Shows starting in 1993:
Miracle Girls, Irresponsible Captain Tylor, Little Women II: Jo’s Boys, The Brave Express Might Gaine, Sailor Moon R, Gosaurer
Mobile Suit V Gundam, Ghost Sweeper Mikami, Legend of the Swordmaster Yaiba, Dinosaur Planet, Nintama Rantaro, Pokonyan
Hurricane! Iron Leaguer, Dragon League, Lupin III Orders To Assassinate Lupin, Tama & Friends, Muka Muka Paradise, Love! Hello Kitty
Heisei Inu Monogatari Bow, Jungle King Taa-chan, Slam Dunk, Tanoshi Willow Town, Blue Legend Shoot, Striped Tiger Shimajiro
Puppet Show Heike Monogatari
Shows Ending In 1993:
Chirorin Mura Monogatari, Super Electric Robot Iron Man 28 FX, Brave Legend Da Garn, Flower Magic-using Mary Bell, Teknoman, Sailor Moon
Energy Bomb Ganbaruger, Oi! Ryoma, Chikyu SOS Soreike Kororin, Tomato-man and the Knights of the Salad Table, Super Bikkuriman, Yadamon
Mikan’s Picture Diary, Calimero, Dog of Flanders: My Patolasshu, Hime-chan’s Ribbon, Kaze no Naka no Shoujo Kinpatsu no Jeanie, Papuwa of the South Seas
Space Oz Adventure, Super Zugan
Shows continuing through 1993:
Sazae-san, Doraemon, Anpanman, Dragonball Z, Kiteretsu Daihyakka, Cooking Papa
Crayon Shin-chan, Kobo-chan, Get a Grip, Tsuyoshi!!, Yuu Yuu Hakusho
Initial thought after I made this list was “Irresponsible Captain Tylor looks really out of place”. As a non-robot sci-fi show in prime time it looks really odd next to all the manga adaptations and brightly coloured cartoons for kids. In fact it’s so odd, that my post on 1994 that I did for the Golden Ani-Versary blog might have read differently had I realised it before.
The second thought was that we had a lot of shows continuing throughout the year, taking us to ten (eleven if you count the Sailor Moon series as a whole). Five of which are still on the air today. 1992 only had five continue from 91 to 93, and all continued through this year too.
Slam Dunk and Ghost Sweeper Mikami were the big ratings hits among the shows launched this year. However, despite doing better than Super Bikkuriman, Ghost Sweeper Mikami was cancelled after 45 episodes. According to an unsubstantiated “fact” on wikipedia, this was due to lack of merchandise sales.
In terms of longevity though, Nintama Rantaro was the winner, as it continued to air to the present day.
Looking at the Animage Grand Prix ratings, everything was still massively overshadowed by Yu Yu Hakusho and Sailor Moon (which got in there twice). Tylor, Gundam V, and Mikami were the new TV shows making the top ten.
As I go into writing about the new shows, I have seen episodes of four shows that started in 1993. And the Lupin III special.
- Captain Tylor – I have seen random episodes of this show. I was going to buy it on VHS at one point, but managed to order volume 5 instead of volume 1 and never got the rest. I’ve seen some of the last episodes at a convention back in the 90s.
- Ghost Sweeper Mikami – I’ve seen the first few episodes of this back when it was getting fansubbed.
- Mobile Suit V Gundam – I’ve seen the first episode of this.
- Slam Dunk – I’ve seen the first few episodes of this way, way back before the ill-fated attempt at releasing on DVD in the US. Entirely possible they were dodgy HK bootlegs.
One last note, the odd picture for the Hello Kitty show is the dinosaur character that was the only original animation on the show. The rest was recycled material from earlier Hello Kitty animation. Finding that information out was the trickiest part of compiling this list. Tanoshi Willow Town (a Wind in the Willows adaptation) also proved tricky to find a screenshot for.