TV Asahi’s Obocchama-kun Sequel Unveiled at MIPCOM

TV Asahi Corporation hosted a screening this morning for the new season of its classic anime series Obocchama-kun, produced for Sony YAY!, followed by a panel discussion on the Japanese-Indian co-production moderated by TV Kids’ Mansha Daswani.

The session featured TV Asahi’s Makiko Inaba, the director of the international business department, and Kanon Asami, development executive for animation; Ronojoy Chakraborty, head of programming for Sony YAY! at Sony Pictures Networks India (SPNI); and Rajiv Chilaka, founder and CEO of Green Gold Animation, which is handling production of the show at its studios in Hyderabad, India. TV Asahi is managing international distribution on the series, which is among its highlights at the market this week.

Obocchama-kun is based on a Japanese manga from the 1980s, created by Yoshinori Kobayashi, that was turned into an animated series that aired on TV Asahi in prime time. “It created a huge sensation at the time,” said Inaba.

Following the success of the original on Sony YAY!, the channel opted to commission a new season. Inaba said it was a challenge to find a studio in Japan to handle the production, so the company chose to partner with Green Gold Animation in India. “Once we decided to do the co-production, it took almost two years to work things out and get the project going. It’s deeply moving to see this series revived as a new production, not in Japan but in India, after three decades.”

Sony YAY! was previously almost solely reliant on local fare, but when the pandemic hit in 2020, the channel found itself in need of external acquisitions, leading to the licensing of the original Obocchama-kun. “We initially acquired the first season, which was just 52 episodes,” Chakraborty said. “It became such a raging success that we had to ask for more. Within a year, we acquired all three seasons—156 episodes. We ran out of episodes. That’s when we approached TV Asahi. We went to Tokyo during the pandemic. We met with Shin-Ei Animation [producer of the original]. We wanted to produce it quickly. We met Mr. Kobayashi. When he said yes, I’m excited about this project, the deal was signed.”

Kobayashi has been deeply involved with the new season. “Some of the episodes are based on the plots he has written,” Asami said. “Some of the episodes are based on the original manga, which was published 30 years ago. We’re asking advice for every episode, in every production stage, and he’s giving us the ideas for how to enhance the humor and how to make the tone right for this show.”

Chilaka then talked about the process of animating the show at Green Gold’s studios in India. “Although the show looks very simple, we knew it was going to be challenging. When we went through the scripts, we found the humor was phenomenal, the scripts were well-designed. We asked if it would be OK to kind of take some creative freedoms and they were open to that. It’s been a phenomenal experience working on this. We’ve learned a lot about new things. This is not the first Japanese show we worked on, but we learned more about the culture.”

Daswani then asked the panelists about the logistics of the co-production and overcoming some of the challenges that can occur during cross-border collaboration.

“We created the scripts in Japanese with Mr. Kobayashi and translated them into English for the team in India,” Inaba explained. “All the animation process went to India. In creating the new season, one of first challenges was figuring out how much to consider the Indian audience. We knew that it would air first in India, not Japan, but we kept in mind that the Indian children enjoyed watching the previous seasons that were made and aired in Japan. Both the Japanese team and Indian team worked with that element in mind.”

The TV Asahi team visited the Green Gold studios in April of this year, Asami explained, together with representatives from Shin-Ei. “It was a meaningful trip,” she said. “The staff at Green Gold have a lot of respect for Japanese animation. We discussed leveling up the quality of the animation and the differences in how the production was done in Japan. We discussed things like how many times the characters are going to blink and the thickness of the eyelines. We discussed a lot!”

Chakraborty talked about the process of dubbing the new season into Hindi and noted, “It was smooth sailing for us in production because we had dubbed those previous episodes. We knew how to translate from the Japanese original scripts to our language. Most of the stories are adapted from the older works of Mr. Kobayashi, so we had visual references. That was very helpful. There were four stakeholders in the show: us, TV Asahi, Green Gold and Shin-Ei. We knew exactly what our roles were. The teamwork was excellent. The synergy made the show smooth sailing.”

Paying special attention to the facial expressions was key, Chilaka said. “The humor is just not about the dialog. It’s also about his expressions. There was a learning curve. We got a lot of support from SPNI and TV Asahi.”

As the session wrapped, Inaba explained that a new season of the classic anime series probably would not have been made if it weren’t for the Indian commission. “No one was thinking [the demand for new episodes would] come from India. That was like the magic of this project.”