Title: Kodocha
Alternate Title: Child’s Toy
Genre: Romantic Comedy / Slice of Life / Drama
Studio: Studio Gallop, NAS
Length: 102 Episodes
Release Date: 1996
Based Upon: “Kodomo no Omocha” manga by Miho Obana
Where to Buy: Amazon.com/Kodocha.. – This is a pretty old and rare / obscure series. At time of writing, there’s only 2 copies of the Kodocha Season 1 DVD box set available – for about $45. I’d encourage you to snap them up now, rather than later, as it will become harder and harder to find as time goes on. The Season 2 Kodocha DVD boxset is even more rare, with only 1 copy for $135 at time of this review.
Overall: 30/35 86% B “Very Good Anime For Girls”
Story: 10/10 The story in Kodocha is very unique. I can’t think of any other anime that 1.) Deal with child stars or 2.) Focus on a romantic relationship in elementary and middle school (most romantic comedies are set in highschools or universities). The main story centers around an elementary student named Sana who is a child star, she does acting, modeling, and singing for movies, tv series, and commercials. It’s about how she balances her work with her school, family, and personal life. Of course being famous gets you sometimes unwanted attention, such is the case for the main love interest, who comes from a broken home and troubled past. He is jealous of Sana’s “perfect” life and innocent child-like qualities. But it’s also her youth, exuberrance, and innocence that draws him to her. Like most little elementary boys, he doesn’t know what to do about his feelings towards Sana, which leads to him teasing or picking on and bullying her. Because of his actions, Sana of course hates him in the beginning. But over the course of the series, she too begins to have feelings for him as well. The first half of the anime focuses on their time spent together in Elementary school, while the second season continues on through middle school.
Characters: 10/10 In addition to our two young love birds, there’s a slew of really quirky, unique, outlandish characters. For example, Sana’s mother is very eccentric; she is an author and often late with her deadlines sneaking around trying to avoid her publisher who’s pressuring her for her next release. Sana’s mama hires a manager to help her daughter’s young career. Sana is confused by this since she is so young and she tells everyone that her incredibly handsome manager is actually her boyfriend or even her pimp (because she is aware that her parents pay him to spend time with her.) Besides just helping in her career, he often chauffers her to and from school and to and from her modeling and acting appointments. He also cares a lot for Sana and treats her as a good friend. Although all of the characters are eccentric, they are very warm and heart felt and endearing too and a good deal of time is spent focusing on character interaction, back story, and development.
Voice Acting: 2/5 I didn’t really enjoy some of the voices in this anime, I found them to be rather grating on my nerves at times. I understand they were doing their best to sound cute or child like… I just really found some of the voices to be like nails on a chalk board at times 🙁 Not all of the voices are that bad, but a few definitely stand out as being over dramatic or just their tone of voice put me on edge at times.
Music: 5/5 The music is really as zany/crazy as all the characters in this show. Most is very youthful, energetic, fast paced, featuring a lot of tracks which are more along the lines of JRap and JHiphop (if that’s even a thing) as opposed to “pop” or “ballad” like arrangements. This works well however for this series as it gives it a young feeling to match the setting and energy of the anime – It also differentiated itself in this choice of music which is definitely a departure from other 90s anime themes.
Art: 3/5 As far as 90s anime goes, this artwork is not too bad. I find the character designs to be cute, and even cleaner looking than many of their 90s counterparts in other similar series. Still of course, the animation techniques look dated by today’s standards as the anime is now 20 years old!
Overall: 30/35 86% B “Very Good Anime For Girls”
