Jordan News

Earlier this summer, Saudi Arabia released its first feature-length anime co-produced with Japanese studio Toei Animation.

The journey, which took three years to complete and is set in pre-Islamic Arabia, is a retelling of Aksum’s conquest of Mecca by King Abraha, who ruled southern Arabia, now Yemen.

The film brings together the country’s cultural arm, the MiSK Foundation, and one of Japan’s most famous animators, who previously worked on shows such as Grendizer, Dragon Ball Z, and One Piece.

Previous co-producers also created the animated series, (The Woodcutter’s Treasure) in 2018 and are working on Folk Tales of the Future, which takes place in the year 2050 in the new city of NEOM.

This is not the first time that Middle Eastern studios have delved into the world of animation. The Torkaizer series was created by Abu Dhabi-based Alter Ego Productions in 2013.

Turkey has also developed its own domestic anime scene, hosting 30 creative studios and releasing many feature films annually.

The trend in original animation production reflects the broad appeal of Japanese animation, stretching back decades.

In this report, we show you some of the offers that have left their mark in the region:

Grendizer
UFO Robot Grendizer, more commonly known as Grendizer, was one of the most popular anime series in the Arab world in the 1980s. The third installment in the Mazinger trilogy (preceded by Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger), the series was voted as the second most popular cartoon in the Middle East in a 2019 YouGov poll.

The story takes place in Japan, and begins on a distant planet called Floyd. The main character of the show, Duke Fleed, must leave his home when he is attacked by the neighboring planet Vega.

Fleeing to Earth, Escape lands on Mount Fuji in Japan with his Grendizer spacecraft that can also transform into a giant robot. Herb meets a cute scientist named Dr. Omon Jinzo, who adopts him and renames him Daisuke.

But Daisuke’s arrival on Earth does not guarantee his safety, as he is tracked down by the alien king of Vega, and his vegetarian army (not the food type) is in hot pursuit. Here, Daisuke and Grendizer fight to protect Earth while trying to keep their alien identity a secret.

The 74-episode show, created in 1975 by Japanese manga artist Go Nagai, is said to symbolize Japan’s post-WWII standing in the world. The show “represents the exorcism of Japan’s imperial past by portraying it as a victim of extraterrestrial violence (and) a celebration of Japanese technological progress,” wrote Marco Pelletieri, in his 2009 paper: Nippon ex Machina: Japanese Postwar Identity in Robot anime and the case of the UFO Robo Grendizer .

The series, dubbed into Standard Arabic, by Lebanese actor Jihad al-Atrash, was first shown in the Middle East on Lebanon’s Lebanese TV in the 1980s. Soon it was broadcast throughout the region.

“Everyone knows Grendizer,” said Lebanese painter, writer and director Fadi Baqi, and called the cartoon “the glue that binds the Arab world together” before explaining its importance. Using the same Arabic language – fighting the invaders who were coming – but on TV, the good guys win.”

Jordanian Amer Mango remembers watching the program on Saudi state television during the family lunch with his younger sister.

However, Mango, a Japan-based sports management consultant, says his memories of the show were bittersweet because they are mixed with his memories of the Iraqi invasion of neighboring Kuwait and the subsequent Gulf War.

“We were living in Olaya, in Riyadh at the time, and whenever there were rockets fired from the Iraqis, we would hear sirens and rush to nearby shelters – so while we were watching the Grendizer battles, we also feel a real fight going on.”

The character returns this year in the form of a new video game.

Captain Majid (Captain Tsubasa)
Captain Majid is an 11-year-old boy who dreams of playing professional football and finally achieving his ambition.

In the show, which was originally created in 1983, main character Tsubasa Oozora often faces the “bad guys” on opposing teams, but he always finds a way to beat them using his skills on the ball.

When the show was exported to the Middle East in 1990, Tsubasa’s name was changed to Majid, apparently after the famous Saudi player Abdullah Majid, who won the Asian Player of the Year award three times in 1984, 1985 and 1986.

Like most anime, the show began life as a manga (comic strip). Its creator, Yuichi Takahashi, said the 1978 FIFA World Cup was his inspiration.

