News

Yōkai Chiitan TV Anime Delayed From Planned April 3 Premiere

The official website for TV Tokyo's children's programming block Kinder TV revealed on Friday that Yōkai Chiitan, the television anime for the mascot character Chiitan, has been delayed from its April 3 premiere. The site will announce a new premiere date for the anime once it has been decided.

Natsuki Takemura (Hana Kappa conceptual designer) is credited as director and character designer. Isamu Sasagawa (PriPri Chii-chan!!, Grandpa Danger) is in charge of the scripts. Infinity Vision and East Fish Studio are producing the anime.

The Asian small-clawed otter "fairy baby" character debuted on December 15, 2017. The "eternally 0-year-old" character has no gender, and they wear the turtle character Kame-chan on their head.

The mascot character is based on a real-world female pet otter of the same name, who gained a social media following big enough to become the honorary tourism ambassador of the city of Susaki, Kochi. The same designers who created Shinjō-kun, the city's official mascot character, also designed the mascot character Chiitan, who also gained popularity on social media acting unofficially as tourism ambassador. However, Susaki received complaints about the apparently reckless and dangerous nature of some of the stunts in Chiitan's videos, such as those below. The city recently decided to revoke the real otter's status as a tourism ambassador.

Sources: Kinder TV's website, Comic Natalie