Cartoons and Manga in my childhood

When I was very young, I was brought up in Hong Kong. The television stations there used to play some brilliant Japanese cartoons / manga (all dubbed into Chinese, of course), and recently I have been doing a search on the internet for the various cartoons that I can remember.... Here I am introducing you to a few of my all-time favourites - these are all original Japanese versions but have got English subtitles:


(1) Doraemon

The cartoonist for this rather brilliant Japanese cartoon is Fujiko Fujio (his real name is Hiroshi Fujimoto). Doraemon is a mechanical cat from the 22nd century, but lives in the 20th century with Nobita, a rather timid and clumsy boy.... There's a pocket in front of Doraemon, where various useful (or useless, depending on how you see it) gadgets are stored and would come out.



(2) Galaxy Express 999

An absolute favourite.... The setting of this manga is futuristic, and it's about a train journey (Galaxy Express 999) for a young boy called Tetsuro and his female "guardian angel" Maetel. Tetsuro's goal is to get a mechanical body so that he can become immortal. Each episode is like a stop at a particular planet and the adventure that Tetsuro and Maetel would embark upon. It really captures my imagination at the time (can you imagine me playing with my lego train set, pretending that it's Galaxy Express 999 train flying off?)

Here's the very first episode of this cartoon in three parts.

(3) Dr Slump

If you think The Simpsons was ground-breaking at the time with adult jokes etc for a cartoon, think again. Dr Slump was way ahead of its time - it's about a mad inventor (Dr Slump) who thinks that he's handsome and intelligent (in fact he is short and fat) and his robotic girl (Arale) who has unlimited power and energy but completely naive. Here is the first episode in two parts:

Part 1:



Part 2:



(4) Q-Taro

Created by the same cartoonist as Doraemon, Q-Taro is a ghost that is rather useless and also ends up making a mess of things in life. Many of the characters in this cartoon share marked resemblance to the ones in Doraemon. The only video I can find on this one seems to be the opening theme song in Japanese.