Characters roles, from left to right:note Top: Comic-relief, The Ace. Bottom: Hot-Blooded Iron Woobie, The Scrooge ,Ms. Fanservice
"It's something weird and bizarre what's coming up next
(Something never seen before!) note
But if you are smart enough you will comprehend this part
(Even the sanest person, here insane has gone)
What it's right, here could be wrong
Because in this world, nothing is normal
It's sensational!"
(Something never seen before!) note
But if you are smart enough you will comprehend this part
(Even the sanest person, here insane has gone)
What it's right, here could be wrong
Because in this world, nothing is normal
It's sensational!"
— Latin American Dub Intro song
Dotto! Koni-chan is a Quirky Work directed by Shinichi Watanabe. It originally aired on Animax between November 26, 2000 and May 29, 2001. It was animated by Studio Shaft and produced by Animax and Genco.
The story - as it is - involves the title character Koni and his gang having lots of crazy and incoherent adventures (from fighting with their 'Lovely Teacher' to kicking a can, dealing with samurai fish, driving a taxi, or saving the world) in their equally crazy world. It has No Fourth Wall, and lots of Lampshade Hanging and Parodied Tropes.
The cast consists in five main characters that deconstruct known tropes: Koni is The Ace, High is your usual Hot-Blooded anime hero (who is always suffering one way or the other), Moro is Ms. Fanservice with some sort of crush on Oblivious to Love Koni, Nari is a self centered rich guy with a fixation for rounded things (therefore, with Koni), and Afro the dog, yet another self-insert of Shinichi Watanabe.
Practically unnoticed in its country of origin, the series was a hit in Latin America, especially in Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Argentina. This is probably due to its outstanding localized translation note , which can be easily compared to what American voiceovers did with Samurai Pizza Cats and especially Ghost Stories.
Being just an obscure Gag Series in Japan, the LatAm dub turned into a cult-classic and is more generally appreciated by fans. For reference, there is more information on the Spanish version of The Other Wiki about this series than the English and Japanese wiki combined.
The series provides examples of:
- Abhorrent Admirer: Lovely-sensei to Koni. Though it has less to do with her being unnattractive and more that she's a Sadist Teacher and too old for him.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Squid-girl gets enraged by the show's stupidity and grows to giant size to go on a rampage over the city. Koni fights her in a Humongous Mecha.
- Baseball Episode: There's two of them. One of Koni playing against High as they're fighting over the last bean sack in the shop. And another, the whole cast is playing against a generic team, trying to win for Moro who is their coach (and gone ill for that episode).
- Failed a Spot Check: When the Fish Samurai went to his old school to become master he discovered it was destroyed, so he thought it was defeated by another school. But in the debris there was a note saying that the school actually moved to another building.
- Hot-Blooded: High. This is even literal, to the point where he catches on fire multiple times. Sometimes his partners use him as a source of heat. He also has an appropriate hairstyle.
- Ink-Suit Actor: Tomoe Shinohara and Ryudo Uzaki, the singers of the opening theme, appear in one episode as guests, and they record a music video with Koni.
- Kavorka Man: People seem to love Koni, even if he doesn't do anything to win their love.
- Leitmotif: Each character have their own theme whenever they appear. In the baseball episode you can actually hear most of them in rapid succession.
- Ms. Fanservice: Moro is pretty aware and proud of her status as this. Lovely-sensei counts as well.
- No Fourth Wall: They are aware that they are animated, and tend to make references of the writing and animation of the show, specially of how bad it is.
- Noodle Incident: Everything regarding the fish samurai's past. This is specially noticeable when he fights the Egg gang, and talk about two "Egg-headed-girls" we have never heard of before note and the fish samurai starts having flashbacks.
- Oblivious to Love:
- Koni doesn't seem to notice Moro or Nari's love.
- The fish samurai Meromero doesn't seem to be aware that Emi is in love with him.
- Parrying Bullets: Parodied. In the episode where Emi's gone rogue and turned into a Killer Robot, she shoots a missile at the Fish Samurai. Koni rushes in and grabbing his sword cuts the missile in half... then the two halves continue flying and hit Koni's friends behind him.
- Potty Emergency: High's whole gig in a certain segment was looking for a bathroom in Koni's home... and not finding it until the VERY last moment.
- Robot Girl: Emi the TV. She is a walking flat-feets robot with a TV for a head.
- Sadist Teacher: Lovely-sensei. Heck, she's introduced whipping her students for giving wrong answers.
- Shout-Out: Lots of them.
- May the Farce Be with You: In this episode, the space ship the federation uses is the same as the one from Cosmo Warrior Zero.
- A few episodes parody Super Sentai and reference Dragon Quest and The Magic Sword.
- Another references Black Jack, when High needs special treatment and his doctor is a BJ Captain Ersatz.
- Another one parodies Tokimeki Memorial. It involves Yanderes.
- One episode manages to parody Dragon Ball, Captain Tsubasa, Sailor Moon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Case Closed, Love Hina, Mazinger Z and Kochikame in about 7 minutes.
- Another episode is a clear homage to Wacky Races, complete with Koni laughing like Muttley whenever his friends' plans to sabotage the other racers backfire.
