Trivia / Anpanman

• Acting for Two: With a cast this large, it’s inevitable. To name just one example, Kōichi Yamadera is Cheese, Kabao-kun, and Kamameshidon, plus a number of side characters.
• Actor Allusion: Naganegiman is a parody of Zorro. His voice actor, Akio Ōtsuka, was the dub voice for Zorro in The Mask of Zorro.
• Adored by the Network: This show is the most-aired anime on Kids Station, with at least three airings occurring a day. In addition, Anpanman-themed events are held on the channel at least once a month.
• Amateur Cast: The cast of the English dubs of the films by Macias Group is comprised of voice actors who only work for dubs produced by the company.
• Cash-Cow Franchise: Anpanman has spanned books, an anime, movies, a multitude of projects, and a few children's museums. The franchise often ranks high on "highest grossing franchises" lists as a result. What makes it notable for the Anpanman franchise is that it has a surprisingly small spread, having not left Asia much.
• Colbert Bump: When BTS created a song about this franchise, more people wanted to learn about it. In fact, it lead to two major breakthroughs for the franchise: the show's music being added to Apple Music worldwide, as well as the films being licensed for the North American market, which Tubi even mentioned as the reason in their press release!
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: When some of the movies between 2005 to 2019 were dubbed, the release dates of the movies are off. On the English side, the release years are based on when the films were originally released in Japan, with the exception of "Twinkle! Princess Vanilla of Ice Cream Land" where the release year is 2021, even though it was released in 2019.
• Crossdressing Voices: The male bread heroes Anpanman, Currypanman, Shokupanman and Creampanda are all voiced by women putting on the voices of young boys.
• Descended Creator: Before his passing, Takashi Yanase (creator of the Anpanman franchise) was the voice of "Yanase Rabbit" who was a recurring character and Author Avatar for the author
• Fountain of Expies: Baikinman's unique hybrid devil and fly design, along with his popularity as a character, has caused his design to become shorthand for germs of various uses in other Japanese works, including computer viruses.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • With the series being as long in rarely exported, year-sorted episode packs in VHS and DVD with about a dozen each year, many, many episodes have never been officially released for home viewing.
  • Likewise, with a publication history spanning the better part of four decades and 100+ titles, a large number of older Anpanman books are out of print (the 25-volume "Anpanman Mini-Books" series from 1983-'84 was only recently republished), and some stories (including the entirety of the monthly manga) appears never to have made it out of the periodicals where they were serialized. The last three years' worth of the newspaper strip (whose books only cover the first 18 months or so) is relatively easier to obtain, provided you have access to a library that collects old issues of the Yomiuri Shimbun....
  • Also extremely rare is an English version of the film Fly! Fly! Chibigon, which was made in the mid-to-late 90's as a test pilot to get English TV stations to pick up the series. Although it was not meant to be screened to the public, the credits sequence of this version was leaked in a video of the full version of Cha-Cha's cover of "Anpanman Tasiou" around mid-2012 before being removed by TMS.
  • There's a streaming service in Japan called "Anpanman Channel" ^note  Available on Nippon Television On Demand, Hulu Japan, and U-Next., which streams some episodes. However, there are two downsides to it: 1. The only episodes on the service are from 2010 and beyond, making the service useless to fans looking for a legal way to watch the pre-2010 episodes online. 2. The episodes are only available for a limited time. So if there's a particular episode on the service that you want to watch, don't put off watching it for too long.
• Late Export for You: Tubi licensed the show for Western audiences in June 2020, 32 years after its' Japanese debut.
• No Export for You: As of 2024, the franchise is not officially available in Europe, outside of Spain, where the show did air there.
• The Other Darrin: Due to show being a long runner, quite a bit of the characters would get replacement actors over time, either because the original actor passed away, or couldn't get a hold on continuing the voice.
  • SL-Man was voiced by Kei Tomiyama, but then he passed away in September 1995 after the release of the film "Let's Defeat the Haunted Ship". Mitsuo Senda briefly took over the role for the 1995 home video special "Everyone Gather, It's Christmas" before Tomohiro Nishimura took over the role permanently afterwards in episode 400a which he still does to the present.
  • Kenji Utsumi originally voiced the Lamp Giant, Mushibakinman and Kurayamiman up until his death in the summer of 2013. After his characters were brought back in 2018, they were recasted (Koji Ishii as Lamp Giant, Naoki Tatsuta as Mushibakinman and Tessho Genda as Kurayamiman).
  • Ant Kid was originally voiced by Ken Yamaguchi, but he passed away in 2011. Once Ant Kid was brought back a few years later, his new replacement actor is Kiyohiro Yamaguchi, the son to the original voice actor.
  • Okra-chan was voiced by Yuko Mizutani, but she passed away in late 2016 due to breast cancer. Mami Kingetsu took over the role since 2018.
  • Ice Candy Man was voiced by Toshihiko Seki, but was recasted by Chika Sakamoto in episode 577a.
