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Manga / Sgt. Frog
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We had fascist amphibians before it was coolnote From L to R: Kululu, Tamama, Keroro, Giroro, and Dororo. For simplicity's sake, the enormous supporting cast is omitted.
"What are you talking about? I'm just a slightly overgrown and slightly mischievous normal frog. I've never even thought about invading Pekopon."
Originating as a gag-manga by Mine Yoshizaki , published in Shōnen Ace starting in 1999, and every bit as goofy as its English title Sergeant Frog would suggest, Keroro Gunsō is the story of a not-so typical Japanese family and the alien frogs who turned their lives upside-down.
When pubescent paranormalist Fuyuki Hinata and his tomboyish older sister Natsumi (14 in the manga, 13 in the anime) discover an alien in his bedroom, it's just the beginning of their troubles. This alien, Sergeant Keroro, is the leader of a recon team for an alien invasion from Keron, "the 58th Planet of the Gamma Nebula". But once his superiors realize he's been found out, they abort the mission and leave him and his crew behind. With no one else to turn to, Keroro ends up staying at the Hinata house with Fuyuki, Natsumi, and their mom Aki, living as something between a servant and a pet.
Of course, Keroro is still an invader, and still plotting the downfall of "Pokopen/Pekopon" (his species' name for Earth in the manga/anime)... when he's not doing chores for the Hinata family, or being distracted by such aspects of Earth culture as Gundam model kits and the Internet. Before long, Keroro manages to reunite with his squad-mates: hot-headed rookie/Keroro fanboy Private Tamama, hard-boiled combat specialist Corporal Giroro, and smarmy intelligence officer Sergeant Major Kururu/Kululu. With this eclectic crew (plus some hippy lance jack, Do... uh, rodo?), Keroro attempts to conquer the planet through one convoluted scheme after another, though sometimes he feels torn between his mission and his obligation to the Hinata family... but not that often.
Surprisingly, for a series that's not meant to be taken seriously, often has No Fourth Wall, and is frequently brimming with pop-culture references, it has a lot of heart. Though it stops far short of being sappy, there are many heartwarming moments sprinkled in that sometimes constitute Tear Jerker material. It's still firmly in the comedy genre, though, and hence, occasionally brings these scenes to an abrupt halt with a quick joke.
Rounding out the cast is an assortment of eccentric humanoids, including Momoka Nishizawa, bi-polar scioness of a multi-billion-dollar international corporation who hangs out with Tamama and has a serious crush on Fuyuki; Mutsumi Saburo, a smooth talking poet/artist/radio show host who hangs out with Kululu; Koyuki Azumaya, New Transfer Student and Ninja girl who hangs out with Dororo and is a rather close friend of Natsumi; and Angol Moa/Mois, a ditzy alien girl who has a crush on Keroro and the power to destroy an entire city block with literally a fraction of her power ("Armageddon One Ten-Millionth!").
Insanely popular in Japan, the manga was eventually released in North America in 2004 by Tokyopop, with the title Sgt. Frog. An anime adaptation naturally followed, also begun in 2004. In November 2006, ADV Films announced that they had acquired the rights to the anime version. However, after nearly two years without a single word on the project save for a couple of trailers, Funimation acquired the distribution rights in 2008 (along with about 30 other ADV titles). After a bit more Development Hell, the first season 1 DVD was released September 2009. Episodes can be viewed on Funi's video portal. By March 2010, all of the first season had been released on DVD - split into two "seasons" for whatever reason. In February 2011, Funimation announced that it has licensed further seasons and will continue the dub. However, production came to a standstill after the completion of their third, and as of February 2013, the show is "now on hiatus" — though, another, more faithful English dub provided by the Animax network is still going strong in a few select countries of the series' birth continent.
Adding to the multimedia franchise, Bandai Namco released an RPG adaptation using the Tales engine in March 2010.
This series provides examples of:
2D Visuals, 3D Effects:
Keroro's ceiling fan.
Most of the closing credits sequences utilise cel-shaded CGI. It makes it into the show proper for most of the Chibi Kero episodes, and the entire short film "Secret Of The Kero Ball".
Accent Adaptation: Both Animax!Kululu and facile facsimile Tororo have inexplicably had larynx transplants from Woody Allen.
Accidental Misnaming: In one episode, Kogoro keeps forgetting Dororo's name and guessing wrong. He thinks he's called "Terere" in the original and either "Domomo", "Dimimi", or "Dolo" in the dub.
Accidental Pervert: Giroro sometimes takes Keroro's role of Chew Toy due to this (see below).
Actor Allusion:
Giroro's voice actor also played Leonidas in the Japanese dub of 300, which is quite appropriate, as they are both badass warriors or violent, cryptofascist lunatics depending on your point of view. At one point Giroro even utters the film's most memorable line.
In a similar vein, Dororo once executed an Energy Ball in the exact same manner as a basketball shot, uttering the line "the left hand is only for support"...
Garuru, whose voice actor was previously Anavel Gato of Gundam 0083, is known to carry weapons identical to those of Anavel's GP02 Physalis.
Urere gets an entire story lampooning Kamen Rider Den-O, which features his voice actor Toshihiko Seki as Momotaros.
Saburo's break-in in Episode 9 wasted no time taking advantage of the fact that he was voiced by Akira Ishida to make an extended Neon Genesis Evangelion Shout-Out.
From Saburo in episode 298, a reference was made to Akira Ishida's role as Xellos from Slayers, with Saburo using his catchphrase, "That is a secret!"
It is particularly amusing to read the manga with Giroro speaking with Vegeta's voice. The English dub has had fun with the fact that Giroro is voiced by Christopher Sabat, who was Vegeta (and Piccolo) in Dragon Ball Z. Giroro hoping Keroro will turn into a Super Saiyan, Giroro mentioning the Fusion Dance in the very next episode...
In episode 29, the octopus-like creature used to frighten the newspaper club in the manga is replaced with an obvious Ryo-ohki reference (Ryo-ohki being one of the first characters voiced by Etsuko Kozakura).
Pururu's birthdate is exactly the same as her voice actress.
Despite the lack of a rival character being introduced, episode 282-B, bears a great deal of resemblance to the 3rd episode of the anime Mirumo de pon (the titular character of which shares Tamama's voice actress); Early in the episode Tamama taunts a dog and is consequently bitten when it turns out the dog is unchained, in the same way that Mirumo taunts and is subsequently chased by a cat that is unchained by Yashichi. Additionally, near the end when Tamama unleashes pet up Tamama impact fury on the robotic flies that caused him to drop the over-ripe Keronfig he was trying to eat (and everyone that was in the same general direction as said flies) closely mirrors the savage beating that Yashichi receives from Mirumo as punishment for ruining his cake.
In the dub, Lavie's TV show is called "Gunbringer Girl", and it's described as being about "a cyborg child assassin who always brings her gun with her everywhere." Mois (Carrie Savage) thinks the title and the premise sound familiar - her actress having had a minor role on Gunslinger Girl.
Another dub one: In one episode, Keroro meets Space Kumiko Watanabe and gets her autograph. He says he wishes the guy who does her roles in English was as nice to fans as she is.
A Mobile Suit Gundam Wing parody in Episode 320 has Kururu turned into a Zechs Marquise-like character. Takehito Koyasu, Kururu's Japanese voice actor, also voiced Zechs in Gundam Wing.
Adaptation Distillation:
In the beginning of the manga, Fuyuki is a grade schooler in the 6th grade and Natsumi is a 8th grader. Shortly afterwards, he graduates and moves to another school for his 7th grade. In the anime, Fuyuki is already in 7th grade from the start.
In the manga, Fuyuki has an occult club in grade school and has a lot of members. When he enters middle school, he joins a manga club to follow his mom, Aki's steps. Eventually, however, Fuyuki leaves the manga club and creates a new Occult Club alongside Momoka. However in the anime, Fuyuki already starts with an occult club, initially by himself before being quickly joined by Momoka.
Adaptation Expansion:
Because Giroro, Kururu, and especially Dororo and Koyuki are introduced in the anime much earlier than in the manga, several early chapters not featuring them at all were modified to include them.
Because of the time difference between the start of the manga and the anime, Angol Mois' backstory is somewhat modified. Everything up to the point of Mois telling Nostradamus about her destroying the earth was true but she ended up being five years too late (2004 instead of 1999, 2009 in the Funimation dub).
Mutsumi (623) still has his radio show in the anime, but he is a student in Natsumi's class instead of a high school dropout. Also the fact that he is the host of the 623 radio show seems to be a secret from Natsumi and other listeners of the show.
In the manga, Keroro gains access to the Kero Ball early in the plot, but in the anime Fuyuki keeps it. This means that several of the early uses of the Kero Ball in the manga didn't happen in the anime or found other ways to happen. Meanwhile, the anime had its own exclusive story focusing on the Kero Ball.
In the manga, Sumomo is a female 'Ahotoran' who appears in a bonus chapter, while in the anime Sumomo is a hit intergalactic popstar who appears in several episodes throughout the early seasons of the show. Even after she stops appearing, her presence can still be seen through merchandising and posters featuring her.
Dororo and Koyuki live in a house next to the Hinata's in the manga, whereas in the anime, they live in the woods near Momoka's estate and can see the Nishizawa tower from their home.
Many of the Sgt. Frog anime episodes are not found in the manga.
In the manga, there's only an impersonal narrator, while the anime uses the narrator as a character who eventually even appears on screen.
Adaptational Modesty: The original manga often uses the female characters as vehicles for Fanservice, but the anime tones down these moments.
In the manga, the platoon invents a gun to zap Natsumi with that leads to her wearing a skimpy oni-girl outfit. In the anime, the outfit is still skimpy but the bottom is changed from bikini briefs to a pair of shorts.
An episode of the anime from season 1 shows Koyuki hanging upside-down, where the skirt part of her ninja uniform flips over and we see her wearing a black pair of shorts. Had this happened in the manga we would have had a view of her panties.
In the manga chapter where Keroro gets ill, Angol Mois transforms into a different, more revealing outfit in order to destroy the Earth. In the anime version of this episode, she stays in her regular outfit.
Adaptation Name Change:
In the manga, Earth is referred to as "Pokopen", whereas in the anime, it is "Pekopon". "Pokopen" is a derogatory word Japanese used to describe China during the Sino-Japanese Wars (literally "worthless"), and has since been banned from TV programs by the mass communications authority in Japan. In the Chinese subs, it is replaced by "Blue Planet".
Mustsumi Hojou's full name is never said in the anime. His radio identity uses the "Mutsumi" name from the manga, but everyone outside of work calls him "Saburo", a nickname that doesn't exist in the manga.
Many of Kululu's inventions have different names in the anime.
Added Alliterative Appeal: "Animal Army Attack! ...Alliteration!" "Kitty Conundrum! Another Alliteration!"
An Aesop:
Early episodes had the Narrator end every episode with one of these, which eventually descended into Spoof Aesops such as, "Kids at home, don't grow up to be stupid adults like them!"
Episode 10: Brush your teeth. Not to combat cavities, but to combat an alien menace that sets up bases in your teeth.
Affably Evil: The Vipers tend to be depicted this way, despite supposedly being the sworn enemy of the Keronian race - in fact, they've been shown to have a soft spot for Keronian children. Also they tend to fail as much as our heroes.
For beings who destroy planets for a living, the Angols are pretty damned nice.
Alien Among Us: Alien frogs hiding in a Japanese suburban home, ineffectually plotting world domination. There are also other aliens on Earth besides the Keroro Platoon.
