Trivia / Kirby: Right Back at Ya!

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• Acting for Two:
  • In the Japanese version:
    • Kirby, Rick and Iro are all played by Makiko Ohmoto.
    • Banjo Ginga as the N.M.E. Sales Guy and Nightmare.
    • Nobuo Tobita as Chef Kawasaki, Kabu, Galaxia and others (including Max Flexer).
    • Takashi Nagasako as Mayor Len, Sir Ebrum and Professor Curio.
    • Yuko Mizutani as Lady Like, Mabel, Waddle Doo and several monsters.
  • In the English version:
    • Ted Lewis as Dedede and Escargoon.
    • Kayzie Rogers voices both Tuff and Lady Like.
    • Maddie Blaustein as Chef Kawasaki, Waddle Doo and numerous Cappies.
    • Eric Stuart as Meta Knight, Blade Knight, and Sword Knight.
• Banned Episode: "A Dental Dilemma" was banned for a while from airing in America because Fox thought it portrayed dentists in a bad light that would scare children. Seemingly, they would later change their mind as the episode later aired on 4KidsTV.
• Bonus Episode: A special eight-minute short was released on the Wii no Ma Channel in Japan. It was dubbed and available on Nintendo Video for Nintendo 3DS, three years after its original release in 2012, and given a limited release through My Nintendo in 2017.
• Breaking News Interruption: The ending of the original Japanese broadcast of "Hunger Struck" was interrupted by a news report about a powerful earthquake in Miyagi Prefecture. Thankfully, the episode re-aired just days later so that way people can see the ending of the episode as intended.
• Cross-Dressing Voices:
  • The Japanese original has Kirby, Iro, Rick^note all voiced by Makiko Ohmoto, whose voice is retained in the English dub as Kirby, Fololo, Blade Knight, and Coo^note all voiced by Chiro Kanzaki, Knuckle Joe^note Minami Takayama, and Tokkori^note Fujiko Takimoto.
  • Ted Lewis voices Escargoon's mother in the English dub.
  • Tuff is voiced by a woman in both Japanese (Rika Komatsu) and English (Kayzie Rogers).
  • In the English dub, Chef Kawasaki is voiced by Maddie Blaustein, a trans woman.
• Early-Bird Release: The final three episodes of the series ^note "Cappy Town Down", "Combat Kirby", and "Fright to the Finish" were released alongside the "Air-Ride-in-Style" 2-parter as a single movie on the "Fright to the Finish" DVD over a year and a half before they aired on American TV.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Most of the 4Kids dub remains unavailable on video in North America. A few of those episodes did appear on the North American Funimation VHS and DVD releases, but they are now out of print. 4Kids ending their partnership with Funimation, as well as their 2011 bankruptcy, has made the dub even harder to find. Three episodes of the English dub were included in Kirby's Dream Collection, and the first episode of the English dub is also available on the Japanese Blu-ray box set, but it was only included as bonus content.
  • With the shutdown of Nintendo Video in 2015 and the Nintendo 3DS eShop in 2023, there is no legal way to watch the English dub of Kirby 3D (though it is not entirely lost, as it is readily available online). The original Japanese version nearly suffered this fate as well, but was thankfully included on the Blu-ray box set.
  • The Latin American Spanish dub also suffered this fate when the master tapes were junked after the series got Screwed by the Network on Jetix.
• Kids' Meal Toy: Wendy's sold a set of five toys in their Kids' Meals in 2003, one of which was a board game that the Kirby Wiki counts as an official Kirby game.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": As the soundtrack for the show got replaced in the west thanks to 4Kids, the reused songs in Kirby Air Ride ended up making the anime soundtrack's sole appearance in the west in said title, as even Super Smash Bros. Brawl credits Strong Star Warrior as Checker Knights from Air Ride.
• Meaningful Release Date: The 4Kids dub aired A Novel Approach (the episode with an extensive Harry Potter parody) on June 21, 2003, the same day Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was first published.
• Milestone Celebration: The 2022 Blu-ray release coincides with the franchise's 30th anniversary.
• Missing Episode: While a few episodes of the 4Kids localization still have official copies from Funimation, the rest have survived through off-air recordings.
  • The English dub of episode "Shell Shocked!" in particular was considered missing for a long time, because even though it aired as originally scheduled on 4KidsTV in a share of markets in 2005, many other Fox affiliates pre-empted the episode for cable viewers for an edition of This Week in Baseball. The episode wouldn't be shown again in full until just once in 2006. Fortunately, the full episode was resurfaced a decade later.
  • "A Chow Challenge" was also previously missing.
