PERMAN
Perman was never translated into English, but I've had alot of requests to include a page as it was very popular in Japan and other non speaking English countries throughout the world.
Thanks to my good friend Jorge Marin (maresc@hotmail.com) for writing the
following information.
Perman (also known as Parman or Paa-man in japanese) was a manga created by the famous
duo Fujiko Fujio (who even created the popular Doaremon).
Because of it's popularity this series was later made for television by Studio Zero and
Tokio Movie in 1967. 55 black and white episodes were produced in Japan between
2/4/67-14/4/68 and became a huge hit show in Japan. This anime was later shown in
the middle 70's in several countries in South America together with Phantoma, Gigantor,
Space Ace, Princess Knight, The Amazing Three etc. It was also showed in Italy. It
never made it to the U.S. or Australia.
I never found out why many South American countries had the privilige to show most of
these old anime shows. I believe that one reason could be that it wasn't so
expensive for the television networks to buy unknown foreign cartoons at that time .
Whatever the reason was so are we very thankfull that that happened.
This
super hero, humoristic anime tells the story of a group of kids; two boys, a girl and a
monkey who are elected by a mysterious masked man (named Super Perman) to be the
protectors of their city. The main character was a young boy, Mitsuo. He became the Perman
#1 and the leader of his group. The intelligent monkey was the #2, the girl and
Mitsuo's potential future girlfriend was #3, and a fat boy the #4. All the members
of the group owned a special "Perman Kit": A helmet with ear-caps giving
them a super strength, a cape giving them the power of flight, an emblem button with a
"P" that they used as a communicator. They also had their own robots.
These robots had a very interesting function, they transformed into an exact copy of the
kids by pulling a button in it's nose. It was very useful when our heroes have to go
fighting crime. The robots replaced them both at home and school and helped them
with 
different things, for example their homework. Mitsuo usually hid his
in the closet of his sleeping room. It was very funny to see him often take advange
of the situation and let his robot do the boring stuff around home.
This classic 60's anime show had a lot of action but was also very charming and funny.
For this reason it's remembered as one of the favourite cartoons for many people
from my generation. The stories were often based on dealing with the small and big
problems of their daily life.
Always from a kid's point of view, it let us learn a lot about Japanese lifestyle too: the
clothes (kimonos), the oriental houses, their habits such as taking off their shoes at
home and eating dinner (mostly nooddles) sitting on the floor.
Perman was translated into Spanish under the name "El hombre Par." In
Brazil it was named "Super Dynamo" and it was "Heroe Bambino" in
Italy. It was also shown in Mexico. It's still a very popular character in
Japan (A later coloured version of the show was produced in the 80's)
I received this information from Julio Santibanez ( email - JSantibanez@staffmark.com)
I believe that the fat's boy name in this cartoon series was Kabao (this was the fat
boy with big full lips). I use to watch them when I lived in Lima, Peru. One
of my relatives is an executive at channel 5 (where they use to air this cartoon) and he
mentioned a while ago that the reason why they made it to Peru was because of the low cost
of the cartoon, versus cartoons in the US.