Shocking news for fans of Fujiko F. Fujio’s (or Shin-Ei’s, TV Asahi’s as well) animation masterpiece Doraemon. This past November the show was removed from Canal Panda.
Tudo por Animes em PT-PT says that the show is now unavailable to air on the channel. We now know the reason why: Cartoon Network Portugal, through the synergies of Boing Spain, grabbed the rights to air it.
For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a (long) historical overview:
(Black-and-white photograph of what seems to be an episode where Sewashi, Nobita’s future son, appears)
Doraemon’s first manga issue was published on September 3rd, 1969. The first television adaptation aired on Nippon Television (where available, other areas with no NTV station got it on other stations and hours or days after the original airings) but was unsuccessful and had 26 pairs of episodes. This anime was produced by Tokyo Movie Shinsha and animated by Nihon Hoso Eigasha. The show continued in reruns on individual commercial television stations like Hiroshima Home Television (which has the same network as the 1979 and 2005 adaptations) in 1975, RKK in Kumamoto in 1977/78, and T34/BBT (Toyama Television) in 1979. Fujiko F. Fujio was so angry and sent a letter to Toyama Television and stopped airing it by the ninth episode. In 1980, Nippon Television officially announced that they could no longer sell the show to local stations.
In 1979, TV Asahi premiered a successful adaptation of Doraemon (the picture above comes from an early episode). It became Shin-Ei’s most popular property and is TV Asahi’s most popular anime.
Doraemon arrived to Spain on December 23rd, 1993, thanks to Luk Internacional’s licensing and subsequent airing through various autonomous television stations. This dub was distributed by Telemadrid, which was, in turn, the first station to air the anime. The show was also dubbed into Galician, Basque and Catalan through autonomous stations that were broadcasting in their language. In turn, the dub premiered nationally through TVE 2 and Canal Panda.
It was also via Canal Panda that Portugal discovered the anime in Spanish, subtitled in Portuguese.
Meanwhile, Canal Panda closed down in Spain, a new dub was made at a Basque studio (Mar Digital) and CN ES got pay TV rights that were relinquished once Canal Panda left the Spanish market. Oh, and RTP 1 aired Doraemon around 2002, with a dub which, according to Desenhos Animados Esquecidos, had references to Pedro Abrunhosa, Jaiko was called Gigantina like the old Spanish dub and Doraemon was pronounced “Doremon”.
2005 led to the premiere of a new anime, also on TV Asahi, at the same time as the 1979 version got for at least a decade by then. The anime seems to be a remake of the 1979 version, with longer episodes. For example: there is an episode where Giant enters a TV studio (and Doraemon wants to make Giant appear singing in a professional way at 3am). In the 1979 show it lasted ten minutes while in the 2005 show it lasted twenty minutes. It also has scenes that aren’t shown in the original.
I started to get into Doraemon again by the end of 2009, but I only catched it at the 23:30 timeslot on Canal Panda (which was followed by Ninja Hattori and Kiteretsu before it closed down at 01:00) very rarely at 07:00, but the last lot of episodes seemed to be a salad composed of short telemovies, two-parters, the last few episodes of the 1979 show, some 80s episodes and a few episodes of the 2005 anime. When (Panda) Biggs launched on December 1st, 2009, the 2005 version (also in Spanish with subtitles) was one of the shows they had on offer at launch, but was removed due to unknown reasons. Was the 2005 version deemed unpopular with the Portuguese audience? That’s at least my theory.
In February of 2010, Canal Panda premiered 2112: The Birth of Doraemon, the last known premiere of Doraemon in Spanish on Portuguese screens. This seemed to mark the death knell for Doraemon on Portuguese screens.
Eventually, in the very start of 2011, Canal Panda brought the show back from the scheduling limbo, but this time with a completely new Portuguese dub. A few netizens in recent years complained about the lack of the Spanish version and want it back (just like the netizens that want CN HQ back).
Then in April of 2011, the show was removed again, then it returned, removed, returned, removed, returned before it disappeared without any announcement at all.
In July of 2014, an English dub produced by TV Asahi and Bang Zoom! Entertainment debuted on Disney XD. This version is highly “Americanized” and seems to be a slight deconstruction of the Japanese product. They tried to bring the anime to the US in the mid 80s but it was considered “too ethnically Japanese”.
Now we know the reason why: as stated at the start of the post, the show has moved to CN PT. There are a few mysteries involved: will the second audio track be in Spanish or (least likely) Japanese? Will the version be 1979 or 2005 (which was never dubbed)? Will the channel abuse of it like Boing ES, airing the movies every week? Will we get a new dub? When will it air? Only time will tell. Will keep you all updated.
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