Research Help: Non-american otaku in the 80/90's.

[felipepepe]

Bros, help me with some info for my research:

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It's very hard to find much info on 80's & early 90's anime/manga/jrpg consumption around the world; I've got Brazil's info and read some usefull books on USA's otaku habits, and that alone already started many doubts...​

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For instance, Saint Seiya (Knights of the Zodiac, whatever) was a major hit here in the 90's, every bloody kid watched it, Angra did the opening song, they sold tons of manga & action figures and all that; yet it only aired in the US around 2003!​

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Many other anime that were classics from my childhood in the 90's, like Yu Yu Hakusho, Dragon Quest, Dragon Ball (the original), Shurato, Samurai Warriors and Captain Tsubasa only appeared in the US almost a decade later, or never appeared at all! Meanwhile, we never had a liking for Mecha anime, unlike in the US almost none ever aired here..​

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Kwas can't into good anime.

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Not only that, but here we usually imported the episodes from europe or directly from Japan, with no retarded cuts & censorship like in the US. It's weird, because I was reading US books on anime in the 90's, and disagreeing with everything, until I saw the aired anime list and saw that most of what I knew wasn't there! In true kwa fashion, even in academic books americans only consider thenselves as reference, so anime culture is analysed based only on what hit US shores, and taking in account the MASSIVE mutilation they underwent to "fit" american audiences.

It goes without saying that this basically makes them completly useless and invalid when trying to understand anime culture worldwide... I'm reading books telling how the editing was key in introducing anime to "the western world", while knowing that the REST of the western world did not edited anime at all...

I'm trying to get a understanding on how the non-US anime culture was in the 80 & 90's, but info is hard to find; even things like a swedish student thesis on anime culture in sweden is just spewing shit from the US books I've read, without any info on how it reached sweden...

Since I'm only gathering info to weight the possibility/usefullness of this thesis, I don't need have detailed data on this, I just wanna hear, what was the situation of anime & manga in your home countries?

TL;DR: What anime you (non-kwa) guys watched as kids? Was there lots of animes in your country?



I'm a impacient man; I'll summon everyone from the VA thread: Hirato, Jasede, Mrowak, WhiskeyWolf, Vaarna_Aarne, RK47, Haba, Kz3r0, lightbane, damicore, Gragt, treave, Agassi, ghostdog, MaroonSkein, Helly & Bahamut.

EDIT: I'm interested in pre-2000 stuff, so fuck Naruto.

 

[Helly]

I personally am too young, and started mangas/animes with Fruits basket around 2002-03, then Naruto/One piece... I watched stuff at random, mostly what other people gave me on CDs, and it was quite difficult to get older stuff. Well at that time I didn't really care though.

In France, the anime boom started with the Club Dorothée, which was a french TV show from 1987 to 1997 starring silly sitcoms (Baywatch, Ultraman...) but also a lot of animated series:
We had Dragon ball, Attacker You !, Saint Seiya, Kimengumi, Dr Slump, Galaxy Express 999, Sailor moon, Hokuto no ken, Ranma 1/2, and I probably forget a lot.

Almost all children watched that show (almost no competitor at that time and it was scheduled on non-school days), and they all got traumatized by some Hokuto no ken's episodes It's actually quite funny, try talking to any ~30yo french dude and see him shiver as you talk about Hokuto no ken's explosive fingers .

Sadly, there have been no successor since that show ended. Nowadays on TV we only have Naruto/Bleach/OP and some silly kwan/european animations. Quite a sad state of affair when you see how awesome and effective that show was. I personally believe this show is responsible for France being one of the biggest consumer of manga in the world, so that's that.

Talking about manga, there was almost no manga available until 1990 when Glénat, a french publisher, started publishing Akira, Hiroshima no gen, then Appleseed, Dragon ball, Ranma 1/2 and others. It only really started in 1995 when another publisher, Tonkam, joined the fray. Afterwards it kept growing with other publisher and lots of series. It's all info from the french wiki page though; as I said I sadly am too young for this.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

It's getting late right now but suffice to say anime in Poland before 2000 was almost non-existing, maybe an occasional movie here and there, American cartoons dominated. But thankfully the Germans, bless them, apparently still had some leftover deals from WW2 with Japan and were importing anime by the shipload.

