Forum - View topic
Did you grow up surrounded by anime but didn't realise it?


Goto page 1, 2  Next

Anime News Network Forum Index -> General -> Anime
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
aleatory



Joined: 28 Mar 2013
Posts: 10
PostPosted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 11:10 am Reply with quote
I guess this post is probably only going to apply to people of a certain age, but it still amazes me that so many of the cartoons I grew up with and loved all came from Japan. Going back and racking my memory for the things I watched, there were the obvious ones (Astroboy etc) but there were so many others as well! In fact most of them really.

Probably a good chance that it helped shape my love of anime later in life!

These are the ones I can remember, along with what I now know to be their original titles.

Has anyone dared go back and risk shattering their rose coloured view of the past by watching some of these as an adult? I did ... but only once! lol.

Astroboy - Tetsuwan Atom
Kimba the White Lion - Jungle Taitei
Speed Racer - Mahha Go Go Go
Star Blazers - Space Battleship Yamato
Battle of the Planets - Gatchaman
Voltron
Robotech - mashup of Macros/Southern Cross/Mospeada
Ulysses 31 (technically half French)
Mysterious Cities of Gold
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
RichardFromMarple



Joined: 10 Feb 2013
Posts: 38
PostPosted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 3:50 pm Reply with quote
Certainly it took me years to find out Battle of the Planets, Ulysses 31, Mysterious Cities of Gold & many others were Japanese.

In the 1980s there seemed to be a quite a few shows written in France or Spain, & animated by Japanese studios, which makes guessing their origins tricky.

The puppet show Star Fleet (X Bomber) also surprised me to be from Japan, I sort of knew it wasn't one of Gerry Anderson's shows, but wasn't sure of it's origin. This was when I didn't know that Shiro was a common Japanese boy's name.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Alan45
Village Elder



Joined: 25 Aug 2010
Posts: 10364
Location: Virginia
PostPosted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 6:52 pm Reply with quote
No, not at all. To the best of my knowledge there was no anime on Philadelphia stations in the 1950s.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
Bango



Joined: 06 Jul 2013
Posts: 1122
PostPosted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 7:05 pm Reply with quote
I called them "giant robot cartoons" up until I first heard the word "Japanamation" to describe the look I was seeing. It wasn't until the very early 90's that I'd learn "anime". And not until watching Ranma½ before I learned how to say it right. Prior to that I'd always say Kage, Sake, Anime using english pronunciation.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime
Stark700



Joined: 30 Jan 2012
Posts: 11762
Location: Earth
PostPosted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 9:31 pm Reply with quote
Oh I sure did. After watching the most recent DBZ movie that came out last week, I felt quite nostalgic. In fact, I even watched Digimon Xros Wars recently too and I remember watching the dubbed version of the original Digimon Adventures (season 1 and 2) when I was a kid with my dad on early Saturday mornings.

Dat nostalgia.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website My Anime My Manga
marie-antoinette



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 4136
Location: Ottawa, Canada
PostPosted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 8:28 am Reply with quote
I definitely grew up surrounded by anime but in the 90s I guess it was better known if something was anime. I'd expect that this is probably due to the popularity of Sailor Moon and Pokemon, both of which were known to be Japanese (or at least known to me at the time).
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
CarnivalCorpse



Joined: 12 Sep 2013
Posts: 25
Location: England
PostPosted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 9:37 am Reply with quote
I remember watching on TV some episodes of Sailor Moon and watched Digimon, Pokemon and Cardcaptors religiously back in the day, I had no idea they were considered anime until I became a serious user of the internet, funny thing is out of all the shows I watched the latter three were some of my favourites.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
yoshiyukiblade



Joined: 10 Nov 2012
Posts: 305
PostPosted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 10:04 am Reply with quote
That realization was kind of nebulous for me, so to answer the question: yeah for a while. At some point, I just somehow realized it, but I can't exactly recall where that bit of understanding came from. It might have been the gradual accumulation of things in these shows that tipped off that it was foreign (like seeing Asian texts/symbols). I was already aware that NES/SNES games were mostly Japanese-made when I was 5-6 years old. So when I saw the animated version of Pokemon a few years later, I conjectured that it was Japanese-made like the game. However, earlier shows were a bit more nebulous for me. I didn't know where the animated versions of Mortal Combat, Ninja Turtles, and Mega Man were from.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Beltane70



