Ginga Nagareboshi Gin & Ginga Densetsu Weed

[Takeshi]

Ginga Nagareboshi Gin
Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin (Silver Fang) is a tale about a little puppy dog who was born in the wilderness. He has silver striped and is destined to become the defender of people from perilous cave bears; which ironically, his father, Riki was killed by Akakaboto, the most dangerous cave bears. Silver then decides to seek revenge at any cost, even though he has to leave his best friend, Daisuki, to follow and search for more wild dogs in their fight to kill Akakaboto.

Sequel
Ginga Densetsu Weed
A dog named Weed happens to hear that he is the son of Gin, The great leader of Ohu, Who lead the dogs of Ohu to victory in a fight against monsterous bear Akakabuto. Weed wants to find his father no matter of what. On a way to his father Weed meets many friends and enemies.
Favourite anime, and also the first anime to watch. I used to pause my VHS tapes and try and draw the bears. Of course I couldn't get to occupy the TV for hours so my drawings were always half-finished. Later on I discovered what the Japanese title was, and that this was actually an anime. Man, I had watched the cut version which had boiled 21 eps down to 4 VHS tapes which lasted, what, 1-2 hours each? I got the episodes and man a lot of content had been cut out. Sure, this is not something you would pay attention to when you were a kid, but it really destroys the anime. Oh well, I were just in it for the bears back then.

But it was really awesome to see some content you had been hidden from. I'm mostly talking about

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Ben's meeting with Sniper on the cliff.

At the same time I discovered that there was a sequel, Ginga Densetsu Weed, I became a little exited because, what if it was as epic as Ginga Nagareboshi Gin? It was not. The animation lacked completely, and original storyline had been altered, and you really couldn't help make the experience worse by thinking, this is not Ginga Nagareboshi Gin.

I usually try and recommend this if it fits the viewers taste. But I'm probably biased by the fact that this is my childhood memory. It doesn't help that there's no decent fansubs of this. asd-fansubs did the whole show, and then did the first 11 episodes again (due to better translation + encoding). The torrent on this tracker is also a bit iffy so it's a bummer when people aren't able to get a somewhat decent experience of a great anime. I've been trying to get an encode of this series running, but for some reason my meGUI fails me everytime it tries to encode with x264.

Have anyone (who haven't seen this before) seen it? It sounds a bit contradicting. What I am asking is if anyone has seen this without having it as their childhood memory? Did you like it? I suspect it was mostly people who saw this in their childhood, thus this becoming their favourite or remembered as an awesome cartoon.

AFAIK, onemanga hosts the manga of both animes so if you're willing to give it a shoot. Though they're both incomplete. And Ginga Densetsu Weed is still running in Japan.

[kenshin-dono]

never seen this, it looks like something my niece would love though.. i dont supose they ever did a dub for the 'correct' series, right? dont see anything listed on ADB

doubt a 3 year olds gonna be rocking subtitles lol

[Takeshi]

This series was never dubbed in English. Maybe because it was very old, and  but also because it never reached any popularity in the U.S, I don't even remember it being distributed in the U.S. Funny thing is that the series was dubbed in both Korean, Finnish, Hungarian, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish.

You should try and watch the first 11 episodes by asd-fansubs, one scene in the first episode especially "impressed" me, which is one you won't find on the VHS tapes. You can get them DDL at Lolipower. It's really not a kid's anime. There's a reason why so much content was removed before being distributed. I have the uncut DVD box, and it says that it contains almost 200 minutes more content than the VHS tapes. There's blood, violence and horror. Seriously:

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I get scared everytime I review that scene with the bear on the big ship.

That's also one thing I dislike about Ginga Densetsu Weed, all the scary stuff is nowhere to be found. Although it is arguable if the source contained horror.

Also, if you're willing, watch it in a dark room. That'll give you a great experience, if you can take it.

EDIT: Here's the opening: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4_mrdCI6Rw