Trivia / Magical Taruruto-kun

• Celebrity Voice Actor: Neyo Zakenja is voiced by well-known anime and tokusatsu singer, Mitsuko Horie. ^note  Though she's had her fair share of voice acting roles before and since this series
• Cowboy Be Bop At His Computer: An October 1992 issue of Sega Mega Drive Advanced Gaming incorrectly refers to the Mega Drive game as Magical Tarot, despite none of the characters ever using tarot cards in the game. The writer also calls Taru asexual, as they couldn't figure out what gender he is (Though TARAKO's performance probably didn't help much). Also, to no surprise, Count Racul is outright referred to as Dracula.
• Creator-Chosen Casting: Tatsuya Egawa had asked Hiromi Tsuru to voice Mari Oaya as he was a huge fan of hers and had been following her since her debut, this would also be the main reason why she voiced Madame President in Egawa's next series, Golden Boy.
• Descended Creator: Egawa himself voiced Waseda in the anime.
• Fan Translation: The Mega Drive game was translated by a group of fans in both English and French sometime in 2023.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: True to most licensed video games, most of the titles in this series haven't been made available since their original release. The only exceptions are the Shonen Jump Edition of the Famicom Mini which has Fantastic World!!, and the Mega Drive 2 Mini, which has the Game Freak game. Even then, these consoles are Japan-exclusives.
• Licensed Game: The series launched a series of video games between 1991 and 1992. Taru even makes appearances in a few of the Shonen Jump-based games.
  • According to Game Freak's Ken Sugimori, the company was approached by Sega with a choice of a few projects for the Mega Drive, including a game starring a fast food chain’s character (presumably what would eventually become Treasure's McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure), a Phantasy Star sequel, and a game based on Magical Taruruto-kun. The rest is history after that, Pulseman would later use a similar, if not the same engine, and it may be a coincidence that a few traits of the characters, including Taru's large and long tongue and Niruru's shape-shifting abilities were later be adapted into a few Pokémon, such as Lickitung and Ditto.
• No Export for You: Except for the original manga, which didn't even see an English release until 2020, thirty-two years after its debut, nothing of this series has ever seen the light of day in America.
  • Same goes for France, they only got the manga and that's it.
• The Other Darrin: Honmaru's mother, Chizuru was voiced by the late Chieko Honda throughout the entire duration of the anime, however, there were some instances where the late Hiromi Tsuru (who was already voicing the teacher, Mari Oaya) would fill in for her.
  • Ditto for Taru & Ria's mother who was voiced by Eriko Hara in episodes 4 & 5 and later voiced by Mika Doi in episodes 60 & 61.
  • In the pachinko games, none of the anime's cast came back and both games had entirely different sets of voice actors.
• Referenced by...: Taru makes a cameo towards the end of the first episode of Golden Boy as a part of the office assistant-esque UI that Kintaro builds. He later reappears in episode 6 on a mug of coffee that Kintaro passes to Chie.
• Those Two Actors:
  • The anime adaptation marked the first time we'd see Minami Takayama (Honmaru) and Ryō Horikawa (Harako) voicing rival characters, and it wouldn't be the last time either.
  • Takeshi Aono (Matsugoro) would later join the lead actress TARAKO (Taruruto) and the cast of Chibi Maruko-chan in 1995 as the second voice of Grandpa Tomozō Sakura, whom he would portray until having his stroke in 2010.
• Troubled Production: According to producer Hiromi Seki, the production of the anime was subcontracted to the Philippines which often put the series on a tight schedule because several circumstances, including delivery delays, and airport closures. This also frequently led to episodes being skipped over in production, which resulted in altered or merged stories which could result in different endings.
• Uncredited Role: For whatsoever reason, Gabeira's voice actor goes uncredited during the credits sequence of episode 34.
• What Could Have Been: According to TARAKO, she had auditioned for the role of Honmaru, but had to also audition for Taruruto's role on the spot. Given Taru's soft yet raspy voice, Honmaru's expressive and loud mouth, and how well the final voice actors fit into their roles, It's hard to imagine how that would have turned out.

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