Chi's Sweet Home

The manga was serialized in Kodansha's seinen magazine Morning from 2004 to 2015, despite the story being about a small kitten, meaning it originally targeted an adult readership rather than children.

Each chapter title follows the pattern 'Cat, [verb].' in Japanese, a style the anime kept by replacing 'cat' with 'Chi'.

The manga was originally serialized in black and white, but was fully colorized when collected into tankōbon volumes.

By August 2017, the manga had been published in 23 countries and regions worldwide, with total circulation reaching 3.5 million copies according to Kodansha.

In July 2014, the Chi character appeared in a TV commercial for Apple's MacBook Air, and was also featured on the product's promotional webpage.

The first two anime seasons became a major hit in France, where the gentle, picture-book-like visual style and storytelling resonated strongly with children, unlike more American-style cartoons.

According to Benoît Huot, editor of the manga's French publisher Glénat, French audiences embraced the depiction of family life in the series as though it reflected their own culture, and the show's success led to a wave of French comics featuring cats as protagonists.

Producer Kaori Kitamoto said that although Kodansha was happy to see the first two anime seasons made, the merchandising did not initially take off because toy makers and licensors struggled to target an audience, since the source manga was serialized in a magazine for adults but the anime was produced for children.

Ironically, it was the overseas sale of the anime's broadcasting rights that led a French publisher to request bundled manga and anime rights, which then led directly to the series' major success in France.

For the 2016 3DCG series, director Kōki Kusano and the Marza Animation Planet team based Chi's redesign on figurines that had been sold in France, giving her a bigger head, rounder face and warmer look than a realistic cat, and they specifically reworked the neck structure of her 3D model skeleton to better express her kitten-like movements.

In the 3DCG series' direction, backgrounds were deliberately deformed differently depending on whether they needed to move or stay static, a technique meant to keep viewers from feeling visually fatigued while focusing on Chi's movements.

Satomi Kōrogi voiced Chi across all four Japanese anime seasons, remaining the sole consistent cast member even after the rest of the staff and cast were largely replaced for the 3DCG series.

The lyrics of the first season's opening theme, 'Ouchi ga Ichiban,' performed by Satomi Kōrogi (the voice of Chi), are written entirely in the invented 'Chi language' rather than standard Japanese.