I used to wake up at like 4am when I was 6 years old just to watch this show. I didn’t know what anime was back then, and I haven’t heard this theme in like 16 years, but somehow I remembered the first line of it over all that time, so I googled it and found the song. This is unbelievably cool Please tell me I’m not the only one who thinks so
I fucking loved SatAm Sonic. Robotnik being an actually scary and capable villain just blew my mind. I loved that song too, though this is actually the first time I’ve listened to them while being able to understand English.
Soaring high in the sky,
He may be small but only in size,
Astroboy! Astroboy!
He is brave, and gentle, and wise!
Odd timing there, Hades, I just finished up a paper for a popular culture class about my experiences with Japanese media influeces growing up, starting with Astroboy.
The ending song always stood out too, but less so for the lyrics and more for the individual frames of Astroboy’s animation going by one by one. And then he, like, flies through colors… and then space, for some reason.
Also, related to Sonic. Stick with the video, it gets to SatAM in the second half. I watched that while it was on too, right up to the freakin’ cliffhanger ending.
Ironically, I missed seeing Astro Boy as a kid despite being old enough; the show was aired here (in Spanish) but on a channel that didn’t reach my area. Boy have we come a long way from those days! I did see the later (color) series, tho.
Ahahaha, man, that other cartoon was fucking insane. It was like the G-Rated version of an acid trip, though I did like the four chapters revolving around the Chaos Emeralds. Ironically, it was aired in full like a billion times here while we only got a few chapters of SatAm.
I’m still bitter about that. Then again, the voice acting we got was a lot better than yours, thankfully.
Ah yeah, I’ve heard of that new CGI Astroboy movie coming this year. Hopefully it’ll fare better than Dragonball did. At least the character designs look right; the big-nosed poofy-haired scientist, for instance, he was called different things in the 1980’s show depending on the dub, Professor Peabody (Canadian), Dr. Elefun (American), and Ochanomizu (literally: tea water) in the original.
Though I kinda dislike how Astro is acting like every spunky young male animated hero ever from the past few years. But hey, it might not be so bad.
I always hated the first Sonic cartoon, so so much. Which pissed me off because it was rerun in syndication for ages, While I never got to see the SatAM version after it was cancelled. I could never find it. Oh, and don;t get me started on Sonic Underground.
the second Sonic cartoon was much better, better animated and with more serious plotlines. The first one was in the same vein as the various Mario Brothers cartoons, which is to say it was mostly silly.
EDIT: the trailer posted is from the second one… is that the one you didn’t like, Valkyrie?
Speaking of which, critiquing children’s cartoons is starting to make me feel mostly silly.
What? No. I thought it was clear - the first Sonic cartoon was the shitty one with just Sonic and Tails against a retarded Robotnik, seen Here.. THe second was the one Crotanks posted, which was awesome. Sonic Underground, the one I posted, was the third.
Side note? I think that it was only in the saturday mornign cartoons that Sonic ever managed to get a clear win over Mario, in terms of quality.
Yeah have to agree with you there Val, that first Sonic cartoon, was just awful.
Of course I never realised that when I was a kid, seeing it for the first time. But everytime I’ve seen it since, it just makes me cringe.
The third one, of god, just why did Sonic have sibling? And why were they a band? It makes no sense.
The second one was clearly the best of the lot, and of course sod’s law it is the one that was cancelled.
I got up 7am or earlier on Saturdays in the early 90s to watch the Dragon Warrior anime way back when. Probably my first exposure to the medium.
There was also something years later that we would label generic sci-fi anime #3243 nowadays. It started with a guy falling to earth and making a crater, where he’s found naked by humans. Later on a “twin” of his who’s with the aliens shows up. I don’t remember much more, other than that this was the first time I’d seen the idea of a space-launch ramp visuallized.
It’s stuff like this that reinforces the fact that there isn’t shit on TV anymore as far as Saturday morning cartoons are concerned. I remember waking up 7am just to catch early cartoons and stuff…nowadays, there’s nothing worth watching.
Makes me wish they’d show stuff like the old TMNT cartoons or the SatAm Sonic. Monkey Magic was also up there, but it had some crazy plotline shit going on there.
Of course, Astroboy and Unico were made by Osamu Tezuka, who also made Kimba, the White Lion.
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Which Disney thought they had the rights to when the made the Lion King but made last-minute changes to make it no-longer a Kimba movie but refuse to acknowledge… (Kimba was originally shown in the 60’s but was rerun a lot in the 80s too)
Wasn’t Pluto that big blue robot with the horns that went around killing the most powerful robots in the world in that two-parter? Sweet. Those are probably the only episodes I really remember from Astroboy.
Geez, I remember having nightmares about that robot when I was, like, 5. Pluto was badass.
Man, that takes me back. I couldn’t even make out the words to the song back then.
What I do remember is wondering how Astroboy could ‘fly’ underwater. There was a scene in the opening(?) sequence where he would fly into the water and his flaming jets would turn into bubbles and he’d move through it like it was air.
Astroboy became less innocent for me when he defeated Pluto by melting off his arms with his jets.
Please tell me I’m not the only one who thinks so 
Boy have we come a long way from those days! I did see the later (color) series, tho.