Animal Yokocho

Animal Yokochō
Cover of the first manga volume of Animal Yokochō
アニマル横町 (Animaru Yokochō)
Genre	Comedy
Manga
Written by	Ryō Maekawa
Published by	Shueisha
Demographic	Children
Magazine	Ribon
Original run	February 2000 – present
Volumes	16
Anime television series
Directed by	Yukio Nishimoto Nam Jong-sik
Music by	Yasunori Iwasaki
Studio	Studio Gallop Dongwoo Animation
Original network	TV Tokyo
Original run	October 4, 2005 – September 26, 2006
Episodes	51 (102 segments)

Animal Yokochō (アニマル横町, Animaru Yokochō^?, trans. Animal Alley) is a Japanese manga and anime series aimed at children about a little girl who has a doorway to another world in her room, from which three bizarre and frequently-annoying stuffed animal-like creatures emerge to make her life "interesting". The manga was created by Ryō Maekawa and is serialized in Ribon Magazine, Ribon Original and Ribon Bikkuri. This manga's characters originally appeared in Ribon Original as quiz column's characters. The manga won the award for children's manga at the 51st Shogakukan Manga Awards. In 2008, Cartoon Network Philippines made an English version of the anime called "Ani-Yoko: My Next Door Neighbor"

It is explained in the anime that AniYoko itself is an alternative world inhabited by stuffed-animal-like creatures. The only method of travel between AniYoko and the human world is through a door mounted in the floor of Ami's bedroom. The Trio has given many conflicting and spurious explanations for how the door got there, but the real answer may never be revealed to Ami nor the viewer. Still, nothing overly sinister appears to be involved - As Kenta said in the second story, "That's the setting for the story, so don't worry about it", breaking the fourth wall, something that happens often in the show.

The door is two-way. It is most often used by the Trio to enter our world and interact with Ami, who they seem to find strangely fascinating. Ami could go through the door herself and enter AniYoko but, due to the insistent Trio and their strange often frightening stories, has yet to do so in the anime and AniYoko itself has never actually appeared, with only a dark space being shown whenever Ami looks inside. Scenes of AniYoko do appear in the Trio's recollections and stories, but these often are immediately shown to be false, and no objective AniYoko scenes have ever been shown. On one episode, it has shown Iyo's bedroom.