Trivia / Chargeman Ken!

• Creator's Apathy: According to Wikipedia, the show's low budget caused the staff working on it to become disinterested in it, with many of them frequently skipping work to go to the beach.
• Defictionalization: In Episode 16, minor characters mention "Brahms Symphony No. 8" and "Silly Goldfish". They both became real songs and were included in the official soundtrack.
• He Also Did:
  • The show's production studio was Knack Productions. Despite Knack Productions being founded by some of the best animators of the era and having had notables in the anime industry working with them, quite a number of their productions (especially in the 70s-80s) are for some reason either very low quality (sometimes horrendously so) and/or outright copycats of more-popular shows. This reputation was acquired early in the American anime fan community, thanks to the release of some of their mockbusters - namely Ninja the Wonder Boy (original title Manga Sarutobi Sasuke) and Ken Ishikawa collaboration Robby the Rascal (original title Cybot Robotchi) — on U.S. home video for the 1980s kiddie audience. Nevertheless, not all of their shows were terrible and some of them found legitimate international success. Anyone who watched Nickelodeon in the late 1980s may remember them for The Little Prince anime, which was good enough to win a commendation from the U.S. National Educational Association. Don Chuck Monogatari, a kodomomuke show about an anthropomorphic beaver and his friends, and the volleyball comedy/drama Attacker You! found tremendous success in Europe and, in the case of the former, in French-speaking Canada (as Le Petit Castor). And although the studio's team-up with Go Nagai, Psycho Armor Govarian, was something of a Mazinger Z redux, it was well made for its era and became popular in South Korea.
  • Another name in the credits, Tama Productions (who did the bulk of the show's "Animation"), would go on to make a name of themselves in the realm of Western Animation, contributing to shows like Darkwing Duck, Gargoyles, Static Shock and the pilots to the ultimately not picked up Welcome to Eltingville and Constant Payne.
• Late Export for You: The show did not leave Japan until 2017, when Discotek Media announced the distribution of Chargeman Ken! in North America.
• No Budget: Each episode was produced on a mere 500,000 yen (approximately 5,000 USD); even taking into consideration that said episodes were only five minutes long, this is very little.
• Referenced by...:
  • The entirety of the Sgt. Frog anime episode "Jerseyman Fuyuki" is a somewhat affectionate Take That! towards the anime. Fuyuki buys Ken's jersey online and becomes Ax-Crazy after putting it on, alluding to how Ken constantly does needlessly cruel things in the name of defeating the Juralians and gets no comeuppance for it.
  • The anime podcast Dynamite in the Brain is named after the infamous episode with Dr. Volga.
  • SiIvaGunner's rip of "Charge Man Stage" from Mega Man 5 includes clips from Chargeman Ken, including "Dynamite in the Brain".
  • Hunger Games Simulation:
    • (Player1) finds out that (Player2) has a bomb planted inside. (He/She1) says, "forgive me, (Player2)!" as (he/she1) drops (him/her2) on (Player3).
    • Upon (Player1) raising valid concerns about the dangerous (Player2), (Player3) simply replies, "never mind!"
    • After seeing (Player1) set fire to (Player2)'s camp, (Player3) and (Player4) tell (Player1) to burn down camps everyday.
  • Sho Terashima from Zanki Zero looks identical to Ken, with a large "T" on his shirt.
• Rereleased for Free: Knack Productions' official channel (as ICHI Corporation) released the whole series on YouTube in 2020.
• Technology Marches On: Even though this anime is set in the future, everyone still uses vinyl records (while the vinyl revival means this isn't as implausible as it might have been, the fact that no more advanced music storage formats are mentioned still makes this an example).
• Tyop on the Cover: Several episodes have their title cards misspelled, such as Episode 44, "Beat the Fake Ken!". It should be written as 研の偽者をやっつけろ！but on-screen it's written as 研の偽物をやっけろ!◊, with wrong kanji for 偽者 (both 偽者 and 偽物 are pronounced "nisemono", but the former is used for impersonating a person, while the latter is used for making fake objects, like counterfeit money. They should have used the former in the title card). やっつけろ (yattsukero) means "Defeating someone", but due to a typo it's written やっけろ (yakkero), which is not a real word.

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