I will write the titles tomorrow unless someone will do it for me.

A short article on the topic - http://www.awn.com/mag/issue1.5/articles/goslingeuro1.5.html

 

[lightbane]

Well, IIRC here in Catalonia we had Doraemon, that weird anime about a talking robot cat. Then there was Sailor Moon, Sakura Card Captor, Cowboy Bepop, Doctor Slump, Dragon Ball (which was VERY successful), Yuyu Hakushu, Mazinger Z and... Evangelion.

 

[Excidium]

Kwas can't into good anime.

To be fair, the BR dub makes it a lot better.

Also remember that here Tokusatsu was also huge. Jaspion, Jiban, Cybercops, Jiraya, etc. I was crazy about the last two, I remember getting so pissed when they stopped airing Jiraya that I tried flushing the figure I had down the toilet.

Also Black Kamen Rider, how did I forget to list it. Shit was cool.

 

[felipepepe]

Wow, amazing info, thanks! Club Dorothée wiki page even has a list with the animes they aired & date! They follow a very similar selection than Brazil's, with some stuff that never aired on the US, but they also use stuff like Robotech, a frankenstein creation of america, done by editing 3 anime series together...

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Here in Finland manga was almost non-existent, only existing as imports in specialist stores (note: Not manga specialist stores, but either comics in general or geek stores). It only achieved exposure when the Kolibri Kustannus publication company formed its Sangatsu Manga division in 2003 and started publishing translated Dragon Ball as monthly books. For a couple of years it was a really huge thing (also got a minor scandal due to Finns being rather iffy about naked little boys), and they've still got a large presence on store stands (obviously Donald Duck still makes the same godlike weekly sales it always has, it's just how it is; To illustrate it, Donald Duck weekly magazine has weekly sales that would make the Big Two in America jizz their pants, with WEEKLY sales at around 300,000 copies). Manga obviously had people following it long before 2003 though, but it was part of the same minor geek culture that comic books were (the first manga I read was a horror one that Petri Hiltunen showed me when I was 11).

Both anime and manga did have a non-descript presence before 2003 though, it was only then when they showed up as a separate and special entity in the mainstream. Before that, they just kinda were there if they showed up. For example, Thunderbirds 2086 once ran on television (making it technically the first anime I've seen), and I did rent Detonator Orgun (first anime I watched knowing it was anime) when I was 10. Oh yea, I also saw Ginga Nagareboshi Gin when I was 6 (that was probably the first anime that got widespread exposure, almost every kid in my age group has seen it on VHS). While on the subject, I insist that the censored ending to Ginga Nagareboshi Gin where the old man shoots the bear instead of DBZ bullshit with the dogs, it's a lot more dramatically satisfying.

Nowadays it's different, since like I mentioned manga is on stands in regular stores (vastly outnumbering other comics present), and seems very up to date (based on my limited knowledge), with Bleach and similar being there. There was a bit of concern on teh internets that manga would drown out Western comics, but the longterm comics community foreman Otto Sinisalo concluded that claim was bullshit and that ultimately the manga boom that would fade would have a positive effect on all comics... And he was right. Nowadays we've got a whole lot more comics being published/translated (for example, we get Blacksad albums right when they come out in France, and we even got All-Star Superman and almost all Alan Moore comics translated in just a few years) and creators have better exposure and salary. Part of this is also due to DC making movies about their prestigious IPs like V and Watchmen, which got exposure to Western style comics as well when Egmont swiftly translated and published V for Vendetta in the wake of the movie.



So in the end all nerd culture is interconnected.

EDIT: Oh yea, those premieres regarding Miyazaki's movies also happened in the 90's I think. I saw both for the first time when Porco Rosso and My Neighbour Totoro were on the TV. They also showed Porco Rosso again just this year, felt real good seeing it again (it's my favourite Miyazaki movie).

EDIT2: It actually bears mention that Sangatsu Manga was formed to capitalize on the rising ratings of Dragon Ball Z that was being shown on SubTV at the time. SubTV also aired a handful of other anime series late at night later on, but none of them made the same kind of longterm effect as what one publisher's idea to capitalize on Dragon Ball Z's viewers ended up causing.

