Trivia / Chibi Maruko-chan

• Acting for Two: In the Arabic dub, Reem Saadeh voices Hanako Migiwa, Kotake Sakura and Sakiko Sakura.
  • In the SDI Media dub, Muriel Hofmann voices Sumire Sakura, Tamae Honami, Emiko Noguchi and Misuzu Fuyuta.
• Adored by the Network: The Japanese Animax was obsessed with this show starting in 2012, to the point where any show that didn't do well was replaced with more reruns of Chibi Maruko-chan. This practice ended in 2018, when the channel began focusing on more variety in its schedule, and the show was reduced to two airings a day.
• Dawson Casting: Played straight with the anime. This is averted in the Japanese live-action adaptations with Maruko and her friends played by actual primary school aged children. However, this is invoked/played for laughs in the 2017 Taiwanese live-action version with grown adults playing said children.
• Died During Production: Unfortunately has a history of this;
  • Tomozou's first VA Kei Tomiyama died from pancreatic cancer in September of 1995.
  • Tomozou's second VA and Tomiyama's successor Takeshi Aono died in April of 2012, although he retired from voice acting couple years earlier due to health issues.
  • Sakiko's first VA Yūko Mizutani died from breast cancer in May of 2016.
  • Creator of the manga and the anime adaptation Momoko Sakura died from cancer in August of 2018.
  • Maruko's original VA TARAKO died in March of 2024.
• Dueling Dubs: An Animax dub, a Nickelodeon India dub, a Canadian dub, and a YouTube English dub.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • For quite a while, a few episodes of the older series were hard to find in Japanese.
  • Some of the English dubs, such as the Canadian dub, are unavailable in any form with nary a trace online.
  • The Indian English dub has quite a few episodes online, but the Indian Hindi dub is near-impossible to find, despite several Indians requesting to watch it.
  • Chapter 98 of the manga, known unofficially as "Chibi Maruko Yume," was never republished outside of Ribon magazine, due to receiving a lot of complaints about the shift in tone (ie, bizarre and borderline nightmarish), which was due the the fact Sakura was in a bad mental place at the time.
• Missing Episode: The official Blu-ray boxset of the 1990 series was released in 2020 with two episodes missing. Both because of rights issues with the songs in them.
• Outlived Its Creator: For the anime adaptation, since Sakura Momoko died in August 2018. Very briefly in the case of the two posthumous manga volumes; although it's unknown if any future books will be made.
• Recast as a Regular: Kokoro Kikuchi previously voiced Ohana-chan in episode 1162 prior to taking on the role of Maruko herself after TARAKO's passing.
• Self-Adaptation: Momoko Sakura wrote the first 219 episodes of the second anime adaptation; she merely supervised episode 220 and onward until her death in 2018.
• Series Hiatus: Aside from the final episode featuring TARAKO's voice airing on March 24, 2024, the show took a hiatus beginning on March 10, 2024 to air reruns before announcing that Kokoro Kikuchi would be taking on the role of Maruko.
• Star-Making Role: Maruko is by far the most iconic role of TARAKO's career as a voice actress.
• Swan Song: Before she passed away, Momoko Sakura penned lyrics for a song for composer Kazuyoshi Saito to sing. Later that next year, Saito would add a melody for these lyrics, becoming the anime's 2019 ending song Itsumo no Fuukei. This would be Sakura's final work.
  • The 1990 pitch pilot was one of the last works of animator Yasuji Mori, who would pass away two years later
  • TARAKO's final episode as voice of the titular character aired posthumously on March 24, 2024.
• Unfinished Dub: There has never been a complete dub of the entire show. The German dub is the more incomplete of them all, none of the English dubs cover every episode, while the Indonesian and Arabic dubs get very close in terms of count.
• What Could Have Been: A pitch pilot was uncovered, and while it lacks audio, seems to imply that Maruko would have given asides as an out-of-body moment, instead of the Lemony Narrator we would end up getting. The art style and character designs were also notably different, with Maruko's grandparents looking unrecognizable.
  • In The Animax English Dub, Maruko's father Hiroshi Sakura was secretly voiced by Russell Wait.
• Write What You Know:
  • Several of the stories are inspired by Sakura Momoko's life. Of note is one story where Maruko's town gets flooded by a heavy thunderstorm, which actually can be traced to a real life event.
  • Sakura Momoko's friends and family members inspired some of the characters in the series.

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