Gokicha (Cockroach Girls) chronicles the adventures of the title character, a cockroach who moved to Hokkaido from Kanto in order to make friends with humans. Unfortunately, while the audience sees Gokicha as a cute cockroach girl, the humans around her see her as, well, an actual cockroach, and react accordingly. During her misadventures, she gets in all sorts of trouble and meets a few recurring characters.
Gokicha began as a couple of doujin in 2009 as Gokiburi Gijinka, before getting serialized as a monthly 4-koma in Manga Time Kirara Carat from 2011 to 2016. In September 2012, a web animation aired on Nico Nico Douga as Gokicha!! Cockroach Girls with two episodes.
Tropes:
- 1-Dimensional Thinking: Gokicha lampshades the trope while running from a rolling golf ball and makes a 90 degree turn to the golf hole to avoid it.
- All-Loving Hero: Gokicha wants everyone to be happy and tries to help humans with no benefit to herself and never being appreciated for her efforts. She even rationalizes not wanting to be eaten because animals may get stomach ache.
- All of the Other Reindeer: Gokicha is jealous of other insects like butterflies and cicadas because humans are fond of them but hate cockroaches for reasons unbeknownst to her.
- Alternate Continuity: The doujin and 4-Koma take slightly different paths; in the doujin, Gokicha meets Chaba while traveling to Hokkaido by train, while in the 4-Koma, Gokicha arrives by boat, and meets Chaba after spending a while in Hokkaido. The web animation follows the doujin.
- And the Adventure Continues: The manga ends with Gokicha's quest unfulfilled, but she's still determined to become likable one day. At least now she has a good friend in Chocolat, reconciled with Chaba and the Professor wants to know more about her.
- Animal Talk: Gokicha can communicate precise ideas between Chocolat the cat. They are notably the only animal besides Chaba who can understand Gokicha, though Chocolat can't speak.
- Animals Hate Him: Cats and birds either consider Gokicha food or mistake her for food when they see her.
- Berserk Button: The Part-Timer hates cockroaches, and goes out of her way to chase and crush Gokicha on sight.
- Big Fun: Chocolat, Gokicha's cat friend likes to laze around at home and play with toys.
- Butt-Monkey: Gokicha. On the one hand, she is a cockroach, so it's understandable, but on the other, seeing the kind of violence humans normally deliver to cockroaches delivered to a Little Bit Beastly cockroach girl makes things rather more distressing.
- Cats Are Mean: Played straight with cats who try to eat Gokicha, then averted with Chocolat who gives her home.
- Comically Missing the Point: Gokicha often overhears why humans dislike cockroaches and tries to correct her flaws. Which does nothing to her reputation.
- Creepy Cockroach: Chaba and Gokicha avert this, but humans still treat them as pests anyway (as they're not in on the audience's perspective).
- Diet Episode: In Chapter 46 Chocolat tries to lose weight due to their cat tower collapsing under them. They turn out to be too much of a Big Eater and the diet is shortly canceled.
- Epic Fail: When a toothpick holder falls off the table, Gokicha performs a Heroic Sacrifice by pushing Chaba... right below it. Oops.
- The Faceless: The part-timer lady, a recurring character, has the eyes obscured all the time. Unless she senses a cockroach. When her eyes ARE visible, Gokicha must run.
- Face of a Thug: Chocolat has scars over their right eye and sends other cats in panic with their presence, which is good for Gokicha who gets to learn of their shy side.
- Fairy Tale Episode: Chapter 29 spoofs Momotarō, The Tortoise and the Hare, Little Red Riding Hood and The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter with the manga characters.
- Festival Episode: Chapter 36 has Gokicha attend a traditional festival, and she makes a yukata for herself out of a popped balloon.
- Fortune Teller: Chapter 61 has Gokicha try different fortune reading techniques on Chaba, the only thing she got right is that they're both Born Unlucky. She even somehow got the wizard costume up her size.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Chaba doesn't tolerate being insulted, hungry, or hit, and comes back at the offenders.
- Hammerspace: Gokicha can store a lot in her dress, including items bigger than her.
- Happy Rain: Gokicha is comfortable under rain and doesn't understand why humans are not.
- Honor Before Reason: Gokicha would rather eat leftovers than steal food from humans, in contrast to Chaba who prioritizes her own comfort.
- House Fey: If Gokicha does manage to help humans without them noticing her, like cleaning the room, they consider it the work of fairies. For example, she once left a coin for damaging a toy while staying, for the coin to be rare and valuable in collectors market
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Gokicha's main goal is to have a human friend.
- Inconsistent Coloring: Gokicha got black, grey, brown, and purple color schemes on different colored pages and volume covers.
- Iron Butt Monkey: Gokicha gets stomped on, sprayed with insecticide, swatted, pounced on by cats, even survives a Venus Fly Trap, and she still manages to keep trucking. Truth in Television as roaches are really that persistent.
