Go Cabtain Majid!
Saturday, September 18, 2004I'm sure many of the Arab readers here will have grown up watching the Arabic cartoon "Captain Majid" on TV. It was a great show that I and many others throughout the Arab world would watch religiously. It was basically a cartoon about football in which Captain Majid and his team would play against his arch-enemy Bassam. Captain Majid was the centre of my life for such a long time. I stopped watching it when I "outgrew" it, and I totally forgot about it until recently.
Yesterday I was talking with one of my Italian friends about our favourite cartoons while growing up. She described an Italian cartoon named "Holly e Benji" which was also out football. After a while we realized that we both grew up watching the same show but dubbed in different languages. It's crazy. Coming from different corners of the planet, one would think that our upbringings would have nothing in common. But for both me and my Italian friend "Captain Majid" was a fixture in our childhoods, and we were able to have a discussion about all of the different episodes for several hours afterwards.
A bit of Googling made me aware that in its original Japanese form the show was called Captain Tsubasa, and has been dubbed in to many other languages. You can download some episodes (in Arabic) from here.
Go Cabtain Majid!
9/18/2004 05:43:00 am
Amazing cartoon! Last year I actually purchased the entire Captain Majid (or Captain Tsubasa) DVD collection from eBay! It's a total of 9 DVDs, while the audio is only in Japanese, there are English subtitles which can actually be very amusing. What was cool though is that the episodes from the last 4 DVDs were never aired in Bahrain, at least I don't think so! It's of Captain Majid, Bassam, and co all grown up. Captain Majid goes to Brazil then to Spain to play for Barcelona. Bassam goes to play in Italy. Waleed (the goalkeeper) plays in Germany. They all then get together to play in the World Cup and stuff. Thanks for reminding us of a classic!