Trivia / Dropkick on My Devil

• Banned Episode: Chapter 148, entitled Dangerous, was pulled from Comic Meteor in May 2019, due to its similarities with a knife attack conducted by a 51-year-old man named Ryūichi Iwasaki on a train towards elementary school children in Kawasaki, Kanagawa. In the original chapter, Jashin is stabbed with a knife by an older man while waiting on the train.
• Breakthrough Hit: For both Yukiwo and Nomad. The former had created several manga prior and the latter had been producing anime since the early 2000s, but it was Dropkick that became their most popular work for each.
• Cash-Cow Franchise: One of the most unexpected in all of anime history, in spite of its obscurity. Since its debut in 2012, there have been 20 manga volumes, three crowdfunded anime seasons (with a fourth and a spin-off in development), loads of merchandise, various collaborations with other franchises, multiple art exhibitions, a wrestling promotion, a stage show, and even having real life tourism cred for the locations the series showcased.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: While being a voice actress by her own right, Hatsune Miku in the Latin American Spanish dub is voiced by the also singer Melissa Gedeón, also being known for being the dub voice of Pinkie Pie.^note This is also one of the few times Miku gets dubbed by a foreign voice actress, rather than using the software for that job, as the synthetizer can only handle Japanese and English voice banks, through it can also handle Spanish with some phonetic workarounds due to the phonetic similarity between Japanese and Spanish.
• The Cast Showoff: Jashin-chan's voice actress, Aina Suzuki, is an acclaimed folk singer and gets to show this off at points. In the season 1 finale, Jashin-chan sings the first chapter of an alleged six-part elegy that recaps the plotline in an absurd fashion, and in the season 2 special she sings the entire song... which is ten minutes long and a showcase for Aina Suzuki's vocal talents.
• Channel Hop:
  • Season 1 aired on Prime Video in the west, while both of its sequels were licensed out to Crunchyroll. Japan has all three seasons on Prime. Appearances of Product Placement from Amazon appear. However, in June 2023, Crunchyroll would gain the rights to the first season from Amazon, making all three seasons available on the platform.
  • As far as TV broadcasts go, in the Tokyo area, the first two seasons aired on Tokyo MX; however season 3 would air on TV Tokyo instead.
• Creator's Favorite:
  • In a 2020 interview with Manga Tokyo, series director Hikaru Sato considers Jashin-chan his favorite character, while series producer Akihiko Osawa's favorite is Minos.
  • Ecute has become this, being the character who runs most of the live streams on the YouTube channel and being featured in the series' most recent marketing and merchandise alongside the main duo.
• Colbert Bump: The series' first two seasons and the original manga were fairly obscure outside of Japan. Then Hatsune Miku's involvement with the third season led to the show seeing a sizable boost in viewership and popularity outside Japan, primarily from the interest of seeing Miku herself appear in an anime. Fortunately, many stayed to watch the show itself beyond Miku, with it being praised as an entertaining violent slapstick comedy. Miku is also the reason why the series was allowed to go past its initial end date of 2022.
• Completely Different Title: The series is known as Jashin-chan' Dropkick in Japan, but is referred to Dropkick on My Devil! in the west. Both titles are evenly used by fans, however.
• Cow Boy Bebop At His Computer: Pekora is the correct spelling of the character's name, but it is commonly believed her name is Pekola instead due to how several sites spell it.
• Deleted Scene: There was originally a longer runtime for the Chitose episode in season 2, but was scrapped due to time restrictions with at least 5 minutes being shelved altogether. The exact specifics are unknown.
• Early-Bird Release: Dash was released all at once on Prime Video ahead of its television airings.
• Enforced Method Acting: Sato had used his body as reference for the movement of Jashin-chan , as the team originally had difficulty on how she would move.
• He Also Did: Hyadain, who helped with the ending theme for season 1 also did the ending theme for Nichijou, another zany Japanese comedy. He is credited under his real name of Kenichi Maeyamada. His other works include songs for One Piece, Naruto, Hunter × Hunter, One-Punch Man, and Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures.
• Inspiration for the Work:
  • Pekora was based off Castlevania, Last Armageddon, and Shin Megami Tensei.
  • Yukiwo's inspiration to become an archaeologist in his youth is what he considers to be the genesis for creating the series, practically because of the ancient astronaut theory. The theory, based on the idea that the gods in the Bible were originally aliens, and were worshiped due to their superior civilization beset by angels gifting humanity benefits, is what inspired the series' setting to have angels, demons, and humans coexist. The characters were based on mythology: Medusa being inspired by Egyptian culture being one such example.
• Meaningful Release Date:
  • Dropkick on My Devil! X premiered in 2022, during the 10th anniversary of the series.
