Trivia / Sgt. Frog

• Acting for Two:
  • Keroro meets an alien version of his own seiyuu, Kumiko Watanabe. Sadly all her future appearances are scarce on dialogue.
  • Dororo and Dokuku share the same seiyuu.
  • Keiji Fujiwara as both the Narrator and Paul may be old news now, but one recent episode plays this trope to the letter when Paul explains an important plot point to the Narrator. This is not the case in the English dub, where Kent Williams plays Paul and R Bruce Elliot plays the Narrator.
  • In the dub Leah Clark plays both Fuyuki and Lavie (who, admittedly, don't really share a lot of scenes) and Todd Haberkorn is Keroro and Dance*Man.
  • Dororo-mama shares a voice actor with Keroro.
• Ascended Fanon: Joriri and the Shurara Corps were originally some of the fan designs submitted to the Keroro Land mangazine, before being incorporated into the TV show.
• Cancellation: The anime was originally going to be dubbed and shopped to children's TV networks by ADV Films before their eventual shutdown. ^note  they have since reemerged as Sentai Filmworks Funimation dubbed the first 78 episodes, but ceased production due to being unable to secure a TV broadcasting license on a major children's network, probably because the series was still too risqué by American standards (even though things like Koyuki's blatant crush on Natsumi had been toned down in the first place, networks probably thought people would pick up on the subtext anyway, and didn't want a repeat of the "Sailor Uranus/Neptune are cousins" debacle).
• Cross-Dressing Voices:
  • To be expected in any anime with pubescent boys — keep that in mind when you listen to Keroro, a veteran soldier and avatar of the very otaku who watch this show. There's a reason all his female impersonations are so realistic.
  • Keroro averts this in the Funimation dub. Of course, in both versions, Tamama and Fuyuki are voiced by women.
  • Also averted for Keroro in the French and Italian dubs.
• Development Gag: In episode 12-B of the English dub, Kululu accidentally calls Giroro "Giro", which was his name in the preliminary dub (of that same episode no less).
• God-Created Canon Foreigner: Katoyama Kiko, a human mecha designer who joined the Keron Army for a while, and also Mois' friends, girls with similar missions to judge and destroy planets, like Maya, Luz and New, who appear in one story of the last season of the original anime, were all created by Mine Yoshizaki but have made no appearances in the manga at all, not even in small cameos.
• Late Export for You: Only the first 78 episodes were dubbed by Funimation. Further, those were the only episodes released in North America until Discotek announced they would release all 358 episodes to Blu-ray.
• No Export for You:
  • While the manga and anime were exported overseas, the majority of merchandise and games based on the series weren't exported outside of Japan, with some minor exceptions in Europe. China and Korea got the most of it, with Korea getting some of the games and even some exclusive to Korea.
  • Even after Viz rescued the manga from Tokyopop, North America still hasn't gotten any of the manga past volume 21 and on top of that Viz's release is digital only, KADOKAWA did provide translated chapters of current chapters available via Comic Walker in 2015, but that didn't last long.
• The Other Darrin:
  • In the Japanese, Fuyuki was originally played by Tomoko Kawakami. However, she left the show about two-thirds of the way through its run and was replaced by her longtime colleague Houko Kuwashima (who incidentally took over several of Kawakami's other roles later after Kawakami died of cancer in 2011).
  • Jirara, the leader of Dororo's former assassin unit, had a completely different voice actors and style of voices in the 7th season flashbacks compared to the 4th season story which featured him. In the 4th season, he sounded like a cold warrior type, while in the 7th season, he sounded like an old mentor.
  • This is also the case for minor character Melody Honey, in her initial appearance in Seven of Seven, Melody Honey was voiced by Naoko Matsui, however in Arcade Gamer Fubuki as well as her appearances in this series, she's voiced by Megumi Toyoguchi.
    • Same applies to the dub, in Seven of Seven Melody Honey was voiced by Erica Schroeder, in Arcade Gamer Fubuki she was voiced by Shannon Conley ^note  and this is despite both being dubbed in New York , and in this series she's voiced by Tia Ballard.
  • In a dub example of this, for Saburo's first animated appearance in Seven of Seven, he was voiced by Sebastian Arcelus ^note  best known to anime fans for his role as Yoh Asakura (as well as his twin brother Hao) in the 4Kids dub of Shaman King , but in this series, Joel McDonald voices him, granted this is justified since not only is Sebastian a New York based actor ^note  though Funimation is well known for casting out of state voice actors in their dubs , he had also moved on to doing live action and stage work by this point so hiring him would've been way above Funimation's pay grade.
• The Other Marty: Keroro, Kululu, Natsumi, and Mr Narrator were recast between Funimation's preliminary tryout dub of episode 12-B and their released dub (Giroro and Tamama remained the same). It seems like they didn't even re-record Brina Palencia (Tamama)'s lines. For the record, in the tryout episode Chris Cason was playing Keroro and Todd Haberkorn was playing Kululu.
• Playing Against Type: Junko Noda, seiyuu of Karara, doesn't usually voice Genki Girl's often.
• Referenced by...:
  • The anime adaptation of Lucky Star makes quite a few references to Sgt. Frog^note Sunrise, the studio that produced Sgt. Frog, is a parent company of Kyoto Animation, who produced Lucky Star; Tsukasa is a big fan of the manga, and Episode 13 notably features the voice actors of Keroro, Tamama and Giroro (in the episode itself they voice Anime Tenchou's assistants, and they voice their respective Sgt. Frog characters in the preview for the next episode).
  • Sgt Frog has had a few Abridged series and one-shots, the best known being Sgt. Frog Abridged by TheMidnightFrogs.
  • A HK TV Drama has referenced the manga via the names of the characters. (page is in Chinese)
• Studio Hop: In North America, this is the case for both the manga and the anime, the manga was originally licensed by Tokyopop and after their intial demise the manga is now licensed by Viz Media ^note  though Viz's release is digital only . The anime as noted above was initially licensed by ADV Films ^note  now Sentai Filmworks , but due to financial troubles they sat on the rights for 2 years and eventually the license went to Funimation and currently the anime is now licensed by Discotek Media.
• What Could Have Been: A large example from the English version due to its Development Hell. Keroro was originally going to be voiced by Vic Mignogna when ADV had the series^note with the only officially released remnant of this being Keroro's cameos in Lucky Star (and Jessica Boone was to voice Natsumi). However, when Funimation picked up the show, everyone was recast. Keroro was played by Chris Cason in the test dub of Episode 12B, but was changed again in the final release to Todd Haberkorn, who in the test dub voiced Kululu, whose voice actor changed to Chuck Huber. Chris Cason still does make an appearance in the dub as Taruru, however. In fact, the only voices from the test dub that weren't changed for the final cut were Giroro and Tamama (Christopher Sabat and Brina Palencia respectively). Hell, even most of their lines were unchanged from the test dub.
  • The dub was also going to have some name changes, such as changing Natsumi to Natalie^note  This one actually happened in most non-Asian countries to air Keroro, so Funimation wasn't exactly pulling a 4Kids here, and removing the third syllable of the frogs' names (Keroro became Kero, Tamama became Tama, etc). This was changed due to negative reception, and they instead went with the original names for the characters.
  • Had the English distribution rights remained to ADV, the show would've aired on television in the United States in partnership with the Summit Media Group ^note  the ex-syndication arm of 4Kids Entertainment . Cartoon Network liked the mass-media pilot and Nickelodeon liked the kids' pilot (in fact, Nick said they would air the show if ADV got merchandising rights). To this date, the Funimation dub has never aired on television in the United States outside of their own channel, and no network has picked it up.

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