Forum - View topicHunting for Anime Fandom in Puerto Rico
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 489 |
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Hi, everyone! I'm Jean-Karlo, the writer for the article. I've been blown over by the support this piece has gotten on the Internet, and I want to thank you all very deeply for your outpour of support. I agonized over this article long and hard, worrying that it wouldn't be good enough, interesting enough, or authoritative enough for anyone else. Thank you for showing otherwise. I'm glad I was able to share our experiences with the world, and I'm glad so many people resonate with it.
First off, lemme say I'm flattered and honored someone from the Dominican Republic found my article amusing. If there's room for me, there's definitely room for people to share what anime fandom is like for Dominicans. This is me talking out of my elbows, but I feel like once the 90s/00s rolled around for anime fandom in Puerto Rico the shows that "got big" were the ones that kids could watch in English and Spanish. So the big heavy-hitters--Sailor Moon, DBZ, Pokémon--were reinforced in the minds of fans by virtue of still being aired on Cartoon Network and the like, while the other classics (Ranma 1/2, Slam Dunk) trailed off as the local airings ended and no English version was around to replace them. I'm pretty sure this is why Saint Seiya isn't as big in Puerto Rico as it is in the rest of Latin America; the other countries never stopped airing Seiya-reruns, while people in PR wouldn't really get another shot at Saint Seiya until the American "Knights of the Zodiac" dub from the mid-'00s.
Ah yes, Suncoast! There was one tucked away in Plaza Las Americas for the longest time, I remember! When Suncoast died out in the US, I recall Plaza's Suncoast becoming Specs; IIRC, that Specs is still open in Plaza, and as recently as 4 years ago they were still selling some of Suncoast's unsold stock! (I wonder if they still have that old Lunar Legend Tsukihime soundtrack lying around...).
Yep! I couldn't go too deeply into it, but part of the reason I loved David's Comic Clan was because of his old bins full of unsold manga floppies! I still kick myself for not buying the whole thing outright, but I was a dead-broke college kid in those days and I literally had to scrimp just to get the few issues of Time Traveller Ai, Change Commander Goku or Outlanders that I got from his shop. Alas, those old Area 88 manga, I missed my chance... But yes, Metro Comics to my knowledge still carries a lot of old stuff too. At least the last time I went (4 years ago), they had old Studio Proteus stuff lying around like Seraphic Feather or Cannon God Exxaxion, or old anthologies of Fred Perry's Gold Digger. Also, curiously, a lot of old World of Darkness roleplaying supplementals.
Thank you for sharing this! I remember a coworker of my mother mentioning that she grew up watching Candy Candy. A lot of this stuff I never put in because information for it just isn't easy to find; it was all I could do to uncover Esperanza Martinez's involvement with our Astro Boy dub, finding verifiable sources beyond people I knew saying "Oh, Channel 6 aired Teknoman!" was the best I could do for a lot of it. And with my internet presence being what it is, not many of the folks I could poll had much in the way of knowledge prior to the 90s. TVTropes claimed Harlock and Space Adventure Cobra aired in Puerto Rico, for example--but I couldn't verify that at all. I have contacts (read: old professors I studied under) at the University of Puerto Rico's Communications faculty that could maybe put me in contact with folks who could talk about PR's old dubbing studio. Whether they remember ever working on specific anime from the 80s is a crapshoot, but one I'd like to look into someday. Thanks for bringing up Princess Knight, I'm amused we got that in PR way back when!
Refer to the above bit; I'd have loved to share finer details of anime in Puerto Rico, but there just isn't much in the way of writing that actually lists this stuff. Even ANN's encyclopedia has gaps as far as Puerto Rico's anime history is concerned. Funny bit about Mazinger having aired in PR is that it's a lot more iconic of us than my old GaoGaiGar-loving heart gave it credit for; an American(?) artist that visited PRComiCon one year pointed out he could recognize all the Puerto Rican weebs that visited his stall because they were the only ones that recognized Mazinger!  There was a (non-fatal) landslide near a neighborhood in the Metro area sometime in 2011-2012, I also recall one of the hosts to an AM radio show joking that he thought it was one of Dr Hell's robeasts!
Thank you again for your warm reception, this means worlds to me! -IPOY |
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Kiggy-Is-Back!
