The United States saw its first exposure to anime in September of 1963, when NBC syndicated a dubbed version of the Japanese series Astro Boy. Not counting such Japanese/American co-productions as The King Kong Show and Johnny Cypher in Dimension Zero, only seven more anime TV series were released in the United States in the 1960s. These were 8 Man (1965), Gigantor (1966), Kimba the White Lion (1966), Prince Planet (1966), Marine Boy (1966), The Amazing 3 (1967) and Speed Racer (1967). Speed Racer would be the last anime series released in the United States until 1978 when the 1972 series Kagaku ninja tai Gatchaman was adapted for American audiences as Battle of the Planets.[10] Many anime series that made it to American television from the 1960s through the 1980s tended to be sci-fi or action-oriented, such as Star Blazers (the English dub of Space Battleship Yamato) and Robotech and Voltron (both Americanized amalgamations of unrelated anime series cobbled together into a single story).
As the 1980s wore on, more anime series and films targeted at very young children also found their way to U.S. TV screens, often on cable television channels or in syndication. Nickelodeon broadcast many mostly Canadian-made English dubs of anime films during its early years, including TV series such as Mysterious Cities of Gold, Adventures of the Little Koala, Belle and Sebastian, The Adventures of the Little Prince, Noozles, Maya the Bee, Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics, and The Littl' Bits, many of which were aired on "Nick Jr.", the network's block of programming for very young viewers. The Disney Channel broadcast both of the feature-length anime films starring Osamu Tezuka's popular unicorn character Unico, and CBN redubbed and broadcast its Bible-based anime TV series co-produced with Tatsunoko, Superbook and The Flying House. HBO also showed juvenile-targeted anime on occasion, including TV series such as Tales of Little Women, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and Saban's Adventures of Pinocchio and feature films such as Gisaburo Sugii's 1974 Jack and the Beanstalk.
A great many anime films and feature-length TV series compilations were also released direct-to-video in the U.S., and were often available for rental at mainstream video stores. Some titles which were distributed in the U.S. in this fashion included Candy Candy, Captain Future, Angel, Serendipity the Pink Dragon, Taro the Dragon Boy, Robby the Rascal (Cybot Robotchi), and Ninja the Wonder Boy (Manga Sarutobi Sasuke).
For the most part, though, these TV series and films were not actively promoted as being of Japanese origin; in fact, many of them went so far as to remove most or all Japanese names from the credits except for credits to the animation studios. In the series themselves, character names were often changed and Japanese cultural references removed to make them more accessible to English-speaking audiences. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, this trend began to change as more openly Japanese works, such as Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Gundam Wing, achieved mainstream popularity on American television. Although many of these shows did undergo some kind of "Americanization" in the form of character name changes and edits for violence, language, and the occasional nudity, viewers were more aware of the shows' country of origin, which might perhaps pique their curiosity to seek out other works in a similar style.
VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), is showing Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan on VIZAnime.com just hours after the episodes are shown in Japan.
