“ALLAAAAH YA MAJID! ALLAH!”

At six years old, I remember cheering along with the soccer commentator of my favorite childhood cartoon – al-Captain Majid. Every night, my mother would turn on the Arabic satellite channel for me to breathlessly watch the next climactic episode, each one a singular treat for a Sudanese-American girl growing up in Virginia. Only many years later in Sudan would I realize that “the Arab player Majid” was actually Captain Tsubasa and that my cartoons were actually Japanese anime.

At least two generations of Arabic-speaking children have grown up with anime, yet a quick Google search shows that anime in the Arabic-speaking world has gone unresearched by academics and pundits alike. What brought anime from Japan into the Arabic-speaking world? What role does anime play in the politics of language and art of Arabic-speakers? And what is the future of anime in Arabic?

A History of Anime in Arabic

Anime took off in Japan in the 1970s. The very first Arabic translations of anime were released in the late 1970s. Writing in The National, Rym Ghazal noted that the rise of anime in the Arabic-speaking world was a result of the “GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] Joint Production Program Institution, set up in 1976 to make television programs for the [Gulf] region.” My parents’ generation gathered once a week to watch Japanese-produced Arabic-translated classics such as Sindibad (The Adventure of Sinbad, which opened with an Arabic-script basmala that transformed into Japanese characters), the cult hit Grendizer (UFO Robo Grendizer, with its rousing theme song by Sammy Clark), and the especially beloved Adnan wa Lina (Future Boy Conan, the science fiction debut of Hayao Miyazaki, who later founded Studio Ghibli, famous for its record-breaking anime feature films such as Spirited Away).

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, many Arabic-speaking children watched dubbed anime daily, featuring then-contemporary shows such as Detective Conan, Slam Dunk, and Ana wa Akhi (Aka-chan to Boku). Due to lack of funding, employment opportunities, and education, there were (and continue to be) very few grassroots animation studios in the Arabic-speaking world, meaning there were very few locally animated shows produced for children.

If one watches the credits roll in 1970s and ‘80s dubs, studios in Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia seemed to dominate the translation of anime into Arabic. But in the late ‘90s and 2000s, after the two Gulf Wars, the Damascus-based Venus Center became largely responsible for dubbing anime into Arabic directly from Japanese. Venus Center usually worked with the Jordanian investment company the Weiss Brothers, and obtained anime via Animation International, a Hong-Kong based film distribution company. The rise of anime-focused children’s channels such as Spacetoon (based in Damascus and Dubai) and ART Teenz (based in Saudi Arabia) who used Venus Center regularly for their dubs, led to a much higher social prevalence of anime in Arabic.

Arab Politics and the Themes of Anime in Arabic

The way in which anime was dubbed from the ‘70s until the contemporary day often reflected the politics of the Arab world. For example, producers often chose shows that would encourage popular 20th century nationalist ideals of pan-Arab-Islamic unity. There was also a focus on family, personal honor, and good morals. This was the aim of the GCC Joint Production Program Institution (which also created Arabic Sesame Street, which was cut short by the First Gulf War) as well as the channel ART Teenz. The same companies which dubbed popular anime (e.g. Venus Center) were also helping locally produce media with explicitly Arab-Islamic themes, such as al-Ashbal, a cartoon about three young Muslim boy scouts who travel the Muslim world with their teacher.

Romance, swearing, off-color humor, short skirts, alcohol, blood, references to magic, or references to non-Muslim beliefs about the afterlife found in the original Japanese were quietly censored out by the Venus Center dubs, in order to avoid upsetting conservative Arabic-speaking Muslims’ sensibilities. Sandy Belle – the blonde anime character searching for her mother in Mughamarat Sandy Belle – constantly praises and thanks God, in the Arabic dubbed version, but not in the original. Anime shows with dark or serious content, such as Hunter x Hunter, which follows a young boy as he becomes a bounty hunter, were originally aimed at older audiences. The Arabic dub (al-Qannas), however, adopted a moral framing and was shown to children.

At best, this censorship was marginal to the story or nearly absent. At worst, anime shows became totally bowdlerized. But, this same censorship, meant to keep shows sanitary and polite, often also led to children being exposed to complex and intriguing narratives focused on the perspectives of marginalized peoples.

For example, the themes of Arabic-dubbed anime often transcended the conflicts and authoritarianism of Arabic-speaking countries, espousing many of the anti-violence sentiments and themes of hope and renewal that later underscored the Arab Spring.

