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Kemono Friends' Rerun Gets a Kid-Friendly Opening

The rerun of the hugely popular Kemono Friends anime series got an updated opening targeting younger audiences. TV Tokyo and its affiliated stations began airing the rerun on August 14 with the 3DCG characters replaced by children coloring, the voice actors dressed as their characters, animal info, a dance, and puppets, the very same ones available in a current Ichiban Kuji lottery campaign.

Concept designer Mine Yoshizaki and the series' cast relayed their thoughts on Twitter about the rerun. Yoshizaki seems to have some mixed feelings about the change, and the some of the voice actors posted their own various reactions. Yoshizaki said:

The Kemono Friends rebroadcast will start tomorrow morning at 7:30! For this day, they persisted in making it into an anime even little kids can watch. This is my second challenge after Sgt. Frog. When something is very popular, you can't think about selfish things. I'll be happy if this becomes a chance [for kids] to know about animals even a little bit.

He also teased that he will reveal the reason why the Friends have four ears if the rebroadcast becomes relatively popular.

Many of the anime's stars tweeted on Monday morning that they were up and preparing for the new airing. Yuka Ozaki (voice of Serval), Mikoi Sasaki (Royal Penguin), Aya Uchida (Kaban), Saki Ono (Common Raccoon), and Misae Komori (Shoebill) all tweeted shortly before the rerun debuted. One minute after the airing started, however, Uchida tweeted "?!" in an apparent reaction to the opening. Akari Uehara (Eurasian Eagle-Owl) said the opening video was cute.

After the episode concluded, Ono revealed that watching the anime together with everyone again made her remember things and feel nostalgic. Sasaki noticed that the rebroadcast even included the PPP preview, and she thanked fans for watching. Ozaki also added that her own "Friend" was rooted in place and seemed to enjoy the broadcast:

Source: Animate Times via Yaraon!