Trivia / Shima Shima Tora no Shimajirō

• Acting for Two: The Japanese version has multiple instances:
  • Mimirin and Hana are both voiced by Miki Takahashi
  • Kanta and Sakurako are both voiced by Yu Maruyama
  • Omi Minami, Shimajiro's voice actress, also voices Torippi's sister Riri.
  • Kento and Miss Shikako are both voiced by Chinatsu Akasaki
  • Takumi Yamazaki, Torippi's VA, is pulling off quadruple-duty as Torippi, his siblings Toto and Pipi, and also Officer Lion.
  • Zig-zagged with Nobuo Tobita, who used to voice both Kanta's and Ramurin's dads, as well as one of the black cat brothers, but since the black cat brothers and later Ramurin and her family was written off the show, he is now currently only voicing Kanta's dad.
  • Also Zig-zagged with Shinobu Adachi, who previously voices both Mimirin's mom and one of the black cat brothers. She now only voices Mimirin's mom due to the black cat brothers being written off.
  • Also Zig-zagged with Satoshi Shimada, who previously voices both Mimirin's dad and one of the black cat brothers. He now only voices Mimirin's dad due to the black cat brothers being written off.
• Anime Theme Song: The ending theme, Tomodachi no Wao! (トモダチのわお！), which was recorded by Puffy AmiYumi.
• Bad Export for You: Only 10 episodes of A Wonderful Adventure are available on select Netflix markets (Japan/South Asia/SEA/Hong Kong/Taiwan) other than Japan as of 2021. The Kodomo Challenge episodes are not even available in those markets. Which is not as bad as the US, (and the UK & most of Europe) where the general consensus is that the show is not on Netflix. Thankfully there's a YouTube channel that carries the show in English for these markets.
  • Even the English Youtube channel has videos that are blocked from half of the world and is almost completely blocked in most of Eastern Europe (including CEE, the Balkans, the CIS, Ukraine, Georgia and Russia) as well as parts of Asia. Sometimes YouTube glitches up and makes the videos visible, and they're always visible in the many playlists on the channel, but any attempt to play the videos results in the depressing "not available in your country" error.
• Casting Gag: The English VA for Mimi-Lynne, Stephanie Sheh, is also concurrently engaged as the US voice actor for another project that involves a Japanese snow rabbit (albeit with brown ear tips). And she's also the current voice actress of a character who has a first name that means rabbit in the US English dub of said Anime.
  • On the Japanese end, surely there's a reason Kikuko Inoue was cast as Shimajiro's mom. And yes, if you threaten to harm Shimajiro (like Professor Gaogao's MomBot made the mistake of doing) or Hana, a world of pain ensues.
• Completely Different Title: In China and Taiwan, the show is called Qiao Hu (巧虎, roughly translating as "smart tiger"). Thanks to this, people who know only the Chinese name may not know it's from Japan. Also in South Korea version, the show is called Hobi.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: In both the Japanese and English versions of the anime, including the first anime, Shimajiro, the tiger boy is voiced by a female voice actor.
• Descended Creator: The founder of the recording studio and voice director of the new season of the CGI series' English dub is Valeria Zunzun, who is also the voice of Hanna.
• Died During Production: Saori Sugimoto, the voice of Nyakki, passed away from heart failure on October 21, 2021, as new episodes were still airing and the recent Shimajiro 2022 film Shimajiro and The Prince of Glittering Kingdom which was her final film released after her death. According to The Other Wiki, Masami Suzuki, who had voiced Nyakki for one season in 2017, was called back on short notice to pick up the role.
• Edited for Syndication: The YouTube uploads for the Japanese channel typically cuts off the second animated segment from the main show, and uploads said segment on a different day^note The first two thirds are normally uploaded on Friday evening. The final third is usually uploaded on the following Monday evening.. Likewise, the English version of the show cuts out the live action segments completely and then rearranges the animated segments, either as a random set or themed set of two or three, when uploading, while the Taiwanese/Chinese version's YouTube Channel chops the show up into three parts, also discards the live action segments completely, and uploads each of the animated segments as individual episodes^note Although they are very slow with the anime episodes- only one upload every Saturday morning.
