T5W#394-Top 5 Saturday Morning Cartoon Anime

In an age where every Anime on the planet can be streamed at our leisure, it’s easy to forget how rare it was to watch Anime back in the day.  Before Toonami really took off, there were the early Saturday Morning Cartoon schedules that gave young fans their very first taste of Anime to go along with their bowels of milk and cereal.  I can definitely remember being up just before the crack of dawn to catch shows that only aired in a 6am time slot on Saturday morning before enjoying the more heavily promoted mainstream titles later on.  It’s one of the reasons why I love checking out an early morning screening Saturdays at Katsucon after I eat breakfast down by the fountains, it really makes me feel like a kid discovering his first Anime.  Having relived some of those good feelings while watching Samurai Pizza Cats at Katsucon 2023, I figured I’d take today to talk about my Top 5 Saturday Morning Cartoon Anime.  Most are obvious choices (#1 for certain).  But maybe there’s a title or two that you may have forgotten aired on US airwaves back in the day on a day when instead of sleeping in after a long school week, we just wanted to watch the latest and greatest we had from the Anime world.  Anyway, enough rambling, let’s get to it.

 
#5-Escaflowne

Yep, believe it or not The Vision of Escaflowne’s first major exposure to Western audiences was through a very brief run on Fox Kids back in 2000, where it was shortened to just “Escaflowne”…and it wasn’t the greatest run to be sure.  It was heavily edited to focus more on the Mecha Action side of things rather than the love story between Van and Hitomi and Fox Kids even skipped the entire first episode altogether.  The glorious music of Yoko Kanno was also replaced in several sections ALTHOUGH the Dance of Curse theme that everyone associates with Escaflowne was still there at least.  This show might’ve been a victim of the strict US Broadcast guidelines from back in the day but nevertheless, this is still how I discovered Escaflowne right after I’d been introduced to Gundam Wing.  High flying fantasy mecha action with Giant Robots swinging massive swords?  How could I not get hooked?

 
#4-Yu Gi Oh

Ok so I’m not the biggest Yu Gi Oh fan and I was kind of growing out of its demographic and moving into the more assorted choices of Toonami.  But I’m not blind.  I remember how big of a deal Yu Gi Oh was when it first dropped in late 2001 on Kids WB.  The characters, the theme song, the dub, the entire concept of Dual Monsters, this show took the nation by storm in a way not seen since the very beginnings of Pokemon.  Personally, I think the Card Game took off to far greater heights than the TV show inspired by it.  But the Anime is still beloved by many, along with its many spin offs.  Yet the King of the Franchsie, and Games, will always be the leather pants sporting Yami Yugi and his Brooklyn accented posse. 

 
#3-Digimon

Speaking of Pokemon rivals, I can say without embarrassment that there was a time when I was into Digimon a lot more than Pokemon.  Something about the story, characters, concept and how the Digivolutions worked just struck a cord with me.  Digimon felt bigger and badder than Pokemon and was actually a far more darker and mature series than Pokemon.  Not to mention it had huge stakes with the fates of two worlds constantly hanging in the balance.  Digimon was one of the first big, epic, multi episode arc spanning Anime since Dragon Ball Z that really got me hooked.  While the First Season is the one fans often gravitate to, I did watch through Season Three aka Digimon Tamers and really enjoyed the heck out it.  Still, Tai and Augumon and the first Digidestined are still some of my favorite Saturday Morning Heroes and Heroines.  Now, cue that freaking catch as hell theme song.
 

#2-Pokemon

I mean we had to talk about this one eventually right?  While it eventually became a weekday affair with reruns, catching brand new episodes of Pokemon on Saturday Mornings was required weekly viewing.  It helps that the games were still mega popular and there were tons of big events and twists to keep us coming back: the birth of Togepi, Ash’s first Pokemon League Tournament, that episode that teased Mewtwo before Pokemon: The First Movie, the sad (but temporary) departure of Brock.  Sure we all sat down at lunch to throwdown with the cards or the video games but everyone always had to talk about the last big episode.  In fact, there was only one other mega hit Anime on this same level of weekly importance…you all knew it was coming…
 

#1-Dragon Ball Z

Saturday Morning, 930am-1030am.  THIS WAS…the place to be.  This is where it all started.  Sitting in the kitchen every Saturday Morning running through either the Namek Saga or the Tree of Might Miniseries.  This is where I met Goku (after meeting him briefly when Dragon Ball aired a couple of years prior), Vegeta, Piccolo, Krillin, Gohan and Frieza.  This is where I whinned when we reached the end of the Namek Saga only to restart because the rest of the series hadn’t been dubbed yet.  Dragon Ball Z was a huge deal to me and introduced me to Anime as a whole, showing me larger than life action sequences and story arcs that still make me grin ear to ear when they come to mind.  It’s also because of the limited showings of episodes that I had to track down the VHS collections of the Saiyan Saga and discover the movies too.  And it all started with one epic announcement every Saturday morning, “Stand by for Dragon…Ball…Z…coming next,” followed by one of THE BEST US THEME SONGS FOR AN ANIME EVER!!! Seriously, listen to “Rock the Dragon” and try not to get hyped to kick some serious ass.