Kirby: Right Back at Ya!

Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, known in Japan as Kirby of the Stars (Japanese: 星のカービィ, Hepburn: Hoshi no Kābī), is a Japanese anime television series based on Nintendo's Kirby franchise. Produced by Chubu-Nippon Broadcasting, Dentsu, and A-UN Entertainment and animated by Studio Sign, it was directed by Sōji Yoshikawa, who also handled anime composition, and Mitsuo Kusakabe, with Miyuki Shimabukuro as character designer, Kazuo Iimura as chief animation director, and Akira Miyagawa as music composer. The anime aired on CBC and TBS in Japan from October 2001 to September 2003, with 100 episodes. In the United States, the anime aired on FoxBox from September 2002 to November 2006, with episodes being released in Europe on the Kirby TV Channel for the Wii and on Kirby's Dream Collection, also for the Wii.
The anime follows Kirby, who possesses the ability to temporarily gain magical powers by sucking up their owners. After crash-landing on the planet of Popstar and befriending siblings Tiff and Tuff, Kirby and his friends fight to bring down the evil emperor Nightmare while evading King Dedede and his assistant Escargoon, who seek to eliminate Kirby using monsters provided by NightMare Enterprises.
Long ago, the emperor of darkness known as Nightmare created armies of monsters and sent them across the universe in order to conquer it, but over time, some began to rebel against him. Star Warriors, which included Sir Meta Knight, fought for good and formed the Galaxy Soldier Army to fight against evil and defeat Nightmare. Despite their efforts, they were unable to defeat his endless supply of monsters, and the surviving Star Warriors retreated to the edges of the universe, where they still sought to defeat Nightmare. Nightmare established the corporate empire NightMare Enterprises (Holy Nightmare Co. in the Japanese version), which created monsters and expanded its power by selling them to villains and avaricious people throughout the universe.
Some time later, Kirby was born as part of the next generation of Star Warriors, intended to gain the strength needed to fight Nightmare while sleeping in a spaceship. However, the spaceship has the ability to automatically travel to the planet where monsters are located. After detecting the presence of monsters on the planet of Popstar, Kirby's spaceship awakens him 200 years ahead of schedule and crash-lands in Cappy Town (Pupu Village in the Japanese version), where Kirby befriends siblings Tiff and Tuff (Fumu and Bun in the Japanese version) and the residents of Cappy Town. With their help, he fights the monsters to one day defeat Nightmare. As in the games, Kirby can inhale enemies to temporarily gain their powers and transform into forms such as Fire Kirby and Sword Kirby.
The ruler of Dream Land, King Dedede, is suspicious of Kirby, and, along with his right-hand man Escargoon, often attempts to eliminate him with monsters provided by the company. Nightmare is ultimately defeated when Kirby and Tiff confront him in a dream and Kirby swallows the Warp Star to become Star Rod Kirby, using the Star Rod to defeat him.
The original creator of the franchise, Masahiro Sakurai, was in charge of supervising the anime, with planning and production beginning around 2000, coinciding with the development of Super Smash Bros. Melee. In an interview with Famitsu, Sakurai stated, "I've had a lot of involvement in the production of the animation. We aim to create an anime that both parents and children can enjoy just as much as the games. In the beginning, Kirby started out as a game that even beginners could enjoy. I think that spirit has been carried over to the anime as well." He became friends with the cast and staff, and they held a birthday party for him when the day of voice recording for the final episodes happened to coincide with it.
Director Sōji Yoshikawa spoke about the challenges faced by the anime's creators, expressing concern that most anime adaptations of video games did not work well, but felt that it could be successful. He added that it was difficult to have a main character who did not speak, as well as creating unique settings and characters. Kirby was unusual because it had no humans in the cast, and he likened it to the Finnish anime Moomins, which was popular in Japan.
Initially, the anime' background music was original music composed by Akira Miyagawa. However, from episode 33 onwards, music from previous Kirby games was used, mainly from Kirby's Dream Land and Kirby Super Star, as well as Kirby Air Ride around the time of its release, arranged to fit the anime' style. Kirby Air Ride also featured some songs from the anime, with the song “Checker Knights” later appearing in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, with Miyagawa credited. Some arranged songs were included on the Kirby & the Amazing Mirror Sound+ music CD. After the anime ended, some of its character and copy ability-related traits were later used in the games.
