Crayon Shin chan, or Shin chan, as it is known in the West, is a humorous manga and anime. The series was first broadcast in Japan in 1992, and remains in production after more than 1,300 episodes. Known for its irreverent humour, it arrived here in Basque courtesy of the TV channel ETB1. Veteran San Sebastian-born dubbing actress Nekane Sarobe was for over 500 episodes given the task of voicing Sinnosuke Nohara, affectionately known as Shin chan. He is a mischievous, rude and irreverent five-year-old who lives in the city of Kasukabe, in Saitama prefecture. A number of his catchphrases and jokes, along with characters such as his mother Misae, his father Hiroshi, his sister Himawari and his dog Elur, have found their way into the popular imagination of a whole generation.

The manga was the work of the ill-fated artist Yoshito Usui, who died suddenly in 2009, leaving the work unfinished. The anime, meanwhile, served as an early training ground for such established directors as Keiichi Hara, the name behind films including Summer Days with Coo (2007), Colorful (2010), Miss Hokusai (2015) and Lonely Castle in the Mirror (2022), the last two having been screened at the Festival.

This new nostalgia session of Animedon at the Victoria Eugenia, to be presented by journalist Irati Errandonea, will feature three episodes filmed in the nineties, giving us a sense of how the animation of the series has evolved, along with behind-the-scenes stories about dubbing a character like Shin chan, courtesy of Sarobe herself.