• Fandom Life Cycle: Outside of Japan, at current, is at Stage X- renewal.
• He Also Did: The movies were produced by Toho, who're better known in the west as the producers of the Godzilla movies.
• Late Export for You: WildBrain's English dub was announced in 2020, over a couple of decades after the series' 1993 debut.
  • All versions of the YouTube channel does this, resulting in this trope, invariably to prevent people in Japan from watching it online instead of tuning in to the TV station that airs the show, as well as to ensure people watch it on Amazon Prime Video/Netflix/Meecha/Shimajiro Club Japan. The Japanese version is the most up to date with it being just three weeks behind the TV Tokyo airings^note However, the upload is only kept up for a limited time- see Permanently Missable Content below. On the flipside, the English Channel is at the moment lagging the furthest behind, having just made it to the 2017-2018 episodes.
  • The Chinese dub's Youtube Channel on the other hand is also on par with the English Channel in terms of content and is currently also only showing the 2013/2014 episodes despite the show being dubbed into Mandarin in Taiwan since the early 2000s.
• Market-Based Title: For some reason, the show has two English titles. In Indonesia and several other markets, the English dub is called Shimajiro: A World Of Wow which is in line with the Japanese title (Shimajirō no Wao!, which literally means Wow, Shimajirō!). But in other English markets, the show is called Shimajiro: A Wonderful Adventure instead. Why they're doing this is unknown.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": The first appearance of this franchise in the United States was when clips of "If You Can Use The Toilet, You're A Pantsman!" appeared on the show The Soup.
• No Export for You: Shima Shima Tora no Shimajiro, while popular in Japan, was only dubbed overseas in Taiwan, which is then re-exported to Mainland China (and also in areas where the pay TV provider carries ETTV Yoyo). And since 2017, Indonesia and South Korea now has its own dub. There is also "unofficial" dubs for some Middle East countries and Thailand (ie the dub is licensed officially, but not endorsed by Benesse), but that’s practically it. This means obscurity and little exposure in the West, with only being popular as a short-lived meme.
  • Two episodes of Shimajiro no Wao! (dubbed as A World of Wow!) have seen English dubs that were exclusive to YouTube, but these appear to be test pilots to pitch the series to potential licensors.
    • In July 2020, it was announced that WildBrain picked up the test pilot and decided to dub not just A World Of Wow! (also retitled to A Wonderful Adventure in several other markets), but several Kodomo Challenge shorts as well, roping in Bang Zoom! Entertainment for their talent pool & Funimation for their expertise in anime dubbing. Which unfortunately results in...
    • The English channel on and off blocks videos from half of the world without rhyme or reason. Half of the videos from 2020 are blocked, and the pattern carries on to 2021. Much of this is most likely due to Funimation's involvement in the dubbing process and their aversion to markets outside of the Americas, the UK and most of Western Europe. The mind numbing part is that none of the other language channels do this, only the English channel.
  • Half of the apps made by Benesse are not available outside of Japan.
  • A lot of the music on Spotify is cordoned off from people outside Japan, although this appears to only apply to albums released by Benesse (self-distributed digitally, physical releases handled by SME under the Columbia label) themselves and featuring the Shimajiro VAs. However, Benesse opened up select tracks from some of their albums to countries outside Japan after it’s English-language dub premiered. Other licensed music that is featured on the show are not bound by this limitation ^note For example, the ending theme by Puffy AmiYumi, Tomodachi no Wao!, is available as a single outside of Japan, but with the ties to Shimajiro reduced to hints on it's cover art. Other albums like Uchikubi Gokumon Doukoukai's single Kangaroo Ha Doko Ni Ittanoka is not afraid to use artwork derived from the music video featured on the show, including the grotty angry-looking Manga style Shimajiro, on its album art despite also being available outside Japan.
