Previously, I mentioned the first three anime I was exposed to at an early childhood (albeit dubbed, flawed, and not completely faithful to the original source material) as well as a few US cartoons that adopted the anime style to an extent by having Japanese animation studios back the production, such as Thundercats and Galaxy Rangers. In this next segment of my retrospective, I will discuss about other miscellaneous anime I've watched either vaguely or partially before my real big push to dive into the depths, so to speak.
Sometime around 1986-87, there were few things that kept me occupied: Preschool, Saturday morning cartoons, and whatever cartoons my parents recorded over the weekdays. You could say the programs were mixed bags-- a little G.I. Joe here, a little Ghostbusters there... but the real standout shows I saw in these mystery meats of videotapes were Robotech and Voltron. Now I was a bit too young to really appreciate Robotech's storytelling at the time, but Voltron's was simple enough to understand: Space explorers and a princess fight aliens from Planet Doom with a giant robot formed by robot lions. Yeah, I was in for a treat. And given I was used to what anime looked like after watching three movies, I could tell Voltron and Robotech were THOSE kind of shows.
In 1988, my immediate family settled in Germany in the city of Butzbach, if only because my old man was partaking in Operation Desert Storm at the time. Watching television there was quite... different. We had only one channel, which I believe was called AFN SuperStation. Essentially, this one channel aired the highest-rated / most popular programming in the US at the time. So whatever kids shows were hot on Saturday mornings, they aired it within a 3-hour block from 8-11 AM. Whatever prime-time shows were hot on the weekdays, they aired from 7-10 PM. And so on. When we first got there, they were still airing Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs, which was yet another anime adapted to a US cartoon. But dad-gummit, was the theme song and narrator ever catchy. It was then that I really started to pay attention to authentic voice acting, though I only had basic knowledge of it. But I knew the narrator of this show was also the narrator of Voltron AND the voice of Optimus Prime, Peter Cullen.
My uncle also shipped a couple of other anime from Celebrity - an Australian video distribution company notorious for bringing butchered adaptations of various anime to be watchable for kids - as well as another set of recorded tapes containing one particular series he told me was related to Galaxy Express. At the time, it was dubbed "Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years" by Harmony Gold (the same guys behind Robotech), which later I found was a splicing together of two separate TV series in the Leijiverse (basically connected series authored by Leiji Matsumoto). Although it's not faithful to the original source material and I would eventually look back at this and laugh at some altered plot lines Carl Macek added (or removed), this would mark my first real exposure to the character development of one of my favorite anime characters of all time, Captain Harlock, and one of the few anime that I actually watched in full with my family. And it was memorable enough to make me watch its original Japanese version many years later, but wasn't quite enough to make me dive into the depths of anime at that time, as I was still loving the other Saturday morning programs being offered. Among the VHS tapes from Celebrity, the one that was most memorable for me was "Clash of the Bionoids" (which is widely known today as "Macross: Do You Remember Love?"). Essentially, it was a retelling of the Robotech story with questionable voice acting, but damn good animation and music.
I think that's about all I remember on anime I watched while I was in Germany after leaving in 1990. Beyond that, I remember watching Samurai Pizza Cats the following year and that's about it. The next part will be a doozy, as I will go into incredible detail on how I was sold on actually watching anime in the early - late 1990s.
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