• Newbie Boom: While it didn't make a Cash-Cow Franchise out of the series the same way the Pokémon anime did, quite a few Kirby fans will admit that the show is what introduced them to the series and it shows. The anime still maintains a dedicated following to this day. So much so that, since its conclusion, HAL has brought various things from the show into the games and even included several of its episodes in Kirby Dream Collection which celebrated the series' 20th anniversary.
• The Other Darrin: While the dub typically retained Kirby's Japanese voice (Makiko Ohmoto), the earliest episodes had Amy Birnbaum voice Kirby whenever 4Kids needed him to say a different name.
• Out of Order: Most of the 4Kids dub's episodes aired willy-nilly in their original broadcast. In particular, the "Air-Ride-in-Style" two-parter was part of the final arc of the Japanese broadcast, and also coincided with the release of Kirby Air Ride. In the English dub, the episodes were stuck in the middle of the series to better align with Kirby Air Ride's international release date. However, they were re-aired in the proper placement later on, and the Fright to the Finish DVD includes all five episodes of the final arc in the proper order.
• Recursive Adaptation: A few nods to the anime made it into games made around the same time.
  • Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land redesigns the original Kirby's Adventure to more closely align with the anime, with the international box art using stock art directly from the series.
  • A few music tracks from the original Japanese version made their way into games such as Kirby Air Ride and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse.
  • Anime-exclusive characters like Escargoon and the N.M.E. Sales Guy made a cameo in Kirby Mass Attack.
  • A few locations, like the anime's Castle Dedede and Chef Kawasaki's restaurant, are depicted in games like Kirby: Squeak Squad and Kirby Mass Attack.
  • Water Kirby is a game-canon Copy Ability as of Kirby's Return to Dream Land.
  • Kirby Star Allies has a number of things from the anime:
    • Dedede's muscular appearance when possessed by the Jamba Heart resembles his muscular self seen in "Power Ploy" and "Frog Wild".
    • Devil Kirby from "Frog Wild" makes an appearance when selecting the hardest difficulty in The Ultimate Choice.
    • Octacon, the first Monster of the Week, is a summonable painting by Adeleine.
  • Meta Knight and Knuckle Joe are voiced in the Japanese version of Super Smash Bros. by their anime voice actors, Atsushi Kisaichi and Minami Takayama. Likewise, Parallel Nightmare in Super Kirby Clash is voiced in all regions by Banjo Ginga, the voice of Nightmare in the Japanese version of the anime.
• Role Reprise: In the special "Kirby 3D" episode, the Japanese and English voice casts both returned to voice their characters. Only two voice actors didn't return for the English dub; Maddie Blaustein, who passed away before the dub was recorded (with Chef Kawasaki being voiced by Ted Lewis), and Andrew Rannells, who moved onto Broadway productions (with N.M.E. being voiced by Michael Sinterniklaas).
• Screwed by the Network: The show got it rough in Latin America. When it aired on Fox Kids, it had a decent afternoon schedule alongside other anime series like Ultimate Muscle and Shaman King. However, when the channel became Jetix (a channel infamous in the region for having screwed over series on purpose so they could remove them to show more The Fairly OddParents! and Pucca re-runs), they put the series on a horrible time slot at the early hours of the morning and stopped airing the first half of the series before removing it entirely just a few years later.
• Self-Adaptation: The anime was produced by Warpstar, Inc., a joint investment between the Kirby series publisher Nintendo and its original developer HAL Laboratory, with the direct involvement of the series' creator Masahiro Sakurai.
• Studio Hop: At first, the Japanese home media releases were handled by Pony Canyon, before switching to Avex Mode.
• Troubled Production: If the final episode seems a bit rushed (in particular regarding Nightmare's defeat), it's because chief director/head writer Soji Yoshikawa's wife was terminally ill and he had to complete the script as quickly as possible because he wanted to be with her in her final moments.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The Kirby of the Stars pilot (as seen here) has a lot of differences that were changed by the time the anime went into full production. Examples including Tiff having a far more simplistic design and (according to the crown on her head) she would have possibly been a princess of some kingdom, King Dedede being more based on his appearance in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards and having the role of a reluctant ally/rival more comparable to the games, Meta Knight being an antagonist with the ability to fly, Kirby not wearing distinct hats when gaining powers, and the total absence of prominent characters like Escargoon and Tuff. Interestingly enough, Dark Matter appeared as a monster despite not appearing in the show proper.
  • The people working on the show also wanted to put Nago in, but didn't have the time. Chef Kawasaki does have an old friend who's made to resemble Nago though.

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