When / How did you become an Astro fan?

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Tetsuwan Penguin
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When / How did you become an Astro fan?

Postby Tetsuwan Penguin » 10 years ago

I was almost 11 years old when Astro Boy first aired in NYC (I think on channel 5). Being a nerdy weakling who wasn't good at sports, I got picked on a bit in school, and I fantasized having Astro as friend. Back then being a fan of any TV show was a lonely thing, there wasn't any Internet, no fan conventions. It was all marketing and merchandise. Sometimes merchants would form a 'fan club', but these were just gimmicks to promote advertising for fan merchandise. Today things are so different, its easy for fandom to thrive and people to meet others with the same interests.

So when the show went off the air I moved on to other interests (Star Trek, Space 1999, Dr. Who, etc) and pushed Astro into the back of my mind. I did find out as a kid that Astro was an import from Japan. I had an Uncle who worked for Panasonic, and he made one or two business trips to Japan a year. He sometimes brought stuff back, and I vaguely remember seeing a manga book at his house with Astro's picture on the cover with the English title "Mighty Atom", and most everything else in Japanese.

I never ran into the 1980 Astro TV series. I don't know if it was on network TV or only carried on Cable. By then I had graduated college and I was working in South Florida for a computer related firm. I had cable TV, but never saw listings for the show. Maybe it was on early morning Saturdays in the Kids show slots, which I didn't even scan anymore. (There was one Kid's show on Nick that DID catch my eye called "The mysterious cities of gold" which had a very strong SciFi theme to it. I'd like to find a DVD collection for this one).

Then one day I saw the coming attractions in the theater for the 2009 Astro Boy movie. I hadn't thought about the 1963 anime in years, but the instant I saw the first few seconds of that promo it all came back in a flash! A search of the Internet later brought back tons of information that I had never known. I found videos on YouTube (Someone with the user name "mushroom of doom" or something like that, had posted the entire 104 episodes on Youtube, that must have taken him or her forever!) I also learned about Osmau Tezuka (I never knew who had created Astro back then, although Tezuka was listed in the credits). I quickly became a fan of the "Manga God", and I've searched the interlibrary loan link on the net to borrow as many of his works that were available in English, both in print and DVD. Hulu had both the 1980 and 2003 versions of the anime up on their free site for a while.

So that's my fan story. What's yours?
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Earthshine
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Postby Earthshine » 10 years ago

Interesting story. It's a bit like mine without such a large time lapse. I was only 5 when I was first introduced to the 1980s Astro Boy in 1993, at the time I was obsessed with Megaman and robots in general (still am) so I really gravitated to Atom. I stopped watching it I think when I was 8 because of some reason or another (I can't remember if I watched the series on VHS tapes or if it was on cable...) and pushed him out of my mind.

Then I saw on Cartoon Network the 2003 version and felt so nostalgic I had to watch it (I couldn't for a while because for some reason my cable company had its rating as M and my mother had a parental block for all M rated material... wonder what that was about). Ever since then I have been a fan. It was only the last two years that I managed to buy the ultra box sets of the 1960s anime, and am very pleased to have been able to buy the 1980s versions as well as the 2003 versions as well.

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Postby ASTROBUDDY » 10 years ago

What is interesting is that while I watched "Astro Boy" on TV back in the sixties on channel 5 in NYC, (To Tetsuwan Penguin, Hello, neighbor!) it was in the eighties when I started making the rounds of sci-fi and comic book conventions that I really got into Astro Boy fandom and Astro Boy collecting. J

ust so you'll know the 1980s Astroboy, while popular in countries like Australia and Canada, not so much in the US, being only broadcast on a miniscule number of UHF stations like WTGI in Philadelphia in the mid 1980s.

This website has been a great source of Astro Boy info from such members as JeffBert and Doctor Frag. "Catch the Future"!

I :heart: :astro: :D

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AprilSeven
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Postby AprilSeven » 10 years ago

And I'm the third person who was watching Astro on Channel 5 back in 1964 - Tetsuwan Penguin . . . were you a member of the class of '71 too? :lol:

And I know one of our newer members - salotreup - was also a NYC guy who saw the original series, "back in day!"

I was also unaware of the 80's and 03 series until I arrived here :p

Now I thoroughly enjoy myself being a late-blooming :astro: fan girl!! :lol:
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Postby Sporkia » 10 years ago

It's neat to see so many people who've seen the 60s series in it's original run! Alas, being only 17, I unfortunately can't say the same. XD My journey with Astro is a long, mildly amusing one though.

I first discovered Astro when I was about 9 or 10 via my friend, who owned Astro Boy: Omega Factor. I only ever saw him play it once, but he was telling me about the 2003 anime (I didn't have cable at the time so I never actually got to see it on TV) and I thought it sounded really cool. After that day, I'm pretty sure he never brought it up again and Astro drifted out of my memory.

It wouldn't be until years later when I was in middle school that Astro became relevant again. Around that time, my parents were finally letting me stay up later and watch adult shows, and that's when I saw the 60s series on adult swim. I found out they were going to play a marathon, and being that I had to get my hands on literally every anime-related thing I could find, I was really gung-ho about watching it. (I was also excited to know that I would be watching the "first" anime, though I don't remember how I actually found that out. :I) When I watched it, it was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. I fell instantly in love. Unfortunately, I only got to watch maybe the first 5 episodes before I had to go to bed (my parents wouldn't let me stay up too late back then, don'cha know. :D ) and I don't recall seeing too much of it after that marathon.

