| I didn't know it at the time, but I've been watching anime since I was a toddler. Growing up in Quebec, we had obscure Euro/Nippo productions as Saturday morning cartoons, all in French, that no otaku today is even aware of, with a few exceptions. In ultimate irony, we did not have Speed Racer.
Some of the only enduring titles from that era are Galaxy Express 999 (known to us as Albator), The Cities of Gold, Astro Boy and Gatchaman. The forgotten stuff is along the lines of Captain Flam, Goldorak, Candy, The Wizard of Oz, Belle & Sebastian, Rémi, The Litte Beaver, Ordy, The Jungle Book and (one of the very best of the lot) Under the Sign of the Musketeers.
It wasn't until my teenage years that I was finally instructed about this concept known then as "japanimation" (making me realize that I'd been watching some all along), and at that point my first "real" animes were Ranma ˝, El-Hazard and Akira, with others soon to follow. |
