Trivia / Pop Team Epic

• Acting for Two:
  • The "Bob Team Epic" segments drawn by AC-Bu are completely voiced by the members, Shinsuke Itakura and Toru Adachi. They voice Popuko and Pipimi respectively and any other characters present. Taken to an extreme in Season 2 Episode 7 which is entirely just their "live sketchbook flip illustration acting" performance of Hellshake Yano — in Part A, Itakura voices Popuko and the titular character and Adachi voices everyone else.
  • Season 2 Episode 7B has Kōichi Yamadera dubbing over AC-Bu's live skit and voicing every single character. This is an Ascended Meme in bringing the popular and longtime internet jokes regarding Yamadera’s reputation as the Japanese voice actor "whose name takes up the entire voice credit section" to fruition.
  • Shouta Aoi appears As Himself and as his evil alternate self.
  • In the Season 2 finale, the screen actor Yūichi Nakamura plays himself and his lookalike, who is voiced over by the voice actor Yūichi Nakamura.
• All-Star Cast: With multiple people voicing them, Popuko and Pipimi are voiced by pretty much every big name voice actor you can think of, both in the Japanese and English dubs.
• Approval of God:
  • Toby Fox, the creator of Undertale, posted a tweet about the Mettaton reference seen in Episode 7, thanking Bkub Okawa for it in a reply.
  • An official photo mural for the PriPara anime had scenes from all throughout its seasons... and one screenshot of Popuko when she parodied the lead's catchphrase.
• Ascended Meme: In Season 1 Episode 5B of the rerun, Popuko and Pipimi poke fun at "Pipimi Marriage" when watching TV. Jokes about "Pipimi Marriage" spawned online when Bkub drew art of two Pipimis getting married to celebrate the marriage of two of her actors Yūki Kaji and Ayana Taketatsu. Bonus points for Pipimi being voiced by Kaji here.
• Bad Export for You: The US Netflix branch originally cut each episode in half. In contrast, the Japanese branch shows each episode uncut. Fortunately, Netflix heard the complaints and brought back the second half in the Western release.
• The Cast Showoff: Trained enka singer Nana Mizuki deliberately sings "Eisai Haramasukoi" in enka style in Season 1 Episode 11.
• Cast the Expert:
  • Season 1 Episode 3: The two female idols are voiced by Amina Sato and Sawako Hata, former members of sister idol groups AKB48 and SKE48.
  • Season 1 Episode 9A: Ayumu Murase was cast as young Joseph for being a native speaker of American English (Murase was born in Los Angeles). Old Joseph is voiced by Japanese-Australian YouTuber Joey Bizinger, who used his Japanese name, Ikuru Kamijou.
  • Season 1 Episode 9B: young and old Joseph are voiced by Shino Shimoji and Tarusuke Shingaki respectively in the Shuri-Naha dialect of Uchinaaguchi, the indigenous language of Okinawa Island, where both Shimoji and Shingaki were born.^note Although Okinawa is part of Japan, its traditional language has no mutual intelligibility with standard Japanese, despite the falsely held belief it is a dialect of Japanese, and it is just as foreign as English is.
• Completely Different Title: Since Pop Team Epic isn't very translatable, the Chinese title is Daily Lives of Popuko and Pipimi.
• Crossdressing Voices: Deliberately, in fact. Pipimi and Popuko receive male voice actors for several skits and the ending theme, but Popuko gets another male voice actor during the "female voice actors" version of the first episode.
  • In the dub, Shouta Aoi is dubbed over by Apphia Yu.
• Cut Song: A stop-motion felt segment where Popuko and Pipimi sing about a fox named Kon-Chan didn't make it into Season 1 of the anime. It was included as a DVD and Blu-ray extra and was later put in the Pop Team Epic Season 1 song medley on YouTube.
• The Danza: All major characters within Season 2 Episode 12's Endless Love live action uses the actors' own names for their roles, including Shouta Aoi, Takanori Nishikawa, and both the screen and voice actors that share the name "Yuichi Nakamura".
• Defictionalization:
  • After playing the Butt-Monkey for so many of Pop Team Epic's big reveal gags, Hoshiiro Girldrop later got a manga anthology, finally bringing it to the format it was originally slated for.
  • Remember the The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim shoutout in Episode 1 of the anime? Someone made a mod for it.
• Directed by Cast Member: For the English dub of Season 1 Episode 10, Part B was directed by Popuko's voice actor Cris George.
• Dub Name Change: Inspector Higure in Season 1 Episode 10 is renamed Inspector Higuire in the English dub as a reference to the character he's based on, Juzo Megure, whose name was changed to Meguire in the dub.
• Fake American: The New Yorker Old Joseph is voiced by Joey Bizinger, who is half-Australian and half-Japanese.
