Post Pokemania in the late 90s, every company was lining up to grab what could potentially be the next big thing, the new millennium was setting up to be dominated by the new wave of anime set to hit western shores; for TV networks it was like a market day with Toonami and Fox Kids leading the way along with WB who was supporting 4Kids, but as someone who is from the UK and alot channels like Fox Kids and Cartoon Network were on cable, we had to make do with five terrestrial television channels and this is where it gets interesting.
UK TV Machinations
I suppose a brief history is in order, the most prominent channels are 1 and 2 both owned by the BBC, it's ad free but costs money to run as a separate tax thing called a TV licence, as far as I know, UK is the only country that does this; BBC were never in to the idea of anime, their only dabble at the time was an attempt at dubbing Urusei Yatsura for a special report on anime as a new genre and they may have had Monster Rancher but it's unconfirmed, so were left with channels 3-5.
Channel 3 or ITV Independent Television was our main free channel and they latched on to the anime craze early by acquiring Pokemon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Sailor Moon.
Channel 4 was actually the first to showcase anime as accounts from friends and my older sister suggests they showcased the much maligned Grindhouse scene which briefly became a news piece for concerned parents, channel 4 would later buy the rights to Studio Ghibli's film library.
That just leaves Channel 5, the newcomer who was building a solid library with their kids section known as Milkshake, this was pre-Peppa Pig in 2002 so they weren't taken seriously, since ITV had all the best stuff and Ghibli was in Channel 4's hands, they were left with just Beyblade and the we have Yu-Gi-Oh at home Duel Masters, but they also licensed an anime from 2000 which too this day, is it's only known English speaking western TV release making it probably the only UK exclusive anime to date, this anime is Strange Dawn.
What on Earth is Strange Dawn?
The story revolves around two school girls named Yuko and Eri who get summoned by a princess to save a world dominated by little semi-humans, basically taking regular people and seeing how they react to a world of SD characters or Super Deformed the proper term for chibis.
The anime itself to pardon the pun is strange, it's hard not to feel put off when you compare the two girls to the semi-humans, my memories of the series are vague but I remember Yuko being insufferable throughout and the final episode being a "what just happened" moment, after that it never aired again, the only taste America got of Strange Dawn was an incomplete home release through Urban Vision which no longer exists so for collectors, those DVDs will be worth a fortune, the only known existence of an English dub is the English opening theme dumped on Youtube, so the dub at least for now is lost media.
It always baffled me for years why Channel 5 picked this anime over everything else at the time, a quick look at the releases in that period, they could've had titles so much better quality than Strange Dawn.
They could've had Zoids over this but I doubt we would get a story like this again as better licensing means we basically get whatever America gets.
I will attempt to review it after watching the subtitled version so look out for that.
