that you can see all over this post. I really wanted one! *grumbles*. By the way, I don’t remember where I got them from, but there were some others. I’ll try and backtrack and find where I got them…

Anyway, episode twelve is out tomorrow, so I’ll blog that then. After Christmas I’ll be doing some obsessive blogging, assuming that I get some manga and with the new winter season there will be at least one post each day near the end of the season.