The Mystery of the Shugo Chara English Dub

In today's video, I explore the mystery of the english dub for the anime Shugo Chara, and uncover the truth about it's existence.

Reddit post:

Original Live Journal Post:

Lost Media Wiki Article:

[riginzer]

It's sad this anime was popular before, but is now slowly being forgotten. As a wannabe voice actor, voicing a character on this show is a pipe dream.

[LuluMedly]

As a Canadian who was a huge fan of anime from the late 90s to the late 2000s. I think what that Reddit user is thinking of is the first season of Precure/Pretty Cure. Which aired around the same time they were thinking.

[RevRainsUtopia]

The other reason people might be misremembering is cause the first season has a small English intro to it before the opening plays

[sarahanna]

I remember watching an English dubbed version of Shugo Chara back in like 2013 and when I went to go find it to rewatch it was gone and I couldn’t find it anywhere. It could have been a fan dub but fan dubs back then were not that great and from what I remember it sounded like a real English dub. I always thought it might be a Mandela effect.

[IWannaBeAnArtistToo]

They also might be remembering a fan dub

[tiaisadork]

It honestly still makes me sad that we never got an English dub of Shugo Chara. It's been a major hyperfixation since I first saw it back in 2009-2010! At the moment though I have more hope held in a possible reboot, after all a bunch of other magical girl anime have been getting reboots, plus a lot of new official merch has been released over the last few years!

Over all a great video! Oh and just a lil fun fact, the stich of the 1st Shugo Chara Doki ED(at 0:50) was actually made by me! I recognized it right away thanks to all the janky lines. I think it's honestly pretty funny seeing just how big of a footprint I've manged on leave on the fandom for this series lol.

[tinkotonko]

I cannot help shake the feeling that i 99% did watch shugo chara in english. I am pretty sure it is out there.

[CallumDowney]

Holy crap it honestly came back to me tonight and was talking about it in a discord server and someone linked me this video.
I Totally forgot I even made that reddit post kind of cool to see this.

[maddybordner]

I’m from Texas, and I SWEAR I watched this in dub? But way later than the Reddit posts suggest. I have always been a big dub girl, and this would’ve been the ONLY sub anime I watched as a middle schooler. Like I saw this before I watched Ouran. I watched this before I saw any ghibli. I’m sure I just watched it in sub, but it haunts the f**** out of me.

[phaineinTV]

I'm never one to deny myself a good internet rabbit hole, so I did a bit of digging! My up-front disclaimer is that I'm from the UK and never had access to Animax Asia, so any assumptions about the station's functions here are pulled out of my butt.

By happenstance, the 'all shows' page of Animax Asia circa 2012 is extremely well archived by the wayback machine, with multiple captures per month for the entire year. I went through the entire year's worth of captures and could not find Shugo Chara listed under either the original or 'Guardian Character' title. Going by the resume, I supposed it was possible that the dub was *recorded* in 2012 but not aired until the following year, so I checked 2013 as well. Again, the entire year is accounted for (though split across two pages when the website was restructured) and I could not find Shugo Chara listed for the entire year. While it's definitely possible it could have been on the schedule in years following that, I felt I was definitely stretching plausible deniability when it came to wriggle room on that 2012 air date and left it there.

I also investigated Anime News Network, since it has articles dating back to 2012 and beyond and has even hosted articles specifically about shows airing on Animax Asia. They did not have any articles about Shugo Chara on that network and the sole English dub credit I could find was Matthew Leonhart. There were no articles about a dub for the series, even though other contemporary shows (including shoujo) received articles about dub casts and announcements. Finally, I did a few searches of the net using the time range of Shugo Chara's Japanese airdate to 2015. I used a number of different keyword combos but did not find any relevant results.

All this combined has me pretty confident that a dub does not exist. While it's certainly possible for a TV-only English dub to have become lost, I simply don't believe that an English dub for one of the biggest shoujo properties at the time would have landed with this total absence of fanfare. Ten years isn't really that long in internet terms and so, I find it hard to accept that the information to confirm this would have vanished so quickly in that stretch of time.

Hope this was helpful!

[Blk_Hony]

I got a computer virus watching this in English dub as a child! Maybe it was fan dubbed

[yashiki-the-scholar]

I think it was a fairly decent fandub that existed back on youtube that wasn't a parody and was more a straight translation but not as sophisticated as fanworks today that learned to audio layering and clean up. I never saw it reach past about 6 episodes and only found it since I found the original on CrunchyRoll back when they weren't so money hungry as they are today. Parodies were huge at the time thanks to Little Kuriboh and can remember a few dub audition videos for a few other fandubs and parodies.

[kiki_therando]

I SWEAR ON MY LIFE THEIR WAS A DUB VERSION😭😭😭

[brianna_ray]

When my husband and I first started dating, he introduced me to anime. He started me off on Trigun, Death Note, and Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood. Shugo Chara was the first anime I watched on my own, and I will always have a spot in my heart for it. I wasn't use to watching anime subbed yet, so I remember always hoping that Shugo Chara would come out with an English Dub. If it ever did now, I'd probably now hate it.

[spongey-goo]

If the English dub did exist, I wonder if the Canadian one used a translated theme or a new one??
Also an Animax dub is interesting as usual, as we know damn well it’ll probably be lost forever since Animax Asia dubs are INCREDIBLY hard to find.

[virtualvenus]

honestly i do remember watching the Shugo Chara English Dub. they showed it on the british channel "pop girl". i'm not sure how many episodes they aired, but the only thing i remember was a scene where Amu was in her school's bathroom and Miki was saying that if she didn't believe in her guardian characters, they'd disappear. i believe that was one of the earlier episodes? i remember that they showed the entirety of that episode, but i don't remember if they aired the whole season. also, they barely aired the show on the channel, so maybe that is why it is lost? i know this dub existed but i barely remember it as i was so young haha

[siderastral]

When i was little there was a french dub and they didn't change the name

[_nein_]

As far as I'm aware Shugo Chara did have a dub
At least when I was younger
I remember watching it because it was one of my first anime
After 2-3 years i wanted to watch it again but i couldn't find it anywhere at least the dub version
It's weird cus I remember it so clearly but everyone says it didn't have one
And i did watch it on YouTube not on tv

[kedo]

I like how when I was watching kodocha I found this channel and now I'm watching shugo chara (currently on doki (season 2) and this vid comes out

[Lisey_Ann]

holy shit i forgot the english name was "my guardian characters." i have doubts of it ever being dubbed though, only people looking forward to it. i think it's totally possible that there were plans for a dub, some episodes may have gotten dubbed, maybe even aired, but then the dub probably was discontinued.