Aliens Steal Cable: Even in the original, Pekoponian media saturates the lives of aliens, though in the dub this is exaggerated. There's even a Galaxy Quest reference, where the Keronians believe Star Trek episodes are the actual documented voyages of a real Enterprise.
Alien Invasion: Parodied, since Keroro always says he'll invade Earth but is constantly distracted by his hobbies or doing chores for the Hinata family. Whenever he and his platoon do try to carry out an invasion, they inevitably fail.
All Love Is Unrequited:
Momoka likes Fuyuki, Chiruyo likes Fuyuki, Alisa likes Fuyuki, Fuyuki likes... being nice? Natsumi likes Mutsumi, Giroro likes Natsumi, Koyuki likes Natsumi, Tamama likes Keroro, Mois likes Keroro, Keroro likes his Gundam models, Bariri likes Pururu.. and the list goes on, including situations involving one shot characters.
Played straight in episode 320. When Pururu finally falls in love with Bariri, Bariri is the one who becomes disinterested.
All Myths Are True: About half the time, when it's not parodied to hell and back.
Alpha Bitch: Natsumi's 'school rival' Imogo Rie.
Amateur Film-Making Plot: In episode 33, the Keroro Platoon come up with an invasion plan that involves them making their own anime in order to gain more funds. Unfortunately for the invaders, they learn that creating animation is much harder to do than they initially thought.
Amusing Alien: The platoon and any other aliens that come along provide the bulk of the comedy.
Anticlimax:
All through the Episode 101-103 arc, it was being set that there was going to be a huge epic showdown between Dororo and Zoruru. Of course, right when it was going to begin, Dororo revealed that he didn't remember Zoruru, and well, Zoruru just left. Events in Volume 17 and Season 7 correct this error.
This gets played for laughs too, several times. In the fourth movie, the climax sees Keroro willingly undergoing the ritual to evolve himself into a dragon, and Shion starts reciting from the spellbook, as Keroro starts to glow and the music slowly builds up — so slowly that Keroro catches a cold first.
Apologises a Lot: Rabbie/Lavie.
The Aristocrats: The dub of episode 18 has Koyuki attempting and failing to tell the joke.
Arm Cannon: All of the Vipers have one. A parody of Space Adventure Cobra and the psychogun.
Art Evolution:
Keroro's pupils becoming smaller and Natsumi's pigtails getting shorter every season is good evidence.
In the manga the frogs are drawn as being rather tubby in earlier volumes. They get thinner partway through volume 4.
Lampshaded in the 9th title sequence, when 1st-season and current Keroro meet each other and get a shock.
Art Initiates Life: Saburo with his Reality Pen; Putata of the Shurara Corps.
Artificial Limbs: Zoruru, who not only has a robot arm and leg, but an entire half of his body and head too.
Art Shift: Momoka tends to commit this during her plans to get closer to Fuyuki, who appears in a deliberate shojo manga art form, sometimes lampshaded by the Narrator. Similarly with Tamama turning psychotic.
Ascended Extra
556 and his sister Lavie are fairly big recurring characters in the anime, but are very minor in the manga after their initial appearances.
In the manga, Sumomo was a character from a one-shot side story loosely connected to the main comic. In the anime, she was remade into an alien Idol Singer who was taking an impromptu vacation on Earth in her first appearance, and eventually became a recurring character for the first couple of seasons.
Pururu, aside from her introduction, mostly appears in the manga alongside other Garuru Platoon members. However, in the anime, she's assigned to Earth, to check up on the Keroro platoon's health, thus makes fairly frequent appearances by herself starting in the fourth season.
Asleep for Days: Happens to Keroro in the 100th chapter, "The Frog That Lost New Year's", after partying a little too hard on New Year's Eve.
Ass Kicks You: In episode 175, Fuyuki, Keroro, and Giroro shrink so they can swim in a kiddie pool. Everything goes fine, until Natsumi and Koyuki show up and jump in the pool. Fuyuki and Keroro get tossed around and generally battered...but Giroro? Natsumi ends up sitting on him, complete with crunching sounds and poor Giroro groaning in pain. Ouch.
Also, this.
Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Done in a few episodes and also in the first movie.
Author Appeal: It's a Mine Yoshizaki manga. What do you expect?
Author Avatar: One of manga editor Aki Hinata's employees is called Yoshizaki-sensei, referring to Mine Yoshizaki (who used to work with Futari Ecchi creator Katsu Aki). This character goes on to appear onscreen several times, including one scene in the third movie where he's enthusiastically sketching Dark Keroro's flying fortress.
Badass Adorable: All of the featured Keronians are very cute, especially the main ones, but they are military personnel and alien conquerors. Their partners are all pretty cute teenagers as well, and all of them will have a piece of the action when the time calls for it.
Badass Mustache: Paul. The dub exaggerates its size and importance frequently; Natsumi said she could see it and nothing else when Paul approached the Hinata house in a helicopter.
Badass Normal: Natsumi, Aki, Paul, both Momoka's parents. Koyuki and the ninja clan are a borderline case.
Baseball Episode: Several variations, including a soccer episode, a tennis episode, a general winter sports episode, and a swimming episode. There's even one episode where the characters played Yukigassen, the organized sport version of snowball fighting!
Batman Can Breathe in Space: Keronians, at least according to many opening sequences. Also seen in the manga.
Poyon is shown breathing in space during her Cold Open debut.
Actually, the Keronian and Galaxy Police member use an "Anti Barrier" which create an invisible barrier with built-in life support system.
Battle Aura: Usually invoked by Tamama.
Battle Butler: Paul Moriyama, obviously. Pierre, in the 4th movie.
Beach Episode: Several, to gratuitous use.
Beneath the Earth: Side 6, an underground city that acts as refuge for all alien immigrants on Earth, but otherwise looks exactly like any street-level environment. Turns out that not only is it really a massive space battleship buried underground, but it combines with Side 1 through 5 to form a Humongous Mecha!
Berserk Button: You hurt Natsumi, prepare to be filled with bullets by Giroro.
Also, Tamama/Momoka are Berzerk Keyboards!
And DON'T EVER break any of Keroro's Gundam models! In the dub this extends to all mech-related merch; he once punched Tamama for breathing on his Voltron playset.
And when some visiting aliens broke some of his models:
Keroro: 'What flavour is your blood?!'
The "animal animalizer" episode featured some crows who attack Sarge after he mentions he's into Gundam - crows hate Gundam, since everybody knows Macross is where it's at!
Don't ever hurt Keroro in front of Mois. She's got the power to destroy the entirety of the planet in her hands (although she does downsize her power when it comes to teaching those who harm Keroro a lesson, thankfully!)
Beware the Nice Ones: It is very, very difficult to get Fuyuki pissed, but God help you if you do. Even Natsumi becomes terrified of him.
Angol Mois can qualify, considering she can quickly go from not hurting a fly to trying to destroy the world and back again.
BFG: Garuru's sniper rifle is at least 5 times larger than himself.
BFS: In the first chapter of the Musha Kero saga, the first of the five crystals our heroes recover turns into this.
God Keron is known to carry two of these.
The other Humongous Mecha, Keroro Daishogun, that appeared at the end of the Musha Kero saga, had an even bigger one.
Big Bad: Shurara from the anime-original Shurara Corps arc. He's voiced by Norio Wakamoto for god's sake!
Big Damn Heroes: To be expected whenever the storyline goes into full-blown action mode. Of special note is the Garuru Platoon arc, where Giroro is appparently shot down in combat, but later rises from a lake a la EVA-02, and blasts into the captured underground base by RIDING A BARRAGE OF MISSILES.
Episode 133 has a rare case of Tamama leading the Big Damn Heroes moment to rescue practically everyone else from Alisa Southerncross.
The fourth movie has Aki doing this in a Citroen 2CV.
Big Ol' Eyebrows: Keroro has so much determination every once in a while, he grows giant eyebrows to display it.
Giroro's father has actual Big Ol' Eyebrows.
Biker Babe: Aki and her motorcycle can outrun anything. ANYTHING. It seems Fuyuki inherited just enough of this to outrun alien missiles on a bicycle in the second movie, BEFORE activating the Nitro Boost.
Bilingual Bonus: In the Japanese version, Tamama is filled with 嫉妬/しっと, pronounced "shitto" and meaning jealousy/envy. He makes some sort of energy ball with his feelings and shooting it towards someone who angered him. The ball never reaches its destination though, and usually returns..
Which on one occasion led to the use of Gratuitous English which led to the logical conclusion. ◊
Birds of a Feather: Arguably, each of the Keroro Platoon is perfectly matched up with another major character. Keroro to Fuyuki, Tamama to Momoka, Giroro to Natsumi, Kululu to Mutsumi, and Dororo to Koyuki.
Fuyuki mentioned in the manga that Tamama and Mois were like Birds of a Feather since they both didn't overthink their actions when trying to save others or going Berserk.
Bishōnen: Saburo
Bizarre Alien Biology: Keronians like humidity, but too much makes them... drunk?
Bland-Name Product: Aki's place of employment, Kadoyama Shoten Publishing, based on the real-life manga publisher Kadokawa Shoten, and the animation company "Sunirase", based on Sunrise, the company that animates Keroro.
The Gundam ripoff seen occasionally, Dangale, is another example of this trope, but not to Gundam itself. It looks virtually identical to a real life Gundam knockoff called Gungal (And a more proper romanization would be "Dungal"), only with a different name and slightly goofier proportions. The manga actually used the Gungal name itself, rather than Dungal/Dangale. Hilariously, one of Keroro's model kits actually was released with a miniature Dungal as an accessory.
Bleached Underpants: Sort of. Space Policewoman Poyon-chan began her career in one of Yoshizaki's doujins, wearing only her UFO skirt and three small adhesive stars. Yoshizaki himself is much in demand as a pin-up artist (see his book Mine Blue for examples).
The Blind Leading the Blind: Happens whenever our heroes get to explain things about Earth to other aliens. Episode 291 in particular involves Nevula getting the wrong idea about the onsen from Giroro and Kululu.
Blue with Shock: Dororo, especially when his Trauma Switch flips on.
Book-Ends: The third movie open with a recap of important anime scenes like Keroro being discovered by Fuyuki and Natsumi; then ends with Dark Keroro being discovered by Space Fuyuki and Space Natsumi.
Bowdlerize: In the anime, Natsumi and Koyuki have a Romantic Two-Girl Friendship. In the manga, they're Schoolgirl Lesbians (at least, Koyuki is, since Natsumi is as oblivious to her as Fuyuki is to Momoka).
Bratty Half-Pint: Karara, Chiroro, Tororo, Taruru (to some extent) and Sumomo (in the manga).
Through flashbacks and Kululu's age manipulation beam gun, we learn that Fuyuki used to be the brattiest of them all.
Breath Weapon: Tamama's "Tamama Impact".
Brilliant, but Lazy: Kululu — as shown in the Nintendo DS game Keroro Gunsō: Enshū Dayo! Zenin Shūgō, he can't be bothered to get out of his seat for the leg race minigame, even when a giant spiked steamroller is chasing him. (Why, when the seat runs for him?)
Giroro, usually at the hands of Kululu.
Runners up include Keroro, usually at the doing of Natsumi or Giroro, and Dororo, by most other characters.
In the Gag Dub, Fuyuki.
In the Nintendo DS game Keroro Gunsō: Enshū Dayo! Zenin Shūgō, Keroro and Giroro are the only two options for Tamama's fishing minigame. They are, of course, bait.
The Cameo:
Zorori, Ishishi and Noshishi appear briefly in the first movie, with Zorori lampshading their out-of-nowhere appearance.
