Welcome!

Remember the early 2000s? Ah, that wonderful time when most of us didn’t have Internet (and those who did had to be content with download speeds of about 10-15kb/s), so we had to trade and organize CDs if we wanted to exchange anything; when Lindsay Lohan didn’t need to sue a popular videogame in order to be relevant and when Stephanie Anderson was the coolest kid in the class for being the first who had a flip phone with a camera? Crazy times, I know! If you, like me, were a kid during that time, then you might remember that literally the only way we could get any kind of entertainment was to sit on our butts every Saturday morning and watch cartoons. And boy, did we get some AWESOME cartoons at that time – “Samurai Jack”, “Justice League”, Teen Titans”, “Clone Wars”, “Fairly OddParents”, friggin’ “Avatar: The Last Airbender”, man! So many classic cartoons that are still remembered fondly to this day as some of the best of all time were made in the early 2000s! But honestly, while I agree that all of these are AMAZING, I didn’t really watch most of them when they aired. Instead, my favorite cartoon was a little show by the name of “Knights of the Zodiac”.

You see, back in the early 2000s a whole lot of Japanese anime were being localized and aired overseas. The trend actually started in the mid-1990s with shows like “Sailor Moon” and “DragonBall Z”, but arguably peaked a few years later when “Yu-Gi-Oh!” became an international sensation, prompting Konami to defictionalize the card game depicted on the show, start selling the actual cards and make a whole lot of money in the process. Suddenly everyone wanted a piece of the pie, and quite a lot of anime were localized for airing in the States, such as “The Cardcaptors” (“Cardcaptor Sakura” in Japan), “Shaman King”, “Cyborg 009”, “Naruto” and so many more. One of the least successful ones was “Knights of the Zodiac”. It told the story of a young martial artist named Seiya who, alongside his group of friends, was tasked with protecting the incarnation of the goddess Athena. And it was AWESOME! I absolutely fell in love with this show – it had colorful animation, excellent fighting scenes and a ridiculous storyline that made no sense, but who cares, I was a kid!

Years later, I actually discovered that “Knights of the Zodiac” was way bigger in Japan than it ever got around here. “Saint Seiya”, as was its original title, aired for far longer in Japan than it did in the US, and it also had a lot more complex storyline and characters now that it wasn’t dumbed down for American audiences. And, much to my surprise, it was way better than I remembered it! That experience of rediscovering “Saint Seiya” made me think about what other anime from Japan may have been butchered for its American release, and also what other series from that time period people remember fondly. That’s why I decided to create this blog in order to talk about anime-related stuff like that. I can’t tell you exactly what I’ll put on here, and what you can expect from me, because I’ll mostly be making it up as I go along, but I hope that you enjoy it nonetheless!