 

[felipepepe]

Also remember that here Tokusatsu was also huge. Jaspion, Jiban, Cybercops, Jiraya, etc. I was crazy about the last two, I remember getting so pissed when they stopped airing Jiraya that I tried flushing the figure I had down the toilet.

I actually read on a japanese book that in the mid-80's tokusatsu was even bigger here than in japan!

Well, IIRC here in Catalonia we had Doraemon

Was Doraemon popular? All the bloody books I read keep saying that Doreamon failed in the US because "it was too japanese for any other culture"...

 

[ghostdog]

In Greece my first contact with anime was probably in late 80s/early 90s and it was captain harlock. There was also Kabamaru, Jumaru, and Robotech all in late 80s and early 90s. I think there was also Yamato, or some such series. Also at that period TV showed Area 88 , Lensman, Loki the superman and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, maybe other Miyazaki films too. Oh, there were also classic robot series like Jetter Robot, Voltron and VoltusV and other such shit. Around late 90s Dragonball, Sailor moon and Slayers appeared. Didn't like that crap. Naturally all these titles appeared in Greece at least a decade after their initial release. Other anime I saw as a kid where purely from VHS rents, where apart from actual movies you could find series with only the 2-3 first episodes...

Then at 00s anime seems to almost completely disappear from TV. Ok maybe there was something, but I wasn't really paying attention. I think One Piece and Yugioh and Rurouni Kenshin aired for a while but I never cared for that shit anyway. Today I don't think a single anime is displayed on TV. My interest in animated films was renewed when I watched the Ghost In the Shell and Ninja Scroll movies on DVD. That was the time I learned about "Anime" and the fact that they were Japanese and stuff, never thought about it when I was a kid. After that, thank god for dsl.

 

[Helly]

In France, the anime boom started with the Club Dorothée, which was a french TV show from 1987 to 1997 starring silly sitcoms (Baywatch, Ultraman...) but also a lot of animated series:
We had Dragon ball, Attacker You !, Saint Seiya, Kimengumi, Dr Slump, Galaxy Express 999, Sailor moon, Hokuto no ken, Ranma 1/2, and I probably forget a lot.

And the best one of all: Nicky Larson (French adaptation of City Hunter)

Oh yeah, how could I forget Nicky Larson !

Tadada Nicky Larson ne craint personne !
Damn, we definitely had the best voice actors for our openings

 

[felipepepe]

Thanks for the replies guys, a bonus question: Was there some sort of otaku culture, with people advertising & obsessing over anime, or they were just threated as regular cartoons; turn tv, watch Thundercats, Tintin & Dragon Ball and that's ok?

 

[Gragt]

I can only speak for France and Belgium, obviously, but the situation was rather fun back in the day. First it is interesting to note that when manga/anime arrived in the '80s we were finally entering an era where comic books of the Belgian/French school could be recognised as an acceptable art form by the public. Before that comic books were seen with distrust, mainly as a childish activity in the most benign form but as something that would make kids dumb and illiterate in the worst. So finally we reached an era where the general public could consider comic books as something adult and serious, and even then only the European ones because the US comic books were something else. And then came that stuff from Japan that looked different and was seemingly full of sex and violence. As you can imagine, the distrust switched to anime and manga.

As Helly mentionned, the Club Dorothée was one of the main vessels for anime on TV, and in retrospect that show was weird as hell, but before that there were other shows, like Recré A2. Those were on French TV channels, as I don't think we had something similar here in Belgium, but since everyone with the cable got the French channels, it was pretty much the same for us. Back in the early '80s, there were even collaborations between French and Japanese studios to create good series like The Mysterious Cities of Gold or Ulysse 31. Then came the Club Dorothée in '87. Fun fact: the Dorothée wench (actually named Frédérique Hoschedé) who gave her name to her show actually started in Recré A2 on A2 and then defected to TF1 to create the infamous Club Do with the promise of bigger budget and salary. The Club Dorothée was a behemoth of children TV, with cartoons, anime, games, songs (ugh!) and series, taking place before and after school and pretty much all day long on holidays. It did have competition from A2 but it was so unfair it may as well have been non-existent. Of course many parents were happy to have their kids want to watch TV all day long instead of playing outside in the sun. Now a very important thing to know is that Club Do was produced for TF1 by the group AB Productions. The focus of that group was on quantity over quality, which allowed them to flood the competition in variety. They produced a ton of shitty sitcoms with low budget that were nevertheless popular, and when it came to anime their philosophy was to buy in bulk whatever licenses were offered by Japanese studios and see what they could do with it. They did not know what most series were about nor did they care. All they wanted was stuff to saturate the market with. That means that they showed pretty much anything at any time of the day: action series aimed at boys (Saint Seya), love stories aimed at girls (I don't know the original names :D ) and things aimed towards an older audience (City Hunter, Hokuto no Ken). The last category was what made a huge controvery: because that stuff was shown at a time where kids were watching and even explicitely marketted at them, many parents decided that the Japanese were a mad and violent people and their own children wouldn't be subjected to such horrors.