Serval, Tsuchinoko and Recticulated Giraffe make shirt appearance at the end of a chapter.
Cannot Spit It Out: Momoka to Fuyuki.
Cannot Tell a Joke: Koyuki is like this in the English dub of episode 18, judging by her failed attempt to tell the joke about The Aristocrats. When they return to the beach a year later to compete in the comedy contest again, she's improved a little — she can now tell a joke, but her material, featuring "walk into a bar" jokes, is extremely stale.
Dororo too, to a greater extent.
Canon Discontinuity:
In a story of the 2nd year of the anime, Fuyuki, Keroro, Kululu and Tamama visit various famous ancient locations around the world, trying to find signs of alien artifacts. They turn out to be either toys or domestic utensils built by ancient aliens, completely useless for the invasion. However, later manga chapters, TV episodes, and movies presented completely different origins and functions for those locations, ignoring that episode.
The anime in early episodes showed that Keroro was interested in Earth culture since his childhood, including Gunpla. However, it'd be later revealed in the manga (and was hinted at from the start by an adult Keroro taking care of a child Mois, who is more than 500 years old) that Keroro is ancient by human standards, making that scenario impossible. As a result, when the anime started focusing more on his childhood, having "Chibi Kero" centered stories, the idea of Keroro being immersed in Earth culture since he was a child was completely dropped, with the anime then using original counterparts of Earth produts when necessary, rather than straight references like Gundam or Dangale.
To be fair, that episode actually ended with a Hand Wave disclaimer.
A recent ep details elementary-school Momoka's original Crash-Into Hello with Fuyuki, who didn't see her coming as he was busy reading a book... wait... wasn't he the Bratty Half-Pint at this time?
The bratty Fuyuki is younger than the Fuyuki that Momoka met. Although the anime changes the events slightly to make Momoka and Fuyuki meet earlier than in the manga version of the story (from one week to at least several months or even years before), the Fuyuki that she meets in the anime still is older and taller than the bratty one.
Canon Immigrant: Several characters later in the series appeared in the anime before the manga, most notably Pururu and the casts of the 2nd and 4th movies. There's also Angol Fear, who made her first appearance in Soul Calibur IV. Of course, all those characters were originally created by Mine Yoshizaki anyway.
Captain Ersatz: Baio and Ouka Nishizawa. In an early episode, Baio and Paul fought using techniques similar to Street Fighter characters Ryu and Ken while talking about their past rivalry. That short scene could be seen as a simple Shout-Out. However, when Ouka finally appeared, it was revealed that, when they were younger, the couple closely resembled Ryu and Chun Li and met each other in a fighting tournament which, in the anime, featured other Captain Ersatzes of the Street Fighter II cast. Even in the present, Ouka's outfits are variations of Chun Li's, and both Ouka and Baio mostly use techniques based on Ryu's and Chun Li's. Paul Moriyama shows similarities to both Ken (flashbacks) and Akuma (in the present, only after Ouka's introduction), so he isn't a Captain Ersatz of any specific character.
There was also the briefly seen, but also the most obvious example, Eddy Honda to Street Fighter's Edmond Honda. Eddy Honda was a sumo fighter competing in the street fighting tournament and was defeated by the younger Ouka. He even fought in a location resembling the actual Honda's Street Fighter II stage and had the same voice actor as Edmond Honda from the Street Fighter II animated movie.
In-universe non-character example - the Nishizawa radio tower to the Tokyo Tower. It helps that the NPG can afford to build a new one. Which they've done a few times.
Although the Nishizawa radio tower takes the roles usually given to the Tokyo Tower, its design is actually taken from the less famous Skytower Nishitokyo.
Chekhov's Skill: The Great Resonance, which the Keroro Platoon discovers completely by accident in episode 155, is used to power up the God Keron's final attack against the Keromet in episode 203.
The Chew Toy: Keroro's regular failure to complete his plans of world domination or even his household chores result in him getting grabbed by the head, smacked, punched, shoved into the wall, kicked across the room (gooooaaaall!!), and otherwise getting abused by Natsumi. Lampshaded in one 'flashback' scene where Keroro throws in a few Japanese torture sequences that never really happened...
Clean/Diagonal Cut: Dororo seems to be a master of this.
Cluster Bleep-Bomb: A malfunctioning piece of Pekoponian technology causing Natsumi to swear uncontrollably, covered up by bleeps.
Comic-Book Time: Played with. While the characters never seem to age, the reasoning behind the debut of (Shin) Keroro/New Keroro/Keroro-2 is due to the fact that after so long, Pekopon still isn't conquered much to the frustration of their high command.
Contrived Coincidence: In episode 112, it's revealed Kululu had a second Reality Pen, the first of which he gave to Saburo. The Platoon members go into Kululu's memories to see where it ended up, and it's revealed that he loses it during the events of episode 2 and that it was destroyed by the Tamama Impact Tamama fired towards the end of the first half of episode 2.
Episode 37 has a series of coincidences that end up saving Keroro and company from a rampaging dinosaur.
Crash-Into Hello: In Episode 2, Momoka bumps into Fuyuki intentionally in order to get an excuse to talk to him. A flashback chapter in the manga shows this is, in fact, how Fuyuki and Momoka originally met.
Creepy Monotone: Kululu, who gets inexplicably high pitched when he gets particularly excited about something (usually terrible or destructive), which actually makes him even creepier.
There's also the Keronian resonance ritual, which acts as a bonding ritual of caramaderie between fellow countrymen far from home, but to anyone else it sounds like a satanic cult initiation...
Crossover: Aside from all the references and homages to other series, Sgt. Frog has had several crossovers with other series which had direct participation from Mine Yoshizaki in their production.
Melody Honey actually originated from Seven of Seven and also appeared in Arcade Gamer Fubuki before her animated appearances in Keroro.
On the other hand, Mutsumi and Omiyo appeared in Seven of Seven after debuting in Keroro's manga. However, that was actually their first animated appearance too.
The Keroro manga had frequent cameo appearances by Fubuki, from Arcade Gamer Fubuki, and her best friend in the background of several scenes. Eventually, there was a full blown cross over chapter where Fubuki beat Keroro in an arcade game. Fubuki only makes a single brief background cameo in the anime.
In the Fubuki anime, one of the finalists of the videogame tournament which is at the center of the story looks suspiciously like Kururu in a Pekopon suit.
Natsumi and a Keroro plush had guest appearances in the Arcade Gamer Fubuki manga. Keroro plushies are also seen in the anime.
'Space X Jyubei', main character of an obscure manga by Mine Yoshizaki, had a guest appearance during the chapter which introduces Dororo in the manga, listed among the aliens on Earth. He was absent from the anime version of the story.
In the single volume of the 'Space X Jyubei' manga, the last chapter is actually a complete crossover with Keroro, featuring not only Keroro, but also Fuyuki and Natsumi in main roles.
Angol Fear, Mois' cousin, debuted in SoulCalibur IV, but her backstory always referenced Keroro, mentioning Mois, who'd come to Earth after her. She eventually would go on to appear in the Keroro Gunsō manga itself.
Keroro plushies and toys are seen in Lucky Star, and there's even an episode preview where Keroro, Tamama and Giroro take control of the narration.
Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: There is a reason Sgt. Keroro is the leader even though he appears to be a fool. Threaten (or worse, actually hurt) his squadmates or his adoptive family, and there's no force in the universe that will stop him, as the Garuru Platoon found out. Or just get him too wet. See Berserk Button far above.
Video here, from Episode 103, unfortunately sans subtitles. Complete with Transformation Sequence and Theme Music Power-Up due to The Power of Friendship, along with He's Backs for the rest of the team, followed shortly by shoutouts to god only knows how many animes, reminding us that for all their problems, we are dealing with an elite alien invasion force, after all.
Fuyuki has a bit of this too — in several instances Sgt. Keroro pushes him too far, he gains a Battle Aura and a shadow covers his face, then the manga cuts over to a terrified Keroro and a cheerful Fuyuki. The first time this happens he actually stops the otherwise unstoppable Keroro described above. See Berserk Button, pretty close above. Also Beware the Nice Ones, far above.
In one chapter of the manga, the platoon goes way too far by converting some old Children's Day carp flags (which Fuyuki considered a family heirloom) into invasion weapons. Fuyuki snaps, prompting Natsumi to genuinely panic, and Kululu quickly zaps him with the age reduction beam. Child!Fuyuki promptly takes charge of the invasion.
Crowded Cast Shot: Several events in later episodes routinely reunite at least one member of each alien race shown in the series up to that point, although most only return as background cameos.
Episode 296 is the biggest example in this series. The first half, featured piles of letters and cards sent by old minor characters. In the second half, there was a competition involving one member of every alien race shown in the series up to that point.
Cute Ghost Girl: Omiyo, or Ghost-chan/Yuurei-chan.
Cute Kitten:
Giroro's kitten.
Ending 11, when the team dons kitty ears to do the Kero-Cat Tango.
Keronian females tend to have cat-ear-like protrusions on their hats (Pururu in particular gains these as an adult).
Daddy Didn't Show: Chapter 17/Episode 27-A has Keroro's father coming to visit the house, and Keroro convinces the Hinatas to act like his slaves to impress him. His dad doesn't make it, severely annoying Natsumi.
Dancing Theme: This has happened with a number of the endings. For instance, three words: Kurutto Mawatte Ikkaiten .
Darker and Edgier: Subverted. In the 7th season, when half of the series moved to a late night timeslot, called Keroro Gunsō Otsu, there was an entire story about Keroro becoming "Keroro of the Night", and so, "Adult, Dark and Dangerous". However, as it turns out, he was no different from before and he's defeated as usual.
Dark-Skinned Blonde: Mois in human form and Asami.
Death of a Thousand Cuts: Tamama's "Deathblow 9000".
Deep-Immersion Gaming: A recurring plot element involves the Keronians creating video games that are a bit TOO interactive.
Depraved Dentist: Do not, under any circumstances, let Kululu near your mouth.
It's a bit ironic when we briefly see his mouth filled with rotten teeth in episode 310.
At the end of the Caries War episode, it's revealed that Keronian teeth will all drop out and replace themselves several times (for humans it only happens once), which sheds a little light on Kululu's attitude (saving the teeth is not a priority).
Destroyer Deity: Angol Moa has come to Earth to destroy it, in accordance with Nostradamus' prophecies. Fortunately, she's one of the sweetest girls you could meet, so convincing her to forgo the plan isn't too hard. Unfortunately, she's also rather flighty and doesn't fully understand the implications of her role, so she's prone to offering to destroy the world as a solution to any minor difficulty the other characters are having at the moment.
Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Angol Mois is the cosmic entity sent to destroy the Earth, as well as one of the sweetest and gentlest souls you'll ever meet.note Or maybe we should say "wouldn't harm a fly"?
Disappeared Dad: Where is Mr. Hinata? He seemingly returns at the end of the anime, though the reason for his unspoken absence remains a mystery.
According to the wiki , it says that it's because of his constant traveling, which is more than likely attributed to his also mentioned fascination of global mysteries, such as that of Easter Island's Moais.
"Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The Keroro platoon's voice actors have performed 3 opening themes thus far.
Don't You Dare Pity Me!: In the manga when one of Tamama's attempts to discredit Mois not only ends in failure but results in Mois trying to console him without knowing what she is consoling him about.
Double-Meaning Title: Most of the episode names in the dub.
Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Sgt. Frog breathes this trope, expect it to be played on a daily basis. It doesn't help that all female characters in the show are generally far stronger than the males and one of them is an infamous galaxy destroyer. Though subverted as said galaxy-destroyer is one of the nicest character in the show, and the frequent abusers are the Muggle whose house Keroro lives in and a Yandere rich girl.