In 2017, Captain Majid’s popularity was still going strong and inspired the first manga to be translated from Japanese into Arabic and then distributed throughout the Middle East, with free copies being donated to Syrian refugee children.

Recently in 2020, a new series of the show premiered on MBC 3.

Adnan and Lina
This 26-part series from the 1970s, originally called Future Boy Conan, is set in a post-apocalyptic dystopian world.

Based on the 1970 story The Incredible Tide by American writer Alexander Key, the show’s opening offers a brief history explaining the setting. “The third world war broke out in 2008 after the warring parties used supermagnetic weapons, which are much more dangerous than conventional weapons, and this led to devastation on land and at sea.”

The show was Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki’s first production with Nippon Animation. He co-founded Studio Ghibli and produced classics such as My Neighbor Totoro (1988) and Spirited Away (2001).

The Arabic version of the show has been renamed for two main characters – Adnan (Conan) and Lina (Lana).

Dubbed in Kuwait and voiced by local actors, the series follows the journey of Adnan (11 years old) and Lina through different islands created after the war. The pair try to outwit the other survivors of the conflict and try to evade the people responsible for destroying the land, who also plan to take control of what’s left.

Using the powers of telepathy and telepathy, and their ability to communicate with animals, the two friends manage to stay several steps ahead of their enemies.

“The scene of Adnan and Lina falling from a tower still stuck with me,” says Muhammad Ramadan, 42, who grew up watching shows in Amman, Jordan in the 1980s.

In the iconic scene, Lena is captured and placed in a tower. As Adnan tries to rescue her, he carries her in his arms and balances him along the edge of the tower’s spires, but is eventually forced to jump with the confident Lina.

Ramadan says: “I still watch shows today and have introduced them to my children, because of their classic stories and interconnected personalities. When I watch them now, I always feel as if I am watching them for the first time, they never get old.”

The show was rebroadcast on Japanese station NHK in 2020, and Arabic episodes have been available on YouTube since 2016.

Sinbad (The Adventures of Sinbad)
Based on the story in The Thousand and One Nights, Sinbad was popular in the early 1980s.

Known as Arabian Nights: Shindobatto no Bōken in Japanese (The Adventures of Sinbad), he was known colloquially in the Arab world as Sinbad.

The story follows the story of a young Sinbad – the son of a merchant – as he explores the world and meets other popular children’s story characters, such as Ali Baba, along the way.

“When I was a kid, I thought that the anime Sinbad was a true reflection of Arab and Islamic culture and traditions,” says Omar Al-Ghazi, assistant professor of media and communications at the London School of Economics.

“But when I watched one episode on YouTube as an adult, as part of my research, I noticed that in a scene that supposedly shows Muslims praying, Muslims are portrayed as kneeling and then raising their arms to the sky and not actually praying in the way that devout Muslims do.”

“Many of the paintings in Sinbad are actually the product of Japanese imaginations of Arab and Islamic cultures.”

Iron Man (Isenburg’s Dinosaur War)
Produced by Tsuburaya Productions, Dinosaur War Izenborg aired from 1977 to 1978 on TV Tokyo and is set in the future – 1986 – at a time when dinosaurs are trying to reclaim Earth.

Often referred to as Izenborg only, the concept was unique at the time, using the Japanese art of tokusatsu, or live action scenes, combined with animation. The plot revolves around Oruro, the leader of the dinosaurs, and his attempts to reclaim Earth from humans and restore the rule of reptiles.

Aamir Manju says, “I’ve been watching this endlessly. There were two main characters, Kamal and Lamis, who are brother and sister and are fighting against giant enemy dinosaurs.”

He added, “But in order to fight the dinosaurs successfully, Tachibana Ai and Tachibana Zen (Kamal and Lamis) need to combine their strength and connect their robotic body parts, which were installed after being hit in a massive explosion, to become an Isenburg-a robot like action figure.”

The popularity of the program led to the release of a one-off TV documentary in 2017, The Return of Izenborg which was broadcast on Spacetoon in the Middle East and local channels in Japan.