alternatehistory.com

Anime (Japanese animation) has been airing for years in the USA; viewers just didn't recognize it for what it was. In the 1960s, we had Astro Boy, Speed Racer, Gigantor and Kimba the White Lion airing on US television. The second wave came in the late 1970s with Star Blazers and Battle of the Planets; it would really explode in the 1980s with works like Voltron, Robotech, Saber Rider & the Star Sheriffs, Maple Town, Mysterious Cities of Gold, etc. Anime didn't go mainstream until the mid-to-late 1990s when Sailor Moon, Dragonball and Dragonball Z along with various reruns on Cartoon Network's Toonami of Robotech and Voltron helped. The groundwork for that was set in the early 1990s with teenagers and college students being into imported video of series like Ranma 1/2, Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku, etc.

I'm still trying to understand why anime did not go mainstream any sooner. It actually did catch on in some other countries like Italy, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands (anime series were broadcast there, many of which still are unknown in the US even today) and so on.

So now we come to the big questions:

1. WHY did anime not go mainstream any sooner than the mid-to-late 1990s in the US? Money? Cultural differences? Skepticism of television executives, home video companies, etc?

2. What would it take for anime to go mainstream earlier in Eagleland? Say, the early 1990s or even the 1980s?
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