The eternal and unkillable Scooby Doo has been with us since the late 1960s and never missed a trend — except apparently for one. When we first heard today of a possible Scooby anime being developed, our first thought was “this really never happened before?”
It hasn’t. Batman has dabbled in the anime business with the Batman Ninja series. Rick and Morty entered the medium with a series released on Adult Swim that was decidedly different from the main show and wasn’t to everyone’s taste. But somehow WB has never thought of paying for a Scooby cartoon produced under the shadow of Mt. Fuji. Until now, we guess.
This announcement was hard to catch because it was made in Brazil, as part of a presentation related to a Scooby-branded makeup line being sold over there. It was at that event Scooby-Doo! Gokko, a series of anime shorts rendered in the chibi style, was revealed as being in production for a 2027 release.
“Gokko” is a Japanese term meaning to pretend or to play up, but in this case, it’s a catch-all brand for a series of anime shorts WB intends to make — in addition to Scooby there is also a Tom & Jerry Gokko series in the works. And who knows what else?
It’s unknown at this time if Scooby-Doo! Gokko is related to a similar project announced at Annecy last year, Go-Go Mystery Machine. This would be a show about a chibi-looking Scooby and Shaggy exposing people dressed as yokai — I mean, having to deal with ACTUAL yokai (on occasion, they run into real monsters…guess this’d be one of those times). “While visiting Japan on the ultimate foodie adventure, Shaggy and Scooby-Doo unwittingly unleash hundreds of mischievous mythical monsters that are now causing trouble all over the country,” WB said. “Scooby turns to his uncle, Daisuke-Doo, and magical friend Etsuko and gadget wiz Toshiro to help solve the mystery and catch the monsters.”
It’s possible that Go-Go Mystery Machine and Scooby-Doo! Gokko are the exact same thing, since we haven’t heard much about the former since its announcement. Zoinks, what a mystery. Stay tuned next year to find out the answer.