Drives Like Crazy: Aki Hinata has a car as well. She is already known as a terror on the mountain roads in the series and is implied to have traversed miles of implausible terrain in a Citroen 2CV in the fourth movie.
Drop the Washtub: Seen in a few episodes.
Dub Name Change: Averted in the released version, but apparently part of Funimation's original plan for this show was to eliminate the last syllable from the aliens' names (Keroro becoming simply Kero) and have Earth be known intergalactically as "Planet Wuss" and humans as "Wussians". Funimation likely abandoned this due to negative feedback on the changes. Changes that stay include Giroro's cat, who doesn't have a name at all in the original (everyone calls her "neko"; "cat" or "kitten"), but the dub calls her Miss Furbottom, while Dasonu*Maso becomes the Dance*Master, because the pun doesn't even sort of work in English.
Broadcasts in languages other than English sometimes went rather farther than Funimation's dub did; Keronians tended to keep their original names but the human characters were occasionally renamed to fit with the language of the dub.
Earth-Shattering Kaboom: What would literally happen if Angol Moa ever used her entire power. One ten-millionth of her power is enough to demolish a city block.
Easily Thwarted Alien Invasion: It happens a lot. A lot.
Elaborate Underground Base: And Elaborate Bedroom, thanks to some Applied Phlebotinum.
Eldritch Abomination: An enormous black hole dragon, composed by millions of smaller negative matter dragons, which appears in one of the show's final episodes (7th season), easily slaughtering the combined force of the Keronian army. Of course, the series doesn't end with it destroying the universe. So, somehow, it's defeated.
Energy Ball: Tamama's Jealously Ball.
Enslaved Tongue
Keroro tries to make a Hypno Fool of Natsumi with a Verbal Tic candy, but everyone ends up eating one (or more) conveniently right before important phone calls.
Kululu's invention turns the second light novel into an aptly-narrated Detective Story, in which the "detectives" are forced to call each other by their embarrassing code names.
Even the Girls Want Her: Natsumi, who in addition to Koyuki has an entire female fan club at her school.
Evil Counterpart: The Garuru Platoon to the Keroro Platoon in Episodes 101-103. Taruru to Tamama, Garuru to Giroro, Tororo to Kululu, and Zoruru to Dororo. Strangely, Keroro did not have one. Also done in the Third movie, with Shivava to Tamama and Doruru to Giroro. Dark Keroro counts, but he's more of an Evil Twin to Keroro.
Evil Laugh: Kululu. "KUU KU KU KUUUUUU!"
Evil Twin: Dark Keroro from the third movie.
Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Swedish title, Keroro, Grodan Från Rymden (Keroro, the frog from space).
Expy:
There are many characters and inventions which are obvious homages to other works, from the more well known ones like Wettol King to Iron King and Ultraman or the Pekopon Invasion Machine resembling a green Gunbuster to the less well known and one shot ones, like the Abilika group from a 5th season episode to Time Bokan's trio of antagonists and their successors.
Saburo is an expy of Kaworu. The first time he visits the Hinata household, the ode to joy starts playing, and he's voiced by Akira Ishida.
In-universe examples: Dasonu* Maso is the unabashed bootleg version of Dance* Man (see Ink-Suit Actor below).
Yoga and Cyclone to Street Fighter's Dalshim and Zangief.
There's one to Guile, in an absurd way. Oka complains about his hairstyle not being comparable to the original, and lies on the ground while the Guile expy is charging for Sonic Boom or Flash Kick, just like in the game.
Extra Eyes:
Gyororo, with a total count of 7! And... they also shoot lasers... for some reason...
Nevula (Alisa's "Daddy") can open multiple eyes at random but usually just looks at the world through one.
Eye Beams: Taruru's main attack. Gyororo also has these, as mentioned above.
Eye Catch: Actually says "EYE CATCH"
Eye Scream: Kululu gets drills for eyes in the infamous drill episode.
Fake Shemp: Many minor characters, like aliens created for specific episodes, return later in minor roles. Unless they were voiced by one of the show's main voice actors, this usually means they either get random voice actors replacing them or just appear mute. This happens more rarely with minor human characters, but there are still some examples, like Natsumi's and Fuyuki's teachers in later episodes, who aren't even credited and generally talk with the camera showing their backs or off screen in order to lessen the impression of recasting.
Sumomo is probably the most obvious example. The last time her VA returns to do her character's voice is in the beginning of the third season. Afterwards, Sumomo only makes minor silent cameos or uses old audio.
There's also an example with Danceman in the 5th season. He's shown in a far away shot of a concert, which uses stock audio.
Fanservice: Mostly focusing on Natsumi and her mother Aki (Miss and Mrs. Fanservice). In Episode 9, Kululu watches Aki shower (with ample Toplessness from the Back). In the swimming pool chapter in the manga, Natsumi's troupe of fangirls grab at her chest, and Yoshizaki comments that he couldn't help himself. The second ending theme song has a brief shot of Aki in a bikini as a special reward for sticking around for the credits. However, the fanservice in the anime is overall much more toned down in comparison to the manga.
"Fantastic Voyage" Plot: In episode 10, Keroro's mouth becomes infested with microscopic, cavity-causing aliens, and a good chunk of the rest of the cast (including a robot duplicate of the sergeant mentally controlled by Keroro) shrinks down and enters his mouth to fight them off.
Fantastic Racism:
There's a reason they couldn't get away with calling Earth Pokopen in the anime.note "Pokopen" was a derogatory term for China and the Chinese before and during World War II. It's considered extremely offensive today and usage of the word on Japanese TV is banned.
In-universe example: Natsumi hijacks the Keronian's pool, declaring it humans only...with Mois swimming right next to her. This is just the top of the list.
Fartillery: Tamama, especially in later episodes.
Feet of Clay: Keroro was held up as being a remarkable and terrifying soldier before coming to Earth. Turns out he's an incompetent idiot.
Festival Episode: The Keroro Platoon runs a series of stalls as part of their latest scheme to raise invasion funds. Natsumi gets them to leave by meeting their turtle-catching challenge.
Keroro: Big Bad (He wishes.)
Tamama: The Dragon (Actually has breath attack)
Kululu: The Evil Genius (Ku ku kuu)
Giroro: The Brute (Of the weapons based variety)
Angol Mois: The Dark Chick (Is usually acting as TheDitz when she's not trying to crack the planet in two)
Dororo: Sixth Ranger Traitor (Will only take over the world if it's in a peaceful way; which is to say, not often)
Foreshadowing: Mutsumi could see through the Anti-Barrier and in the anime had the same colored pupils used by human-like alien characters. In a late anime episode, one of his alternate counterparts from another dimension is shown to be an alien conqueror. The anime in later seasons also introduced the idea that there were rumors about both his Saburo and Mutsumi identities being aliens. However, the original anime ended and nothing seemed to come out of that. On the other hand, in the manga, it's eventually revealed that although Mutsumi is biologically human, he was adopted and taken by a race of super intelligent human-like alien invaders called N326ans, a name referenced by his anime nickname, Saburo(sometimes spelled as 326), and through that he seemed to have learned their abilities like breaking into other dimensions and flight.
Forgotten Birthday: Keroro does this to Natsumi in one episode, while Fuyuki insists that Natsumi wouldn't enjoy it. Much to his chagrin, he finds his sister not only has a good time at the party, but completely fell for the Forgotten Birthday ploy.
Forgotten Phlebotinum: The Kero Ball and Angol Mois's Lucifer Spear gets used less and less each season. This gets lampshaded in the third movie - both items are lost at different points, but recovered from the wreckage during the end credits. The 7th season of the anime attempted to reestablish the basic characters and setting of the show. As a result, both of these elements come to the forefront again. There are 3 episodes with the Keroball in the center of everything just in the first half of the season. That's more than in all of the first season!
Frog Men: The Keronians.
Funny Afro:
Anyone who survives an explosion will have their hair fried into this, with bonus sideburns and soul patch in Keroro's case.
A variant in episode 294: Paul's Mobile Shrubbery camouflage includes a massive green afro resembling a bush.
Fun with Acronyms: Keroro's squad's name is ARMPIT in the dub, a fact which Keroro lampshades as being "unfortunate."
Gag Dub: Funimation pretty much took the same approach as they did with Crayon Shin-chan for this dub, though it stays faithful to the main plot of each episode while changing up references and adding new jokes. Funimation's original test dub represents this trope much more accurately, making the current dub look like the original Japanese version in comparison.
Gag Series
Gender Bender:
In the anime, episode 271-B, Natsumi is turned into a boy accidentally, while something similar happens to Fuyuki, who becomes a girl, in chapter 219 (volume numbering), volume 25, of the manga. In both cases though, they return to normal at the end of a single story.
In an in-game crossover quest with the mobile RPG Kemono Friends, it's the Keroro Platoon themselves who are turned into human girls. This is used for a longer in-game storyline and they can be used as standard party members even outside of that quest. Unlike the stories in the manga and anime, it follows the First Law of Gender-Bending, with the Keroro platoon never going back to normal in the game's story, although they learn a way to do it. The characters also follow the Third Law of Gender-Bending to various degrees, with them all dressing as girls, and quickly becoming used to being girls, in spite of Keroro's initial shock, and Giroro's continuous denial. Giroro and Dororo even completely change their speech patterns to more feminine ones, while Keroro boasts to the player about how she makes a perfect girl in her self description.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Dasonu*Maso is an in-universe example.
Get-Rich-Quick Scheme: Quite a lot of Keroro's plans are just to raise the invasion budget...usually so he can buy more Gundam.
Getting Crap Past the Radar:
A little-known gesture of implied rape in Japanese culture involves the Shogun grabbing the waistband of his consort and ripping it off so hard that she spins several circles and falls on the bed with her clothes splayed open. The second movie actually turns this into a running gag... with Giroro as the consort.
Drill episode. There is a reason why they didn't show the females getting a drill up their arses.
This gem of a line from the dub, which makes sense in context: "This DNA spilled out of your sack!"
Another line from the dub, when Keroro becomes a teacher: "My name is Hugh, but you can call me Mr. Jass".
In the same episode, Tamama and Giroro play his students. Their names? Jacques Strap and Seymour Butz. One of the students remarks, "Their names combined are Butt Strap!"
"I can't handle Natsumi like this! She's too womanly! I need a cold, cold saltwater shower!"
One that dances the line between subtle and downright egregious is in "Lost in Transportation", uttered by Keroro as he caresses his long-awaited KRRSP: "Oh, baby, what took you so long to come?"
Netflix has the dubbed version of the show under children's TV, making typical words like "bastard" in the dub and recurring fanservice more of this.
In episode 74, there's a mini-episode called "All Night Wrong" where Momoka believes that Fuyuki is having sex with Angol Mois in his room after spy reports say that they haven't left Fuyuki's room all night and Tamama remarks about them in the dub "totally making out and...stuff". Turns out, Fuyuki is just helping her with her English, but still, how does this get past the radars of Netflix and Funimation, both who assign it a simple PG rating? Momoka even remarks, embarrassed for barging into his room, "Oh, you're dressed, that's good." Also, in the beginning of the episode, Fuyuki remarks in an out-of-context conversation "Um...are you sure you're ready to do this?" to which Angol Mois replies "I guess...I just want it to be right, you know?"
Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Nyororos are Giant Space Plant-based Moisture-hungry Seasonally-Appearing Creature... Things From Nowhere.
Good Scars, Evil Scars: Giroro has a line across his left eye.