- It's a Small World, After All: Throughout the large area of Hokkaido, Gokicha manages to run into Chaba (who asks why do they keep meeting) or the same Part-Timer all the time despite the odds.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Chaba is more selfish and aggressive than Gokicha, and finds the latter a Doom Magnet, but still worries about her.
- Kids Are Cruel: Children are often portrayed as sadistic, often treating Gokicha like a toy or trying to injure her for fun. She doesn't understand why stag beetles get better treatment.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Any time Chaba tries to get rid of Gokicha for being a nuisance, she gets to be the one to get hit with Amusing Injuries next.
- Literal-Minded: The reason why Gokicha carries several gokiburi dango with her and tries to give Chaba one is that she overheard that these are "made for her" and she "should share it with friends", not knowing that they are toxic to cockroaches.
- Little Bit Beastly: How Gokicha and Chaba usually look to the audience: humans with two antennae and hair shaped like a cockroach's tegmina.
- Mad Scientist: The Professor is nice to Gokicha, but gets pretty intense when something interests her, like trying to cure her Assistant's phobia by locking him in a room full of bugs, catching him by surprise with cosplay, or suggesting experimenting on his optic nerves.
- Mouse World: From Gokicha's perspective Hokkaido is a City of Adventure, as she gets into a lot of adventures that humans wouldn't know.
- Neat Freak:
- Gokicha dislikes trash to the point of obsession and cleans it up if she stumbles on some. This pisses Chaba off to no end, who prefers to live in a Trash of the Titans for easier food access.
- This is actually Truth in Television: A little-known fact about roaches is that they clean themselves obsessively, similar to cats. Naturally, they're not known to clean up their environments, but it's not hard to imagine that one might try if they were Little Bit Beastly cockroach moe girls.
- New Job as the Plot Demands: The Part-Timer has worked at over a dozen of jobs and fills in the role of adults who specifically hate cockroaches.
- Nice Girl: Gokicha is a sweetheart that cares about the wellbeing of others even if they don't or can't appreciate her or just attacked her.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
- Gokicha occasionally tries to help humans, like cleaning trash or picking up items they've dropped. She expects them to be thanking her and nearly gets killed for it every time.
- Chocolat tries to help young kittens and children when they can, but to his owner, they're just a cat trouble-maker.
- Not Helping Your Case: Gokicha knows she looks terrifying to humans and that they attack her on sight every time, but she keeps approaching them and even jumps on them.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: The Professor and her Assistant wear Labcoats Of Science and have apparently created extendable arms, cosmetic drugs, a teleporter, and a Translator Collar.
- The Pollyanna: Gokicha, so much. No matter how much they hate her, she never gives up trying to befriend humans.
- The Prankster: Chaba loves to jump on humans with the intent to scare them, which does not help Gokicha's case.
- Punny Name: Gokicha is a play on "Gokiburi", meaning "Cockroach", and Chaba is an abbreviation of "Chabane" — "Chabane Gokiburi" means "German Cockroach," which she is.
- Sadist Show: Gokicha just can never be at peace. Any chance humans would like her is a Bait-and-Switch, and the longer she's on the streets minding her business the more often she ends up with Amusing Injuries in one way or the other.
- Shout-Out: One of the chapter title pages has Gokicha standing on the game board from Jumanji.
- Sliding Scale of Animal Communication: Level 3. Cockroaches have their own language, but can't be heard by humans.
- Stylized for the Viewer: Gokicha and Chaba look Little Bit Beastly by default, but from a human point of view they're indistinguishable from a regular Creepy Cockroach.
- Super-Strength: Like many insects, Gokicha can carry objects way larger than herself to a certain extent.
- Tender Tears: Gokicha's main expression besides smiling is crying.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: The Professor isn't afraid of Gokicha and feeds her cookies. Her Assistant believes she would experiment on her For Science!, but she's just a Nice Girl with an interest in insects.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Chaba and Gokicha respectively. They also have some elements of Red Oni, Blue Oni. Amusingly, Gokicha (the blue) has red eyes while Chaba (the red) has blue eyes.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Gokicha loves skull-marked gokiburi dango, which are buns filled with boric acid (also known as Cockroach Bait), and always carries some with her. Chaba reminds her that they are supposed to be poisonous.
- Translator Collar: The Professor makes a gadget that reads the feelings of animals. As it turns out, it allows Gokicha to have a normal conversation with her.
- Tsundere: Chaba can't admit that she can't leave Gokicha alone in trouble.
- Wall Run: Like cockroaches in real life, Gokicha and Chaba can run on walls, and at Super-Speed at that.
- What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: Chaba and Gokicha are cockroaches portrayed as cute humanoid girls. But from the point of view of humans, they are Creepy Cockroaches that should be stomped on sight.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: The Professor's Assistant has severe entomophobia and is afraid to get close to one.
