Good comedic anime is hard to find, so when I find a series I really like, I devour it. And Sgt. Frog (Keroro Gunso) is one of the funniest anime I’ve ever watched. The series centers around Keroro, an alien invader tasked with conquering Earth, but who is far too lazy and easily distracted to conquer much of anything.
Keroro begins living with the Hinata family to the delight to paranormal-obsessed Fuyuki and annoyance of hot-tempered Natsumi. Over the course of the first twenty or so episodes, Keroro reconnects with the rest his invasion platoon, and from then on episodes consist of Keroro’s botched plans for world domination, get rich quick schemes, and other general shenanigans.
Most episodes are broken up into two unrelated 15-minute segments, though some have a single 30-minute story instead. In standard sitcom style, there is very little continuity between episodes. However, the show has an impressive habit of picking up minor plot points from episodes and expanding on them sometimes a few dozen episodes later. This is never done in a way that if you missed the earlier episode, you’d be lost, but the callbacks do a lot to make the sprawling world of the series feel more like a cohesive whole.
The greatest strength of Sgt. Frog is its large cast of wacky characters. There are eleven characters in the main cast alone, but each one is so well defined that the show never feels overcrowded. Don’t expect any deep character explorations; each character only has a couple of defining personality traits and none of them really change over the course of the series. However, the characters all play off each other so well that their interactions never get stale.
While a lot of Sgt. Frog’s humor is character-based, the show is packed to brim with jokes of every sort: visual gags, pop culture references, breaking the fourth wall, slapstick. It’s rare to go more than 30-seconds without some kind of joke, and almost every one will at least make you smile.
(As a side note, Sgt. Frog’s humor is endearing not only for what it does, but also for what it doesn’t do. While there is some relatively mild fanservice from time to time, the series is free of panty shots, accidentally gropings, and other cringeworthy anime cliches that supposedly pass as comedy.)
The animation is lively and colorful and completely matches the tone of the show. The music is also well done, particularly the opening and closing themes; through several of each, there was only one theme I didn’t really like. The rest are so catchy and fun, I sat through them every time, even when binge-watching.
I have to give particular praise to Funimation’s English dub of the series. All of the voices match the characters perfectly, and this might be one of the rare cases when changes in the dub actually improve the series. Some pop culture references were changed to make them more familiar to Western audiences, and there are some added jokes that aren’t in the original Japanese. I haven’t watched the Japanese version myself, but many who have say the dub is version to go with. Unfortunately, only 78 of the series’ 350+ episodes have been dubbed into English. Since I’ve already exhausted the dub, I plan to continue with subtitles, and I’ll let you know how that turns out.
Sgt. Frog is one of the rare shows where weeks after watching an episode I can still think back on specific gags and chuckle. If you’re a fan of wacky humor, you owe to yourself to give this one a shot.
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