Gorgeous Gaijin: Recurring American character Melody Honey, originally from the much less popular (and understandably so) Arcade Gamer Fubuki.
Goroawase Number: Keroro, Kululu and Natsumi are associated with K66 (ke-ro-ro), 966 (ku-ro-ro) and 723 (na-tsu-mi).
Grand Theft Me: Thanks to a special Gashapon machine. In the anime, the first time, it's used by Keroro to steal Natsumi's body, but the situation ends up closer to "Freaky Friday" Flip when he is dragged to help her classmates. The manga's story turned out differently though. Either way, it seemed like a one-off item, but it returned in the 6th season. Keroro's mother disappears with Natsumi's body and even convinces Giroro to go on a date with her. There were also incidents involving Momoka and Keroro and Tamama and Fuyuki, when Tamama decides to use Fuyuki's body to approach Keroro and even attempts to kiss him... although he made a mistake. In the later episodes, the voice actors stay with the bodies, only following the personalities for internal monologues.
Gratuitous English:
Oddly enough, Keroro and Giroro wind up delivering more of this than the Foreign Fanservice character.
One scene involving Tamama's Jealousy Ball has its proper Japanese name, 'Shittou Ball', written in the background in English — only it's spelled Shit Ball.
Momoka's swimsuit from the first beach episode is "Qute".
The dub invokes this in episode 4: "Buubii Torappu?"
"Opening... Celemony"
"I know that says 'Warnig' but I'm pretty sure they meant 'Warning'."
Fuyuki has a sign on his bedroom door reading "Winter", which he has also used as a codename. Natsumi was, of course, "Summer."
Related to the above is the Mois-Momoka-Natsumi group "More Peach Summer", the name of which vaguely obscures the identity of its members by hiding them behind English words relating to their names. With Koyuki, the group is called "More Peach Summer Snow", and with Pururu it becomes... "More Peach Summer Snow and Pururu".
Gratuitous Ninja: They really didn't need ninja, but aren't you happy they added them anyways?
Gratuitous Princess:
The second movie, where Natsumi became a sea princess. Keroro's hairbrained idea to get her back involves dressing the rest of his troops as princesses. And he tries it again in the third movie.
Momoka gets recast as an actual princess in the Musha Kero storyline. She is The Ojou, after all!
Anime Sumomo displays some princess behavior in her first appearance — the plotline is basically Roman Holiday with a galactic pop star.
Natsumi Princess Summer in Keroro RPG.
Gratuitous Spanish: Angol Mois in the dub, probably because to a western viewer her tan complexion immediately suggests Latin heritage. And then lampshaded when she stopped doing it, or at least she doesn't do it as much anymore at least.
Green-Skinned Space Babe: Every female alien if she is not from the Keronian (or Viper) race. The Keronian females can change into human females though and do this VERY often.
Hand Cannon: Giroro's oh-so-cool alien handguns.
Handy Remote Control: Kululu's iPod remote... thingy.
Healthy in Heaven: Ghost Girl died of a congenital illness in real life. As a ghost, she shows no signs of it.
Hero of Another Story: Yamato and Kapu. Yamato was a kid around Fuyuki's age who befriended a kappa-like creature similar to Keroro, who took he and his friends in many adventures. When Fuyuki meets him though, Kapu had disappeared, although his friends still hoped to meet him again.
In the manga, it's directly lampshaded by Fuyuki writing a report afterwards where he talks about how he realized, with that incident, that there are other stories like his going on in the world, which doesn't spin around him after all.
Heroic BSoD:
Dororo's "Trauma Switch" sends him into a deep funk where he cowers in a corner weeping to himself.
Pururu shuts down and blabbers randomly to herself when someone calls her Oba-san.
Keroro sometimes gets this, when all the pent-up remorse for everything he did to Dororo turns him into a broken, sobbing mess.
Hidden Eyes: Fuyuki, when he's had enough; Natsumi, right before she brings the wrath of god down upon Keroro; amongst others.
High-Speed Missile Dodge: Powered 723.
Hitodama Light:
The ghost girl is often accompanied by hitodama.
Dororo tends to sulk in the corner with hitodama around him when his "Trauma Switch" turns on.
Hoist by His Own Petard: Happens a lot to Tamama and Keroro.
Holding Back the Phlebotinum: The outlook on Keroro DaiShogun's next appearance isn't very bright. As a matter of fact, any Keronian mecha that gets featured in the KeroPla model line has been known to suffer from this. Contrast with fan favorites like Giroro Dendrobium and Autumn H.
Homage:
Out of all the shoutouts to Mobile Suit Gundam, the third movie in particular offers what may be the strongest homage yet, with an actual Gundam being used against the enemy and Keroro doing a rendition of the theme song. This Gundam being a sized-up toy, it doesn't last very long.
The 4th movie starts out with Keroro dressing up as the Zeta Gundam and ZZ Gundam, then takes advantage of the retro setting of France to homage ∀ Gundam. Case in point, Pierre's uniquely shaped moustache, and the presence of antique coat-of-arms that resemble known UC mecha.
Honorifics: Keroro is especially fond of using honorifics with his adoptive family, applying military-equivalent ranks to each member. He uses "dono" for the family members in the anime, and calls Aki "Mama-dono". Mois calls Keroro "Oji-sama" (Uncle).
Hospital Hottie: Chief Medic Pururu, who is often the subject of male affections.
Hot-Blooded: Everyone on the show does this at one point or another, but Space Detective Kogoro probably fits this best.
Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Angol Mois's father is a colossal celestial being, while Mois herself is human-sized.
Human Aliens: Mois, Kogoro, a few other examples.
Humans Are Bastards:
That's what the Angol clan considers humanity to be in the manga, sensing various evil thoughts throughout the world and even being able to count how many sins are happening on Earth in a specific moment. This would explain why the Angols seem nice, despite their destructive aims.
In SoulCalibur 4, which features Angol Fear, Angol Mois' cousin who'd go on to appear in the Keroro manga later. Her story suggests the Angol race thinks Humans Are Bastards, and possibly the reason they want to destroy Earth is to save the rest of the Universe from that corruption expanding; Ultimately, Angol Fear observes that there are many innocent humans, and leaves it up to Angol Mois to decide whether to destroy Earth or not.
Humans Are Special: It's hinted in one arc of the manga (the World's Tiniest Invasion: Lost Episode IIRC) that humans have an absurd level of mental potential, and that Keroro's contact with them has put his own potential far beyond that of the average Keroronian, which still leaves him far below a human's level.
Humongous Mecha: The series loves them, as does its titular Anti-Hero.
Hyperspace Arsenal: Giroro's weapons are always summoned from nowhere via Keronian tech. In the third movie, Kululu's computer system is hacked and Giroro is left without his heavy arms for half of the movie.
I Am Not Shazam: In-Universe, Alisa's "Daddy" is named Nevula, but tends to be forgotten as such.
I Call It "Vera": J. Michael Tatum has admitted to naming Dororo's katana "Stephen". This made it into an episode when Dororo broke his sword against an indestructible spaceship hull and cried its name out in grief.
An Ice Person: Koyuki has some ice-related ninja moves, as the "yuki" (Japanese for "snow") in her name implies. Also Yukiki, who was a snowman after all.
Identical Grandson:
After being zapped with Kululu's "Midlife Crisis" gun in Episode 9, preadolescent Aki is shown to look very similar to Fuyuki (but not close enough that Funimation's dub could resist lampshading it). A later episode involving time travel reveals that teenage Aki looked a lot like Natsumi — except for the hair color and the glasses, of course.
Fuyuki's son shown in a brief glimpse of the future at the end of the 6th season looks basically identical to Fuyuki's Bratty Half-Pint younger self.
Identical Stranger:
The Musha Kero saga takes place on a planet full of people resembling our heroes' friends. Their actual characters range from disturbingly similar (Fuyuki, Momoka) to completely different (Natsumi, Saburo) to something from out of left field (Mois.)
One episode revolved around a girl named Asami who looked exactly like Angol Mois going around and mugging and/or beating people up. The only difference between them was that Asami's eyes were blue while Angol Mois' were gold. It turns out that when Angol Mois first came to Earth she saw Asami beating up the "Sleazy 26" gang and decided to model herself after "Earth's Greatest Warrior," per instructions from her father.
Idiosyncratic Episode Naming:
Episode titles always start with the name of whichever character the story will be about and end with Keroro's "de arimasu". Animax's little-known English dub of the show — it was only seen in Asia — preserves this tic by having Keroro's voice actress say "Sir, yes sir!" after the title. The Musha Kero saga has chapter numbers instead, and "de arimasu" is replaced with the more archaic "de gozasorou".
American Keroro says "de arimasu" after one episode's title, just for the hell of it. However, most episode names are Shouts Out to various other media: V for Valentinedetta, Springtime for Hitters, Lost Action Hero, Lost in Transportation (de arimasu), you get the idea. Note that this is only most episodes, though all the others are puns ("Pop Startled", "Fake It Til You Make It", etc.) As of the second season a couple of episodes use a line from the show as the title, a la Crayon Shin-chan.
The Idiot from Osaka: Keroro, but without the accent. Whenever he has one of his money-making schemes he gains one, and eats takoyaki.
I'll Never Tell You What I'm Telling You!: Early in the second season Keroro uses a robot copy to skip out on the invasion meeting and the copy is found out. When pressed for information Tamama insists that he'll never tell them that Keroro used the robot so he could go see the Java Risers show at the amusement park
Improbable Weapon User: Pururu, and her various novelty-sized syringes. Like, as big as her. These are made even more improbable in the anime, due to the fact the needles are tipped with a ball, so as to not scare the children or give the impression they could actually cause bodily harm.
Dororo's mother can battle berserk security robots with frying pans.
In the episode that introduces Giroro, Natsumi busts right through a massive array of tripwires, plastique, and claymore mines with just a leek. The finishing blow is delivered with a bookbag to Giroro's head.
Inconsistent Dub: Tamama Impact is usually referred to by some variant of "Crazy Rage Breath", but occasionally they still call it Tamama Impact. Kogoro's transformation word also flips from "Attach-O!" to "Adhesion", the literal translation of the Japanese.
Incredible Shrinking Man: Episode 175.
Incredibly Lame Pun: "Boy, I sure had a blast at Hiroshima!"
Ink-Suit Actor: Dance*Man (real name Hideki Fujisawa) in the regular show; 'Dylan & Catherine' in the Fundari Kettari title theme.
Intelligent Gerbil: The Keronians are a frog-like intelligent alien race.
Interactive Narrator:
As per Rule of Funny, the characters can hear everything the Narrator says (Natsumi asks him for fashion advice in one case), and finally the Narrator appears on screen (wearing a mask) in episode 40.
In the English dub, he frequently gets into arguments with the guy who writes the subtitles for the on-screen Japanese text (the latter often choosing to write insults rather than actually translating what's written).
Subtitle: "The narrator sucks!"
Narrator: Here's a caption: Bite me!
An entire episode revolved around how Kururu got tired of the Narrator's comments, and caused even more mayhem. This causes all the characters to Blame the narrator
Kululu: "We're all tired of your complaining about how you hate the show, and how you're only here because of your gambling debts!"
later in the episode...
Narrator: Okay, someone remind me how this is all my fault?
Fuyuki: Because you hate the show?
Invisibility Cloak: The Anti-Barrier, or the system the Keronians use to become invisible to anyone other than a select few, like the Hinatas. It's explained that very curious people (like the mangakas in the deadline arc, and the Hinatas early on) can see straight through it, but then it says this is how Natsumi and Fuyuki saw the Sergeant to begin with... yet Keroro had forgotten about the anti-barrier at that point.