The translation quality was poor. Again AB was only interested in a product to show, not in a high quality product. Scripts for dubbers would be done rather fast, and in some cases even improvised on the fly with what would fit with the action on-screen. One of the hilarious things would be how they tried to move the action of most series in Europe, especially France. So all characters were given French names, various elements of Japanese culture wouldn't make sense in that context, and the translator would shit himself when he discovered that the episode of a finale would take place in a very Japanese landmark and it was impossible to make it French — you can kinda make the Tokyo Tower appear as the Eifel Tower but that's a bit silly. This was even better when the action suddenly moved to France or other European countries like Germany for an episode! For probably the same reasons Japanese culture was misunderstood here, anime would show that people in Paris still went around riding horses and other silly stuff like that. But one of the worst offending episodes of that period is that it was discovered a few years ago that AB would record their dubs directly on the original master they received instead of making copies! So when the dvd format became popular, there was a huge demand in France and Belgium for series like Saint Seya, also with the hope that we could get to see them in their original versions for the first time. That's when it was discovered that those who held the rights of distribution for those countries didn't have the originals anymore because they recorded over it, and of course obtaining a new master would mean paying for it and that was out of question for AB.

There was censorship though. Dragon Ball got a few panty shots cut and the dialog adapted to something nonsensical but not offensive. The worst was Hokuto no Ken, which was so violent that an episode got reduced by a full 7 minutes. Even better: the dubbers hated those series. They considered them stupid, harmful for children, and in the case of Hokuto no Ken a glorification of nazism due to the presence of swastikas. City Hunter was taken a few notches down with the various villains being turned into bumbling idiots who generously uttered bad puns and places like love hotels being referred to as vegetarian restaurants, all in an attempt to make the serie more acceptable for children. Hokuto no Ken was different: the dubbers hated it so much that they went on strike and demanded to be able to rewrite the script themselves, and they won! So the whole thing was completely changed and made ridiculous, with a ton of bad puns and silly comments in pretty much every line possible. Many people who watched it at the time don't remember it, but anyone who understands a bit of French should try to watch it in French because it's so hilarious. It's like a parody dub, except it's the official French dub! To give you an idea, "hokuto" sounds like "haut couteau", french for "great knife", so they made tons of puns, like Ken saying to his enemies that with his big kitchen knife he will cut their meat, or the various schools of martial arts are given silly names, like the School of the Kitchen Knife, the School of the Bread Knife, the School of the Meat Knife, the School of the Bread Plank, the School of the Fork and pretty much every kitchen apparatus you can think of. Or the Royal Veal Stew Technique. My favourite is still the School of the Cloak You Leave in the Cloakroom. The bad guy is called the King of the Fur Cloak because of his clothes (I should request "King of the Fur Cloak" as a special title :D ) and sends his minions from his base at the Mountain of the Fur Cloak where he sits on the Throne of the Fur Cloak. And then you got simply bad puns like "Times, just like eggs, are indeed hard", or an enemy with his head being crushed saying "Oh? Looks like I'm getting a headache!" just before it explodes.

Anyway all this meant that anime and manga for a very long time had a very bad reputation. Even in early 2000 years I would hear that this stuff should be banned and many libraries refused to carry them. Now it's just fashionable and kids are dumber than before. Ah, those were the days!

Edit: to answer your question, the otaku circles came later, when that generation who watched anime in the '80s grew up, discovered the PSX, etc. Miyazaki movies also helped to develop that culture in the '90s. There are some big conventations in France nowadays.

