Trivia / High Guardian Spice

• Acting for Two: Anthony Brandon Walker as Professor Hakone and Camphor (Thyme's Dad). Their voices also sound similar.
• The Cast Showoff: Slime Boy, voiced by musician Julian Koster, sings in one episode.
• Crossdressing Voices: The male Parnelle is performed by voice actress Barbara Goodson.
• Darkhorse Casting: The four main characters are all either voiced by complete unknowns within the voice acting community or this being their first starring role after years of side roles.
• Descended Creator: Raye Rodriguez, the show's creator and executive producer, also voices Professor Caraway.
• Executive Meddling: Per Daftpina, this was why the show wound up being TV-MA. The team was told to “age up” the show, likely because of Crunchyroll’s main demographic being Anime fans more used to such content. This despite most concept art pointing towards a more child-friendly series, contributing to the Uncertain Audience problem the show developed.
• Invisible Advertising: After the first trailer dropped in August 2018 — which was almost entirely behind-the-scenes interviews with only a few promo images to go with it — the show's advertising was nonexistent. There were no other trailers released for the show until 2020, and it was missing from Crunchyroll expo panels that the show's crew were advertised for, leading to many thinking that the show had either fallen into Development Hell or had been quietly cancelled. It took until August 2021 for a trailer to be posted on Crunchyroll's official YouTube channel, with only one other trailer being released on October 11th before being unceremoniously released on the 26th, with only a single Tweet to herald its arrival. Crunchyroll advertised it for the next several days before the show's adverts quietly disappeared from the front page.
• No Budget: According to creator Raye Rodriguez on his Twitter account, the series had a very low budget. While the exact amount has never been specified, it is known that funding went far below the norm for American animation projects due to being produced by a non-union studio, which contributed to a lot of the series' problems like the frequent amounts of Off-Model and being unable to afford more experienced voice actors save for a very small number who largely were minor characters.
• No Dub for You: For a while, the show was only available in English. with only subtitles for several other languages. That is until an (unlicensed) Persian dub was added to the service Digitoon in 2023.
• Production Posse: Most of the professional voice actors in the cast (those who don't fall under Darkhorse Casting above) previously worked with voice director Audu Paden on Monster High.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Transgender man Raye Rodriguez voices the likewise transgender Professor Caraway. Similarly, trans woman Julia Kaye voices Snapdragon, who Rodriguez confirms is a trans girl.
• Quietly Cancelled: Despite the first season ending on a cliffhanger, there hasn't been any news regarding a second season. Between the first season's massively Troubled Production and the mostly negative reviews, renewal doesn't look likely. On November 2023, it was conformed that Ellation Studios/Crunchyroll Studios shut down.
• Release Date Change: Was originally set for a late 2019 release, after wrapping production in autumn of that year. However, it wouldn't be released for another two years, in October 2021.
• Screwed by the Network:
  • It was Crunchyroll who were responsible for releasing the infamous first trailer without any input from the rest of the team, leading to the heavy backlash against the show as a whole. This was not helped by Crunchyroll sitting on the show for two years, letting the distaste grow instead of dying down while those who were actually excited for the show saw very little until its release.
  • Crunchyroll only advertised the show until the end of Halloween weekend before essentially washing their hands of it in order to focus on their Winter 2021 lineup.
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: Production wrapped in Autumn of 2019, but Crunchyroll sat on the series for around two years before even releasing a trailer with actual footage. After which they released all twelve episodes in October 2021 to little fanfare.
• Tribute to Fido: According to Raye Rodriguez, Olive and Kino are based on his pet cats sharing their names.◊
• Troubled Production: A Twitter thread Raye Rodriguez started revealed that the show was made on a very small budget at a non-union studio. This was coupled with extremely tight scheduling; storyboarding for the first episode began before the script was even finished and the team were legitimately unable to go back and fix any errors that they ran into due to lack of time and money. Lastly, the initial first trailer hurt the production even more as the team had absolutely no say in how Crunchyroll marketed their series.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In an interview with The Gamer, Raye Rodriguez stated he originally pitched the series to Frederator Studios in 2013. It was around the time the studio released series like Bee and Puppycat and Bravest Warriors. However, it didn't get picked up.
  • The series was first pitched to Crunchyroll in 2016, much earlier than its eventual 2018 pick-up. Though Crunchyroll liked it, they didn't have the "bandwidth" at the time to produce it as a series. It was only after Ellation Studios was created that Raye could successfully pitch the series.
• Word of Gay: Not that it's terribly ambiguous, but series creator Raye Rodriguez did indeed confirm that Snapdragon is intended to be a trans girl.
• Written by Cast Member: Katie McVay, who mainly voices Amaryllis and several additional cast, is solely credited with writing three episodes: "A Lost Cause", "The Cave of Vinca", and "Rainy Day Memories". She has also co-written episodes alongside Kate Leth and Amanda Levari: "Journey to Lyngarth", "Disorientation Day", and "Crushing Obstacles".

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