Kodocha

Kodomo no Omocha/Kodocha (こどものおもちゃ) is a manga series by Miho Obana, helped periodically by her sister, Kaori Obana. The series is commonly known under the name Kodocha. The manga won the 1998 Kodansha Manga Award for shōjo. In the year 2007, At the American Anime Awards the anime was nominated for best comedy anime. The series was adapted as an OVA and later as an anime television series.

In 2002, the manga was published in North America in English by Tokyopop as Kodocha: Sana's Stage. In 2006, Tokyopop lost the license to the manga, leaving it out of print. The first half of the anime series was licensed for North American distribution by FUNimation. It was translated in english in 2005 and the first DVD was released in English in 2006. Seasons 1 has been completely released on DVD, however Funimation has not yet licensed seasons 2 of the series due to the lack of sales.

Characters
The main characters of Kodocha are Sana, Akito and all of their other friends at school, in Sana's work, and their families.


 * Sana Kurata (倉田紗南)
 * At the start of the series, Sana is an 11-year-old child star who is exuberant, cheerful and generally outgoing. Because a boy named Akito Hayama is causing chaos in her classroom, and she sets out to stop him. However, as she learns more about him she becomes compassionate for Akito. Sana began her acting career at the Kowamari Theater Troupe, and now stars in a popular variety program called Child's Toy, as well as television commercials. During the course of the series, her career flourishes, and she stars in TV dramas and a feature film among other projects. However, when Fuka comes in the series, her relationship with both Fuka (her new friend) and Akito crumbles and all three are left hurting. Fuka, who asks Akito out, becomes his "girlfriend". Sana in the meantime is in the mountains starring in a movie and doesn't know about this, and cannot call Hayama or Fuka. Naozumi tells her he loves her, but Sana remains faithful to her love for Akito which is revealed during a night with Asako. She matures quickly during the series but, in her heart, remains a true child.


 * Akito Hayama (羽山秋人)
 * Akito is sullen boy of few words and physically strong, with a powerful karate chop. At the beginning of the series, it is shown that Akito has acrophobia. Akito's mother died when giving birth to him, which leads to his older sister Natsumi resenting him, frequently becoming angry with Akito and calling him "Demon Child." In addition, Akito has a distant relationship with his father, who works long hours. Despite his troublemaking ways, Akito is smart and gets good grades. His friendship with Sana softens his behaviour, and she helps him have a better relationship with his family. Although capable of cruelty, Akito has his own code of honor: even the teacher who he terrorizes will admit that Akito will never lie, and Akito refuses to pretend to be nice to anyone he doesn't like or respect. Inspired in part by Sana's devotion to her acting career, Akito takes karate classes. He always gets jealous when he sees Sana with another boy. As he puts it, "he doesn't hate her." Later in the series, he becomes angry with the so-called oblivious Sana is unaware of his love for her, even though he had kissed her three times (and touched her chest throughout the entire series). He then tells her that "he has always loved her, even though he didn't say anything."

Reception
Kodocha was generally well received by critics and readers. It won the Kodansha Manga Award for best shōjo manga in 1998 and received a 3.5/4-star rating in Jason Thompson's Manga: The Complete Guide.

Manga
Kodomo no Omocha was originally serialized by Shueisha in the magazine Ribon from August 1994 to November 1998. It was collected in ten tankōbon volumes. The series was published in North America in English by Tokyopop under the title Kodocha: Sana's Stage. As of 2008, this English edition is out of print and Tokyopop no longer has the license.

Anime
The anime version consists of 102 TV episodes, which aired in Japan weekly from April 5, 1996 to March 27, 1998. The opening theme songs are "19 O'Clock News" by Tokio (episodes 1-44) and "Ultra Relax" by Tomoe Shinohara (episodes 45-102); the ending theme songs are "Panic" by Still Small Voice (episodes 1-39), "DAIJO-BU" by Tomoko Hikita (episodes 40-74), and "Pinch (Love Me Deeper)" by Rina Chinen (episodes 75-102). The first 51 episodes deal with the elementary school story arc and the remaining 51 episodes deal with the middle school story arc.

A single-episode OVA was also released earlier to the series, with significantly different character designs.

The series was partially broadcast on American TV in a syndicated FUNimation Channel programming block airing on CoLours TV and Los Angeles KSCI-DT channel 18.3. The first DVD was released in the U.S. on 2005-08-02, containing the first four episodes of the series. While no actual footage was removed from the series, the first two episodes of the dub has removed references to Rei being Sana's "pimp". (The Japanese word used, himo, can mean either "pimp" or the less problematic term "gigolo".) The first opening song, "7 O'Clock News", could not be used for contractual reasons concerning the Japanese boy band Tokio and "Ultra Relax" (the theme to the second story arc) was used instead. All references to Tokio in the Japanese version of episode 001 have been removed from the subtitles and are replaced with (XXXXX) where Tokio would be mentioned and the audio is silent as well. The name Tokio still appears in the end credits.

Funimation has released season 1 in two boxsets. There is a petition at Petitiononline.com to bring Kodocha back in Dub.

Omake endings
The anime included omake epilogues, including various alternate-universe scenarios. These include:
 * Akito fails his black belt test twice.
 * Asako marries Mikio Ono, the moody director of Water Palace.
 * Akito gets attacked by a pickpocket
 * A very angry Shizu gets her vengeance on Fuka for stealing Takaishi.
 * The son of a yakuza boss demands Sana that she marries him, and when she refused, the gang beat up her and Akito. Misako and Shizuka Kurata brought together the entire Kurata clan and teams up with another clan to get back at the yakuza.
 * Naozumi discovers that his family, the Hamiltons, have gone broke.