Hello and welcome to Tea and History, with your hostess, Felicia Angel.
Many people talk about certain shows they grew up on, mostly the cartoons of each generation and if they are still relevant or if they sucked badly or not. During the late eighties and early nineties, a new genre of animation was brought over from Japan, that of Anime, and specifically, Anime geared towards children instead of young adults or…um…hentai.
It had to be said!
Now, for those who have grown up with anime as a staple, understand that before anime came about, cartoons were often broken up into some categories, mostly Disney, Looney Toons, and Others, but they were, in general, very Western. If you watch something like the old G.I. Joe cartoon, the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and others, you get a different sense of how animation was as compared to today, and not just because they didn’t have computers or digital media to work with.
So into this mess of Tail Spin, My Little Pony, and some imported from Europe shows like Smurfs, we also get anime, which has a very Japanese bent. What really sets the stage, though, are two in particular who are often credited, along with Pokémon, to be the start of the anime invasion.
Shonen – Dragonball Z
Created by Akira Tokiyama for Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, the original Dragonball comic was supposed to be a lose retelling of Journey to the West, and by the time Dragonball Z came around, it was pretty much…not close to the story at all, save for some of the names and powers, but not that much.
However, both Dragonball and the very long list of predecessor (Dragonball Z, GT, and the remake called Kai) gave most ‘fight’ Shonen stories, such as the new powerhouses of Bleach and Naruto, the ability to do one thing – drag out a fight for five or more episodes and a major good guy vs bad guy fight that can be stretched out to maybe 20 or more episodes due to ‘evolutions’ of powers, bringing out old somewhat unused ‘uberpowers’ and using sudden ‘super special’ abilities or power that allow the good guy to win.
Still, this is one of the most popular animes among all demographics, and perhaps one of the many that is just edited to all hell from the Japanese run to the English run. Yes, is this also one of those that, when it was released ‘unedited’, a bunch of fans gave a collective WTF for some of the decisions, and you can check out most of the changes on the internet.
But as far as getting anime to young boys, and some young girls, DBZ did the job and then some. The story had some interesting twists and in general was fun to watch…if you didn’t get into it halfway through a major battle, like I did. Trust me, when you come in halfway through the second of five major battles with a final boss and you have no idea who the people are, why they aren’t focusing on the actual FIGHT, and why said fight hasn’t even started until the next EPISODE…you tend to go watch something else.
The story tends to be…not that complex, but has a lot of the current shonen fight show characters and basic outline of plot. You have a character who is cooler/powerful/has the potential to be powerful. Said character has a fight and either is beaten or shows off to be exceptionally strong/talented. He gains friends/teammates/allies and soon they face their first very big fight/rescue/enemy. They come out either barely or completely, only to learn there is a bigger threat/enemy to face against. So they begin heading out, training/fighting-as-training along the way. Soon it’s down to the main guy vs. the big badass, and it’s the fight we’ve all been waiting for, where the main guy finally pulls out the Kamehameha/Rasenga/Bankai/uberattack that helps him win, or at least cause some damage. If the evil badass survives because he’s far too badass, the group goes through more training to unlock more power so they can finally fight the badass and kill him off.
Then another guy comes up.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat until you just get to the point where some who don’t follow the show will begin to wonder, or at least avoid it, or you run out of evil characters or ideas and finally just end the story. Bleach and Naruto also face up with this problem, as both have been glared at for being too long or having the similar type of storyline as DBZ, or spending too much time on every character, rather than our main one (Naruto), or for taking far too long, even after what should be the end (Bleach).
Still, if you get into the story and are either waiting for the end or at least enjoy the characters, getting into them is fun and watching them is also just as fun. Naruto’s manga and anime tends to explain how and why someone has certain powers or abilities, which is fun to read through, and Bleach has good fights, if drawn out, and has an interesting mythology behind it. Other anime and manga, like Yu Yu Hakusho and some other fight mangas have similar fights, or tournaments, and in general, even if you’re not a DBZ fan, you’ll become a fan of one of these.
Now, onto the girly stuff!
Shojou – Sailor Moon
Created by Naoko Takeuchi after another manga of hers, Sailor V, Sailor Moon helped bring in girls to anime, showing that it wasn’t just stuff like the odd movies brought in during the late 80s/early 90s or something with a huge level of testosterone and girls who were either only partly powerful or only there because they were brought over from the last series, like ChiChi and Bulma. Seriously, despite her technological power (and giving birth to Trunks), what did Bulma do?
Wait…don’t answer that…(yes, I’m looking at you, fangirlintraining)
Sailor Moon, as an answer, had high levels of estrogen and boys who were either partly powerful, turned into girls to gain power, or were just cheerleaders.