  • On another note, 2022 marks the 15th anniversary of Hatsune Miku, who was introduced in X, with the ninth episode of the season airing on August 31st, exactly 15 years after Miku's original debut. And it celebrates it as the regular ending credits are replaced with a singing duet between Jashin and Miku, with a special end card drawn by Yukiwo himself featuring the two and Yurine.
• No Dub for You:
  • Up until 2022 with the release of the third season. Latin America received theirs first in August of the same year. And so far, are the only ones to have gotten one.
  • As of 2023, the main reason why an English dub has yet to be produced is the production team feels no one can match the same performance as Aina Suzuki.
• No Export for You: The manga remains this, even after 10 years of running. There is a Fan Translation however.
• Permanent Placeholder: Yukiwo came up with the name of the series on the spot.
• Role Reprise: Saki Fujita reprises her role as Hatsune Miku during all of her appearances.
• Series Hiatus: Each season takes 2 years to produce, in part to the unique circumstances the series is made under. The series debuted in summer 2018, while Dash was released in spring 2020 and X premiered in summer 2022. The upcoming fourth season is scheduled for a 2025 release, thus making it 3 years, though the December 2023 Apocalypse Arc special being released in the middle of the hiatus will at least make it feel shorter.
• Sequel First: The series wouldn't receive a dub of any kind until 2022, starting with a Spanish dub in time with the release of the third season.
• Sleeper Hit:
  • While it didn't make a giant splash in its original airing, sales of its first DVD/Blu-ray volumes in Japan were high enough for a second season to be greenlit. Later on, a crowdfunding campaign for a 3rd season managed to succeed quite quickly. Following that season's end, plans to fund a 4th season were announced, and was officially confirmed to be greenlit not too long after.
  • Yukiwo himself didn't expect it to last for over 10 years, and plans for another decade of making the series if possible.
• Troubled Production: A minor example of this, but the primary struggle during the development of the anime was to make sure Jashin-chan 's breasts wouldn't be exposed while activating a dropkick, even if scientifically her hair should be up in the air while performing one. Additionally given Jashin-chan 's design, Sato had considered various ways towards how Jashin-chan would move, settling on having her slither on the ground in lieu of a regular snake. Fortunately for Nomad's animators, they were able to animate Jashin-chan 's action scenes and movement naturally.
• Un-Canceled: The anime series was intended to end with the release of the third season as Yukiwo believed there was nothing left to do and it would be difficult producing another season knowing the unique circumstances (it was rumored he was even considered ending the manga alongside it) but the unexpected viral success of the Hatsune Miku cameos convinced him to consider another season and continue the franchise. The fourth season was shortly successfully crowdfunded and confirmed to be in the works soon after.
• What Could Have Been:
  • If the first image of chapter 1 indicted anything, then Jashin was intended to have a lighter green bottom, while Yurine was intended to wear a dark red dress accompanied by dark brown hair.
  • Sato was originally planned to helm a different project instead of Dropkick on My Devil, but when plans fell through for that, he accepted the offer to be the series director, due to his work on Chronicles of the Going Home Club, which was also animated by Nomad.
  • As mentioned above, the Chitose episode of Dash was planned to be longer, but cut due to broadcasting limits. According to an interview with Anime Recorder in 2020 with Sato, there is at least 5 minutes of cut material.
  • Barely averted with the show past the first season, which was planned to be a standalone 12-Episode Anime. Season 2 only happened because of strong Blu-Ray sales, while Season 3 only happened due to crowdfunding and later Season 4 for the same reason. Essentially, it was only due to a strong cult following that allowed it to continue.
  • Prior to the casting of Virtual YouTuber Asano Ruri as Ecute the Vampire Princess in X, 1,660 other people auditioned for the role in a casting search between June and October 2021. There were 11 finalists held on October 2nd, with Ruri winning out the role by 7,040 votes.
  • There were plans for a live event titled Thank You Dropkick! in collaboration with Vocaloid in November 2021 ahead of Miku's debut in X, but was cancelled at the last minute due to an anonymous arson threat against the event's venue and accompanying death threats towards the performers and attendees.
  • X was planned to be 10 episodes, but was later increased to 12 episodes.
  • Before the attempt to get season 4 made was announced on the day of ''X''s season finale and being confirmed, Yukiwo believed ''X'' was the final season as he felt the chances for a continuation were slimmer than with the previous seasons and that there would be nothing left to do.. It might explain why the season ends with Jashin going into the sun, potentially leaving the series on an Ambiguous Ending if she died or not in case no more seasons were produced.
  • It was later properly confirmed during the crowdfunding for the fourth season that the anime was indeed meant to end with the third season, and it was only due to the inclusion of Miku in X that Yukiwo decided to do another season following her cameos going viral. Thus, any further content beyond X also barely averted this, similar to the situation from the end of the first season.
• Word of God: Yukiwo has also explained that Jashin-chan has a small core in her head and unless it is shattered, she will be able to continue to regenerate immediately due to being a 'chosen devil'.