Invisible Writing: There's a chapter where he receives a message from his superiors that had to be revealed by rubbing an eraser on it. In the anime, the message also gets partially revealed due to entry through the atmosphere.
Jerkass: Natsumi is a total jerk toward Keroro. Yes, she hates the fact that a platoon of aliens intending to take over the planet is living with her, but she constantly abuses him, both verbally and physically, at the slightest provocation.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
Giroro. Brutal, war-obsessed commando and devoted cat owner.
Occasionally Keroro comes off as this, except he's not so much a jerk to begin with as an annoying, mooching houseguest. However, he does tend to do the right thing when all the cards are down to crisis point—right by human perspectives; his own race may think differently.
Jidaigeki: The entire Musha Kero arc takes place on an Alternate Universe planet vaguely like ancient Japan. All the best-known Jidaigeki tropes are played straight, from the alternate Idiosyncratic Episode Naming to Keroro saying "Kore nite, ikken rakchaku... de arimasu."
Kawaiiko: Tamama, when he's not being a psycho.
Ki Manipulation:
Tamama's "Tamama Impact".
Later, there's Shivava, in the 3rd movie, and Orara, in the 7th season, who are, respectively, Expy of the Monkey King (with a bit of Dragon Ball's Goku thrown in) and of Dragonball's Goku himself. Both of them had Kamehame Hadokens and a Battle Aura. Orara was even voiced by Goku's original voice actor.
Kid from the Future: One episode has Fuyuki and the platoon dragged into the '80s, where Fuyuki meets young Aki.
The Kid with the Remote Control: Mero in the second movie.
Kill It with Water: Giruru, who was eventually defeated with cornstarch.
Lampshade Hanging: This is especially true in the Funimation dub, and especially with the dub narrator.
Large Ham: SPACE DEPUTY (Add verb.)
Last Episode, New Character: There were three of them in the last episode of the 7th season shown throughout all of Japan (257. 258 had an initial limited Tokyo-only run), two who probably will return later if the anime continues. The characters were the supremer commander of the Keronian army, an invasion AI called DK-666, and also Haru Hinata, Fuyuki's and Natsumi's absent father. The last one basically only had a cameo appearance though, and his face wasn't even shown.
Latex Space Suit: Several times, played up for fanservice with the girls.
Law of Alien Names: The Keronian naming pattern, "A-B-B".
Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Very common in the manga, but the anime has significantly less of them. Aside from Gundam characters mentioned by Keroro, the cameo characters in the anime are usually redesigned, even if only for actual silent cameos, and renamed, if they actually have credited speaking roles, basically becoming Ersatzes. There are a few rare straight examples though, like the Great Mazinger briefly appearing in the middle of a war zone and in a radar during episode 145-A, without any redesign, where different parts of it were visible in the different scenes (legs in one scene, silhouette in another).
Live-Action Adaptation:
Parodied at the end of episode 293. The platoon's reaction is what seals it.
Keroro also says George (or Johji) Nakata—in reality the voice of Giroro—is rumored to be starring in the live action Captain Geroro movie in a much earlier episode.
Finally, there are in fact, actual live-action adaptations . Some of them are quite strange.
Living Prop: Fuyuki's classmates, as of about episode 63.
Living Toys: Nuii, a living Keronian doll that can take on the appearance of a teddy bear.
Loads and Loads of Characters: Played straight and averted, with different alien races instead of single named characters.
Locked in the Bathroom: In a chapter of the manga, Keroro locks himself in the toilet to escape the wrath of Natsumi for messing with her favorite shirt.
Long Runner: Has been running in Japan almost long enough for an entire generation to grow up with it, and is still going strong.
Looming Silhouette of Rage: Several occasions. Natsumi gets Billowing Pigtails of Rage in addition to this.
Lotus-Eater Machine:
A variant appears in Episode 135, in the form of Kululu's beam gun invention that causes Keroro to dream that he's lived his entire life as a grain of rice. He wakes up with an epiphany.
Episode 267 features one that started out as a virtual reality headset, until Keroro himself gets hopelessly addicted to one... and imagines himself successfully conquering Pekopon at long last.
Lovecraftian Superpower: Subverted, as Alisa's assumed to have this ability at first, but it's really due to her "Daddy", a shapeshifting symbiote that lives on her head.
Love Makes You Crazy: Tamama practically embodies this trope, but Giroro has his moments too.
Lyrical Dissonance: What sounds like funeral marches and burning courage is really about failing to do the household chores and the joys of building Gundam models.
Mad Artist: Putata, whose art can come to life and attack people. Also, he paints with people's... fluids.
Mad Scientist: Kululu, who's also an Insufferable Genius, and the Witch Doctor.
Magic Skirt: Natsumi, in the anime, despite the best efforts of the universe at large. Averted in an episode where she's caught in Keroro's snare, where she instead holds her skirt in with her hands as she hangs upside down by one foot. In the manga version of the story (where she's hanging by both feet), Natsumi lets her panties show.
Manchild: Keroro, who enjoys nothing more than watching cartoons and building model robots.
Man of a Thousand Voices: One episode features an alien villain that destroys all sound in the city, rendering our protagonists mute. The Narrator promptly does his part by voicing all their dialogue for them. On top of having done double duty as Paul Moriyama this whole time.
Marshmallow Hell: Aki gets a lot of therapy from having Keroro as a "pet"... to hug and squeeze... She also cures Fuyuki's funk with the same method...
Mars Needs Women: Giroro's crush on Natsumi, and a reversal in Moa's crush on Keroro. This is made ironic in the former's case when he reviews a pre-invasion press conference wherein he violently insisted he would under no circumstances fall for a native woman.
Partial subversion in the second movie, when alien prince Mero kidnaps Natsumi to make her his princess. As it turns out, he's just a child, and Natsumi winds up as his surrogate mother instead.
Mascots Love Sugar: Tamama, to the point that in one of the final episodes of the first season he is diagnosed with high blood sugar and in one of the first episodes of the 4th season when he is told that he is at risk for diabetes.
Meaningful Name: The Keronians all have meaningful names.
Keroro comes from "kerokero", the Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound a frog makes.
Tamama comes from "otamajakushi", which is Japanese for "tadpole". It can also be linked to "tamatama", which means "unexpected" (referring to his fierce mood swings).
Giroro comes from "girogiro", which means "sharp-eyed".
Kululu comes from "kurukuru", which means "spinning" or "wound up" (referring to his whorl mark and the spirals on his Nerd Glasses). It can also be linked to "kuru", which means "hunchback" (referring to Kululu's stooped posture).
Dororo comes from "doron", which is onomatopoeia for a Ninja vanishing. It can also be linked to "dorodoro", which means "syrupy" (which describes Dororo's sentimental and emotional tendencies). Dororo is also a classic samurai manga my Osamu Tezuka, though this may not be relevant in the etymology of Dororo's name.
Medium Awareness:
Aki, being a top manga editor, is primarily responsible for this.
The Narrator can pinpoint the episode numbers of recurring events and character debuts on demand.
Dasonu*Maso/The Dance*Master mentions in his debut ep that if he leaves, the episode will be over (because there won't be anything to provide conflict).
Merchandise-Driven:
Inverted here - it's Keroro's love of Gundams that earned them Bandai as its merchandising arm. The KeroPla line of plastic models features Keronian characters and mecha all compatible with existing Gundam models.
It also resulted in the series making it to Super Robot Wars.
And on Keron, the platoon is a super duper popular cash cow... but they didn't actually know this until they got letters from Keronian kids on New Year's. Somebody's really rich, but it sure as Hell isn't them.
It's parodied in episode 10 of the anime (at least in the dub), where an armored vehicle is introduced just to add it to the toy line.
Keroro: It's so roomy!
Giroro (in monotone): Yes for action figures, and toys.
Mildly Military: Done intentionally: the squad is lazy and incompetent, and their only oversight is the reports Keroro has to send back to his superiors, in which he lies outrageously.
The Minnesota Fats: Giroro's brother, Lieutenant Garuru.
Mobile-Suit Human:
The Keronians run around in these when they need to be seen in public.
Kululu's female Pekoponian suits (to date, Kululuko and a faux-Natsumi loaned to Sumomo) fit more closely, placing the Keronian pilot entirely within the torso instead of leaving the head exposed to allow for a more realistic human appearance — despite being quite unnecessary (see Paper-Thin Disguise below).
Moe Anthropomorphism: Thanks to Kululu's "We All Live Together" beam gun that turns animals into humans.
Mooks: All the members of the Shurara Corps aside from Shurara himself.
Moral Myopia: Natsumi dishes out No-Holds-Barred Beatdowns to Keroro and the platoon whenever they try to Take Over the World. And yet she never laid a finger on Angol Mois, no matter how many times she to destroy the world.
Multiple Endings: The "segmented endings" variant. They aren't alternate takes, just more and more complete versions of the series. The show's 7th season aired in different timeslots, with different running times in different timeslots. In order to satisfy people who couldn't watch the longer version of the show, the last 3 episodes of the series all ended up being different types of ending stories.
Mundane Utility: Keroro sometimes elicits Keronian technology to complete his chores. A non-technological example would be Koyuki whipping out her ninja moves to do perfectly normal things, like Bunshin no Jutsu at the fashion store to try on five outfits at once. And the crescent end of the Lucifer Spear is revealed to be... a key for unlocking Moa's gigantic diary.
Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Movie villain Kiruru, derived from the word 'kill'.
The Neidermeyer: Keroro, sort of, his squad wavers between apathy and quasi-respect.
Nerd Glasses: Kululu.
Never Bareheaded: All Keronians have hats, usually a long-eared one with their personal symbol on it. One episode involves a notorious Unreveal when Keroro switches to a baseball cap after his hat is picked up by a toddler.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!:
The sarge manages to nearly cause Armageddon by returning Mois's cell phone.
The Musha Kero saga ends with one. Upon learning that civilians have been enslaved to unearth something in a mine, Kululu scans the area and finds an energy reading, and Keroro speeds up the excavation. It turns out to be an Eldritch Abomination.
Nightmare Fuel: In-Universe, Fuyuki's skill in telling ghost stories is apparently unmatched — Natsumi and any other listeners become terrified out of their minds. We don't actually get to see more than a couple fragments of what he's actually saying, though.
Ninja: Dororo and Koyuki.
No Fourth Wall: Especially in the English dub, but there's hardly much of one in the original, either.
Nobody Poops: Averted normally, and taken Up to Eleven in one Kero Zero chapter. Basically, the mothership taking our heroes to Earth starts rationing all food and water when its onboard farms fail to produce any crop - our heroes wind up holding it all in for a week when they can't even use the toilet, then desperation forces them to dump it all all over the onboard farms, inadvertently fertilising the soil and allowing it to function again. They don't actually touch the food produced for some time, though.
Nominal Hero: Natsumi Hinata is always there to beat the tar out of alien invaders...mostly because they annoy her.
Noodle Incident: It's mentioned often that Keroro was the most insane and violent soldier in all of Keron "in the old days", but the only times we see anything close to it is when Keroro gets drunk on moisture. A better example would be Keroro's own father, the "Demon Sergeant", rumored to be the most fearsome sergeant in the galaxy, but only appears on vacation in a Hawaii shirt and an easygoing attitude, at least on the surface.
No Sense of Humor: Giroro. In the dub, he describes himself as incapable of feeling joy.