The anime used 3DCG rendering for characters such as Kirby, King Dedede and Escargoon, which was created in Softimage 3D and handled by A-UN Entertainment, with employees from Overlord Inc. moving to A-UN to help with production. By applying the advanced synthesis technology developed by Nintendo and HAL Laboratory in the development of video game software to the production of the anime, they were able to better combine hand-drawn and 3DCG animation. For some episodes that Studio Comet aided in the production of as animation production support, Studio Comet's CG department produced some of the 3DCG segments independently. While many anime use digital technology primarily to save money and shorten production time, the anime used it to give the characters more expressiveness. In the ending credits of the final episode, the names of most of the people involved in A-UN's 3DCG production up to that point appeared in the 3DCG-related staff section.
Before the anime aired on TV, a short episode was produced as a pilot, with a DVD including it distributed as a supplement in the game magazine Famitsu Cube+Advance (a now defunct sister magazine to Famitsu) to celebrate the release of Kirby Air Ride in Japan. The episode was animated entirely in 3DCG, except for the backgrounds and some effects, and used Kirby's design from the Kirby's Adventure era. Compared to the main anime, it was more faithful to the original games, featuring boss characters from the games that did not appear in the main anime and Meta Knight as an enemy.
The world of the anime differs from that of the games, as, while it still takes place on the planet of Popstar, it mainly takes place in Pupu Village. Due to the policy of not having humans as part of the cast, most of the characters are one to three heads tall, with all but the main characters resembling haniwa figures. The characters, mainly the monsters, from the games are derived from the original Kirby's Dream Land, Kirby's Adventure and the port Nightmare in Dream Land, Kirby's Dream Land 2, Kirby's Dream Land 3, and Kirby Super Star. However, it also introduces characters and concepts original to the anime, such as the Star Warriors. Due to differences in style and worldbuilding, many characters had their personalities changed.
While the anime followed Kirby's battles with monsters and the battle against Nightmare while revealing more about the Star Warriors, over time it began to incorporate more social satire and parodies. These episodes covered topics such as famine, global warming, ozone depletion, environmental issues, illegal dumping, education concerns, falsified information on TV shows, tourist morale, abandoned pets, restructuring, government focusing on the construction of public buildings, and the Japanese Paleolithic hoax.
The anime also featured parodies and homages to works of fiction, including films such as Psycho, Roman Holiday, Modern Times, Ikiru, Jurassic Park, Gone with the Wind, Mothra, and King Kong and literary works such as Don Quixote, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
In addition to social satire, the anime featured metafictional elements. Episode 49 deals with the harshness of the anime production scene and the degradation of the drawings' quality, while episode 89 satirizes the decline of cel animation due to the development of 3DCG technology and moe and otaku culture.
The anime was licensed by 4Kids Productions and dubbed into English for North America under the title Kirby: Right Back at Ya!. The official English website featured a manga based on the anime, reminiscent of American comics at the time. In the adaptation process, the show was heavily re-edited: text and scenes were edited or removed to remove content deemed inappropriate for American and Canadian audiences. The dub also changed names of characters, such as the soldiers of the Galaxy Soldier Army being referred to as Star Warriors, and replaced the Japanese score with music produced locally and independently at 4Kids, including songs from anime that had previously aired on 4Kids TV. The final episodes, episodes 96 to 100 in Japan, were not aired on TV until late in the anime's run, and were instead released on DVD as the movie Kirby: Fright to the Finish!.
Some episodes were aired out of their original order, sometimes to air a holiday-themed episode closer to that holiday or to coincide with an event happening at the time. For example, "A Novel Approach", which parodied Harry Potter, was moved to coincide with the release of one of the books. Some episodes were aired earlier to promote new Kirby games, such as episodes 96 and 97, "Crisis of the Warp Star", which were aired near the middle as the television special "Air Ride in Style" to promote Kirby Air Ride. Since these episodes were at a major climax in the anime, some scenes were edited to make it appear as if Tiff and Kirby were having a "prophetic dream" rather than the events actually happening. However, the episodes were placed in the original order and unedited on the Kirby: Fright to the Finish! DVD.