- Squid-girl's wand-movement is the same as Sakura's from Cardcaptor Sakura. She also looks similar to Sally the Witch.
The LatinAmerican Dub provides examples of:
- Black Comedy Rape: In the "Chinese tale" episode, Emi comments that monsters might kidnap her and forcefully plug in their VHRs , DVDs, Playstations and Nintendos, which can be considered rape since Emi is a Robot Girl. After saying this, Moro and Nari reply that, since there is nothing she can do about it, she should just relax and enjoy it.
- Cultural Translation: Since the series is full of Japanese puns, a literal translation would have been pretty unsuccessful. The Latin America dub replaced many hard-to-translate puns with allusions to Latin-American pop culture. It worked brilliantly.
- Double Entendre: There's a lot of this. Since this is a children's show, things are usually mentioned by other name, but it's very clear what they are talking about.
- Just to give an example, the other fish-samurai comments that "Mero-mero was trying to stick his 'parabolic antenna' in such a cute TV-robot-girl (talking to Emi)."
- Dub Name Change
- The Armored-guy is refered to as "El Tal Iván" (lit: "That guy called Ivan"). This is a pun, since "El Tal Iván" sounds exactly like "El Talibán", which means "The Taliban". (since, you know, he is the bad guy and all)
- Also, the fish swordsman is called "El Mero-Mero". This is yet another pun, since Mero is a kind of fish, but it also means "The best", so he is "The best of the best" or "The best fish".
- Gag Dub: MANY parts of the dub makes fun of the animation of the series itself. Cheaply drawn background characters, exaggerated special effects, sudden improvement in quality of the art, and so on.
- Parental Bonus: Many of the Shout Outs are things kids are not likely to understand (like the fact that Nari's balls-obsession is a metaphor of homosexuality), recognize (like the He-man reference) or a lot of sexual things.
- Parenthetical Swearing: A lot of the jokes are not about what they say, but how they say it. In some cases they don't even make a pause to sell it, yet you can hear the "swearing".
- Self-Deprecation: Happens many times in the dub. Like during one of the narrations of the Star Wars parody.In a place where everything is possible, in a cartoon where anything can happen, absolutely nothing happened at all.
- Shout-Out: Again, many of them.
- To many LatAm songs.
- "Allá en la fuente, habia un chorrito"
- "Muévelo, muévelo (qué sabroso) muévelo, muévelo (cómo lo hace)"
- "Si yo fuera rico"
- "Levantando las manos, moviendo la cintura"
- "Tú te vas por que yo quiero que te vayas"
- "Qué calor, qué calor que tengo".
- "Es casi una experiencia religiosa".
- "Borondongo le dió a Bernabé, Bernabé le pegó a Muchilanga".
- "A mover el rabo" -> "A mover el culo".
- When they sing "A patear el bote" sounds like the rhythm of "A mover el culo". Have in mind "bote" is an Euphemism for "butt".
-
This song about a toy store, is suspiciously similar to the jingle of a real Mexican toy company.
- The Super Sentai episode was changed in name to Koni Rangers, since Power Rangers is better-known in LatAm.
- Moro says she would rather be watching Pokémon than being on a episode.
- In the Dragon Quest episode, after seeing the sword, High says "for the power of Greyskull!"
- "Ivan el terrible" episode is named after "Daniel el terrible". (Most likely the American version)
- The female-wrestler is called "the cousin of Aníbal Lecter".
- Koni is told to "patear la lata (kick the can) forever, batman!".
- An episode is named "Taxi Driver connote Koni DeNiro".
- The episode named "Hormiguitaz" (little Antz).
- The episode named "Los Indoblables" (the unbendables).
- The grasshoppers ("Grillos") band "Los Grittles". High lampshades this.
- Koni is said to be better than the Atom Ant, and he replies that he actually played in the "Bascas-boys".
- Moro threatens to go and start working in "Chapa y 1/2", a clear reference to "Ranma y 1/2"
- The chapter in which Koni appears staring mangas has many, some of them which were changed in LatAm due to being too obscure
- Dragon Ball Koni is even named "Dragon Ball Z" by hide.
- The football manga which appears (based on Captain Tsubasa) is called "Los Super Koni-campeones", where as Captain Tsubasa is called "Super Campeones" (Super Champions) in LatAm.
- The tribute to Love Hina (called Love Koni) was changed to Sailor Emi.
- Koni cards is a clear tribute to Yu-Gi-Oh!. The other cards called "Garbash y Rascauele" is a tribute to "Magic the gathering".
- There is a tribute to Detective Conan.
- In the Wacky Racing episode, aside from the blatant Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat and Koni laughing like Muttley afterwards, the Painted Tunnel, Real Train scene has High saying "¡Esto es del Coyote y el Brincacaminos!"
- To many LatAm songs.
- Unusual Euphemism: Besides the Double Entendre examples above, there are a lot of words referred to in a weird way, by very unusual euphismis. This is because they sound funnier that way, and allow to use different puns.
- Visual Pun: In the first episode of Mero Mero, Emi tried to stop him and he told her that she didn't have to thank him, turns out she wanted to warn him that he was going to fall into a chasm. While falling he says "ya caigo", which literally means "I'm falling already", but can also mean "I get it now" or "I see".