Not Allowed to Grow Up:
Even though every season of the anime features holiday and birthday specials and there are direct references to previous years, the human characters still keep their original ages and are still in the same school years. The same happens with Tamama, who still keeps a tadpole's tail and white face, even though Taruru, a Keronian younger than him, matured in the 2nd season.
Lampshaded by the manga, when Fuyuki said that he was "just 12(?) years old" in a later volume.
Irregularly contradicted by the anime itself, which is also the biggest offender due to the number of holiday and anniversary episodes. Paul, in Episode 92, mentions that Momoka's birth was commemorated 13 years ago, and Natsumi was said to be 14 in the second movie, which means that the entire cast aged at least one year. There are also various references to the Keroro platoon spending years on Earth and vague comments about the human characters getting older. However, official guidebooks still keep everyone's starting ages and school years as the only official ones.
The databook for the manga (as of volume 23) actually said that the human characters had aged one year since the start of the series, breaking away from the manga's previous references to the lack of aging of the human cast.
Not Me This Time: There's a rather sad example in one chapter; Keroro is expecting praise for doing a good job cleaning the house, but is instead met with furious accusations by Natsumi and Fuyuki of screwing with computer networks across the city, and has a nervous breakdown when they refuse to believe his pleas that he's not responsible. The real culprits turn out to be the Garuru Platoon, as a prelude to taking over the invasion of Earth.
Not So Different: In the anime, when Keroro is inspired by finding Dororo to actually act like a competent leader, Giroro acts like more of a Yes-Man then Tamama, even having sparkly pink backgrounds to emphasize his admiration.
Obfuscating Stupidity: At first, the platoon believed Keroro was doing this. Turns out he's just stupid.
The Ojou: Momoka.
Older Than They Look:
Pururu. One episode even has Keroro catching a glimpse of her face sans makeup in a fantastic Un Reveal.
Space Policewoman Poyon is implied to have capured rogue aliens on Earth since feudal times.
Omnidisciplinary Scientist:
Kululu, who's a qualified doctor and curry chef on top of everything else. The Musha Kero saga has him assuming the title of Barber-Surgeon, which is really a reference to early village dwellers, lucky enough to get an education in the big city, being saddled with several jobs upon their triumphant return to the countryside.
Fuyuki by way of the paranormal. It's always stated that his interest is in the 'Occult', which being a grab-all term in itself means that Fuyuki has to be well-versed in world history, geography, archaeology, science, urban myth, maybe some astrology... It's at least stated that he's a brilliant detective on the side.
Ominous Latin Chanting:
Angol Mois's theme music, which repeats the words Nostra and Damus continuously, a reference to Nostradamus.
Shion Drakon from the fourth movie; the chant she uses to transform Keronians into Dragon Warriors is a little hard to make out, but it contains the word "draconis," meaning 'Dragon.'
One-Winged Angel: The fourth movie revolves around our heroes being forcibly evolved into giant dragons.
Only Six Faces: Keronians are a borderline case, since they come in a rainbow of colors and a few even throw out the humanoid build. Thankfully all Keronians have their own personal symbols.
On The Next Episode Of Catchphrase: "Sonna kotoyori! ("Never mind about all that!") Next week on Keroro Gunsō — (name of first story), de arimasu! (name of second story), de arimasu! Two stories! How about that! Gerogeeroo..."
Overprotective Dad: Nevulon is a fairly good example in episode 291 when he and Alisa Southerncross are separated at the hotsprings, and he goes insane with worry.
Overly Long Name: Ascended Extra Masayoshi Yoshiokadaira. Kululu's inventions get hit by this a lot.
Pac Man Fever: Averted. (See Deep-Immersion Gaming above.)
Palette Swap:
It's used a lot in the anime for background Keronians, which generally share a few sets of generic designs (eyes with small irises, star emblems, hats similar to Keroro's or Kururu's, headphones included.
Later episodes also use it for random background aliens.
It's rarely used for humans, but, oddly, there's a model who appears in magazine covers of later episodes who looks basically identical to Satsuki, Natsumi's tomboy friend, but with blond hair and blue eyes.
Panty Shot: Happens to many of the females frequently in the manga. And not all that rarely in the anime...
Paper-Thin Disguise:
Keroro's various "Pekoponian Suits", which range from sumo to businessman to schoolchild. These are robotic human suits with no head — the various characters riding them have their heads replacing the normal suit. So you have a 6 foot tall schoolchild with a giant frog's head. Note that these disguises always work perfectly. It's occasionally mentioned people take them for weirdos with masks, though.
On the flipside, headbands with googlibobs are all that's needed for humans like Fuyuki and Natsumi to walk unnoticed among the alien community.
There's a really odd example in the Girls' Day episode, where Kululu's Kululuko disguise is very good (i.e., looks just like a real human woman), but his identity is still very obvious to the viewer if not the cast (the name, the spiral motif, the color yellow, the voice, etc.).
People Puppets: Mekeke's abilities involve stringing people up and using them as marionettes.
Perpetual Frowner: Giroro, presumably, though the Keronian biological structure disguises this a little.
Plot-Induced Stupidity: Natsumi, taking on Keroro — a clearly amphibious lifeform — in a swimming contest. Cue Keroro's first success.
Portal Network:
Used extensively by Poyon (though the effectiveness is significantly reduced with the amount of time she takes to come out of it).
The third movie involves Dark Keroro assembling his doomsday device, from massive pieces built all over the world, with equally massive portals.
Tamama also constantly uses portals to move around in the manga, an element that's only brought into the anime in the last season.
The Power of Friendship: Helps to defeat Kiruru in the first movie.
Promotion to Opening Titles: Many characters. Also played in reverse.
Public Domain Character: Grays type aliens, Flatwood monsters and eventually Chupacabras all appear through the series.
Queer People Are Funny: Keroro is watching a TV show in S1E7 which parodies several anime. When the hero "explodes with the power of love" to save his girlfriend, Keroro remarks offside "Interesting how his love for his GIRLFRIEND causes him to explode in a flaming rainbow..."
Reality Ensues: The reason why (Shin) Keroro/New Keroro/Keroro-2 was assigned to the Keroro Platoon? The Keroro high command is furious at their supposed A-team for taking their sweet time conquering a planet that was meant to be the military equivalent of a milk run.
Reality Warper: The Kero Ball. Some of its functions are Realization, Capture, and Anti-Gravity.
Really 700 Years Old: The Keronians are between 10,500 years (Keroro, Giroro, and Dororo) and 6,000 years (Tamama) old. They're all still relatively young in development.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: Several cases. Assassin Captain Jirara has three. Dark Keroro's red eyes turn black when he is rid of Kiruru's influence.
Redubbing: A few years before the Sgt. Frog anime finally made it to North America, it was dubbed into English by Sony's anime-themed satellite channel Animax, giving it the title Sergeant Keroro. Although the acting (decent for Animax) may not have been quite up to American standards, this dub was considerably more faithful to the Japanese script than Funimation's dub. As a result, there are a few script purists who prefer it. A few clips of the Animax dub can be found online, for those curious enough to sample it.
Reference Overdosed: And how! Both the Japanese and English dubs go to nearly Lucky Star levels of referential.
Reflexive Response: Keroro's inexplicable need to run, slip and fall on any Banana Peel he sees.
Reset Button: Kululu's back-up memory drive in Episode 51.
Retcon: The official databook for the manga released alongside volume 23 changed the ages of several characters compared to their initial ones in previous databooks. Natsumi and Koyuki are 14 years old in the present, but now were 13 in the beginning of the series and Mutsumi now is said to be 16 years old (which would make him 15 in the beginning of the series), rather than 18 like in the previous official publications. In general, the new official ages seem to match up with the ones used by the original anime, although Mutsumi still is one year older than his anime self.
Right Makes Might: Generally Failure Is the Only Option for the Keronians when they try to take over the world, but when they turn around and try to defend it from far worse threats, they seem to become noticeably tougher.
Screw This, I'm Outta Here!:
In the English dub, the narrator makes notice of the show recycling the 'multiple of one character' gag, and gets tired of it.
Narrator "Last episode had two Momokas, now there's two Angol Mois? If we get two Keroros, I quit!"
Later in episode 23, Where there actually ARE more than one Keroro, he keeps his word.
School Clubs Are Serious Business: Fuyuki starts the paranormal club, but only has one other member in it (and she only joined because she had a crush on Fuyuki). The school newspaper also discovers the aliens' existence, but nobody believes them because they're a school newspaper (and because Fuyuki managed to confiscate their evidence).
Schoolgirl Lesbians:
It seems like virtually all of Natsumi's class or teammates in the manga would die happy as the filling of a Natsumi/Aki sandwich. Except for Koyuki, who's only in love with Natsumi.
Later seasons and chapters seem to basically eliminate this side of her character, especially in the anime, although Koyuki remains one in the manga.
School Idol: Natsumi in the earlier chapters/seasons. However, this aspect of her character seems to be dropped in later chapters and episodes of the series, with later school scenes showing her more like an average girl.
School Newspaper Newshound: The Newspaper Club from chapter 68/episode 29.
School Play:
Episode 29 features Natsumi and Koyuki starring in a production of Peter Pan, with Keroro dressing as Chigusa Tsukikage to help Natsumi overcome a case of stage fright.
Episode 184, does Romeo and Juliet in Natsumi's school play. In a turn of events, Giroro lands the role of Juliet, with Natsumi taking on the part of Romeo.
Sea Monster: One episode has several sea creatures crawl out of the ingredients pot and come in contact with the Flash Spoon, which turns them into giant sea creatures.
Second Place Is for Winners: The first beach comedy contest. Keroro enters to get a Gundam knockoff (because it's really rare due to poor sales). He doesn't find out that it's a consolation prize for everyone who doesn't til near the end...and he can't stop himself.
Serious Business: In episode 10, Keroro gets a cavity. The other platoon members notice this and immediately go all DEFCON 1, locking down the entire house, complete with steel barriers on the windows and doors, red rotating lights, and a loud klaxon. This is because cavities are actually caused by other alien invaders! Granted, these invaders are the size of bacteria, and so, are often confused with bacteria by humans.
Shorttank: Natsumi tends to both wear this outfit and inhabit this temperament.
Shout-Out: Has its own page.
Shown Their Work:
The best known example would be the depictions of Keroro's GunPla collection, down to individual versions. Some of the Keroro toys manufactured can even be connected to Gundam toys.
One episode shows Momoka hammering a table that Tamama is standing on, catapulting him into the air — the action freezes for a second as labels appear to indicate force applied, fulcrum, and work produced for an impromptu physics lesson.
When a Transformation Ray turns some koalas into humans, one of them says, "Mummy told me I must never leave this tree, or I'll die." Eucalyptus leaves really are the only form of sustenance for koalas, so there's some truth behind this.
Crosses into Product Placement in the fourth movie, with Shion's Citroen-looking limo and Aki's 2CV.
How many of us have even heard of the Anomalocaris before this show?
Show Within a Show:
The top manga/anime Admiral Geroro, which is essentially Space Battleship Yamato with frogs. Featuring Keroro and Giroro's voice actors to boot.
Thanks to DJ 623 a.k.a Saburo, there's also a Radio Show Within A Show, as is Keroro's Strange Dopamine.
Sigil Spam:
Played straight (Keroro's 'K66' and Kululu's '966') and parodied (one episode has shutter doors emblazoned with a NERV KERO logo)
The first OP uses this to represent their invasion.
Similar Squad:
When digging for a spa, Keroro finds a superweapon left by a team of invaders not unlike his own. The dub takes this further, making them lizardmen from the planet Lizardono come to invade the planet they know as Ponopek but saddled with an incompetant leader who spends all his time building models. They even have similar insignias.
