Crayon Shin-chan: The Storm Called: The Adult Empire Strikes Back

A large exhibition opens in Kasukabe: a nostalgia park themed on the twentieth century. Adults go there, smell their childhood and do not come back. Every parent in the city reverts to childhood and starts living in the past. Five-year-old Shinnosuke and his friends have to rescue their families. The subject is not children's comedy but nostalgia itself. The villain wants to bring the past back and his reasoning is entirely comprehensible; he sells the smell of yesterday against the ugliness of today. In opposing him, the film does not defend the present either, only the act of choosing the future. The staircase sequence at the end has its own place in Japanese animation: Shinnosuke climbs the steps of Tokyo Tower in tears, falling and getting up, while his father's whole life is shown. The passage has been remembered for years for making adult viewers cry. The form keeps the crude humour of the television series and changes register completely in the emotional sections. Keiichi Hara directs, later known for Colorful and Miss Hokusai. The film is counted among the cases in which a movie from a children's series was taken seriously by adult critics. Who it is for: viewers who like Japanese animation and films that think about nostalgia. Who it is not for: anyone unfamiliar with the series; the humour rests on a five-year-old's crude jokes and some of it is tiring.