• Fandom Nod: In Season 2 Episode 8, Part B’s Freeze-Frame Bonus of the last book shows it's a magazine called "Seiyuu Gacha Grand Prix" with Shouta Aoi on the cover. Apart from it being a Bland-Name Product of Japan’s voice actor magazine "Seiyuu Grand Prix", it is also a reference to one of Pop Team Epic’s related trending Twitter keywords, "Seiyuu Gacha (Randomly Generated Voice Actor)" — a term to denote the unpredictability of voice actors cast and paired up to play Popuko and Pipimi upon watching a new episode for the first time.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: Many scenes and the differences between the female and male versions in the Japanese track make it clear that the voice actors are given free reign to make up whatever they wanted to. One such example is the latter half of the "good strokes" skit in Season 1 Episode 5; Part-A features Kaneda making overtly sexual moaning and saying "Marilyn Monroe" in increasingly orgasmic tones while Kobayashi makes a nonsensical sound as Pipimi's neck extends, while Part-B features Sugita and Nakamura engaging in a No Fourth Wall conversation and comparing the Overly Long Gag to a 90's detective show opening sequence, inspiring the animators to add that pop culture reference in the final cut. The voice actors in the rebroadcast of Season 1 also do their own thing. However, the English dub keeps most of the Japanese voice actors' adlibs instead of doing their own.
• He Also Did:
  • Kamikaze Douga, the production company behind the anime, are more well known for action series, such as animating the openings for the two seasons of Gatchaman Crowds, the ending for Terraformars, and the CGI openings for parts 1-3 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, as well as collaborating with Warner Bros. on Batman Ninja. In a little bit of cross-promotion, they remade the "Are you upset?" skit just for the occasion.
  • The studio AC部, the studio behind the Bob Epic Team shorts, is more well known for Policeman's animated music video for "GAL-O SENGEN".
  • Fanny Bloc, the French voice actress for Popuko in the Japon Mignon segments, is more well known in her native country for providing the voice of Yugo from Wakfu and the voice of Alya Césaire from Miraculous Ladybug in their respective native French language versions, as well as being a very prominent voice actress for French dubbed versions of many anime, including Happy in Fairy Tail and Ryuko Matoi in Kill la Kill. Pipimi's second voice in the segments, Kaycie Chase, was also the voice of Cat in My Knight and Me.
  • Despite all the ribbing the series gives Hoshiiro Girldrop, Bkub was actually primarily known for his idol manga prior to Pop Team Epic; he released a series of THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls doujinshi, Honey Come Chatka!! is an idol-based gag strip he does for Sai-Zen-Sen Comics, and he's also infamous amongst Ensemble Stars! fans for being an unexpected choice for writing the official Yonkoma strips (known conveniently as Ensembkub Stars).
  • Comedian BB Goro impersonated Junji Inagawa, who was known for his appearances on Takeshi's Castle as an announcer. Western fans may known Inagawa better by his dubbed over counterpart from MXC, Guy leDouche.
• No Dub for You: Despite the anime being officially subtitled in various languages, the only foreign dub to be made is the English dub. Due to the required amount of voice actors to dub this show,^note Just for Popuko and Pipimi alone, and leaving aside one-shot characters, the French voice actresses and the voice actors from the Bob Epic Team shorts, they were voiced by about forty-eight voice actors solely for the first season. it's very unlikely other foreign dubs will be made, since many voice acting studios outside those two countries either lack the resources to hire such large cast or have small pools of voice actors to use.
• The Other Darrin: Pipimi's Japon Mignon voice actress changes between the series and the specials.
• Production Posse:
  • This wasn't the first AC-bu and Kamikaze Douga worked on a project together; their last meeting came 3 years before on the Japan Animator Expo short Tsukikage no Tokio ~Tokio of the Moon's Shadow~, where the duo contributed character designs for the aliens and a special animation for the Wave-Motion Gun Tokio uses.
  • The mecha parody in Season 2 Episode 2 reunites animator Masami Obari and voice actors Nobuyuki Hiyama, Toshiyuki Morikawa and Show Hayami in Part B, four great friends in private that have frequently worked in Obari’s directed works throughout their careers. This makes the line delivered by Hiyama-Popuko pondering if Pop Team Epic’s project "would really gonna make Obari do even more shit!?" all the more empathetic.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Old Joseph, the Guilty Gear parody announcer, and one of the scene transitions, were voiced by Joey Bizinger. He got the gig when he met someone from King Records at a corporate get-together and mentioned how he was a fan of Pop Team Epic. Said execs, both impressed that he was aware of King Records' involvement and needing an actor that spoke fluent English, decided to hire him.
