Not just France, I think the majority of Europe is like that. Here in the Balkans, local dubs of anime (Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, DBZ...) were 90% of what we watched on TV as kids.
That makes me smile when some Americans say "in the West, in early 90's, no one knew about manganime/Japanese video game"... while in Spain, France and Italy in the 90's we already had a long way along that culture.
By 1998-9, go figure, we were watching Dragon Ball GT. Yes, we saw DBGT before Pokémon. In the West. Something very odd to explain to Americans, often they didn't believe me. Until I show them the printed proofs of Spanish magazines about DB with a clear Copyright date, which is understood from nearly anyone in the world.