CLXXVIII: "Kodocha"

It goes without saying that voice actor Laura Bailey has been in a number of anime and gaming works. That said, whenever I see her name or hear her voice, the anime Kodocha instantly comes to mind for some reason. Don't get me wrong, her name is in a lot of things, but Kodocha felt kind of special to me.

Kodocha centers on the life of the 11 year-old child star Sana Kurata. Plot wise, there isn't any deep dwelling story, but it is a dramatic, yet romantic comedy. Trying to balance her career and school life, she faces problems like any other person, one of which happening to be Akito Hayama, who terrorizes teachers he doesn't like. Yet, he has his own backstory, a painful one at that. While trying to put up with him, Sana becomes closer with Akito. Amidst the chaos that occurs in school, the zaniness of her acting and personal life and the scenarios of those close to her, we follow the both of them as they mature through the series.

Before I move on to the anime, the manga was written by one person, Miho Obana, who also wrote Deep Clear, which crosses this title with another one of her works Honey Bitter. As of now, the manga is no longer in print, formerly under Tokyopop before they lost the license in 2006. Around this time, Funimation released the anime under their license for the US, even featuring it on Funimation Channel. The original run for this was back in April of 1996, ending the run March of 1998. In total, there are 102 episodes, which is quite lengthy, but only the first half of the series was actally dubbed, leaving the others in a limbo as to whether or not they'll be dubbed as well, all of which were made under Studio Gallop and NAS. An opening wasn't used in the Funi dubbed product, due to complications with the boy band Tokio, their name being omitted from even the Japanese episodes and replaced by XXXXXX and their name silenced out. In addition, save that the actual footage was retained, the premier 2 dubbed episodes removed references to Rei being her pimp (people would doubtlessly blow a gasket had they heard/seen that in the anime.) Had it not been hinted enough, Sana is voiced by Laura Bailey, and it came back to me when I heard her voice Omochao and Blaze the Cat in the recently released game Sonic Generations, though she has done other works such as Marlene Angel of Blue Gender and Keiko Yakamura of Yu-Yu Hakusho. Jerry Jewell, who has voiced Kyo Sohma of Fruits Basket and Kaworu Nagisa of the Rebuild of Evangelion films, voices Akito.


Kodocha is touching, yet wacky altogether. And enjoyable for my preferences. 7 of 10, close to 8, will be my call for this anime, and someday, I hope that the latter half also gets dubbed at some point.