 Posts: 2 Location: Houston, TX |
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To add to Vicserr's list: I remember as a wee lad in the early 70's watching Sam el Rey del Judo (Kurenai Sanshiro), Marine Boy and a sci-fi themed series about a time-traveler which was dubbed as "Meteoro", thus causing confusion with the spanish-dubbed Speed Racer. Fast forward 10+ years and there were Robot shows like Dorvack, Toshi Gordian and Super Laser (Video Senshi Laserion), and more magic girls than you could shake a stick at: Gigi (Minky Momo), Majokko Meg-chan, La Brujita Sally (Mahotsukai Sally), Angel (Hana No Ko LunLun), Lalabel la Niña Magica (Maho Shojo Lalabel), etc. In 1994 I started renting anime VHS at David's Comics Clan (sad to know it's been closed for 7 years now  ). The first videocassette i rented: Urusei Yatsura. It was like nothing I've seen before.
And, as a parting shot, I leave these... Festival de los Robots OP (The greatest anime OP ever, regardless of language) https://youtu.be/pGavB2qaajo Lalabel ED (How's this for Latin music influence on anime music composers?) https://youtu.be/jb-5QtS_L5E Candy Candy ED https://youtu.be/mbIZudMnc7Y |
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zer0-sama
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I'm from PR and I grew with all this and this article is pretty spot on. Once I saw David comics clan in the article I knew it was legit. That place in the 90's was heaven, because it was the best comic book spot in PR, and everything you found there was gold. The experience was amazing, you rented anime VHS also there, remember they even had a couple of VHS pirated tapes of the Cell and Boo saga subbed in 1995. I was mind blown by how far the show had gone when the last thing I had saw on the US TV Saban version was Goku training on King Kai Planet with Bubbles. Quick note, most of the anime movies in VHS in the early 90's that you rented or bought at comic book stores here where pirated/bootleg versions because no video store sold the original... in the first place those shows weren't even licensed to be brought to the states and PR, BUT the quality of those pirated VHS were super great tho. BTW there was also a place in Condado in the 90's and early 2000's were anime vhs used to be rented, comics books and Gunpla sold, used to also go there a lot, can't believe I forgot the name. Also was introduced to Gundam in David's comic clan, I rented in 1995 2 pirated VHS, the movies Gundam F91 and Chars counterattack.
When I was like 5 years old in 1988 they bought me a VHS tape on a video store that was next to WAPA that I still have to this day called, Festival de los Robots (the festival of the robots) that only had two episodes of 2 different shows. That VHS left me with one of the biggest cliffhangers in my life, 2 episodes isn't fair lol. In 1992 I got introduced to Gatchaman in Telemundo (channel 2) but the show wasn't called Gatchaman or even G-force, it was called Fuerza G. That show impacted me as a kid because how easily characters died on each episode. Me being a kid not seeing that type of fate on other cartoon shows really hit me hard, specially when the father of a certain character sacrifices himself by doing a kamikaze attack, that was really shocking as a kid and I loved it because it felt more real and heroic than the other cartoons I saw. BTW the good thing about anime shows in PR, and Latin America was that they where not heavily censored, most of the shows were left untouched expect for the voice translation part and the intro/ending song which got translated into spanish and sounded really dope. In 1993 I watched on channel 13 for the first time Dragon Ball on FOX at 6 am (the real airing date of DB in N.America) and eventually in 1994 DBZ. Remember that FOX only aired like 12 episodes of DB before them jumping into DBZ. Also around in 1994 an older brother of a friend of mine had a VHS tape with Ninja Scroll, Vampire Hunter D, Fist of the Northstar Movie and Doomed Megalopolis all in it. I watched those movies in their house (with no supervision of adults obviously lol) and that's when I fell in love with anime and understood in a way what anime was. Forgot to mentioned that In 1993 I saw for the first time Saint Seiya in WAPA, and was mind blown, but they never aired the show with continuity. It was like episode 6 through 12 and then episode 30, it was very random the way they aired it, even some weekends the shows wasn't on and some informercial show or other shows were on, but that Saint Seiya intro in spanish was lit. I even bought on walgreens a Saint Seiya watercolor book at that time that they had for sale. In 1995 I discovered Sailor Moon thanks to Fox and WB and also thanks to Davids comic clan I rented a couple of Sailor Moon vhs that were subbed and ahead of US syndication. This was the time when almost nobody in my island watched anime, because nobody ever spoke about it, almost nobody knew what it was, not even DB they knew. The majority of people here only knew what Power Rangers was, nobody was into geek stuff and ironically those are the same people that watch nowadays all the mainstream trendy garbage shows that come from Japan. Anyways like in 1996 I watched Zenki on WAPA which once they reached like episode 35 they started all over from the beginning repeating it all again with out even finishing it, if not mistaken after that endless repeated cycle they later did aired it all (also dope intro in spanish). Telemundo in 1999 had Samurai X, Slam Dunk, La Leyenda del Zorro, and Dragon Ball Z. By then everyone started to kinda "see" what anime was without knowing it. Lots of friends I had liked those shows that aired on local TV but weren't into Gundam, Jappanese audio (had to be dubbed for them) and other anime stuff. Eventually with the coming of Toonami and the internet, the doors were opened and everybody started to watch and appreciate it post-2000. Locomotion and people buying DVD's and VHS on Suncoast started to become a thing too, to the point where we are now. Sorry for the long post, but really liked this article and thanks for making it. I believe we're part of anime's history, the uncut gems that existed here before the commercialization worldwide, and how genuine things were here in the past related to comics and anime. There where only a couple of comic book places that had anime, the local TV channels here didn't have and didn't aired all the episodes, but giving it a chance when nobody did at that time (with out censoring it) when it wasn't popular and marketable shows you we're part of anime's history. |
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MesousaGaby
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Okay, this could take a while since I've been born and raised in Puerto Rico. I just found this article today and it kinda blows my mind that technically, we kinda were like most Latinamerican countries in having a surprising high amount of anime. My introduction to anime wasn't Pokemon or DBZ or Ranma...it was Slayers The Motion Picure.