The first movie reveals that the ancient invaders who used those statues were actually Keronians, and they also left other weapons on Earth...
Single-Target Sexuality: Momoka seems to be okay with Fuyuki having breasts that are bigger than hers.
Sixth Ranger:
Dororo and Angol Mois like to trade places being this and The Chick, depending on the episode.
In the anime, Joriri joins the Keroro Platoon officially during an episode of the 6th season. However, because Status Quo Is God, it turns out there was a mistake and he leaves... That event was still referenced afterwards though and he continued to be a minor recurring character for the anime.
The manga introduced an actual sixth ranger in chapter 174. The "Second Keroro Platoon", a young recruit also named "Keroro", whose Keron Star gives him alternate modes based on the data of each platoon member. He befriends a human child called Tomosu, who's an occult fan and member of an occult club, similar to Fuyuki, but he's younger and actually a Fuyuki fan himself.
Slasher Smile: Parodied when Keroro finally learns of Natsumi's one weakness.
Snow Means Love: Lampshaded, where snow is explicitly stated to make girls three times more beautiful.
Space Police: Poyon and Poyan, with a Portal Network at their disposal.
Space "X": there are dozens upon dozens of "Space" versions for festivals, TV shows, celebrities, anything you can name. The third movie ends with Dark Keroro attempting to invade another planet, only to be thwarted by Space Fuyuki and Space Natsumi.
Spell My Name with an "S": Kururu/Kululu, Angol Moa/Angol Mois/Angolmois, Rabbie/Lavie, Pururu/Pululu.
Spice Up the Subtitles: Funimation's subtitled version does this to both Giroro and "the other" Momoka, but especially the latter, whose (translated) dialogue almost entirely has swearing in it, especially in the second seasonnote Which Funimation decided would be the "third" season.
Spikes of Villainy: Shurara's helmet is not only excessively spiky, but also has axe blades on it. And Momoka's Fawcett curls turn into spikes when she goes into psycho mode.
Split Personality: Momoka and "Dark Momoka"/Tamama and "the other Tamama".
Stable Time Loop:
Sometimes invoked during the rare few time-travel episodes. The final Kero Zero chapter has our heroes responsible for putting their first human friend Kiko into space in the first place.
The Musha Kero saga turns out to be one.
Stalker Shrine: Momoka has enough money to get a stalker building.
Stalker with a Crush:
Momoka. She has her bodyguards spy on Fuyuki to find out what kind of underpants he wears. And that's only a minute fraction of the stuff she's done.
Chiruyo Tsukigami, who spies on Fuyuki personally, snapping pictures on her camera phone and scribbling in her notebook to boot.
Status Quo Is God:
Lampshaded in one episode where Momoka visualises herself still watching Fuyuki quietly from a corner. In the future. Where both are well into their eighties. Apparently the Japanese are known to age well, but still...
Occasionally subverted in the character development, even if they're Not Allowedto Grow Up. Natsumi evolves from someone who hates the Keronians into a fairly good friend of Giroro, while Keroro goes from someone who merely stops caring about his mission to conquer Earth in favor of being a parasite on the Hinatas, to someone who actually cares about them.
Stepford Smiler: Kogoro, who never stops smiling, even when he's horribly upset. Lavie/Rabbie is the only one who can read his emotions.
Strange Pond Woman: In one story Tamama pretends to be a god (angel in the Funimation English dub) after being caught by a boy practising soccer. While he did help the boy become more confident, he gave some rather strange advice, especially in the Manga and English dub. Among these is a soccer kick fueled by resentment.
Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl:
Played with — she's actually friendly.
The on-off character Tiger-Horse, a bizarre creature with some features of both animals but predominantly resembles a stringy haired ghost. To elaborate: Tiger Horse in Japanese is Tora Uma, referring to 'trauma' and its origins in Dororo's subconscious.
Sturdy and Steady Turtles: In one episode, Tamama comes across a tortoise in the countryside, plodding along the same path day after day. It's revealed later on that Fuyuki had that tortoise as a pet but lost it several years ago, and it's done nothing but make its way back to its breeder ever since. It eventually succeeds.
Swiss Army Weapon: The Kero Ball... but most of the time Keroro's not sure which button accompanies which function.
Tamer and Chaster: The anime adaptation isn't as raunchy as the original manga; while there's still some Fanservice, it's a lot more toned down in comparison. Even the art style is modified to look more family-friendly.
Technical Pacifist: Dororo.
Tempting Fate: In episode 16, the narrator threatens to quit if there's another Split Personality story. Seven episodes later, Keroro clones himself and he makes good on his word until the end of the episode.
Theme Naming:
Fuyuki, Natsumi, and Aki — whose names contain the words for Winter, Summer, and Autumn respectively. Fans correctly speculated that their Disappeared Dad would have the name Haru, for Spring.
Most if not all of the Keronians, and some other aliens such as Sumomo, have a three syllable name with the second syllable being the same as the third.
Many characters have names that can be and are converted to numbers, such as Mutsumi (623), Natsumi (723), Kululu (966), and many others. Helped by the fact that there are several different ways (old fashioned ways, modern ways, ways to avoid saying death...) to say the numbers, and that similar sounds (K sounds about the same as G, for example) can be used to keep character's names in this convention even if a syllable doesn't match up exactly with that of a number. However, three of the main five frogs don't exactly follow it (Keroro->K66, Giroro->G66, Dororo->D66, though as Zeroro, he may have been 066) and Tamama doesn't fit into it at all.
Theme Tune Cameo:
While doing chores around the house, Keroro sometimes sings his own version of the show's closing theme.
Another episode had Sumomo singing a few bars of the show's theme.
Another one had the first ending as Fuyuki's ringtone.
They Would Cut You Up:
In early episodes, this is part of the reason (along with imprisonment and potential traffic accidents) why the alien frogs are not allowed to go out on their own, at least before they develop their Mobile Suit Humans.
Played for laughs in the Kero Zero prequel story - it seems that "human abductions" are a well-known urban myth on alien civilisations like Keron, to the extent that the word "probing" has become a Freakout Button of sorts for our heroes.
This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: In the third movie, Tamama attempts to invoke this while fighting Shivava, but Momoka talks him out of it. They then proceed to curpstomp him together.
Those Two Girls: Natsumi's classmates Yayoi and Satsuki.
Toku:
Spoofed by Keroro's childhood buddy, Space Detective Kogoro.
Some of the Keroro platoon's battles with the assorted Vipers wind up like this.
Tokyo Tower: The Nishizawa Radio Tower, although actually based on the Skytower Nishitokyo, fulfills the same function as the uber-landmark, MacGuffin, etc.
Trademark Favorite Food:
Kululu consumes so much curry that it's turned him yellow.
Giroro and his roasted sweet potatoes.
Tamama, is always eating snacks, but not any specific kind. Candy, potato chips, anything. He's also fond of Space Okonomiyaki FX/Meat Lover's Space Omelet, but this very seldom appears due to being something of a delicacy... not to mention one that is still alive and walks around on crab legs.
Keroro and starfruit, so nutritious to Keronians that it saves him from death.
Transformation Ray: Recurring inventions of Kululu's that range from aging people up and down or transforming animals and inanimate objects into humans.
Turtle Power: One episode has Tamama coming across a tortoise in the countryside, plodding along the same path day after day. It's revealed later on that Fuyuki had that tortoise as a pet but lost it several years ago, and it's done nothing but make its way back to its breeder ever since. It succeeds.
Tyke-Bomb: Kiruru. — read as Kiruru-Dot.
Tyrant Takes the Helm: Tamama travels this path after a badly worded letter from High Command awards him with Keroro's position.
The Unreveal:
The season 6 episode explaining Giroro's scar. It turns out the explanation given was a fake one devised for an infomercial.
A season 7 episode about Dororo's mask. In the end we don't see his mouth, and the Keronians are distracted by Keroro spilling some water or something and don't get to see it before Dororo puts his mask back on. Dororo does blush and... giggle... afterwards.
Unusual Euphemism: "Dynamite" is the word bandied around to describe Aki's... ya know... Even her mecha, the Autumn H, uses the signature attack "Autumn Dynamite".
Unwanted Assistance: Pointing out the fact that Keroro made a doomsday device in front of the Hinatas at a time like this isn't really helping your cause, Mirara.
Unwanted Harem:
To date, Fuyuki has drawn the attention and affection of Momoka, Chiruyo, Alisa Southerncross, and the unnamed mermaid of the undersea Nontolma civilisation.
Keroro's includes Tamama, Mois, Pururu and in one episode Karara (in that episode they're all seen together, it doesn't go very well). It's also possibly included a girl who likes gunpla and Sumomo (only in the manga).
In the manga, there's also a female manga club member (who, although seemingly unnamed, was a minor recurring character) and Haruyo, a girl who befriended Sumomo.
Villain Protagonist: Keroro half the time, though he's not a very effective one.
Villains Out Shopping: This could be the alternate title of the series with how much of it is focused on Keroro feeding his otakuism.
Vitriolic Best Buds: Keroro and Giroro.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: Sumomo and Miruru can all take on human form, while Pururu employs a Class A Pekopon suit only usable by Class A invaders.note The Keroro platoon is considered class F, hence why their Pekopon suits are unconvincing. Although never directly shown in the anime, it's actually a mechanical suit that has hidden rocket boosters around its body in the manga.
Waif-Fu: Natsumi, an average high school girl, is able to take on giant mecha, alien monsters, intergalactic mercenaries, devious deathtraps, etc. It's hinted that her mother is even stronger.
Weirdness Magnet: Fuyuki, a lover of the occult and the paranormal, is very good at attracting aliens, monsters and otherwise into his life.
Wholesome Crossdresser: All five Keronians have crossdressed at least once, with Keroro himself putting on dresses and wigs most often. On the flipside, Kululu's debut episode has him turning Aki back into a 14-year-old — whereupon she dresses up in Fuyuki's school uniform and sneaks off to his school. Their resemblance is uncanny.
Why Can't I Hate You?: Tamama views Angol Mois as his greatest competition for Keroro's affections, but sometimes has trouble viewing her as an enemy because she's too damn nice about everything, which just makes him even more frustrated with her.
Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
Keroro has two: huge dogs and the Banana Lizard (although not for the same reasons).
For Natsumi, it's slugs, which leads to the creation of Wettol King.
Giroro has two: sea cucumbers and ghosts.
Widget Series: Gag Series, in particular.
Wistful Amnesia: In the first season finale.
The Worf Effect:
Giroro chronically suffers from this, primarily played for laughs.
Angol Mois, resident Destroyer of Worlds, suffers this a couple of times thanks to the introduction of Angol Stones.
Episode 133 features a rapid succession of heavy hitters going down for the count, thanks to Alisa Southerncross.
Wrong Genre Savvy: Taruru knows all of the tropes, but he's a little mixed up as to which ones apply to whom.
Yandere: Momoka and Tamama are violently protective of their respective crushes.
You Would Make a Great Model: Tamama tries to discredit Angol Mois by posing as a sleazy camera man (with the help of a robotic exoskeleton) and telling her that she can become more "mature" by doing a photo shoot.
"Sonna kotoyori! Up next on TV Tropes: "TV Tropes, Our Character Page, de arimasu!" "TV Tropes, Our Wild Mass Guessing Page, de arimasu!" Two more things to read! How's that? Gerogeerooo..."Bow to the frog.)
Video Example(s):
Keroro and Giroro swell up like balloons from eating too much cake.
Balloon Belly
Alternative Title(s): Sgt Frog, Keroro Gunsou
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