If you know this anime you get 10 geek points:
youtube link
It’s reeealy old. On top of that, if you watched the Italian dub, with subtitles or lector you get another 10 geek points – cause that’s how I seen it. This might actually be relatively easy if you were growing up in Poland in the late 80’s or early 90’s. You are bound to remember it cause it used to be pretty popular at the time. It appears to have also aired in Spain and Italy. No clue if it was ever shown in US…
Gigi la Trottola (originally Dashing Kappei) is actually a sports-comedy anime, in which the main character competes in various games such as basketball, ping-pong and etc, and totally wins everyone by developing devastating special moves. Oh and he is a perverted liltle midget with a pantie fetish. :P
Here is another anime from my childhood:
youtube link
Once again, Italian dub – just the way I used to watch it. I found the original somewhere on Youtube but the opening song is not even half as catchy, and it does not remind me of the good old days. :P
[tags]gigi la trottola, dashing kappei, chicho terremoto, yattaman, anime, classics[/tags]
nope definitely not aired in US, sadly. american anime fans are such newbs, they don’t know this anime!! I feel so sad for them.
Heh! So does knowing about this anime makes us totally old school or what?
luckily fansubs for this anime are finally out! get ’em. (english subs)
Link?
Having grown up in the US, shows like this never showed up at all. I often think guys in Italy my age had it best growing up in the 80’s and 90’s when this sort of thing was all over. I can only dream of what it might be like instead of the measly few shows that had came over like “Voltron”, “Star Blazers” and perhaps “Robotech”. Anime fandom back then was very small and often consisted of guys having found out through word-of-mouth or sci-fi conventions, leading to tape-trading circles and other costly measures to obtain any of it.
I can understand why you might favor the Italian themes more over the originals. Italy in particular seem to have often done many original themes rather than use the Japanese versions with Italian lyrics dubbed over (or left them alone as I’ve noticed a few had). Too often over here you’ll get the ‘purists’ whom would rather keep stuff alone and subtitle it rather than to waste money/time on dubbing them into English. Of course then you’ll get the guys who’ll scream bloody murder if they have to ‘read’ the cartoon in the end.
Did notice one webpage with about 9 episodes of the series available in Japanese with English subtitles (I assume this was probably the fansub mentioned earlier)….
http://www.crunchyroll.com/showseries?id=4526
Wow! Thanks for the link. The characters sound so different in the original Japanese version. I guess I was just used to the Italian dub because that’s what I grew up with. lol
[quote comment=”7847″]Wow! Thanks for the link. The characters sound so different in the original Japanese version. I guess I was just used to the Italian dub because that’s what I grew up with. lol[/quote]
Probably the case. I do wonder if there was any edits made to the show in Italy for that matter. If this show had aired in the states, they would’ve removed any scenes/references to Kapeii’s perversion/panty shots and just played him as a dumb kid or whatever. Not sure about the dog’s intentions to marry Akane since that could be viewed as “beastiality” by the soccer moms of America! :-)
Really, I still have to think guys my age who grew up with this stuff on Italian TV had it best 20-25 years ago. I hardly saw much of it over here as it either was on cable TV or sold as compilation features on home video. We never had it that great in the 80’s when so little of it showed up at all.
There’s one blog you might like to check out of one guy who’s been there and done that for over 30 years…
http://letsanime.blogspot.com/
Also of interest, a really good podcast on anime that should be given a listen to by everyone!
http://animeworldorder.blogspot.com/
As far as I can tell, all the panty obsession/dog stuff was in the show. Europe in general seems to have a healthier approach to this kind off stuff and better sense of humor I guess. Neither the Italian TV nor the Polish TV seemed to think that this was inappropriate.
Growing up in Poland we didn’t get much Anime either. What we got tricked down to us from Western Europe – mostly Itally it seems. This is how we got Kapei, Yattaman, Daimos and etc. We also had Sailor Moon and few other shojo titles that I wasn’t particularly into. :P For the most part we didn’t know it was “anime” and in many cases we did not realize these shows were actually Japanese.
The real interest in anime didn’t emerge till like second half of the 90’s. When I left the country and moved to US in late 90’s it was still pretty hard to get your hands on any recent/cult shows and movies. Around the same time Anime really exploded here in US and I was amazed that major video stores actually had a small isle for “japanimation”.
Kids these days have it much better when it comes to this stuff. Last time I checked cartoon network has more shonen you can shake a stick at. All heavily edited for content of course, but at least they are showing them.
And of course we have Adult Swim which airs the good stuff (Evangelion, Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, Ghost in the Shell and etc).
Probably one of the things I admire about Europe! Everything’s too conservative over here.
I guess it was much cheaper to deal with the French or Italian companies than to get it directly from Japan. I can understand why you might not have known about these show’s origins at all. One of the first that made it flat-out what it was over here was “Star Blazers” when that first aired (as the Japanese guys were credited along with the show’s original title at the end of every episode).
I remember those days fondly! Back when those tapes cost me a good month’s pay for two episodes a cassette!
I hardly watch any of it now.
Ditto for this too. I pretty much hardly watch anything new as I tend to favor the older stuff personally.