Trivia / Little Witch Academia (2017)

• Approval of God:
  • Chumlee of Pawn Stars found his cameo in episode 3 to be cool.
  • The producer of the series stated to 4chan's /a/ board that although no romance would be featured; fans were free to make fanfiction and the like. However, this didn't prevent some Ship Tease being Played for Laughs in both episode 8 and episode 10, on top of some minor teasing between Akko/Andrew and Akko/Diana.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Yoh Yoshinari’s favorite episode is "Akko's Adventure in Sucyworld".
• Creator Killer: A downplayed example of this happens with the Chilean Spanish dub: Due to the harsh criticism that dub had because of the less-than-stellar performance of many of the voice cast, along with the bad translation of both the TV series and the films, it's very possible that LWA (along with Glitter Force despite Netflix had no word on the dub of the latter, since it was handled by Saban instead and dubbed in the States in Miami instead) will be the last anime series being dubbed in Chile by DINT (Doblajes Internacionales) for Netflix. It took until 2018 to had another non-Mexican anime dub for Netflix, in this case it was Flavors of Youth, when it was dubbed in Argentina instead, along with Last Hope, and it took until 2020 for another anime production dubbed in Chile^note Through technically speaking, it's a International Coproduction between Chilean and Argentinian voice actors, and DINT is not involved in the Chilean side of the dub. to appear in Netflix, in this case No Game No Life, through the Latin American Spanish dub wasn't handled by Netflix, but by Sentai Filmworks, which already did the dub excluisively for the U.S. market, and Netflix just recycled their dub for Latin American use.^note This is not exclusive from this show either: Other Netflix shows and films dubbed in Chile by DINT also suffered of very poor, or mediocre dubs, mainly Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Okja and finally Lost in Space. LWA was basically the last straw that broke the camel's back for both Netflix and the viewers regarding both DINT and Chilean voice acting. This is especially strange in this particular case, since DINT already did excellent dubs, both from anime series and other genres, including especially enough, Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel, both having pretty good voice acting. Oddly enough, DINT is still listed as one of Netflix's main voice actor studios for Latin America (and in the Golden section, the section normally reserved for the top class voice acting studios, no less) in their corporate site, even if they don't do dubs for Netflix anymore, through is very likely Netflix has just forgot to update that info.
• The Danza:
  • In the Chilean Spanish dub, Barbara is voiced by Barbara Bustamante.
  • In the Brazilian Portuguese dub, Hannah is voiced by Hannah Buttel.
• Deleted Scene: Episode 3 originally had a different and longer ending at one point that got as far as to be storyboarded and voice acted. The scene in question depicts Hannah and Barbara proudly showing off the pot they won from the race to Diana, only to have a bunch of snakes pop out after they opened it, much to their displeasure. The scene then cuts to Akko celebrating over getting a new scar from falling off the shooting star and claiming that she can’t wait to participate in next year’s race, with it ending there. The ending was changed due to the team finding it to be too long. The scene of Hannah and Barbara freaking out over the snakes does happen in the final episode though, albeit it’s limited to an illustration for the ending credits.
• Development Gag:
  • Abomination Sucy in episode 8, "Sleeping Sucy", heavily resembles an unused form of Sucy from the 2013 film.^note the bottom middle drawing
  • Episode 10, "Bee Affection", has Andrew get stung by a cupid bee and subsequently fall in love with Akko, alluding to his original role as Akko's Love Interest.
• Development Hell: According to several sources, there were plans to do a second season shortly after the first season, but due to lacking funding from sponsors, the death of head writer Michiru Shimada in late 2017, and a loss of motivation amongst the staff, plans for a second season have been shelved indefinitely, with Yoh Yoshinari moving on to direct BNA: Brand New Animal and to work on other projects instead.
• Directed by Cast Member: The English dub was directed by Laura Post and Lucien Dodge, who provide the voices of Diana and Andrew, respectively.