Michael Haigney stated in an interview that the Fox Network refused to air the episode "A Dental Dilemma" because it depicted dentists in a bad light and could scare children, despite being meant to encourage them to brush their teeth and go to a dentist if they thought they had a cavity. This applied to all other countries that used the 4Kids dub. The episode was eventually dubbed, but aired as part of the third season along with other episodes in the line-up.
The anime aired on CBC and TBS from October 6, 2001, to September 27, 2003, with 100 episodes. After a preview on September 1, 2002, 4Kids aired the anime on 4Kids TV, formerly known as FoxBox, from September 14, 2002, to late 2006.
The anime began rebroadcasting in Japan on June 28, 2007 on the Tokyo MX station and in the U.S. on June 21, 2008, ending along with all other 4Kids shows on December 27, 2008. On June 6, 2009, Kirby, along with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fast Forward, was rebroadcast in the US on The CW4Kids. The anime was available on 4Kids's video on demand service and www.4Kids.tv, but was removed from the 4Kids TV website in October 2009, as 4Kids Entertainment held the rights to the anime until September 2009. A moderator on the 4Kids forums stated in November 2009 that 4Kids no longer held the license. Since May 21, 2009, the Tokyo MX website had stated that the anime was removed from the air.
Since 2009, the anime was available for streaming via the Wii no Ma channel for the Wii in Japan, with each episode worth 100 Wii Points, but on April 30, 2012, Nintendo terminated broadcast of the Wii no Ma channel. On June 23, 2011, the anime was made available in Europe and Australia audiences on the Wii as the Kirby TV Channel, which expired on December 15, 2011. This service returned in April 2012. A special CG animated episode, "Take it Down!! The Crustation Monster Ebizou" (倒せ!!甲殻魔獣エビゾウ, Taose!! Kōkaku Majū Ebizou), was released for the Wii no Ma service in Japan on August 9, 2009. A stereoscopic 3D version of the episode was streamed internationally in two parts on the Nintendo 3DS' Nintendo Video service in January 2012, under the title "Kirby 3D". Three episodes were included in the Kirby 20th anniversary compilation game Kirby's Dream Collection for Wii.
The anime was released on DVD and VHS in the United States by 4Kids Entertainment Home Video and distributed by Funimation. The companies first released the anime in three volumes on VHS and DVD (alongside a fourth volume that was cancelled), each containing three episodes:
In June 2005, 4Kids and Funimation released an edit of the last five episodes of the anime combined into a movie, called Kirby: Fright to the Finish!!.
Also in 2005, 4Kids and Funimation released two DVDs as part of 4Kids' "DVDouble-Shot" anime, which each contained two episodes. For Kirby, each DVD focused on a specific copy ability:
In 2008, 4Kids and Funimation released two seven-episode DVDs which altogether made up the first fourteen episodes of the anime.
On May 6, 2010, the first season was released on DVD in Taiwan.
Three episodes from the anime ("Kirby Comes to Cappy Town", "Crusade for the Blade", and "Waddle While You Work") were included in the 2012 video game compilation Kirby's Dream Collection.
The complete anime was released on Blu-ray in Japan on March 14, 2023.
David Sanchez from GameZone found the anime "awesome" and specifically praised Escargoon, whom he called "one of the best contributions to the Kirby franchise thanks to his dimwitted attitude and obvious stupidity" and suggested should be in the fourth Super Smash Bros. game. However, Common Sense Media described the English dub as "a stab at educational value, but really all about fighting monsters", Christina Carpenter from THEM Anime described the anime as "more pandering kiddy fluff from the Fox Box". Bamboo Dong of Anime News Network cited Kirby: Right Back at Ya! as one of several examples of anime that "exist only to be made fun of" and stated that "the anime really isn't that good at all" and would only be enjoyed by loyal Kirby fans.