Joined: 07 May 2007
Posts: 4186
PostPosted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 11:27 am Reply with quote
Starblazers, Battle of the Planets, Voltron, the Force Five shows, and Thunderbirds 2086 were the only Japanese shows that I watched before I knew what anime was. Plus, half of Robotech. Then I saw an article on Japanese animation in Starlog magazine about the time that Robotech was halfway through its initial TV run.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
EricJ



Joined: 03 Sep 2009
Posts: 876
PostPosted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 12:48 pm Reply with quote
I remember in the 80's, the commercially dubbed Robotech, Star Blazers and Voltron, and others, were usually so badly synched and/or had such limited animation for mouth-flap, it was considered kind of a bane of afternoon syndie TV.
A foreign-dubbed syndication was usually pimped by a cheap independent company like Sandy Frank or Harmony Gold--unlike the professional companies handling He-Man, Thundercats and the Hasbro series--that you knew the "cheap" UHF station in your area would be running it.

In the late 70's to mid-80's after school, there was usually the well-stocked library station that showed Bugs Bunny, Hanna-Barbera and classic reruns, there was the commercial #2 station that showed the current hit syndie licensees, and then, if you lived in a big city area with more than two UHF stations, there were the Delta and Gamma stations that showed....everything else. And Voltron was considered the Everything Else.


Last edited by EricJ on Tue Sep 24, 2013 4:06 pm; edited 1 time in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail
Treeborn



Joined: 30 Mar 2013
Posts: 729
PostPosted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 1:06 pm Reply with quote
Yea, I dfinitely did not realize a lot of my favorite shows were anime because I didn't know what anime was. First one I ever saw was Sailor Moon. After that, it was just what I saw on Toonami and other kid networks:

Sailor Moon
Tenchi Muyo
Yu Yu Hakusho
Cardcaptors
DBZ
Gundam
Pokemon

and all that good stuff
Definitely gonna make my kids grow up watching anime instead of all the BS cartoons that are on stations now like Uncle Grandpa. Seriously? What the hell is that!?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Jose Cruz



Joined: 20 Nov 2012
Posts: 1828
Location: South America
PostPosted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 10:29 pm Reply with quote
I grew up watching anime but knowing it was anime (i.e. animation made in Japan). However, I actually suspected, when I was a kid, that Dragon Ball was made in China because the visuals were less sophisticated than in other shows, since China had the reputation in the 1990's of producing bad quality stuff (they still have).

Overall, I know most of my favorite TV shows as a kid were anime, that's normal given that american cartoons in general lack any sustained character development. Though I guess I watched even more american cartoons than anime, the ones that were preserved in my memory more were anime, as they were more dramatic.

Interesting thing is that many of these anime aired at times when kids over the age of 6 were at school but they were actually quite adult and violent. Saint Seiya, for instance, is incredibly violent even though kids under the age of 10 were most of their audience in my country.

I also watched a lot of live action Japanese shows as well. In the 1990's Japan was an economic superpower with almost the same status of the US (now they declined a bit) so their influence over Latin America was quite substantial.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website My Anime My Manga
Clarste



Joined: 06 Feb 2012
Posts: 445
PostPosted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 11:42 pm Reply with quote
I grew up watching Robotech and Speed Racer and whatnot, but I also knew they were "Japanimation" because that's the section they were in at the video rental store.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15865
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 8:46 pm Reply with quote
I am one of those that grew up with Pokémon, Cardcaptors, Digimon, DBZ and Zoids, without knowing they were anime despite them being favourites. A certain channel also allowed me to watch Speed Racer and Dragonball.

Took me until later in High school to find out what they were, and internet (after graduation) to get a proper grasp of the situation.

I am suddenly reminded of a News Nina comic from a while ago.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
Hitokiri Kenshin



Joined: 14 Feb 2012
Posts: 294
PostPosted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 9:10 pm Reply with quote
I admit I was surprised in my teens when I learned a lot of the old Nick shows I watched in the 80s and 90s like Maple Town, Grimms Fairy Tale Classics, The Littl' Bits, Noozles, and Maya the Bee were anime.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic    Anime News Network Forum Index -> General -> Anime All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Goto page 1, 2  Next
Page 1 of 2

 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group