It was no coincidence that in the 1970s, Grendizer – featuring a tiny band of humans fighting against alien invaders – was idolized by children living through the Lebanese Civil War. Writing for the BBC, journalist Carine Torbey has noted how the show is now becoming a symbol for children in the Syrian war, and that its theme song was even “adapted into a chant of defiance, revolution and victory by protesters in the uprising in Syria back in 2011.”

Other anime shows highlighted the experiences of everyday people in the face of violence, underlined the sacredness of peace and childhood, and championed individual bravery in the face of overwhelming social darkness. Many of these heart-rending shows were part of the famous World Masterpiece Theater series, which focused on animating old Western children’s stories. For example, A Dog of Flanders (Bai’ul Haleeb), told the grim tale of a Danish child enduring discrimination and poverty whilst trying to provide for his grandfather and dog. The afore-mentioned Spacetoon channel also ran emotionally-charged anime films every other Saturday, including “one of the most harrowing anti-war films ever made,” Grave of the Fireflies, which tells the story of two innocent Japanese children who starve to death during World War II.

Anime and Arabic Language Revival

Growing up between the United States and Sudan, Arabic dubbed anime like Captain Majid helped me to keep my spoken Arabic strong. Dubs were done in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), a form of Arabic used almost exclusively in formal situations, news broadcasts, and writing. Since Arabic is a diglossic language, where spoken dialects are different from MSA, anime was one of the primary ways children like myself were exposed to the elite vocabulary of MSA. VHS-preserved clips from the halal store in Virginia along with the new presence of satellite-TV brought me characters who all went about their adventures in perfectly intoned schoolbook sentences.

MSA is often criticized as being a stilted form of Arabic. And, many anime that are translated into Arabic from English (rather than directly from Japanese) do regularly have stilted phrasing. But contemporary Arabic teachers, such as Rym Ghazal and Nadia Qaraqra, have noted that anime is an invaluable resource for students of formal Arabic, especially because many Arabic television shows are in dialect rather than in MSA. To this day, if I stumble over grammar, I can ask myself – what would the Arabic-speaking Digimon say?

The Future of Anime in Arabic

As I have grown older, Arabic-dubbed anime has changed, developed, and taken deep root in the region. Arabic subtitling online now allows watchers to bypass satellite channels, and provides access to shows aimed at older viewers. Sudanese anime-influenced artists such as Art Kanoon, Buthaina, and Mitsuky are on the rise. Popular Arabic-speaking Youtubers such as EtooKB, The Four Sisters, and Muaz Osman produce “Guess That Anime Song” videos and discuss the role of anime in their upbringings and artwork. Kuwaitis such as the Twitter-famous Abdul Razaq have learned Japanese and studied animation to work for new animation studios in the Arab world. The Captain Tsubasa manga is being translated for Syrian refugees by Obada Kassoumah, a 27-year-old Syrian who studied Japanese at Damascus University. Rasha Rizk, a Syrian singer whose career was launched on her dubs of anime songs, is now invited onto talk-shows and is nominated for a Grammy. And finally, the very first anime-style Arabic children’s animation Imara is being produced in the Emirates.

How will anime continue to influence the Arabic-speaking world? Some foresee a possibility for stronger relations between Japan and Arabic-speaking nations, citing the popularity of anime as an indicator of the unique cultural status of Japan in a region with a history of Western colonialism. And indeed, the Japanese government is well-aware of the soft power of anime-as-diplomacy, using imagery of Captain Tsubasa on Japanese-donated buses in Sudan and on Japanese troops’ water trucks in Iraq. On an official visit to Japan in 2016, the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – currently engaging in an authoritarian effort to remake the image of Saudi Arabia as art-friendly, much like the UAE’s recently critiqued efforts with art museums – obtained a signed copy of the manga One Piece and discussed the possibility of a Japanese-Saudi collaboration over anime with Toei Animation. And surely enough, in November 2017, the official Arabic twitter account of the Japanese government announced that Toei Animation would be collaborating with Saudis to produce a Saudi-focused anime.

It will be interesting to see how authoritarian Arabic-speaking states deal with the rise of anime-based artists in their nations, since this depends on cultural openness, investment in art education, and lack of censorship. If independent Arabic-speakers and Arabic institutions continue to quietly invest in art-production, anime could continue to guide people like myself into the world. Childhood fantasy becoming ground for shared futures – that is the legacy of anime in Arabic.