Calimero is an Italian/Japanese cartoon about a charming, but hapless anthropomorphized cartoon chicken; the only black one in a family of yellow chickens. He wears half of his egg shell still on his head. Calimero originally appeared on the Italian television show Carosello on July 14, 1963, and soon became a popular icon in Italy. The characters were later licensed in Japan as an anime series, twice. The first was made by Toei Animation and ran from October 15, 1974 to September 30, 1975, and the second, with new settings and characters, was made in 1992. Altogether, 99 Japanese episodes were made. The series mostly consists of the many adventures of Calimero and his friends as they solve mysteries and make documentaries. However, their adventures usually get them into quite a bit of trouble. The first series was also broadcast on European networks such as TROS, ZDF and RTL II or TVE.

Space Battleship Yamato is a Japanese science fiction anime series featuring an eponymous spacecraft. It is also known to English-speaking audiences as Space Cruiser Yamato; an English-dubbed and heavily edited version of the series was broadcast on North American and Australian television as Star Blazers. The first two seasons of this version were broadcast in Greece in 1981-82 as Διαστημόπλοιο Αργώ. An Italian-language version was also broadcast under the name Star Blazers in Italy, and a Portuguese-language version was successfully shown in Brazil under the title Patrulha Estelar and Viaje a la Ultima Galaxia or Astronave Intrepido in Spain and Latin America. It is a seminal series in the history of anime, marking a turn towards more complex serious works and influencing works such as Mobile Suit Gundam and Neon Genesis Evangelion; Hideaki Anno has ranked Yamato his favorite anime and credited it with sparking his interest in anime. Yamato was the first anime series or movie to win the Seiun Award, a feat not repeated until the 1985 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.