Edit²: Helly just reminded me of the opening songs! Those were usually awful and made no sense, likely written by someone else who had nothing to with translation (ahem!) of the script. So the title of a serie was automatically assumed to be the name of the main character. It was ok with Knights of the Zodiac, translated as this in French, but with other series like Dragon Ball Z it was really stupid.

 

[Hellraiser]

It's getting late right now but suffice to say anime in Poland before 2000 was almost non-existing, maybe an occasional movie here and there, American cartoons dominated. But thankfully the Germans, bless them, apparently still had some leftover deals from WW2 with Japan and were importing anime by the shipload.

I will write the titles tomorrow unless someone will do it for me.

A short article on the topic - http://www.awn.com/mag/issue1.5/articles/goslingeuro1.5.html

Bro, who could forget all the old anime aired on Polonia 1? Daimos for instance or Yatterman. Granted it wasn't particularly ambitious and didn't spawn otakus but whatever. An actual "fandom" formed after Polsat aired Sailor Moon in the late 90s, around 1997 I believe. Sometime after its success the major (and pretty much only, bar some short lived spin-offs which didn't last 3 issues) magazine dealing with the subject "Kawaii" started publishing. Later you had Saint Seiya, Dr. Slump, Dragon Ball on RTL7 and Pokemon airing on Polsat at the turn of the century, between 1999-2002. Dragon Ball in particular attracted lots of new people to anime in Potatoland. Canal+ was occasionally airing some series late in the night like Aria Iria, but the people who actually had canal+ at the time were few and far between. That series also got later aired on Hyper (when that channel was created, around 2002 I think) and they aired Cowboy Bebop soon afterwards.

You also had Slayers on RTL7/TVN7 as TVN bought them out some time after that. Which marked pretty much the end of quality (read not kids-targeted often merchandise machine shows like beyblade or whatever) anime on TV bar what Hyper airs to this day, the new management had a different vision for TVN7. Some time after that "Kawaii" stopped being published marking the end of an era. But that didn't matter as the fandom was slowly moving online with the advent of DSL (spawning the infamous "children of Neo" - from "Neostrada" the first DSL service in potatoland, but that's a different topic) and they would just download/import shit online.

Also gaming culture, particularly jRPGs on the PSone, drew a bunch of people into anime some time after 1997 when that conole became popular (mostly due to the ease of pirating games). After FF7 naturally.

 

[felipepepe]

I'm honestly amazed at how I can get more & better info asking about anime in a RPG forum than reading 5 american books on the subject. I mean, you figure that things like northen europe being addicted to a dog anime no one else watched or that french did anime with the japanese in the 80's would be at least worth of some note...

But nope, you just get quotes like "Future social historians may well conclude that the creation of the american otaku was the most significant event in the post-Cold War period." (Antonia Levi, Samurai from Outer Space, 1996).

:patriot:

 

[Gragt]

I'd even add :kwanzania:.

The Americans also had their collaborations with Japan. Captain Future had Japanese animation but the plots and scripts came from America. Pretty good stuff too.

 

[Helly]

Thanks Gragt, that's more detail that I could ever have been able to give ! I concur with everything
And yeah, in france I believe most otaku circles are post-2000. Most of our "otakus" are from the naruto generation (and by otaku they mean they saw all the Naruto/Bleach/OP episodes, ) ,or anyway they're the most vocal, and that's the kind of guys you meet in our Japan Expo (that started in 1999 and since then has all but spiraled down). Geez, I only go there anymore cuz they have a batting center (which is totally not just a small batting tunnel with an old pitching machine) and you sometimes can meet cute CLAMP fetishists.

Edit: Geez, translators at that time really didn't care at all. Still, I'm thankful for their work, they managed to make the anime super silly yet quite funny, I'm still having a blast rewatching them every so often. And those openings, those openings... Watching the original japanese Hokuto no ken subbed in english was actually pretty boring in comparison.

 

[Kz3r0]

In the beginning there was fairy tales like cartoons:

Notice the yodel style.

Then came the giant robots and the craze begun:

 

[felipepepe]

That's exactly the point I wanna go after in my thesis, how pre-2000's it was a universal kind of cartoon, that handled many subjects and pleased many audiences, from having soccer anime in brazil with Captain Tsubasa to northen-europe only Ginga Nagareboshi Gin; anime had something to offer to everyone, proved by how every country had different popular anime, with few exceptions.