  • The Qiao Hu dub is available on ETTV Yoyo throughout Asia. Except in Malaysia, the only country in the region who doesn't get ETTV Yoyo, because the monopolizing Satellite TV provider, Astro, launched their own Chinese educational programming platform called Xiao Tai Yang and licensed shows from ETTV Yoyo... And one of the shows excluded is Qiao Hu. And they're blocking competing providers from bringing in the channel proper by using exclusivity contracts because they're dicks. There is a company importing the Qiao Hu DVDs and selling them at video stores and bookshops tho.
  • The toys, good grief. Made exponentially harder in that most of the toys of the franchise are only made available to kids whose parents sign them up for Benesse's educational programs and are generally not sold to the public^note the exception to the rule are some McDonald's Happy Meals toys, and some of the earlier merchandises that were made by Bandai, Tomy and Sega Toys, and even then those are long out of production. Also, some toys that are only sold at the merchandise stand of the live shows, although the show itself is open to the public and not restricted to kids who have enrolled in the programs.. And the programs are only launched in Japan and Taiwan, and later Indonesia, Mainland China and South Korea. As a result, getting your hands on the toys can be really hard outside of importing them off Japanese auction or marketplace sites, or getting lucky and finding them at thrift stores that specializes in used Japanese goods.^note  Also, because the toys went into the hands of children, getting most of them in proper working condition is difficult, getting them complete and new in box moreso (you need to find a drop-shipper who's abusing their children's membership to buy the toys and resell them on Yahoo Auctions Japan, Mercari or Amazon Marketplace Japan, which does happen but requires patience to find given the tsunami of used Shimajiro toys on the former two platforms and how they seldom show on the latter platform, and you can expect a markup in price if you go this route). And that's just for the Japanese toys. You have a better chance at winning the lottery than ever finding the Chinese, Korean or Indonesian toys^note although if you have access to Asian shopping apps like Lazada or Shopee, and you search for Qiao Hu using the Chinese script, you might be able to find some drop shippers selling the Chinese toys on the platform, although you should be mindful of bootlegs if you do so. You can also try AliExpress or Wish.com, but again, the legitimacy of the products on those sites are questionable.
• Non-Singing Voice: Shimajiro's singing in the toys, live shows, movies and Kodomo Challenge segments are performed by Sachi Matsumoto instead.
• Out of Order: Most of the episodes posted on the official Shimajiro English channel are normally not posted in the same order as when they originally aired in Japan with a handful of episodes from season one that haven't been released while others have been. As of March 2021, the channel has started posting episodes from season 2 without posting the remaining episodes from the first season, with one episode posted on March 27th featuring Tamasaburo before showing his original debut episode. A similar thing happened on October 7th when the first part of a two part episode was uploaded, but not the following 2nd part, not even when they uploaded another new episode on October 9th with the 2nd part not being uploaded until the 10th. It doesn't help that the channel has a bad habit of reposting episodes that had already been posted on their channel, slightly changing the names to make people assume they might be new^note this appears to be due to the fact that earlier uploads of the same video are blocked in certain countries, and instead of unblocking the old video, they just re-upload the same video without the block.. And more egregiously, they suddenly made a huge skip forward to post-2016 episodes in late 2021, with Boota mysteriously disappearing and being replaced by Kumakkii, before airing the episode that introduces Kumakkii, zig-zagging between episodes with Buuta and episodes with Kumakkii, and finally airing the last episode with Buuta in 2022.
  • This is also true for the Chinese channel that targets Taiwan and Mainland China. The episodes are uploaded in a different order from both the Japanese and English channels.
• Permanently Missable Content: Notoriously, the Japanese YouTube channel. The first two thirds of an episode of Shimajiro No Wao! is only kept up for a week and then deleted from the channel permanently. The final third is usually up for a coin toss- if their decision is to delete, the episode is only kept up for a month and then deleted permanently^note if the decision is to keep, the oldest video from a pool of 50 kept videos is deleted instead. An episode is only kept permanently if it's deemed really important, for example if it's referenced from their Facebook page. This is largely because they also license the episodes to Netflix and Amazon Prime Video Japan, as well as having their own streaming services (both Meecha and Shimajiro Club Japan), and they didn't want to cannibalize on those- although Shimajiro Club Japan only has episodes for up to a month at best.
