Mechamato Is First Malaysian Animation To Air On Japanese TV Station

The Mechamato FGURA toys will also be sold on the online shopping website TOKYO MX Mall.

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Local animated series Mechamato will be the first Malaysian animation to be screened on Japanese TV station, TOKYO MX.

The online shopping website TOKYO MX Mall will also sell FGURA Mechamato toys.

Series creator, Monsta (formerly Animonsta Studios) said in a statement that Mechamato will be aired on the channel at 6.30pm every Friday, starting from 6 October.

The popular series will be distributed by TVer, a video-on-demand (VOD) service with five commercial broadcasters in Tokyo, Nippon TV, TV Asahi, TBS Television, TV Tokyo, and Fuji Television, which allows viewers to catch up on TV programmes they missed for free for a week.

Monsta marketing director Faiz Zainal Aabidin said the airing of the series on Japanese TV is a new chapter for the company.

The Japanese market is tough for international animation to penetrate, let alone from a Southeast Asian country like Malaysia.

Faiz said one of the conditions for allowing international programmes to be aired on Japanese TV channels is that the animated series must expose and educate the audience to different cultures and traditions.

Previously, the Mechamato series was aired in Japan through online applications such as Netflix, HBO Go, Amazon Prime, Hulu, dAnimeStore, J:Com, and FOD. Next month, the animated series will also air on Bandai Channel.

The animated series secured popular Japanese voice actors to dub the show and it quickly garnered a fan following.

Mechamato won the Anime Fan Award at the Tokyo Anime Awards Festival 2023 (TAAF) in March.

What is Mechamato about?

Mechamato tells the story of a boy named Amato who fights and captures bad robots in the world with his partner robot, Mechabot.

Amato could do this because Mechabot can mechanize random objects into high-tech devices to aid them in fights.

The show is set before the BoBoiBoy franchise in Kota Hilir (inspired by Bandar Hilir, Melaka). It’s said Amato is the father of BoBoiBoy.

The Mechamato series first aired in 2021 and has two seasons so far. The film, Mechamato Movie, a prequel to the series, was released in Malaysia and Brunei on 8 December 2022.

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