• Dueling Works: With the 2017 adaptation of The Worst Witch. Both are Slice of Life adventure shows that premiered and came to Netflix roughly around the same time and have very similar premises of a young Naïve Newcomer learning to become a witch (despite lacking any skill in magic) at an all-girls Wizarding School located in Britain. The major differences being that The Worst Witch is a live action British show by BBC, while Little Witch Academia is a Japanese anime by Studio TRIGGER. The Worst Witch ended up winning, having a completed run of four seasons, while LWA's planned second season would fall into Development Hell as aforementioned.
• Fandom Nod: The scene of Diana confessing her love to Akko under the love bee's effects in "Bee Affection" was very likely meant to be a teasing nod to the Akko/Diana ship.
• God Never Said That: In the Chronicle guidebook, Yoshinari states that Akko "is the kind of girl who just isn't interested in guys at all", which caused many fans (especially Diana/Akko shippers) to view the interview as confirmation that Akko is a lesbian. However, nowhere in the interview does Yoshinari imply at any point that Akko is interested in women, just that she isn't interested in guys. In fact, if Chamber of Time is anything to go by, he likely meant that Akko isn't interested in romance period, given the game shows her as being disinterested in the subject whenever it's brought up by the NPCs
• Late Export for You: The series came out on Netflix in the West on June 30, 2017, which by then, it had already finished its run. Even then, it was only the first cour, as the second cour didn't come out for the service for another two months on August 15. What makes this example particularly frustrating, however, was that Netflix had actually simulcasted the entire series back in Japan as it was airing, but chose not to do so elsewhere.
• Market-Based Title: The titles of a few of the episodes were changed for the official English release- "Sleeping Sucy" became "Akko's Adventure in Sucyworld", and "Chariot and Croix" became "Things We Said Today", just to name two examples.
• Newbie Boom: The TV series caused the franchise as a whole to have a big surge in popularity after remaining in mostly cult status in the years prior.
• No Export for You: Although the TV series is available on Netflix worldwide, if you desire to own a physical release of the show, then you're gonna have to import it from Japan as the TV series never received any physical release outside of the country. This is not exclusive to Little Witch Academia as most anime exclusive to Netflix are typically trapped on the service with only a few becoming lucky enough to obtain a physical release outside of Japan (Such as Knights of Sidonia and The Seven Deadly Sins).
• Otaku O'Clock: The TV series aired at 12:00 AM time slots. Many people questioned why due to its kid friendly content until the second cour from "Chariot of Fire" onwards which included more swearing, Heroic BSoD and a living nuke trying to destroy the world. The reason why it aired at 12:00 AM was because it had no other timeslot to air.
• The Other Darrin: Finnelan is voiced by Karen Kahler in the English dub, as opposed to Eileen Galido, who originally voiced her in the English dub for Little Witch Academia: The Enchanted Parade.
• Outdated by Canon: It was common for fanfics to depict Diana's parents as being strict and stuffy perfectionists who tend to enforce Tough Love unto Diana so she can live up to the Cavendish name, with Diana having a strained and complicated relationship with them as a result. This fanon would become obliterated come episode 19, which reveals that Diana's mother was not only a loving mother that Diana adores, but that she passed away when Diana is six. No word has been made on her father though, who remains unacknowledged.
• Referenced by...: In Turning Red, the book Priya is reading is titled Nightfall.
• Refitted for Sequel: The concept of Lotte's family being the owners of a magic store was originally conceived as far back as the first short film, before it ended up getting scrapped. The staff would eventually revisit and realize this concept in episode 16.
• Self-Adaptation: The series is directed by Yoh Yoshinari, who directed the original short films. Likewise, most of the staff that worked on the original films are also involved with the TV series.
• Staff-Created Fan Work: One of the show's key animators, Yusuke Yoshigaki, has created a couple of small "bootleg" stories set in the show's universe. The first one acting as a pseudo continuation of Little Witch Academia: The Enchanted Parade (indicating that the events of Enchanted Parade have occurred in the series continuity), and the second revolving around Akko reuniting with her childhood friend, in which she quickly becomes fast friends with Lotte due to their shared interest in Nightfall.