  • On November 26, 2021, Benesse uploaded the 2014 movie and an additional anime short onto the Japanese Shimajiro channel as part of the Youtube Anime Weekend 2021 event. The videos were removed the next Monday.
• Playing Against Type: Yoko Soumi's roles usually tend to be deep-voiced, sexy women, usually with large breasts or in positions of command/fighting, or the Yamato Nadeshiko. Here tho, she plays the frail elderly goat Granny Mei, who does has a temper but is otherwise far detached from her usual typecast.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: For a while, there were rumors that a English dub produced by Cinar, titled The Adventures of Shimajiro, existed and aired on the CBS Kidshow programing block in the late 90s. There were even claims from people that they had episodes on VHS. These rumors were debunked by Benesse themselves, stating that they never had never given any English company the rights to the show during that time. Coincidentally, WildBrain (the company that owns Cinar's properties) made a English dub of the series, after the rumors of the Cinar dub were debunked.
  • IMDB once listed that a Canadian dub of Shimajiro and the Rainbow Oasis existed. This turned out to be true according to Benesse's PDF file credit sheet for Shimajiro and the Rainbow Oasis, although the English Dub version of Shimajiro and the Rainbow Oasis was once shown at the Toronto Film Festival in Canada it's unknown where the English dub is since it is lost.
• Recursive Import: The English dub of the series is currently streaming on Netflix Japan alongside the original Japanese version.
• Release Date Change: The 2020 film, Shimajiro & the Sky Flying Ship, abandoned its intended release date of February 28, 2020 due to the COVID-19 Pandemic causing the closure of movie theaters to curb the spread of the coronavirus. It was finally released March 12, 2021.
• Rereleased for Free: On Thanksgiving day in 2021, Benesse made the 2014 movie available on the Japanese Youtube channel to stream for free as part of the Youtube Anime Weekend 2021 event. However, the movie was removed as soon as the weekend (and thus the event) was over.
• What Could Have Been: According to Yoshikazu Tochihira, the anime was going to be planned at Animation 21, but due to financial difficulties, the project was transferred to Studio Kikan (now known as Studio Signpost).
• The Other Darrin: Nyakkii was created specifically to replace Ramurin, and Kumakkii was created specifically to replace Buuta, even if for the latter case, the character has very different personalities. Perhaps most telling of all is that both of them still retains the same voice actress of the character previously wrote off- Saori Sugimoto was recast from the voice of Ramurin into the voice of Nyakkii and Akiko Toda was recast from the voice of Buuta into the voice of Kumakkii. They even went as far as recasting Yuko Kobayashi from voicing Ramurin's mom to voicing Nyakkii's grandma when writing off the former.
• The Other Marty: The entire VA crew was swapped out when the show was spun off from being a segment of Kodomo Challenge to it's own show, Shima Shima Tora no Shimajirō. Inverted that the cast stayed unchanged almost completely after that, even after 28 years and through 3 retools.
  • One permanent exception is that the VA of Michiyo Sorano went from Sayuri Yamauchi to Hiroko Nishi after the former lost her battle with cancer in 2012.
  • Another permanent exception is the VA of Miss Tamako going from Kumi Yamakado to Tomoka Kuzutani in 2011. As the former is still alive according to the other wiki, the change can be assumed to be due to something more mundane.
  • Masami Suzuki temporarily replaced Saori Sugimoto as the VA of Nyakkii for one season in 2017. She was then called in to take the role permanently upon Saori Sugimoto's untimely passing from heart failure on October 21, 2021.
  • The CGI English shorts has this trope zig-zagged. Funimation and WildBrain were initially not involved in the CGI English shorts and the characters were voiced by a third set of cast based in Japan who also most likely did the voices for the toys and were overseen by Soli Consultants Inc. instead of the Bang Zoom VAs and Iyuno Media Group engaged for the anime. Dubbing of the 2022 CGI English shorts were reassigned to Zunzun Entertainment and recast to the Bang Zoom! VAs.

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