Trivia / Sukeban Deka

• Actor-Inspired Element:
  • In the TV series, Saki was made a forced left-hander due to injury. This was because her actresses, Yuki Saito and Yoko Minamino, are naturally left-handed.
  • The second Saki was raised in Kochi and spoke in its native Tosa dialect, a variation of the Kansai dialect. Yoko Minamino hails from Kansai (specifically Hyogo Prefecture).^*  Tosa is an accent of the Shikoku dialect, spoken in the south of the island. Like most of Shikoku's sub-dialects, it is not significantly different from the Standard Kansai spoken in Kobe and most of Hyogo.
• Approval of God:
  • As Shinji Wada had disliked the first series for being too different from his vision, Toei warned him beforehand that Yuki Saito's departure would force them to alter further the manga's storyline in Sukeban Deka II. Rumoredly, there were even inner conflicts in the company about this, as some executives disapproved the characters of Okyo and Yukino on the belief that the second Saki Asamiya should work alone like the original. However, it turned out that Wada loved it; he stated that the series was the closest to the work's spirit, as making friends and learning to work with other people was precisely what Sukeban Deka was about, and joked that he would have become a fan of II had it existed back when he was a student. He even made a cameo in the series' movie, the only time he did so in the franchise's audiovisual media.
  • Wada also approved the 2006 movie's casting choice of Aya Matsuura, as he was a personal fan of hers and felt she was a natural Saki Asamiya.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: The 2006 movie was this for many fans. Director Kenta Fukasaku agreed to direct it because for a long time he had wanted badly to do a movie about an Action Girl, while Yuki Saito agreed to make a cameo believing the fans would like it (she was right).
• Baby Name Trend Starter: Apparently, Saki became somewhat of a popular baby girl name back when the TV series was hot. Actress and singer Saki Fukuda is named that way because her mother was a fan of the series, while AV actress Saki Ninomiya goes under that artistic name because her parents were fans as well (she was born the year in which the series premiered, and has implied in interviews that Saki is her true first name).
• The Danza:
  • In the second season of the live action version, Yoko Godai was played by Yoko Minamino.
  • In the third season, there is Yui Kazama played by Yui Asaka.^note  (although this is actually her stage name, her real name is Aki Kawasaki) Yuma Nakamura and Yuka Onishi played her sisters Yuma and Yuka Kazama.
• Dawson Casting: Technically, albeit barely. Yuki Saito and Yoko Minamino were both 18 when their respective series began (Saki is meant to be 16). Averted with Yui Asaka who was 16 when SD-III premiered.
• Directed by Cast Member: In the OVA's English dub, Matt Greenfield was the ADR director, writer and producer, in addition to voicing the police chief.
• Disowned Adaptation:
  • Wada disliked the first series, believing it didn't capture the gritty spirit of his work and was too idealistic.
  • He also hated Sukeban Deka III, in this case for trading the series' realistic action and serious urban crime drama for ninja silliness and Star Wars references. He went to say they should have created another TV series instead of doing that to Sukeban Deka (which, ironically, was exactly what was supposed to happen; see What Could Have Been below). Wada became so bitter about it that he vetoed all attempts to resurrect the franchise until 2006.
• Follow the Leader: While it was not the first series about fighting schoolgirls, the popularity of the live action series inspired similar franchises such as Shoujo Commando IZUMI, Hana no Asuka-gumi! and Sailor Fuku Hangyaku Doumei.
• Franchise Killer: Sukeban Deka III. Whether it was because of the fantastical elements, the bizarre and often confusing storyline, or the audiences finally getting tired of the series (a typical effect of Japan's fad-centric pop culture), the series was unceremoniously cancelled after exactly one year - 42 episodes - and ended the possibility of the world seeing more of Saki Asamiya. Even though the 2006 movie was successful both critically and commercially, the franchise as a whole has yet to return …although new manga in The New '10s produced after Shinji Wada's death shows people still want to see Saki.
• Hostility on the Set: An amusing example. As Yuki Saito and Yoko Minamino revealed in 2010, after Saito chose not to reprise her role and the character of Saki was recast, Saito was curious about the new actress, so she visited Minamino several times through a common friend. However, both Saito and Minamino were so socially awkward that they barely talked, each believing the other to be giving the cold shoulder, and left convinced this was the case. They only cleared out the situation after meeting again decades later.
• Money, Dear Boy: Keizo Kanie was initially only in Sukeban Deka II for the money, considering the series to be just a silly children's show, although he later grew to like it and ended up being proud of his work on it.
• The Other Darrin:
  • The first TV series was narrated by Chiyoko Kawashima until she was replaced by Nana Yamaguchi. In contrast, both the second and the third were narrated by the late Ryoko Kinomiya.
  • Just barely averted after Yuki Saito decided not to return for the second series. Her decision led the TV series producers & writers opting to make "Saki Asamiya" a code-name for every subsequent Sukeban Deka.
