Ask John: What Was Anime on American TV Like Before Dragonball Z?

Question:
Based solely on my own recollection, anime seemed to begin its “explosion” onto the mainstream with the broadcast of Dragonball Z on Cartoon Network, back in 1998/99. Do you recall what broadcasts or viewing of anime was like before that period?

Answer:
I think that as a result of their resentment toward Dragonball Z, and particularly its mainstream success, many American anime fans are loathe to give the show its due credit. While there were numerous anime series broadcast on American television prior to Dragonball Z, it is Dragonball Z that’s most responsible for causing the explosion of interest in anime in mainstream American culture.

Influential earlier broadcasts including Speed Racer, Kimba, Gigantor, and Astro Boy in the 1960s first introduced American television viewers to Japanese animation. 1970s broadcasts of Battle of the Planets and Star Blazers created some of America’s first serious anime fans, but didn’t create a mainstream American demand for Japanese animation. In the 1980s and early 90s, Robotech, Voltron, Teknoman, and Dragon Warrior aroused a lot of interest in Japanese animation among select viewers and led to the establishment of America’s earliest anime exclusive translating companies, like Streamline and US Renditions. Dragonball and Sailor Moon both premiered on American television in 1995. Neither title was a smash hit on American television in spite of efforts by FUNimation, DIC, and affiliated toy companies to turn both franchises into pop culture hits. Sailor Moon seemed to fare slightly better than Dragonball, but both shows were heavily edited for America, targeted at preadolescent viewers, and were aired in timeslots that made watching them troublesome for many viewers.

Dragonball Z premiered on mainstream broadcast television the following year, but it wasn’t until the show relocated onto the Cartoon Network in late 1998 that it turned into the sensation that it is now. I suspect that the show’s broadcast on the Cartoon Network may have helped legitimize it, and expose it to viewers. When Dragonball Z was aired on syndicated broadcast TV, it aired at odd or varying times, and was, I think, often overlooked by many potential viewers. The Cartoon Network turned the show into a featured program, which made it easily available to viewers, and turned it into a high profile program that attracted attention. Unlike Sailor Moon, which was heavily skewed toward girls, and earlier dramatic series like Robotech and Dragon Warrior, which demanded that viewers carefully follow the series’ story, Dragonball Z was a program what was both appealing and easy to watch. Dragonball Z had a cast of characters that viewers could easily appreciate. It’s story developed in such a way that it was easy to come into the series at any time. And unlike Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z didn’t feel embarrassing for many male viewers to watch because it was a masculine action oriented show.

While there was anime available on American television prior to the Cartoon Network’s debut of Dragonball Z, it was too sporadic and isolated to reach a mainstream proliferation point. Series before Dragonball Z either reached too small of an audience, or weren’t shows that appealed to a wide audience. When the Cartoon Network began airing Dragonball Z, everything simply fell into place. Considering that there had been anime on American television for 30 years prior, it’s inevitable that eventually one show would “click.” Dragonball Z just happened to be that one show. Pokemon also premiered on American television in 1998, and we all know how successful it became, but Dragonball Z deserves credit for introducing mainstream America to the idea of animated cartoons with realistic content including characters with complex personalities and realistic violence (by which I mean human characters actually inflicting physical violence upon other human characters). Pokemon caught on and fueled American interest in Japanese animation, but Dragonball Z was the program that made mainstream American television viewers realize that Japanese animation was fundamentally different from American animation.