The original film elements were thought to have been lost, until 2021, when North American anime distributor, Discotek Media, located them in a Japanese film archive. All previous DVD editions of the film, including the Japanese releases, had to be produced from existing video sources.
The names of the three main characters, A-ko, B-ko and C-ko, are actually a reference to a common naming pattern of female extras in Japanese movie scripts, as they simply mean Girl A, Girl B and Girl C.
Some of the missiles fired during the space battle scene are actually Pepsi cans. This may be a reference to the film Macross: Do You Remember Love? (1984), which used a similar gag that replaced a pair of missiles with a Budweiser can and a sake flask. This gag was courtesy of mecha designer Shôichi Masuo, who also previously worked on the Macross scene in question.
The movie that A-ko and C-ko watch is a spoof of Harmagedon (1983), and the man seen emerging from the shadows is Colonel Sanders.
The Captain is a parody of Leiji Matsumoto's Captain Harlock. While Harlock would often be seen sipping red wine on the bridge of his ship, the Captain in Project A-ko is a hopeless drunk. Further, the design of the Captain is meant to parody the character Char Aznable from "Zeta Gundam," a nod to the voice actor Ikeda, Shûichi, who played both characters.