• Outlived Its Creator: Two spinoffs were produced nearly ten years after Shinji Wada died of ischaemic heart disease on July 5, 2011.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Until being cast as Nishiwaki in II, Keizo Kanie was known mostly for playing villains, with his role of Detective Sato in drama series Netchu Jidai being his only real success as a major heroic character. However, due to the popularity of both roles, he ended up switching to playing heroes the rest of his career, and is still sometimes cast as a cop or detective as an Actor Allusion.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, Remi Mizuchi is voiced by Rossy Aguirre, a voice actress normally typecast voicing sweethearted girls or boys, not evil psychotic bitches like Remi.
• Real-Life Relative: In the OVA's English dub, the late Richard Peeples voiced Juzo Numa and his brother Robert voiced the Dark Inspector.
• Reality Subtext: Yoko Minamino hated wearing the iron mask, as it was very uncomfortable to wear and she thought it would make her difficult to act, just like her character Yoko Godai believed that the mask had robbed her of her life.
• Refitted for Sequel: An inverted case where the sequel itself was refitted. The second series was meant to continue adapting the manga just like the first had done, but when Yuki Saito declined to return, the producers decided to insert an entirely new protagonist instead of recast the role. Thus, Sukeban Deka II is effectively an adaptation of the second part of the manga (specifically, the event surroundings the Blue Wolf League), only with Yoko and her friends replacing Saki and Nishiwaki replacing Jin.
• Role Reprise: Hiroyuki Nagato returned at the 2006 move in the role of the Dark Inspector, whom he played in the TV series franchise and films. So did Yuki Saito, Saki Asamiya herself, though this time as K's mother, who is implied nonetheless to be an older Saki.
• Star-Making Role: For all the lead actresses. Two of them, Yoko Minamino and Yui Asaka, would become part of the "Four Idols" of the late 1980s along with Miho Nakayama and Shizuka Kudo.
• Troubled Production:
  • According to Minamino, the shooting of II could become so gruelling that she sometimes went to school still sporting fake blood and glue in her body, as they were hard to wash off. She also hated the iron mask she had to wear in the early scenes, and soon found out she was not nearly as athletic as the role required, so a lot of tricks had to be used for Yoko's strength feats.
  • Even although Akie Yoshizawa (Yukino) was trying her best to balance her schedule in II with her active career as a singer, she ended up burning out and had to be hospitalized with an eye illness, forcing the producers to write the character out of several episodes of the first half of the series.
  • It took a while for Toei to decide what exactly did it want to do after Sukeban Deka II, and it shows in the complete mess that was III.
  • An example at the writing stage. When the 2006 movie was on the works, its director Kenta Fukasaku was so preoccupied to make a good Sukeban Deka film that he told writer Shoichi Maruyama to write ten different drafts so they could decide and choose the best elements. Maruyama acknowledged Fukasaku's reasons on the saying that two generations of parents and children would kill them if the resultant film was bad.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Shinji Wada was originally writing a highschool drama manga, but he was forced to change it when he discovered his editor had been expecting a crime drama story due to a misunderstanding. In order to solve the problem, he decided to mix both concepts, and the result was Sukeban Deka.
  • The character of Jin originally debuted in another manga by Shinji Wada, Hourglass of Love and Death, where he was a secondary character. He was meant to appear as an antagonist in Shinji Wada's earlier manga Alisa of the Silver Hair, but he opted to leave him for Sukeban Deka.
  • In the first TV series, Saki was going to be played by Yukari Usami, but she was replaced by Yuki Saito after she left production to take part in the movie V Madonna, which was also about female killers in school uniform.
  • II was planned to continue with the original Saki as played by Saito, but when the latter declined to return, the producers opted to create an entirely new main cast rather than recast Saki, bringing in Yoko Minamino to play Yoko Godai.
  • Akie Yoshizawa originally applied to II auditions in order to play Yoko. The reason why she ended up playing Yukino is disputed: some members of the production team claim they had already selected Yoko Minamino by that point, while others claim Yoshizawa herself stepped down from the main role because its screentime was too much for her to balance with her participation in Onyanko Club (a pop idol group she was a member of at the time). Ironically, she ended up burning herself out anyway with her schedule and Yukino had to be written out of several episodes.
  • When Sukeban II ended, Toei initially wanted to produce both a ninja-themed spinoff named Sukeban Ninpucho before a proper third season. However, at some point they decided to ditch the unmade third season project and turn Ninpucho into the real Sukeban Deka III. The result was, naturally, a product rushedly put together that barely resembled Sukeban Deka anymore.
  • A fourth season of the TV series had been planned, but it was scrapped due to the failure of the third. Rumoredly, Toei's next drama series, the short-lived Shoujo Commando IZUMI, was a re-tool of this season, which can be noted in its similar plot and premise.
  • Shinji Wada struggled to come up with a decent Big Bad to replace Remi Mizuchi in the second half of the manga. Kyoko Himura and fellow detective Misuzu were both strong candidates as Saki's new arch enemies, but felt neither of them fit the role because they weren't specifically driven to battle Saki as much as Remi was.