Trivia / Kodocha

• Bonus Material: Several cases in both anime and manga.
  • Before Funimation released the DVD Box Sets, they released boxes to keep the DVDs safe with some other feelies.
  • The Japanese DVD box sets that came out in 2010 contain additional material as bonus gifts and cases with new covers drawn by Obana herself.
  • The manga in tankoubon format contains additional chapters such as the Mihona Fujii's crossover, and a strip describing Obana and her sister (who helped her as one of her assistants from time to time)'s "one day in their lives".
  • The manga's kanzenban edition got some extras included such as the original color chapters' covers, clean illustrations from the Ribon magazine's covers, and, at the end of the final volume, a sketch of Sana and Akito if they were high school students.
  • Since Ribon releases bonus gifts for their customers and magazine subscribers, Kodocha had several when it was serialized. Most of them featured original illustrations by Obana.
  • A selection of the first season's most popular scenes and exclusive interviews are included in the PC-FX games Anime Freak FX: Vol.5 and Anime Freak FX: Vol.6, which were basically digital magazines.
• Creator's Favorite: Chris Cason has said that voicing Babbit for the series' English dub was among his favorite voiceover roles.
• Cross-Dressing Voices:
  • In the original OVA, Akito is voiced by Megumi Ogata, who's no stranger to this trope. However, the Studio Gallop anime actually averts this by casting Tatsuya Nakazaki, who goes through a Vocal Evolution that is even reflected in the anime, as he was 14-16 years old when the anime was produced.
  • Omi Minami voices Naozumi, who has cute and delicate features that make him look "feminine".
• The Danza:
  • Zenjiro, a Japanese stand-up comedian, is Child Toy's in-universe host, Zenjiro in the original Japanese release.
  • Tomomi Ayanohanamarukouji is voiced by real-life actress and formal idol singer, Tomomi Nishimura.
• Descended Creator: Akitaro Daichi, the series' lead director occasionally pops up to voice Sanekichi Higashiyamoto, Zenjiro's manager. Noriko Kobayashi, one of the producers of the anime alongside many other TV Tokyo series makes a few sporadic appears as the manga's creator herself, Miho Obana.
• Defictionalization:
  • All of the featured toys that Sana and the other characters had, including the Burutcha, the Nopia, the Polaroid Camera, and the NoriNori Machine (aka the voice sampler) to name a few were made as tie-in products for the series.
  • "The Mansion of Water", the movie that Sana and Naozumi were filming midway through the series, was released as a one-shot manga, in 1999 (it also got a companion Drama CD).
• Dummied Out: An early version of Still Small Voice's "Panic!" plays in the credits of the first episode. Notice the additional segment at the beginning of the track and the extra vocals during the solo. All subsequent episodes that use the song play the final version.
• He Also Did: Tatsuya Nakazaki, the voice of Akito and his American counterpart Brad, is among the anime's voice actors that went virtually unknown in later years, but you may know him as the voices of Mowgli and Young Simba in the Japanese dubs of The Jungle Book (1967) and The Lion King (1994), respectively.
• Hey, It's That Sound!: Episodes 85 and 86 have a few scenes in an arcade that include several sound effects from the original Donkey Kong, specifically 75m.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Funimation not only couldn't license the second season of the anime (which covers the Middle School arc), but in 2012 they decided to drop the license of the entire series altogether. The box sets with the original English logo and credits aren't cheaper to get, leaving the only legal option of getting the individual DVD volumes of 4 episodes each to complete the series (although they aren't going to last soon either). By 2020, Discotek announced that they licensed all 102 episodes of the anime.
  • Wanting to get a hold of the English-translated manga? The manga has been out-of-print since the late 2000s. With some luck, you could try to get the whole series in auction sites.
• Late Export for You: Before Discotek Media rescue-licensed the entire series in 2020 (24 years after the anime's Japanese debut), the anime series was treated as two different licenses. Due to low sales of the DVDs, Funimation never had the opportunity to buy the second season's license, even before the rights of the first season ceased.
• Market-Based Title:
  • In Italy, the series was renamed Rossana.
  • Back in 2003, when the manga series was licensed in Mexico, it was renamed as El Diario de Sana instead of "El Juguete de los Niños" (literal translation from "Kodomo no Omocha", and it's also the title it received in Spain), perhaps to avoid confusion with a similar named telenovela from the 80s called "El Mundo de Juguete".