  • Gyokuro-kun is voiced by Tokuyoshi Kawashima, but he was replaced by Shinya Hamazoe for episode 1331b as the former was busy on other roles. Kawashima would voice him again in 1445b.
  • Mahito Tsujimura originally voiced both Shibugaki Jisan and Avocado Jiya, but his roles were given to other actors. Hiroshi Otake took over Shibugaki Jisan in episode 912a and Takuma Suzuki took over Avocado Jiya in 1268b.
  • Donutsman was originally voiced by Yosuke Akimoto, but was later replaced by Takeshi Aono in episode 400b (1996) and again by Kenyū Horiuchi in episode 1097a (2011).
  • Karakuri Gunnai was originally voiced by Tomokazu Seki in his debut episode (311b). But he was later recasted by Shoichiro Masumoto in his second episode 539a. Masumoto stayed as the voice up until episode 1443a when recasted by Kazuma Takeo (Ryusei Nakao's son) in episode 1492b the following year.
  • Cheese Fonduesan was originally voiced by Miyoko Aso, but then the character was retired for 9 years in episode 1239b after the actress retired in 2015 and later passed away in 2018. Cheese Fonduesan was recasted by Maki Horikoshi when the character returned in 2023
  • Tanpopo-chan was originally voiced by Yuri Shiratori in her first two episodes, but was recasted by Aya Hirano (who would later voice Kokinchan).
  • Kokinchan was originally voiced by singer Otoha in her film short. But was recasted by Aya Hirano once she was added into the anime a year later.
  • Cracker-kun was originally voiced by Jun'ichi Kanemaru in his debut episode, but was replace by Hiro Yuki due to Kanemaru being a bigger star after being the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog.
  • Chocolatepanman was originally voiced by Kaneta Kimotsuki, but was replaced by Hirohiko Kakegawa in episode 120a as the former was recast to play Horrorman (who would later be a main character).
  • As of 2019, the only main characters that had voice replacements are Uncle Jam (Hiroshi Masuoka is retiring from acting due to age) Horrorman (Kaneta Kimotsuki died on October 20, 2016) and Dokin-chan (Hiromi Tsuru died on November 16, 2017). Uncle Jam was replaced by Kouichi Yamdera, Horrorman was replaced by Kazuki Yao and Dokin-chan was originally replaced by Rei Sakuma who also plays Butterko for the 2017 Christmas special until Miina Tominaga took on the role for future episodes and productions.
• Outlived Its Creator: The anime has outlasted Takashi Yanase by ten years.
• Out of Holiday Episode: Episode 70b "Anpanman and Cupidchan" aired on February 19, 1990, which is a few days after Valentine's Day.
• Playing Against Type: Hisako Kyoda, the voice of Omusubiman, is typecast as playing elderly women. Omusubiman, in complete contrast, is a young man.
• Real-Life Relative: Karakuri Gunnai's third voice actor is Kazuma Takeo. He is the son of Ryusei Nakao, who also voiced Baikinan in the series.
• Recast as a Regular:
  • Kaneta Kimotsuki originally voiced Chocolatepanman before voicing main character Horrorman.
  • Mika Kanai originally started voicing minor character Namidachan before voicing main character Melonpanna.
  • Tarako originally voiced one off character Cupidchan and main character Noshi in the 1993 film "Noshi the Dinosaur's Big Adventure" before coming back to play recurring character Frankenrobo-kun.
  • Aya Hirano became the replacement voice for Tanpopo-chan, and quickly became the voice replacement again for Kokinchan once she was added into the series.
  • Tomie Kataoka played Makura Kozo early in the show's run before the character faded out. She would later voice Dokudami Fujin, who as of 2022 has 11 episodes compare to the former who only had two major episodes.
• Recycled Script:
  • Happens from time to time, given the length of the series and its adherence to Strictly Formula. It also affects the movies, which are generally based on existing books, which may or may not have previously been made into TV episodes.
  • The 2012 film adapts the book Anpanman and the Banana Dance (2012), with generous amounts of original material. As always, this will also get a picture-book treatment from the original author, which will be a book based on a movie based on another book of his.
• Referenced by...: Has its' own page.
• Release Date Change: The coronavirus pandemic caused the 2020 movie, Go! Anpanman: Fluffy Fuwari and the Cloud Country, to be delayed from its intended release date of June 26th, 2020 to Summer 2021.
• Technology Marches On: In the original cel-animated episodes, Baikinman's control panel on his computer was a Famicom controller. Since the mid to late 90s and the recent digital ink episodes, it's changed into a Super Famicom controller.
• What Could Have Been: Masako Nozawa once stated that becoming the voice of Son Goku in Dragon Ball came down to the fact that Keiko Toda had replaced her as the voice of Kitaro in the third series of Gegege No Kitaro (as standard industry practice wouldn’t have let her voice two main characters in two separate shows on competing networks). Perhaps, there is an alternate universe out there where Goku ended up voiced by Keiko Toda, and Anpanman by Nozawa....

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