I absolutely love this game, despite it's many,
many flaws.
I always did wonder why in the 80s we had so little in the way of anime things; I remember seeing something like this once, where the japanese cover was anime and the US release had a very realistic, 3D, specifically
non-anime look to it; did they really think kids wouldn't like anime?
Bit worse than that. Ever watch the Harrison Ford movie "
The Mosquito Coast"? The opening of that movie typified America in the mid-80's to roughly the mid-90's, when the Baby Boomers held an openly xenophobic racist viewpoint towards the Japanese and their companies (whereas Gen-X was ambivalent-to-supportive thanks in large part to their quality consumer goods like
The Walkman). In the 80's, Japan started to invest heavily in America as their own economy boomed - buying U.S. companies & sports teams, setting-up U.S. branches for easier importing of Japanese goods, etc. Some Americans viewed this as Japan insidiously trying to buy-up America in order to "run good ol' red-blooded U.S. of A. brands and companies out of business"...to force the U.S. into an "agricultural state" for Japanese import.
Dead. Serious.
Don't believe me? Look-up some interviews from Nintendo of America employees as they geared-up for the launch of the NES in New York City...crazy racist stuff. This got enough traction to be reported on in the national nightly news off-and-on for several years - the biased reporting on how anime was
all sex & violence while
stealing original American art styles (such as "Betty Boop eyes") and making it a disgusting and/or physically impossible perversion is still in my easy brain recall. Heck, my school had
teachers who talked openly about their hatred towards all-thing-Japanese for these same reasons and were never punished for it, and I know the same happened in many other schools in my area, too. The end result is that major box retailers in the U.S. straight-up
refused to sell much of anything that looked distinctly Japanese/anime outside of a few VERY limited brands that could "pass" as "cartoony." Mostly they got a redesign.
(For a sneak peek at what almost was, look-up on YouTube the horror of an "Americanized Sailor Moon" (a.k.a. "Project Y") before someone decided to just badly scrub-and-dub the anime):
(Yes, that's Sailor Mercury in a flying hoverchair on the far left, and yes she was completely replaced with the redheaded best friend character iirc.)
Also keep in mind that the anime market had yet to really open-up in the US. Sure, the US had Voltron, Robotech, Speed Racer, and a few other series in the 80's...but these shows were often
heavily rewritten for the US audience. I mean, to the point that a lot of kids watching these shows had no idea that they were Japanese in origin. To be fair, a lot of US-based cartoons at the time were animated overseas on the cheap as well, so there is that. Also, some of the popular 80's anime were imported
before the hysteria started, too.
The hilarious part about all this "Japanophobia" as it was later coined? The United Kingdom were investing in America hand-over-fist more than Japan, especially when it came to The BP Corporation. You know, "British Petroleum?" But American's weren't concerned about
that. After all, "Brits are White."
...
Tl;dr: It wasn't kids not knowing "anime" that kept Japanese art off product packaging, it was racism.
i promise father, i would treasure it so much like a family's hairdom)