• Milestone Celebration:
  • The J.C. Staff OVA was released as part of the Ribon magazine's 40th anniversary celebration event, in 1995.
  • The Kodocha x Honey Bitter crossover, Deep Clear (and by extent, Misty Blue), was released because of the 20th anniversary of Miho Obana's career. The latest Japanese DVD Box Set edition was also released to celebrate the occasion.
  • In 2015, for Ribon magazine's 60th anniversary celebration, the series was a part of the magazine's flagship representatives. New merchandise was made to commemorate the celebration, there was also a new chapter of the manga titled Days Without Anything published by Obana herself for the magazine, and a stage play based on the series (also directed by Akitaro Daichi) was announced for a Summer performance.
• No Export for You: The "Mansion of Water" one-shot manga volume and the manga crossover with Honey Bitter haven't been officially released overseas.
• Overtook the Manga: The manga ended in November 1998. The anime, however, ended earlier in March of that year. With little to work in the intervals (being a weekly anime based on a monthly manga series), the anime adapted the original story up until volume 7 (with some clear differences in details and characterization) before the last quarter of the anime series.
• Playing Against Type: Harumi Ikoma tends to voice action girls who tend to be in their 20's or, at most, their late teens. Here she voices the middle-schooler Fuka.
• Portmanteau Series Nickname: The series is also known in both Japan (by the anime staff and fans) and in the U.S. (officially) as "Kodocha", a portmanteau of Kodomo no Omocha. The in-universe series itself is actually renamed to this after it's been put back on the air.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: Funimation's DVD release suffered through a couple of music copyright issues since TOKIO (the band who performed the first opening theme, "7 O' Clock News") is managed by Johnny & Associates. Although Funimation was allowed to replace the music in the English dub track, the audio for the first 16 next episode previews is muted, and the first opening theme is replaced with the second (Tomoe Shinohara's "Ultra Relax"), and TOKIO drummer, Masahiro Matsuoka's cameo is edited in the first episode (while it got outright muted in the original audio track). Eventually, when Discotek Media rescued the series, they announced that all the music rights had been cleared thanks to Julie Keiko Fujishima taking over for Johnny himself, who passed away in 2019.
• Studio Hop: Funimation handled the initial North American DVD releases before switching over to Discotek Media.
• Technology Marches On: The usage and overall abundance of smartphones in this day and age would make many of the items that appear in both the manga and the anime obsolete. Both Akito and Sana would use the cameras on their phones to take their pictures, and the panic of Tsuyoshi missing school and possibly moving away would be negated because of this. This means that the Burutchas have been hit the hardest by this.
• Those Two Actors:
  • Both Laura Bailey and Jerry Jewell are brought in from playing lead characters Tohru and Kyo in the dub of the original Fruits Basket and would reprise their roles for the dub of the 2019 remake. Between those two series, they're the stars of this show as well, playing the lead characters, Sana and Akito.
  • As expected of several English dubs during this era, both Greg Ayres (Tsuyoshi) and Monica Rial (Aya) share much of their screen time together.
• Unfinished Dub: Funimation was only able to release and dub the first season (the first 51 episodes) before losing interest in the series and losing the license altogether in 2012. In 2020, even after Discotek eventually licensed all 102 episodes, the second half is sadly still a sub-only release.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Around the time Miho Obana won Ribon's Newcomer Manga Award, she began to come up with the basic idea for the series. The main character was a high school student, and the characters who eventually became Sana and Akito were originally going to be siblings, with the latter being a foreigner.
  • Obana originally intended to make Akito into a genuine juvenile delinquent, having him get in trouble with adults outside of the school, involving him in serious crimes, and letting him carry a real gun instead of the squirt gun he uses. She realized this would be too much for Sana to handle, and it would be harder to be able to redeem him.
  • Tsuyoshi was going to be psychic and would break windows whenever he got mad instead of having his fits of rage. While Obana dropped the idea to keep the series more realistic, the anime makes one small nod to this when the flap his backpack rapidly flails on its own when he threatens Rei to treat Sana well.
  • Naozumi was going to play the saxophone instead of his trademark trumpet, but it was too difficult for her to draw, and she opted for the easier trumpet.
  • For the anime, the initial plan was to make the background music more in the traditional Japanese style, with the popular '80s group, Isseifubi Sepia, considered a major influence. When Akitaro Daichi saw the series for himself, he instead opted for Latin-style music, noting that clear blue skies and dry air fit the atmosphere perfectly.

---