Kiko-chan's Smile

Kiko-chan's Smile (Japanese: きこちゃんすまいる, Hepburn: Kikochan Sumairu) is an anime and manga series about a kindergarten student who has many of the features of a child prodigy but at the same time displays many bizarre habits and an odd personality.

Kiko-chan's Smile
きこちゃんすまいる (Kikochan Sumairu)
Genre	Comedy, Adventure
Manga
Written by	Tsubasa Nunoura
Published by	Kodansha
Magazine	Be Love
Demographic	Josei
Original run	October 5, 1993 – February 9, 2001
Volumes	5
Anime television series
Directed by	Setsuko Shibuichi (Chief) Kazunori Tanahashi (Assistant)
Produced by	Hidenori Murata (Executive) Tatsuo Ono Satoshi Dezaki
Written by	Kazumi Koide Mitsuyo Suenaga
Music by	Kōtarō Nakagawa
Studio	Magic Bus
Original network	TBS
Original run	October 5, 1996 – September 27, 1997[1]
Episodes	51

Characters

Kiko Himemaya

Voiced by: Satsuki Yukino

Kiko is a four-year-old (five in the end of the series) girl who attends a private kindergarten in Tokyo. She is capable of doing many things most four-year-olds are not capable of; these include cooking, unassisted grocery shopping, limited acrobatics. Despite the title of the series, it is very rare to actually see Kiko smile and almost as rare for her to speak. Despite this, Kiko is quite popular with her classmates. She also has a wide variety of interests, including ballet, learning English, playing video games and interfering with her teacher's love life.

Makiko and Tarou

Voiced by: Yumi Takada (Mama) and Voiced by: Mitsuru Miyamoto (Papa)

Kiko's parents. Papa is a salaryman, Mama is a housewife, and both find their daughter a source of much puzzlement and frustration. Still they are devoted parents.

Megumi-sensei

Voiced by: Yuko Mizutani

Kiko's kindergarten teacher. She is twenty years old, and this is her first job out of teaching college. Kiko's eccentricities nearly make it her last, but Kiko is fond of her and turns her happiness into a personal project. Kiko also interferes with her love life, and helped her to find a boyfriend whom she married in the last episode. She hates carrots, to the point of fainting when she sees one. But carrots are her boyfriend's family's favourite food, so she often had to ask Kiko for help on the dates. She is extremely careless, even losing her wedding ring.

Tenshi

Voiced by: Kousuke Okano

An angel who has come to Earth in the form of a black cat on a mission to spread happiness throughout the world. Unfortunately he is unable to communicate with humans (who hear his speech as cat noises), and even more unfortunately for him Kiko adopts him. Even more problematically, he falls hopelessly in love with a vain female cat named Rosa, who eventually reciprocates his affection long enough to bear a litter of five kittens, who she leaves to his (and, without her knowledge, Kiko's) care. His nickname is Neko-chan.

Tenshi's litters

They're named 'pa','pi','pu','pe',and 'po' by Kiko based on the only words that they can pronounce. They are also angels (even though Rosa, their mother, is just a regular cat), and they are able to use supernatural powers. Like normal kittens, they are mischievous and energetic, and they proved themselves to be smarter than Neko-chan, such as the time when Kiko wanted a hippo, Tenshi went to Africa by holding onto a plane, while the kittens just went to the local zoo. They like chocolate and are able to sing.

Akuma

Voiced by: Ureshizu Hideyuki

A devil who is the Tenshi's rival and has come to Earth in the form of a siamese cat on a mission to spread chaos throughout the world. He cares a ball on his collar that causes bad things to happen. Different to his rival, he was never adopted.

Trivia

Kiko's name and the title of the series are a pun on the Japanese Royal Family.

References

1. Kiko-chan's Smile Official site by Eiken (anime studio), retrieved on 2007-08-28(in Japanese)

• http://www.technogirls.org/technogirls/kikochan.htm

External links

• Kiko-chan Smile (anime) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia