Hoihoi-san — Never Got Far, Did It?

Sometimes I wonder about the thought process behind what is determined to be a “good” anime adaptation and what is not. Take Ichigeki Sacchu!! HoiHoi-san. This started as a short manga (see my review here) and even had a short anime created in 2004. When that short hit the fandom circuit, I remember there being a fair bit of positive buzz about this and two hopes — one being that the manga would be licensed and the other being that we’d see an anime series based on this very moe bug-killiing doll. We scored the first one with the first book having been published (the second book has not been published) but we never did see an anime series created. Why?

I suppose the easiest answer would be that there just wasn’t a lot of souce manga material to adapt into an anime. That shouldn’t be a problem in my mind because shorts such as those in the original manga could be expanded upon and stories written around the premise or premises. On one hand, you could have the more human story with the human characters and then the sheer comedy of Hoihoi-san’s bug hunting combined with Combat-san’s attempts to take out a rival product. *lol* The short anime is such a delight and in the hands of a good writer (or writing team) could be a good hit.

Alas, I don’t think we’ll ever see a proper anime adaptation and I’m not sure if we’ll even see the second manga book published in the U.S.. Still, I believe in supporting stuff I like and so I thought I’d give a shout out to one of my favorite yet mostly unknown short manga series and to that lovable Hoihoi-san.