• What Could Have Been:
  • There were plans to do a second season for the TV series^note While Netflix has listed the series as having two seasons, officially, the series is only one season, which ended up getting split into two on the platform. This is likely due to the two month delay between the addition of the first and second halves to the platform.. However, according to an interview with Yoshinari on Gigazine in 2020, unknown circumstances ended up causing a second season to get shelved for the time being, with Yoshinari moving on to do BNA: Brand New Animal instead. Trigger later stated through their Twitch streams that it was shelved due to them lacking a sponsor that can provide the funding needed to make it happen.
  • Yoshinari wanted to have an episode about Sucy discovering a spell that could make a clone of herself, thereby opening the possibility for her clone to work a part-time job while she could stay at the campus to practice magic, and Hilarity Ensues, like having the clone's head fall off when talking to someone. The 25 episode format for the series didn't allow an open space for that.
  • Yoshinari originally wanted the series to be a darker take on the idea of Magical Girl anime, similar to Puella Magi Madoka Magica. However, one of the other members of Studio Trigger decided to make it a lot more light and happy Slice of Life. Episode 15 and onwards is meant to put some of these ideas put into place.
  • Andrew Hanbridge was originally conceptualized by director Yoh Yoshinari and head writer Michiru Shimada to be Akko's love interest, with the two becoming an official couple by the end. However, this was opposed by the rest of the staff, who were concerned that a romantic subplot would bog down the story, take away focus from Akko's other dynamics, and cause Akko to lose her independence by having her work for Andrew's sake rather than for her own sake, while also turning Andrew into a Satellite Love Interest as opposed to a character who can stand on his own. This opposition to the idea would cause the romance to get scrapped and for their relationship to be reworked into a purely platonic bond instead, with most of the planned Ship Tease between them getting edited out of episodes in the process.
  • On the 4chan Q&A, Yoshinari detailed an unused episode that would resolve around the witches getting familiars with Akko getting a small lizard due to her low grades, which would end up getting eaten by Diana's owl familiar, leading to Akko to try and to get revenge for it, in which Hilarity Ensues. According to Yoshinari, the episode was cut out due to time constraints.
  • At AnimeNEXT 2017, Yoshinari reveals that Lotte was originally gonna have more spiritual powers than she did, such as the ability to absorb and channel spirits to become more powerful and to summon spirits with weapons by her side to aid her in combat. One episode was even gonna have Lotte get possessed by the spirit of a celtic warrior via a magic sword, taking a level in badass as a result. However, all of this was ultimately cut out.
  • According to Little Witch Academia Chronicle, most of the original artwork in the first ED are basically unused concepts for the TV series. Some of these concepts (such as the concept of the trio and Ursula taking a road trip) would be revisited in the Drama CD that came with the Japanese special edition of Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time.
  • One short animation by key animator Takafumi Hori done a year before the TV series premiered contains an early and very different design of what would become the Magic Knight Grand Charion. Looking more like a mecha version of Akko as opposed to the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and Gunbuster inspired mecha seen in episode 18.
  • Hannah and Barbara were originally planned to be more sycophantic towards Diana early on, with one proposed episode having them backstab Diana to become the new "queen bee" at one point and a running subplot in episode 19/20 that would have them fight over who becomes top girl with Diana gone. However, the team disliked this and decided to rework them to be genuinely caring towards Diana instead.
  • According to the booklet that came with the Vol. 7 Blu-ray, episode 20 was planned to have a far different and more Bittersweet Ending early on. The episode was originally planned to end with the Cavendish Manor burning down and Diana choosing to save her family over everything else, leading her to lose everything. This ending was scrapped as they felt it was too hard on her and would have ruined potential future stories revolving around the manor.