  • In 2018 French animator Keke made a fan animation of Popuko and Pipimi as pigeons in his distinct bouncing animation style (with censor bars covering their wings as a joke reference to their iconic middle fingers). Four years later he was brought in to animate one of the Season 2 endings, which includes not just the protagonists as the same pigeons but also as other bouncing animals.
• Rated M for Money: Despite Pop Team Epic receiving a TV-14 rating on various sites' simulcasts, Toonami and surprisingly even in the more vulgar Hidive subbed version, Funimation's dub and the series' Blu-Ray is rated TV-MA.
• Real-Life Relative: A few of the Popuko and Pipimi voice actors got married after the anime aired. Bkub acknowledged these announcements by making Popuko and/or Pipimi art based on them, such as drawing two Pipimis getting married when Yūki Kaji and Ayana Taketatsu (both who played Pipimi) announced their marriage and Pipimi and Popuko when Kana Hanazawa (who played Popuko) and Kensho Ono (who played Pipimi) announced theirs.
• Referenced by...:
  • A trailer for Batman Ninja includes a reenactment of the "Are you upset?" skit.
  • This series made a guest appearance in Super Robot Wars X-Ω, whereas Popuko and Pipimi had an encounter with a God (most likely referring to Masami Obari, who had directed one of the intros for the show), who eventually changes their forms to be more fitting to fight alongside Super Robot pilots... basically turning Popuko into a more normally drawn girl instead of Pop Team Epic's bizarre Super-Deformed style (but still with the voice of Kenji Akabane) and Pipimi is turned into a sentient Humongous Mecha for Popuko to pilot.
• Role Reprise: Both Shiori Izawa and Brittney Karbowski reprise their role as Made in Abyss' Nanachi for their cameo in Season 2 Episode 3.
• Trolling Creator:
  • The gag and (initially) non-existent series Hoshiiro Girldrop, a more conventional shoujo manga, getting shown/promoted only for it to be revealed as Pop Team Epic in disguise is a frequent trolling effort from the creator.
    • The entire saga of the series' "cancellation" was one big farce. After ostensibly ending it in favor of Hoshiiro Girldrop (complete with significant amounts of promotion from Bkub's publisher), the latter manga begins... only for it to end with the revelation that Pop Team Epic would return.◊
    • As an April Fools joke in 2017, it was announced that Hoshiiro Girldrop would be made into an anime, but when April 2 rolled around, it instead had Popuko tearing through its website, revealing that Pop Team Epic was getting adapted for real.
    • When the anime itself debuted, numerous people not in on the joke actually had to check if they were watching the right anime, as the episode starts as the fake anime adaptation originally announced!
    • Eventually, once people accepted that "new Girldrop announcement" was just a funny way of saying "something about Pop Team Epic", they expected the official Girldrop anthology to be more of the same...and were surprised to find out that yes, it's real. And the last chapter of the anthology is canon to the series to boot, according to the preview seen in Episode 11.
  • All of the pre-show press in December 2017 said that Mikako Komatsu and Sumire Uesaka were cast as Popuko and Pipimi. This was only partly true. The advance screening of the series premiere was from the first half of Episode 3, rather than Episode 1. Komatsu and Uesaka also just happened to be free to do pre-show press conferences and interviews, despite the fact that they both knew that they were only in that one episode. Uesaka even yelled at the series' director (they'd worked together on her previous sketch comedy show) that he had put her in this situation. The world would not know the truth until January 8, 2018, when Masashi Ebara and Hōchū Ōtsuka were revealed as the initial pair of voices instead.
  • Thibault Tresca, the animator and director of the JAPON MiGNON segments, was told that the interviews he was filmed for were going to be DVD extras at best. It wasn't until the premiere that he found out he was on Japanese television.
  • Bkub's merchandise for Anime Japan 2017 is called the "I Don't Want to Make an Anime" Set, which most people just interpreted as just Pop Team Epic being Pop Team Epic.
• What Could Have Been:
  • bkub revealed on Twitter after Season 1 Episode 5's premiere that the Steamboat Willie parody censored at the start was actually fully animated and intended to be used unaltered in the show proper, but was replaced with the Nice Boat footage at the last minute. While the Nice Boat footage remained unchanged with the release of the DVD/BD Sets, the rebroadcast (Pop Team Epic Repeat) managed to get the actual footage on air albeit with pixellation.
  • The anime was originally planned to be a web series with shorter episodes and just the one pair of voice actors, but Bkub later requested that there'd be dual audio with both female and male voice actor pairs. This wasn't possible to do in web format, and the episodes weren't long enough to fill up the timeslot for TV broadcast. The staff decided to go ahead with the TV timeslot and simply broadcast both the female and male recordings of the episode to fill up time.
• Written by Cast Member: For the English dub of Episode 10, Popuko's Part A voice actress Emily Neves wrote the script.

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