Obocchama-kun Is Coming Home to Japan. Kids in India Brought It Back, and Its 1989 Voice Never Left
A Japanese gag cartoon that ended in 1992 is getting its first new series in 35 years, and Japan isn’t where the comeback started. Dubbed reruns made Obocchama-kun a lockdown hit with Indian kids, an Indian studio drew the new episodes, and Chie Kōjiro, who voiced the hero in 1989, is back in the booth.
TV Asahi has announced that Obocchama-kun Reborn will air across its network in Japan in 2027. It’s the first new anime from Yoshinori Kobayashi’s manga since the original series finished in 1992, and every episode is new: stories the old show never adapted, plus fresh ones written under Kobayashi’s supervision.
The hero is Chama, the heir to a ridiculously rich family, who talks in his own pun-stuffed slang. In the late 1980s Japanese kids copied his lines everywhere, from “ohayogurt” (good morning, mashed into yogurt) to “sonna banana” (a play on “no way”). In 2027 the same voice will be saying them.
Image: ©1986 Yoshinori Kobayashi/TV Asahi
In Japan this is a nostalgia story. In India it’s the second season of a show kids have been watching for years, in their own languages, and the reason the whole thing exists.
The sequel India asked for
Indian children first met Chama in 2013, when Cartoon Network India premiered the old series before moving it to its sister channel Pogo. Sony’s kids channel Sony YAY! relaunched it in Hindi on March 15, 2021, in the middle of the pandemic.
That run is what changed things. According to TV Asahi, the old series was the top-rated show on Indian kids’ channels in 40 of the 52 weeks of its year on air.
“Obocchama-kun Reborn actually started in India,” said Maiko Sumida of TV Asahi’s international business development department. “In 2021 we brought the Obocchama-kun anime to India, and at a time when India was suffering through the pandemic, it became an explosive hit as a wildly cheerful gag cartoon. The project was launched on the strength of voices saying they absolutely had to see a sequel.”
Soon after, Sumida said, executives from the Indian broadcaster flew to Japan to meet Kobayashi in person, and “won over by that passion,” the two countries made an all-new series together.
A hit made in the dub
Here’s the part working voice actors will notice. The show that won Indian kids over wasn’t the Japanese original. It was the localized version. Anime News Network reports that Ambesh Tiwari, business head at Sony Pictures Networks India, credited the efforts of the localization team with making the anime relatable to an Indian audience, in an interview at the Animation & More Summit in September 2025.
Not every fan agreed at first. Under a 2021 story about the relaunch on Anime News India, one reader complained in July 2021 that the show “should be Japanese dubbed. Not hindi dubbed.” The following March another reader replied, and settled it for plenty of fans: “And the Hindi dubbing of obocchama Kun is Very Good.”
None of the announcements we read this week name the Hindi cast. The dub that kept Chama alive for a new generation, and made a sequel worth funding, belongs to performers whose names didn’t make the press release.
Written in Japan, drawn in Hyderabad
The new series runs 26 episodes of 22 minutes. Sidheswar Shukla directed it at Green Gold Animation in Hyderabad, the studio behind Chhota Bheem, while Shin-Ei Animation wrote the scenarios in Japan under Kobayashi’s eye. It premiered on Sony YAY! on August 4, 2025, dubbed into five Indian languages: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bangla and Kannada.
Why animate it in India? Sumida explained at the show’s Japanese premiere at the Aichi-Nagoya International Animation Film Festival last December, as Anime News Network reported, that demand for a sequel was so strong a Japanese production wouldn’t have been ready in time. Writing in Japan and animating in India met the schedule.
VoiceEditSuiteStart with a free studio analysis.Then every session cleaned for $15 a month, launch price until Oct 31.Show me moreWhen the partnership was announced in 2024, Sony’s senior vice president of programming Ronojoy Chakraborty told Animation Xpress that the show’s “success in India reflects the power of its playful charm and relatable storytelling. As an Indo-Japanese co-production, it has struck a chord with kids, fostering a strong emotional connection.”
It isn’t the first time this has happened. Shin-Ei and Indian studios have made new Ninja Hattori episodes together before, in 2012 and again with Green Gold in 2018.
So Japan gets the new Obocchama-kun last, two years after Indian kids, and with a different cast of voices for everyone but one.
The voice that never left
That one is Kōjiro. “However many years went by, Obocchama-kun lived on in so many people’s memories, and Chama lived on inside me,” Kōjiro said in a comment for the announcement. “The voice and the energy from back then? I can still go full blast! I want to do it!”
Kōjiro says the years since have made the work better, not harder. “Because I have more experience than I did back then, I could get much more deeply involved in the show together with the staff. The recording sessions felt like we were all making it together, and they were so much fun it was precious. I just can’t wait for it to air!”
TV Asahi calls the series a “kame-back.” Kame means turtle in Japanese, and Chama rides around on his pet turtles.
Kobayashi says the people who really know Obocchama-kun are in their 40s and 50s, but their children are already finding it. “When I do live events, kids sometimes come backstage with their parents,” Kobayashi said in comments carried by Cinema Today. “Some of them bring a beat-up paperback of Obocchama-kun, and it’s so cute to see.” The new series is their turn: “I’m really looking forward to seeing how kids today feel about it, and how they take to it.”
Kobayashi also hopes the show will inspire someone to take up gag manga. “These days nobody wants to become a gag manga artist anymore,” Kobayashi said, before a closing wish: “I hope it’s such a hit that I can’t go outside anymore!”
Watch the teaser
TV Asahi’s animation channel has posted the first teaser for Obocchama-kun Reborn on YouTube. If the video doesn’t load, search for “Obocchama-kun REBORN teaser PV” on the tv asahi animation channel.
For voice actors, the lesson isn’t subtle. A dub kept a 1989 cartoon alive in a country its creators never had in mind, and that dub’s audience is the reason the original voice gets to say “ohayogurt” on Japanese TV again. Voice Over Herald saw the same pull with Indian fans of Naruto’s Hindi, Tamil and Telugu dubs last week. Local voices make shows travel, and sometimes they bring them home.
Sources: TV Asahi announcement via Cinema Today; Anime News Network; Anime News India (2021 and 2025); Animation Xpress (2024). Quotations from Japanese sources are translated by Voice Over Herald. Hero image and teaser poster: ©1986 Yoshinori Kobayashi/TV Asahi.
Lee este artículo en español: Obocchama-kun vuelve a Japón. Los niños de la India lo trajeron de regreso, y su voz de 1989 nunca se fue
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