| Trouble Chocolate | |
| トラブルチョコレート | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Comedy |
| TV anime | |
| Directed by | Tsuneo Tominaga |
| Studio | AIC |
| Network | TV Asahi |
| Original run | 9 October 1999 – 25 March 2000 |
| Episodes | 20 |
Trouble Chocolate (トラブルチョコレート Toraburu Chokorēto) is a comedy anime produced by AIC in 1999 and is licensed in the United States by Viz Media. The series features Cacao, a student at Micro-Grand Academy studying magic. One day, while his magic class teacher, Ghana, is performing a spell to summon a tree spirit, Cacao finds and eats some chocolate, which turns out to be 200 year old magical chocolate. After eating the chocolate he becomes drunk and causes a wreck. During this, he interferes with Ghana's spell, letting the spirit, Hinano, escape. She inhabits the body of a marionette, who then moves in with Cacao.
Subsequent episodes of Trouble Chocolate have little connected storyline. Rather, the show is a parody of other anime. For example, two other characters, Murakata and Deborah, are constantly shown professing their love to each other, set to absurdly explosive special effects and backdrops, as is common (to a lesser extent) in many anime.
The dubbed dialogue in Trouble Chocolate (written by professional comedy writer Pamela Ribon and recorded by The Ocean Group) often bears little or no resemblance to the original script (as heard in Japanese and seen in the subtitles), as opposed to the normal convention of translating the words as directly as the change in lip-sync will allow.
Some names (in parenthesis) were changed in the English version.
| Character | Japanese | English |
|---|---|---|
| Hinano | Sakura Tange | Nicole Oliver |
| Cacao | Tomoki Yanagi | Richard Ian Cox |
| Deborah | Kyoko Hikami | Venus Terzo |
| Murakata | Hiromichi Kogami | Ted Cole |
| Truffle | Yasuyuki Kase | Michael Adamthwaite |
| Almond | Ikue Ōtani | Saffron Henderson |
| Ghana (Ganache) | Tomohiro Tsuboi | Michael Dobson |
| Big Bang | Hidenari Ugaki | Brian Dobson |
| Papaya | Shigeru Nakahara | Ron Halder |
| Master | Hiroshi Ōtake | Don Brown |
| Matcha (Green Tea) | Yuko Sasamoto | Saffron Henderson |
| Azuki (Red Bean) | Yumi Amikake | Kelly Sheridan |
| Wheat | Yumiko Watanabe | Jocelyne Loewen |
| Sardine | Takako Honda Jun Fukushima Hiroyuki Yoko'o |
Andrew Francis |
| Mint | Yui Horie | Janyse Jaud |