  • According to an an interview in Little Witch Academia: Chronicle, Akko was originally meant to be more of a Smitten Teenage Girl early on and would have immediately fallen for every handsome guy she comes across. However, due to opposition towards the idea from the rest of the staff, this direction was ultimately scrapped.
  • Concept art of Croix originally depicted her with long hair and a different more, Shiny Chariot-like outfit. It also shows her walking on her Roombas, which she doesn't do in the final series.
  • Another piece of concept art for Croix reveals that she would've had tentacle limbs at one point similar to Doc-Ock, as well as a hood for her outfit.
  • The storyboards for episode 25 reveals that Chariot had originally planned to cut her hair short and go back to the hairstyle she had as a teen in the epilogue. The final episode instead has her retain the hairstyle she has as Ursula, but back in its natural red.
  • According to Little Witch Academia: Chronicle, Chariot and Croix's surnames have changed a number of times during production, with Chariot originally having "Septentrio" and "Fontenoy", and Croix having "Du Sud" as potential surnames. The staff ultimately settled on "Chariot Du Nord" and "Croix Meridies" after some trial and error.
  • According to a talk show event, one draft of Episode 20 originally had Akko transform into a gorilla at one point to rescue Diana from Daryl's snakes, but the staff decided to have her transform into a turtle and elephant instead, as they decided that Akko should only transform into "cute looking animals".
• Word of God:
  • When asked about Akko and Andrew's relationship in an interview, Yoshinari describes it as a "sort of playful guy-guy relationship". He also later states in the Chronicle book that Akko has no interest in guys at all.
  • Regarding Croix's fate in the epilogue. Yoshinari has stated that she is arrested and was being taken to serve her sentence. He also adds that Chariot frequently visits her at the prison and even brings a cake with her when she does.
  • According to a talk show event, Akko's cartoonish transformations are designed to reflect her goofy personality and her lack of magic skills.
  • When asked on 4chan's /a/ board if the fan-favorite Diana/Akko ship will become canon, series producer Naoko Tsutsumi answered with "No. Do what you wish in your fan fictions". Yohsinari would later repeat this sentiment during TRIGGER's panel at AnimeWest 2017, stating that while he is aware of the ship's popularity and that fans are free to ship them, officially, Akko and Diana are only rivals.
• Word of Saint Paul:
  • Megumi Han added her own thoughts regarding giving Akko a love interest/romance arc. Specifically, if Akko needs something like that, "she already has Ursula and Diana anyway".
  • When asked on a Japanese live stream promoting Chamber of Time on the characters' futures after Luna Nova, their respective voice actresses present shared their personal ideas regarding the subject:
    • According to Megumi Han, after accomplishing her dream as a performer and traveling around a bit, Akko would take a similar path that Ursula did and become a teacher at Luna Nova, helping out students like her.
    • According to Yōko Hikasa, Diana would come to embrace her childhood dream and then combine it with her current dream and become a traveling performer dedicated to sharing her family's magic around the world.
    • According to Fumiko Orikasa, Lotte would inherit her parent's shop.
    • According to Michiyo Murase, Sucy would become a Mycologist.
    • According to Arisa Shida, Amanda would have no idea about her dream and will still be trying to figure it out.
  • Shortly after the series ended, animator Shiori Miyazaki drew a couple of short comics starring Diana that take place shortly before the epilogue in episode 25. One showing Diana getting a bit jealous of Lotte and Barbara's newfound friendship◊ and another showing Diana making pastries for Akko's flight club after being invited to it◊. Both comics have been endorsed and are considered to be canon by the episode's director.
  • While the TV series is in a different continuity from the films, one "bootleg" story by key animator Yusuke Yoshigaki heavily implies that the events of Little Witch Academia: The Enchanted Parade have occurred in the TV series canon, since it features several callbacks to The Enchanted Parade. Whether or not the film's events and the bootleg story are canonical to the TV series has not been confirmed nor denied by TRIGGER. Though, since Chamber of Time does feature the Shiny Ballista from The Enchanted Parade as a special move, it is at least plausible.

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