Surprisingly successful, and long running, comedy show.
And here’s why:
Genius steals.
Urusei Yatsura spawned multitudes of imitators, but few have understood what made that show great. Sgt Frog, however, gets it.
It hits the correct mix of extra-terrestrial home invasion, mad science, parody and thwarted romance perfectly. And while the anime is a toned down version of the manga, that also works to it’s advantage as had it maintained the more ribald nature of the manga it is unlikely to have found the audience it has. If anything the humour is more effective now as it hits on a variety levels, while kids can appreciate the slapstick and cute characters, there’s plenty of parody and satire for the parents, and relationship comedy for the teen audience.
And it has a cracking cast. Chiwa Saito plays the female lead Natsumi Hinata, and makes a great straight woman for the rest of the cast. Kumiko Watanabe turns in a wonderful performance as the titular Keroro. And best of all, it has the legendary Jouji Nakata as the lovelorn, if overly serious, Giroro.
The first 51 episodes are awesome and well worth your time. The second batch is a little below par, picking up until you get probably the best part of the series – the multiple episode arc where Keroro’s troops are to be replaced on Earth. The start of season 2 seems to assume you’ve not seen the previous season, and spends a lot of time reintroducing characters. I’m guessing there was either a gap, or a schedule change that necessitated this, but it’s a little annoying if you have seen the previous episodes.
Getting it released in the west was a long a laborious process. First ADV had big plans for it, before it ended up with Funimation and got a Shin-chan style “versioned” English script. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, I’m not entirely convinced that Funimation’s script writers are good enough comedy writers or that the talent pool working in anime dubbing in the US are good enough comic performers. The releases do include the original Japanese soundtrack though (and presumably more literal scripts), so it’s still worth getting.