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Trivia / Stitch & Ai

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General

  • The show was produced in English, with the storyboards also written in English. Some storyboards have been uploaded online:

Specific

  • Acting for Two: Due to the rather small voice cast, a few of the English voice actors played multiple roles:
    • Laura Post voiced Jiejie and her and Ai's aunt Daiyu.
    • Lucien Dodge voiced Pleakley, Dahu, the Sage, and the Woolagongs' leader Platypus.
    • Richard Epcar was credited only for the Jaboodies' leader Commander Wombat, but he also voiced Mr. Ding, the town Elder, Captain Gantu, and Cobra Bubbles, though Epcar himself only mentioned the first two of those roles on his characters resumé.
  • Author's Saving Throw:
    • After seeing certain comments from Lilo & Stitch fans, director Tony Craig stated that those Chinese mythological creatures that appear in the show are all experiments that Jumba made based on what he read on ancient Chinese scrolls.
    • When word about Stitch's new giant destructive form got out among the fanbase, Craig claimed that this is what Stitch was supposed to become all this time, but Lilo's and later Ai's love suppressed it to the point where it seemed almost impossible for it to come out.
  • Blooper: In "The Phoenix", Stitch's ears fly off his head as he, Ai, and Bao watch Noo-Bing and Zi's ship fly towards the Fenghuang at the shrine.
  • Franchise Killer: While it did not kill off the Lilo & Stitch franchise as a whole—Stitch is just too popular a character to kill off the franchise, which has seen more works since this series' run—this show's lack of international success and brief thirteen-episode run with no second season in sight after five years since its airing have proven that Stitch's animated TV days are officially over.
  • International Coproduction: The series is animated by Chinese animation studios, but it's partly produced and primarily written and directed by Americans.
  • Invisible Advertising: The American release on December 1, 2018, was completely out of nowhere. It was only given some prominence on the DisneyNow home page and only one Disney fan site reported on its release that day.
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes: The show hasn't been made legally available again since it was removed from DisneyNow in June 2019. It, along with the Stitch! anime, has not been included alongside the main Western animated works (the four Lilo & Stitch films, The Origin of Stitch short, and Lilo & Stitch: The Series) on Disney+note  when that service launched, and continues to be unavailable on there. A couple YouTube channels, one of them called "Stitch & Ai TV", did upload all thirteen episodes in English (from Disney Channel Asia recordings) on that site, but all of them except for the tenth and twelfth episodes have been copyright blocked worldwide, though other sites have taken them and uploaded them for their own sites. However, a Vimeo user who was dedicated to uploading various Chinese movies and TV shows managed to get all thirteen episodes without any Disney Channel bugs and uploaded them to their Vimeo channel. These uploads are still extant as of February 2023, but they're a little harder to find as the user used the show's and its episodes' Chinese titles for these uploads, despite them being the English versions. Also, the videos cannot be watched without a Vimeo account in certain countries, as the user did not give their uploads content ratings.
  • Late Export for You: Although Stitch & Ai was produced in English, the original English version wasn't released anywhere until its Southeast Asian debut in February 2018. Moreso, it didn't see release in any Western country until December 1, 2018, when it was quietly released on the DisneyNow service and app in the United States.
  • Missing Episode: The American release of the series excluded the ninth episode "The Phoenix", possibly because Disney believed that American audiences would be confused by the fenghuang (or "Chinese phoenix") that appears in the episode, which is quite different from the Western phoenix.
  • The Other Darrin: Once again, none of the original cast from the films or Lilo & Stitch: The Series return to reprise their roles. However, Ben Diskin and Jess Winfield reprise their Stitch! anime roles as Stitch and Jumba, respectively. Pleakley, however, got another new voice actor with Lucien Dodge taking over.
  • Production Posse:
    • From Lilo & Stitch: The Series, executive producers Tony Craig and Jess Winfield returned as director and voice actor, respectively.note  Michael Tavera claimed to have returned as a composer in his résumé but he is not credited in the final product.
    • Victor Cook, a director for both seasons of Lilo & Stitch: The Series, was signed on to this show and had some hand in production, but later had to back out early on due to other obligations, letting Craig take his place.
  • Promoted Fanboy: Erica Mendez is a big fan of Stitch and tweeted that voicing the role of Stitch's companion for a series was "a dream come true" for her.
  • Quietly Cancelled: Craig stated that the production team had discussions about ideas for a potential season two, including possible appearances by some of Jumba's other experiments and answers to a couple lingering plot threads, including an answer for why Stitch does not remember much of his life before Ai (which likely would've been answered if he found the shrine he was looking for), but Disney was waiting for ratings from other countries first. However, the show did not get much advertising by Disney, especially when its American release was on a pre-Disney+ streaming service that most audiences don't know of, so it didn't really stand a chance of getting another season. It was eventually succeeded in 2020 by an Alternate Universe Japanese manga.
  • Role Reprise: Ben Diskin and Jess Winfield reprise their roles of Stitch and Jumba respectively from the Stitch! anime's English dub.
  • Screwed by the Network: The show was released in the United States to virtually no fanfare from Disney on a TV Everywhere service and app made for the company's youth-focused TV channelsnote  and without its ninth episode. Not only that but the show was removed from the service in June 2019.
  • Short Run in Peru: In a bizarre case of this trope, China, which this series was made for and was animated in, got this series first, but the Mandarin Chinese version is actually a dub. The English version is the original production (the characters' mouth movements are actually reflective of English speech, which is more apparent in the digital ink and paint animated episodes) and was the basis for the original trailers that first promoted the show in China, but it didn't see release until over ten months after the show's initial debut. The American release was held back even further by almost ten more months.
  • Two Voices, One Character: Meiying was voiced by Cherami Leigh and Xanthe Huynh, though the latter only voiced her in "Dragon Parade".
  • Unspecified Role Credit: The show used the same exact credits for all episodes, with Kyle Hebert, Bobby Thong, Sarah Anne Williams, Deborah Crane, Jacob Craner, and Steve Kramer only being credited for "Additional Voices", Cherami Leigh and Xanthe Huynh both being credited for Meiying for all episodes even though the latter only voiced the character for "Dragon Parade", and Richard Epcar not being credited for Cobra Bubbles and Captain Gantu.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • A second season was discussed but was never produced. Tony Craig said that Disney was waiting to see ratings from other countries first before they would approve one, but the show received little attention outside of China, with what little attention it did receive—not helped by Disney's low marketing—being incredibly mixed.
    • The storyboards for "Teacher's Pet" reveal that the fight between Stitch and the possessed Mr. Liu would've been longer and a bit more violent than the final produced version, with Stitch even using the school gardener's chainsaw at one point and using it to cut a hole in the school wall in the shape of his head.

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