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The story
It has emerged that the anime “Sgt. Frog” (Keroro Gunso) is replacing all five of its main cast members for its new series, including Kumiko Watanabe, who has voiced Keroro for years. Taking over the roles are Makoto Koichi as Keroro, Rika Nagae as Tamama, Toshiki Masuda as Giroro, Kousuke Echigoya as Kururu, and Keishi Inomata as Dororo. On the 5ch Geino/Sports News+ board, some posters praised the new cast’s performances as “surprisingly natural,” while others, noting the lukewarm reception of the theatrical film released just before the switch, lamented that “it’s a shame the old cast’s final work ended on that note” — opinions were split.
The longtime main cast consisted of Kumiko Watanabe as Sgt. Keroro, Etsuko Kozakura as Private Tamama, Joji Nakata as Corporal Giroro, Takehito Koyasu as Sergeant Major Kururu, Tsuyoshi Kusao as Corporal Dororo, Noriko Kuwashima as Fuyuki Hinata, and Chiwa Saito as Natsumi Hinata.
The new cast has Makoto Koichi as Sgt. Keroro, Rika Nagae as Private Tamama, Toshiki Masuda as Corporal Giroro, Kousuke Echigoya as Sergeant Major Kururu, and Keishi Inomata as Corporal Dororo.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Ohh no…
He wasn't involved in this one
Tamama especially is great
The character redesign is what falls a bit flat though
Looked up the Keroro actor — apparently he plays Yahiko in the Rurouni Kenshin remake, but I can't recall the voice at all
Guess he's an older guy then?
Feels like the content's going to get heavily rewritten because of the militaristic elements and all the other-anime parodies
But it's genuinely a shame the old cast's final work ended up like that
Aren't most of them basically exclusive iDOLM@STER voice actors at this point??
Well, they've swapped cast members fairly often before too
People who saw the movie were bracing for some TV personality or comedian instead
Tamama's new VA is the 'BO girl' from Asobi Asobase? (a character known for body-odor jokes)
Fuyuki will always be Tomoko Kawakami to me (the original voice actor, who passed away)
So what?
but seeing Re: #1, Rika Nagae seems fine too
I'd want Aya Yamane to replace Chiwa (Saito), but it's probably going to be somebody else anyway
Normally a reboot like this would hook people with at least a somewhat famous cast
but this one feels like they gave up from the start
Or maybe Fukuda screwed up so badly that skipping the search for a proper cast turned out to be the right call
Nobody's going to watch this, the recent movie flopped hard just like everyone expected
Longtime fans who grew up with the show made the effort to go see it, only to be served the Fukuda-team segments and a lackluster main story…
Sure enough it got panned, spoilers spread all over social media, and it's even being called possibly the worst-performing entry in the franchise by profit margin.
Right after Ultraman, huh
That's exactly why we've seen this wave of old titles getting rebooted over the past few years
If it kept failing, that trend wouldn't exist
I'm honestly looking forward to the new Keroro too, and most people watching are probably in the same boat
Princess Knight flopped hard though
If they'd played it self-deprecatingly it would've gone over well
Background and Key Points
“Sgt. Frog” (Keroro Gunso) is a long-running series that began airing in 2004, with Kumiko Watanabe and four other main cast members voicing their roles for over 20 years. This full cast overhaul comes with the launch of a new series, and recasting itself isn’t unusual — but because it coincided with a period when the theatrical film released just beforehand was reportedly underperforming at the box office, the view that “the old cast couldn’t go out on a high note” stood out in the thread. At the same time, many posters praised the new cast’s performances as sounding “completely natural,” and the gap between how unfamiliar the names looked on paper versus how the cast actually sounded became a talking point. It should be noted that comments about the film’s box office performance and internal production circumstances remain unsourced hearsay and speculation rather than confirmed fact. The fact that this airs as a morning children’s program rather than a late-night anime also appears to be one reason the casting is being judged along two different lines — by adult longtime fans versus the show’s actual target audience of children.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Geino/Sports News+) thread “‘Sgt. Frog’ Cast Overhaul — Keroro: Makoto Koichi, Tamama: Rika Nagae, Giroro: Toshiki Masuda, Kururu: Kousuke Echigoya, Dororo: Keishi Inomata.”
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