YMMV / Unico: Awakening

• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: When the Kickstarter page went live on May 2, 2022, it immediately reached its goal when it was barely 24 hours old. While most of the backers were from Japan, a large majority of them was from the United States. Some of the backer awards such as a Unico mini-comic by Steenz and a Unico picture book in the style of a Little Golden Book. This is due to American and other western audiences growing up with the film series by Sanrio, frequently airing on Disney Channel back in the 80s, and renting both films at rental stores. This resulted in the original manga gaining an official English translation in 2012.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • In podcast interviews, Samuel Sattin (writer of Unico: Awakening) discussed how ecstatic he was when Tezuka Productions immediately approved his pitch on a re-imagining of the Unico series. Prior to his pitch, the company expressed interest in doing a newer take on Unico but had trouble finding the right person to handle it. When the Kickstarter first went live, Sattin was very anxious and afraid of checking the process of the Kickstarter campaign in fear of the project failing to reach its goal, to the point that he refused to use his computer for an entire day and almost got sick in the process. He was overjoyed to learn the "Unico: Awakening Kickstarter Campaign" quickly reached it's goal before it turned 24 hours old.
  • When Sattin personally chose Gurihiru to work on illustrations, new characters, and character redesigns, the duo was overjoyed, since they were huge fans of Osamu Tezuka and the Unico series. They almost rejected his offer in fear of their "American-Japanese art style" not living up to Tezuka's art style.
  • The official Twitter account for the manga would frequently post tweets which contain real quotes from American and especially Japanese fans expressing how much they loved Unico and how the character impacted their lives.

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