Shugo Chara!

Shugo Chara is absolutely one of my favorite animes. It is ten times funnier, cuter, and more energetic than any other kids show I've ever seen. The characters are all super fun and entertaining, and they have such great chemistry with each other that I can't help but smile when I see them on screen. Watching them overcome their personal battles over the course of the series has truly touched my heart. And the transformations (which are the hallmark of any magical girl anime) are also really colorful and creative.

If no one else is going to say it, I will: Shugo Chara is immensely underrated. I highly recommend it to fans of magical girl and children's anime, or anyone who wants to watch a show with their little siblings :)

Pretty bold move for the last season of a long-running show to be entirely filler, with the first half of each episode taken up by bewildering live action idol-project segments and short cartoon segments that aren't even canon to the already-not-canon main show. Even the opening sequence was a montage made up of footage from the show rather than anything new. Shugo Chara was never a particularly stellar series to begin with, but its characters were likeable and for the most part it sent a healthy message to kids about not limiting your ambitions to fit into a box. That being said, I'm a firm believer that children's programming can also be good. For the most part, despite its shortcomings in terms of depth and storytelling, I still enjoyed it for the characters and the albeit formulaic 'monster-of-the-week' magical girl themes. The final season, however, was the final nail in the coffin that neatly did away with every last thing that made me like the show in the first place, topped off with a disorganized disaster of a finale.