Then, some time later, long before there were any mentions or previews for it, our local theater had a poster for the Astro Boy movie up. Well, my sister and I were driving by in her car, and when I saw the poster, I was so surprised that I let slip a rather loud "Holy [Family-Unfriendly Expletive]!" Apparently, my sister thought something was wrong so she slammed down the brakes as hard as she could, turned to me, and was just like "What!?" To which I responded in utter joy "They're making an Astro Boy movie!" Needless to say, she was upset. Even today she says she could still shoot me for scaring her like that. :lol:

Well, after what felt like forever, the Astro Boy movie finally came out, and I went to go see it by myself. I didn't remember much of the source material when I watched it, but I liked the movie anyway. However, I wanted to compare it to the original series in order to get a more grounded opinion, so I went to youtube and found it. I spent a good month or so marathoning the series. Along the way, I discovered the 80s and 2003 series and was more than happy to find out they existed because hey, that meant more Astro Boy. And you can bet your behinds I marathoned those too.

Fun Fact: I didn't know that this forum (and the fandom) existed until during my marathoning of the 2003 series, I found one of jeffbert's threads (It was the one for The Devil's Balloon, to be exact~) while googling to find out whatever happened to Cobalt. :rolleyes:

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Postby Tetsuwan Penguin » 10 years ago

"AprilSeven" wrote:And I'm the third person who was watching Astro on Channel 5 back in 1964 - Tetsuwan Penguin . . . were you a member of the class of '71 too? :lol:
:

I graduated HS in 1970.
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Postby Shiyonasan » 10 years ago

Interesting seeing all of the New Yorkers on here who grew up watching Astro Boy in the '60s. :)

As for me, I was first introduced to Astro Boy in 2004 through the '03 anime when it aired on Toonami. Fun fact: I actually disliked the show after watching a couple episodes. I believe the reason I didn't watch it was because of the dub voices, which is interesting to say because I was fairly young at the time.

I didn't come back to Astro Boy until January 2011 when a good friend of mine and I watched Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Scott Pilgrim wears a shirt with Atom's face on it during one of the scenes; I don't remember which scene it was. For some reason, this sparked my interest in Astro Boy, and I began looking up Astro Boy on the internet.

In February 2011, I began watching the 2003 anime and also found this site after being curious if there was an Astro Boy forum. Indeed, there was, and I quite liked it. I lurked for about a month, then decided to join in March 2011. As they say, the rest is history.

I'm not part of many forums, but this one impressed me due to the hospitality of the members on here. Sure, there's some troublemakers now and then, but this forum generally has some of the nicest people you will meet on the internet. If it weren't for this forum and the members in it, I wouldn't be an Astro Boy fan today. It still amazes me that I'm even a moderator on this forum now, when just two-and-a-half short years ago, I was just getting into the series.

Anyway, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. :p

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StargazerLili
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Postby StargazerLili » 10 years ago

All your stories sound so cool!

I first found out about Astro Boy through the translated Dark Horse Manga in 2008. Volume 1 was in my high school library’s manga section, and awkward freshman me decided to check it out (along with a few others). Somehow I ended up leaving my pile of books on the kitchen table and my mom causally looked them over. She saw the Astro Boy one and asked me where I had gotten it. I asked her why that one stood out to her and she said “Oh, this used to be a TV show back when I was little. Really little. My brothers used to watch this and Speed Racer whenever it came on.” I had no idea it was that old, so I went onto Youtube and searched ‘Astro Boy 1960’. I only found a few episodes, quality wasn't great but they were fun nonetheless.

I ended up getting into different series, movies, and shows because it wasn't until August 2011 that I found Astro Boy again. At the time I only vaguely knew of the 2009 movie, but I had decided that I would watch the older episodes first before I watched the movie (at the time I thought the manga and the 60’s series were the only ones that existed), and I set out to find it on Netflix. Of course Netflix didn’t have it, but they did have one that was dated from 2003, and I decided to give that one a try. The dubbed voices and the mixed up order of the episodes almost turned me off of the 2003 series, but the more episodes I watched, the more into it I got.

Then I tried to watch the movie. I tried, but I had to stop watching after about 20 minutes. It really wasn’t for me.

In April/May of 2012 I found the short film “The Secret of Atom’s Birth” on Youtube. It was all in Japanese, but I still had a basic idea of what was going on. I tried to find out more about it but all the sites over on wikia.com had nothing on it. I finally found the summary of it on this site here, and ended up lurking the main site and the forums the entire summer until I finally joined last September.
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Postby Prettywitchiusaka » 10 years ago

I think I've talked about this before. But, what the heck? I don't mind sharing it again.

One of my favourite internet critics is Hope Chapman/Jesuotaku. She's moved onto other video projects, but at the time, she was specifically doing anime reviews. Around this time about two years ago, she did a review of the more recent Phoenix anime.

Now this might sound like it doesn't relate, but what matters is that her review is what got me interested in Tezuka. I've always had an affinity for media history, so naturally, it was a match made in heaven. So since I was stuck at home with nothing to do (I didn't have a job at the time), I decided to dive into some Tezuka, and began searching youtube for a Tezuka anime that would catch my attention. As it turns out, the only one that interested me was the Toonami promos I saw for the 2003 Astro Boy series.

So after I got home from vacation that year, and I sat down and watched the 2003 series before resuming classes for the fall, and the rest (as they say) is history!

To this day, I still credit Jesuotaku for indirectly getting me interested in this franchise.

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Juanita
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Postby Juanita » 10 years ago

I remembered seeing the 2003 anime on tv when I was younger, so I decided to watch the different animes again.
It's pretty lame. I know.


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