But since the 2000's it became a thing on it's own, the hardcore otaku appeared, the circlejerking begun. The audience is clearly more devoted and more loud, but also way smaller... you can't have "casuals" anymore, a guy that just likes to watch Hokuto no Ken or DBZ, it became such a extreme thing that it's either loved or despised, he may abandon anime due prejudice/shame/disgust. Every country is getting the same dumbed down Jump anime, that all feel like a cheap copy of Dragon Ball.

Even worse, while the artists of the past managed to write things that would please people from all over the world, modern artists are mostly 20-year old tokyo otaku with no life experience besides being an otaku, so all they can write about are stuff for otaku... so instead of trying more universal stuff, you get stuff like Welcome to NHK & Sword Arts Online... instead of a Ken from Hokuto no Ken or Guts from Berserk, we get kids with more and more retarded haircuts & weapons...

Same for jRPGs, Final Fantasy now is about a lolita recruiting monsters and dressing then up, because that's what otaku likes and fuck the rest.

 

[Gragt]

Yeah, watching that stuff in original isn't as fun as watching the French dub. "Il en perd sa moumoute, le Mammouth!" in City Hunter/Nicky Larson makes me laugh each time.

There, bonus for those who understand French:







Edit: nondidju, ils ont vraiment des voix de couillons!

 

[Helly]

Envoies lui une boulette mortelle
Décidément les temps comme les oeufs sont durs
Those where indeed the days !

 

[Hirato]

I was born in the early 90's, so the decade was pretty much over when I watched any anime.
It probably helped that I was a kid at the time, but the few shows we had on TV were viewed as regular cartoons by everyone I've encountered, and I'd DISCUSS! them with my friends like any other TV series we watched together.
The broadcasts were in English, and I should probably note that I could barely understand English at the time (second language).

Shows I've watched in the 90's and early turn of the century...
First up is DragonBallZ, pretty much every boy from the 90's would've grown up watching this. I don't think they did much editing aside from sub-par voice acting. I remember when a new season started, I forgot which, but it was the one after the episode, "Goku, Super Saiyan?" Nearly all the characters got new voices, and despite being a 9/10 year old at the time, I was incredibly put off by this. Didn't like the opening rap much either.
Next up Card Captor Sakura, It had a brief run here, it stopped around the time Sakura got the Maze card, which was pretty early on. I watched the Japanese version a few years back, aside from the opening and the characters, this show was almost unrecognisable to me.
Next up was Mew Mew Power, aka Tokyo Mew Mew, for a few months this was broadcasted Friday mornings. While the Japanese version was kind of padded and rather lame to boot, the Americanised version was even worse and heavily edited to boot. It didn't help that the characters had weird names like "Mint."
Next up, Digimon, I was unfortunate enough to miss most of the first series too

We had a few other shows here too, Pokemon, Naruto, One Piece, and Yu-Gi-Oh. I never liked pokemon much and the last three I'm certain are post-2000 anime.
All of these have one thing in common, they were broadcast in the mornings whilst kids ate breakfast and otherwise got ready for school.
That probably contributes to the western misconception that: anime == cartoons == for kids.

 

[Hirato]

Same for jRPGs, Final Fantasy now is about a lolita recruiting monsters and dressing then up, because that's what otaku likes and fuck the rest.

I call bullshit!
If they truly were following Otaku likes, they'd be 2D as well

You know, '3DPD' and all that inanity.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

Yeah, no country outside of Japan adopted anime as much as France. In Quebec we got a few of these shows, except for the most violent and mature ones who would not get picked up.

But although I only know extremely little of the context, I'm not sure that it only started with Club Dorothée, I seem to remember much older series dubbed in French.

Anyway, the French have got the best dubbers in the world, hands down. In no other country is the dubbing industry so strong and well-developed.

 

[Gragt]

Yeah, we already had old anime before CD, but that one was really the springboard for anime in France for good or ill considering the quality of what they showed.

 

[deuxhero]

Apparently, in the Philippines some mecha anime is "national icon" level popular because it was banned and as a result, anyone opposed to the then current regime watched it. Forget what it was.