I’m a fan of Sailor Moon, and even I look at Tuxedo Mask and Helios and point out how often they have to get their happy asses saved by the power of love, friendship, and…pink.
Sailor Moon is the majou shojou, or magic girl, show. It usually goes that a normal girl, or an almost-normal girl, finds out she’s the heir to some power/has ability for power/is just special like that. She soon begins to fight evil beings attempting to gain the Magical McGuffin or attempting to have the world under darkness or something similar to that. Magical girl, with the help of friends/allies/other magical girls fights off the baddies, either turning some to their side or destroying them, and finally facing off against the final baddie and unleash all their power to the point of becoming a holy figure of undying love and light, which either kills them for them to be resurrected later, or really, really tires them out. Also, they find their true love, and by the end of the series, there is marriage/engagement/they are a couple now.
Like I said, growing up I enjoyed this show a great deal more than DBZ, mostly because I kept running into the first third of a 20 episode fight. However, the seasons and episodes are often very similar as well: during the first part, you have one person learning of magical powers from their mentor (or magical pet) and facing against baddie who unleashes evil monster/creates monster to try and steal energy/random mystical item/search RMI for something. Girl comes up, transforms, gets pushed around somewhat comically, is inspired to fight back, uses the ending attack, and all is good and a lesson of some sort is learned/a person’s life is better/etc. At one point, add another friend who is originally thought to be the Enemy but then turns out to be a friend, and they start fighting the enemy together.
Later, Rinse, Repeat until everyone’s had at least one episode devoted to character growth, your grouping of girls (three or more) and others are here, and they finally go up against the big boss, usually in a two-part or more episode where they fight, people are killed off, or they attempt to rescue someone and then others are brought back to life.
Of course, like DBZ, the original uncut version was released and the time period on Sailor Moon between one season and the next was much larger than the one for most multi-season shows that are translated, and I can give you one good reason.
Well, two: Tenou Haruka and Kaiou Michiru. They were Sailor Soldiers in the next season to come up, Sailor Moon S.
When the translation was finally done, they were changed to “cousins”.
It’s a joke, one that I happily will keep repeating because the official translation of Sailor Moon as done by DIC is HORRIBLE. When I was able to get the uncut, original version of Sailor Moon, I was amazed both with how much I had originally missed which I would have liked to see, as well as the fact that some of the cuts or translations were just…silly or off-topic.
And the Rest
Both shows have been around for ages, and as such, the botched translations or odd cuts are not the only thing bad about it. Ok, so for Sailor Moon, that part is pretty much the major bad part of the show, the fact that the only translation available for English is one made by DIC and one that is, for the most part, really hard to listen to because of some of the voicework. SMA (Sailor Moon Abridged) makes a point of really showcasing the problems of this, and I suggest you check it out if you were a fan of Sailor Moon and are rediscovering it. Dragonball had a semi-similar translation problem, but only because it and Sailor Moon fell into the era when translations of anime were mostly westernized, so some of the names are changed to fit a western viewpoint and some of the foods are also changed to be something they’re not.
If Sailor Moon’s bad point was the westernization and dumbing down of the storyline, the same thing happened to poor Dragonball, as the live-action big-budget Hollywood movie version was…
…look, I’ve seen it and was confused. I went with a friend (who is a fan of DBZ) and her main response was just ‘meh’, even with the addition of the “Kamehameshoruken” and having Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a bad guy that I recalled was somewhat a good guy and fell into the “redeemed a-holes” category.
But a lot of the bigger fans hated that movie with a passion, and some casual fans hated it because it was either trying too hard to be a high-school drama or didn’t do any Japanese actors a service by letting them play a young kid who is supposed to turn into a galactic space-monkey when the full moon comes out on a planet and who’s race was exterminated by a…thing…that no one is sure if it’s a boy or a girl, only that it’s evil and scary and had an odd voice (and I only heard LittleKuriboh’s version…hold on *to the internet!*)
……Ok, I see the reason for wondering and pants-wetting fear 
(and that was 16 SECONDS of this clip)
But beyond that, if Akira and it’s like were the beginning of young adults finding animations that could be watched and enjoyed, DBZ and Sailor Moon brought in the younger audience, and more importantly, brought in both boys and girls. With the success of both during the mid and early 90s, it allowed the break-in of Pokémon in 1998 and is still an important part of the anime culture. As well, both are going through a sort of second recovery period – with the release of Dragonball Z Kai, a reboot of the classic series, and with Funimation apparently owning the rights to Sailor Moon now and saying it might re-release and re-dub the WHOLE series, not just up to Sailor Moon SuperS, fans have something to look forward to for the future, and show that the original action shonen and pretty majou shojo are here to stay.
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