If I remember correctly, my Dad got it from a former friend of his, and while he never specifically told me why, I'd like to guess that his friend's son or maybe even himself was kinda starting to get into anime, and it kinda ended up as my introduction this way, although it was obvious that he recorded it into another VHS or something because said tape just had the "Slayers The Motion Picture" on the lower part. Most of the anime, I recall, aired on Telemundo, and I do recall seeing Ranma and Slam Dunk, but I couldn't really get much into it. Then DBZ happened, yeah, I was one of the few that immediately noticed how different both english and spanish are in terms of content and theme songs. We actually had "Cha-La Head Cha-La" (in spanish!), while it would take like, another 17 years for that theme to actually be in US television during an airing of the first Broly movie in Adult Swim's Toonami. And then Pokemon joined in alongside it at the 3 PM hour on weekdays (the article mentioned that WAPA aired it, but I don't ever recall seeing it there). Anime on weekdays then slowly died out in 2001, I believe. Telemundo aired Pokemon all the way up I think until the Black and White season on weekend mornings while DBZ just kinda left. The 2000's were sort of an end of anime spanish dubs in these countries, but then, of course, depending on what kind of cable service you got in the mid-2000's. If you had Liberty Cablevisoin, you would have The Anime Network. If you had Direct TV, you would have Locomotion/Animax. And luckily, I got to experience both as my Dad's fiancé had the latter cable service, so I'd go to her home at times between 2005-2007 My best memory with Animax was with the anime Pita Ten,airing on early weekday afternoons, and it never got an English dub, but it's spanish dub was just filled with so much fuzziness that just saying it causes me to have such a nostalgia rush with it's "I wiiiiish, hello wake up angel~" opening theme, and honestly, it's still a very fun show. I still have Misha saying "Animo, Kotaro!" in my mind at times. And it also led to probably the most hilarious moment as I as watching Gantz one time to then see a sudden sex scene out of nowhere...and said fiancé and my Dad were wathing alongside me. I immediately changed the channel. 
As for my Anime Network experience (which lasted all of 2007), I recall mostly seeing the channel every once in a while, which was...less han I was expecting, but I consider it's most notable show being Petite Princess Yucie...which also aired on early weekend afternoons. I also remember that the channel then had a very odd schedule overhaul in July, removing some show sand even adding shows as recently as from just a year prior in terms of other ADV releases. Ghost Stories and Cromartie High School were together on friday nights, and it was glorious combination to behold. And then there's thursdays, which had Princess Tutu, Kaleido Star, Yucie, Pani Poni Dash and Best Student Council all in one block. Yes, it was a girl themed block, but man, that was a pretty powerful row of shows. The channel then, of course, was removed when 2008 started due to ADV's financial problems and the channel's last day on December 31, 2007 ended with a big Excel Saga marathon. No, really, I still remember clear as day, they aired all 26 episodes from 12 PM to 12 AM. Speaking of Pani Poni Dash, as you can tell, it's my most favorite anime of all time and also the one anime I collected every single volume. This was back when good 'ol Suncoast was still around and my hype for the show was just too big to ignore due to it's trailer and the fact that I did see the show back when you could see them on Youtube. I somehow bought all volumes within a week or two when they came out and no doubt became my most notable tweenhood memory, and I'll never regret, it either. It says a lot when both that and Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, my other favorite anime of all time, were technically both not only around the same time on TV in Japan, but also in the US, on TV as well! Pani Poni Dash's last DVD volume in the US was released on October 23rd, 10 days after BoBoBo's last episode aired on Toonami. I honestly consider that a bit symbolic. Anyways, that's as much as I can share cause they are my most notable anime in Puerto Rico experinces, so this article was just really cool to see. |
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