TV sets in the early '60s were ruled by shows like "The Flintstones" and "Rocky and Bullwinkle," with their slapstick humor keeping kids entertained for hours. But across the Pacific, there was something revolutionary getting ready to crash land on U.S. screens. Which anime series first showed American viewers that cartoons could be more than just talking animals and cavemen?
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"Astro Boy," created by the legendary "god of manga" Osamu Tezuka, blasted onto American TV in 1963 as the first anime series to cross the Pacific. Unlike U.S. animation at the time, anime followed a stricter serialized format, so no groundhog daying at the end of the episode. NBC aired 104 episodes of Tezuka's atomic-powered kid before ratings slipped, but the show's mix of robot heroics and surprisingly deep storytelling had already planted the seeds for America's incoming anime obsession.
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