How much anime did you watch as a child?
It's probably more than you think.
How many different anime series did you really watch? I mean, besides the obvious.
Whenever somebody mentions anime on SABC TV (South Africa’s national broadcaster) a number of options come to mind: Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, Naruto. Some older folks might mention Medabot, Pokemon, Astroboy, even Samurai Pizza Cats, and Hamtaro.
A random thought popped into my head the other day: how many of the shows that I watched as a child on SABC, during the 80s and 90s, were just cartoons, and how many of them were anime? Many of them shared similarities with some of the anime today; many of them had stories that were too complex for my six-year-old brain to appreciate; many of them had a level of violence that scarred me.
For starters, Speed Racer is an obvious one. Then you get a show called Battle of the Planets, which was originally Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, followed by UFO Robo Grendizer and Voltron.
Bionic Six was technically an anime, in that it was an American/Japanese co-production, as was Robotech and The Mysterious Cities of Gold
Are you keeping count?
Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds, Brakenjan to our South African readers, was a Spanish/Japanese co-production.
Heidi was among the most famous in South Africa, as it was one of the few to be dubbed into Afrikaans. The Dog of Flanders, (Niklaas in Afrikaans) The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (Nils Holgersson in Afrikaans) , Pinocchio and Arabian Nights: Adventures of Sinbad (Sinbad die Seeman in Afrikaans.).
Lastly, do you remember The Flying House, with the Bible stories? That, too, was anime.
So, how many of these nostalgic anime do you remember watching?
The world of Japanese animation has a rich history on South African television, far beyond the most commonly cited examples. To many South Africans, myself included, it helped shape my childhood.
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