Franchises I don't know if there are Japanese or American

nohaynicklibre

This happens to me with Transformers and Sonic the Hedgehog

Forzare

Transformers: American

Sonic: Japanese

nohaynicklibre

I would have swore it was the other way around

Noimporta

Transformers was originally made with footage of Car Robots, a Japanese cartoon (much like Robotech), but became much more popular than its predecessor. There has been media from both America and Japan, but the franchise is mostly American.

I'm not sure about Sonic, I think Sega is japanese, but Sonic Team was, at least originally, American.

Ponicalica

Sega was originally an American company(stood for Service Games) but then moved to Japan before the Master System and Genesis were created.  Sonic 1 was created by a Japanese team, but Yuji Naka moved to the United States and produced Sonic 2 with the help of an American branch of Sega; he then decided to make Sonic 3 & Knuckles with a Japanese team.

(source: wikipedia)

Noimporta

I defer to poniman.

Glowsquid

"Transformers was originally made with footage of Car Robots, a Japanese cartoon (much like Robotech),"

That's actually only describing one of the later series (Robots In Disguise), and that wasn't a Robotech-style hackjob as much as a jokey dub. The TFWiki explains it:

• The original The Transformers series was redubbed anime which
  originated in Japan, just like Battle of the Planets, Voltron,
  Robotech and other such shows screened in the '80s.

Although most moderate-to-hardcore fans are well aware that this is a
fallacy, there are those more casual fans (or those who have not rewatched the
Generation 1 cartoon since childhood) who are under the misconception that The Transformers was an
anime.

Although the original toyline and thus the characters' basic visual designs
were taken from Japanese-originated products, the original characters, names,
factions and entire story premise of the whole Transformers franchise
were developed in the United States by Hasbro, Marvel and eventually Sunbow. Although
the animation was farmed out to Japanese
(and later also Korean and Filipino) studios, the
writing and original voice recording of all four seasons of the original
series plus The Movie was entirely done in
America.

MoeDantes

Would it be fair to describe both franchises as "Japerican?"

I mean, the fact is America and Japan contributed so much to both that its impossible to say they belong to just one country anymore.

nohaynicklibre

This also happened to me when I was a kid with Medabots. I though it was an American Animesque series.