Today I took a trip down memory lane and watched youtube videos of songs that had a big impact on my childhood and are still very special to me… Yes, I admit it! I was watching songs from my favorite cartoons of when I was a child. I say in the title “a true 90’s kid” because I’m 24 and I watched these cartoons before I went to school or the weekends. I used to wake up like at 6am just to watch them… And it’s the only way my mom could dress me up for school! I had to watch them and stay in my little world fantasizing about battles and romance. Even today I like to watch cartoons!
As you can see although I watched a bunch of them, I was pretty selective. For example I didn’t like Dragon Ball (sorry to everyone that I offend with this one) or Ninja Turtles (although I knew the characters and the story). Also as I was doing research for this post I realised that I only watched japanese anime television series! Like in my favorites list I only got one american cartoon. I guess animes were pretty popular in Portugal in the 90’s!
So I didn’t like some of the popular shows but I think I got some good shows as my
favorites. My favorite of all time ever is still Sailor Moon! You don’t understand I used to play sailor moon an
d I even watched the show a few years ago… I still know the song that was used on the show, I want to name a pet “Luna” and have a huge crush on Tuxedo Mask. (Not embarassing at all!) The plot takes place in Tokyo (Minato) where a middle-school student named Tsukino befriends a talking black cat named Luna. The cat gives her a magical brooch enabling her to become Sailor Moon which was a pretty guardian destined to save our planet from the forces of evil. They assemble a team of fellow Sailor Guardians (Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus) to find their princess and the Silver Crystal. The serie was so good and successful that they did many arcs of the story.
In second place on my list there is a story of perseverance and where dreams come true… It’s Captain Tsubasa! Since I was a little kid I developed this big love of football, not playing per se bu
t watching a game and I can say that I have a pretty good knowledge of the game. So it makes sense that this cartoon had a huge impact on me! The story focuses obviously on the adventures of a japanese youth soccer team and its football captain Tsubasa (in portuguese he was Oliver). The attention of the show is on Tsubasa’s relationship with his friends, rivalry with his opponents (Benji), training, competition and the action and outcome of each match. Some drama between opponents and you have the perfect recipe for a series about football!
Another show that always had my attention was Kaiketsu Zorro (in Portugal it was named “The Legend of Zorro”). 
This show was very popular here and, as the original story, focused on Don Diego de la Vega. Diego returns from this stupy trip to discover that his homeland in under the army’s dictatorship and he disguises himself as Zorro to protect the weak and oppressed. At the same time, as Diego he trys to win the affection of Lolita but he only captures her attention when he serenades her as Zorro. I guess I was enchanted by Zorro and I never forgot this show… It’s really one of those where I was excited to see it and just wanted school to finish quick enough so I could go home to watch it.
In fourth place is a show that is still very special to me and I might say I was always obsessed with this story. Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds used to appear on my television every m
orning and even today when I hear the beggining of the theme song I get all nostalgic (and yes I had some uni parties where I screamed it at the top of my lungs!). This was an adaptation of the classic story The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas. (Most of the characters are anthropomorphizations of dogs). As the original story, Dogtanian travels to Paris to become one of the King Louis XIII of France’s musketeers. He befriends three other musketeers (Porthos, Athos and Aramis) and falls in love with a maid-in-waiting for Queen Anne of Austria, Juliette.
Lastly but not least is one of those cartoons that everybody knows and watched when they were a kid: Rugrats! This show is an american animation created for Nickelodeon that focuses on a group 
of toddlers (Tommy, Chuckie, twins Phil and Lil, and Angelica) and their day-to-day lives. This involved a lot of common life experiences that are transformed in adventures in the babies’ imaginations. The parents of the babies usually didn’t know or understand the type of adventures their toddlers had everyday. I used to watch this show so much that I even got two VHS movies of the show for Christmas. I don’t know why I liked it, but I think it was about the concept that babies have their own and powerful imagination!
Okay my favorites list is done! But I also watched so many more iconic shows like The Fairy OddParents, Cow and Chicken, Dexter’s Laboratory, Powerpuff Girls, Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, Doraemon, Pokémon and Digimon. The problem with these were that I only got to watch them 2 or 3 times a year because I had to watch them on Cartoon Network or another channel that I didn’t have at the time. Anyway, I think I had a pretty good childhood with all these, no? I mean I had babies, boys and girls being superheroes, dogs and football… What could I have asked for more?
My Crazy Little Thoughts 