Growing Up with ROBOTS
BEFORE Megan Fox and the Transformers, there were the Mecha Robots from Japan. The seeds of this cartoon genre was planted in 1977 when manga artist Go Nagai created Mazinger Z.
The anime version was shown in Japan from 1972 to 1974. After its local run, it steadily spread throughout Asia (1979) and Europe (1980) and finally, the USA (1985) as “Tranzor Z”.
In the Philippines, we were quite ahead af the West in our exposure to Japanese anime. The Mecha Robots, a different one everyday, was shown every afternoon in GMA-7 right after coming home from grade school’s afternoon session (the “pang-hapon”); just before the top-rated soap opera “Ana Lisa” (with its Roberta Flack theme “If Ever I See You Again“).
Here’s every Filipino child’s TV schedule in 1979:
In September 1980, then President Ferdinand Marcos removed them from TV for “excessive violence”.
In the streets, Martial Law was raging.
Just maybe, he thought “excessive violence” in real life was enough.
(LJI)
scanned thoughts 