Gigantor: the eternal struggle

Judging from my referrals there is a fierce desire among the internet-enabled classic anime fans to experience again the New Adventures Of Gigantor, the 1980 Tetsujiin-28 series that was dubbed into English in the mid 1990s and broadcast on the Skiffy Channel for a brief season or two. I don't have any news on the availability of this series - though rest assured I will be alerting you all the moment something breaks - but darn it, I can't sit idly by while people want to experience Gigantor, specifically his New Adventures. So, here are some toys!!



I was lucky enough to pick up some merchandise from this show in the late 1980s when nobody cared about anything that Kenichi Sonoda didn't work on. Here's one of them - a little package of rubber stamps. If you ever wanted to mark all your possessions with the image of Jimmy Sparks and/or his super robot, this was just the thing for you.



The rubber is getting a little brittle after 29 years, and my last stamp pad dried out and gave up the ghost years ago, but darned if we can't make out some pretty good likenesses here. Also some not so good ones.



Once you've exhausted all the fun possibilities of your Gigantor Stamp Set, it's time to move on to more physical pursuits - namely, the Gigantor Top!



Diligent students of the Japanese language will no doubt be able to translate the katakana emblazoned across Tetsujin-28's mighty iron chest - it reads "Chara-Koma", "chara" being shorthand for "character", and "koma" being the Japanese word for "top", the kind you wrap a string around and spin. There, don't say you never learned anything from Let's Anime.



The top itself is metal and screen-printed with a handsome pic of Gigantor, only slightly marred by a giant pin sticking out of his upper thigh. The string has been lost in the mists of time, but rest assured it gave a mighty spin worthy of the name "Gigantor".

And please. Don't even pretend to try to claim that America knows not of Gigantor the Space-Age Robot. There once was a time when Gigantor fever gripped the nation, where young people wanted nothing more than to grab a pistol, put on a pair of shorts, and fight crime with a giant robot. As evidence I present this item from the 1960s:



No, I don't bathe with this every day. But I would if I could.

Oh, powers that be - how much longer must we wait before The New Adventures Of Gigantor appear on DVD - or at least back on basic cable? Let's get it together here guys!

In the meantime I have a desperate plea from one of my readers, who is looking for a cartoon glimpsed briefly on television in Kazakhstan. I'll let Clive tell the story:

I've been looking for a War Animation for years now without any luck.
I caught sight of some of it on TV in Kazakhstan, but I didn't see the
title or any credits, and my letters to the TV stations, Animation and
Anime experts and anyone else I thought could help have either been
unsuccessful or simply met with silence. I am really interested in
finding it, but I don't think I'm any closer to finding it than when I
started. I have a feeling it's an Anime but I have no way of proving
it until I see at least a still from it.

Here's some basic information about it:

Animation Type: 2D (drawn); Colour

Animation Style: The look of the Animation seemed similar to animated television episodes, one-off specials or direct-to-video releases. The character movements were done in limited Animation (much less than the usual 24 frames a second). The look of the Animation suggested it was made from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.

Notable Camera Movements: Two shots that occur side by side have stuttering zoom effects as opposed to the standard smooth zoom:

1) A zoom into a close up of a little boy’s concerned face.
2) A zoom into a close up of a little toy wagon rolling down the street.

Where It was Seen: an unknown local television channel from Almaty, Kazakhstan, in 1996 or '97. I was channel hopping and cam across it then. It was overdubbed in either Russian or Kazakh and I'm sure the language underneath it was English, but it wasn't lip-synched, just lip-flaps. This suggests that it was available in English at some point.

Music: There was a classical theme that was quite low and melancholy with a female classical vocal on it.

If you have any information on this mystery war animation, please get in touch with Clive via his Myspace page here!

the new adventures of gigantor

Back in the mid 1990s, watchful cable TV viewers got to see a 1993 English version of the 1980 series that was a remake of the 1963 anime series based on manga that had first been published in 1956. Confused? Yes. What am I talking about? The New Adventures Of Gigantor, of course!



In 1980 the anime scene was in the midst of what would become a periodic spasm of remake fever. 60s shows like Tetsuwan Atomu and Cyborg 009 had recieved exciting new color updatings, and other 60s shows like Sazae-San had actually never gone away. The time was ripe for the return of the original space-age robot, Tetsujin-28!

Based on the pioneering manga by Mitsuteru "Giant Robo" Yokoyama, it's the story of a young boy and the flying super robot that is at his command, enabling him to wear blazers and short pants and battle evil monsters and villains and not have to go to school. Dubbed and released in the United States as Gigantor, it became an integral part of the childhoods of TV-babysat children. The 1963 Tetsujin-28 series had been produced by Tele-Cartoons Japan, an early TV anime studio that produced other popular series like Eight Man and Prince Planet. Many TCJ shows would become hits in America, among them Gigantor, which was produced by Fred Ladd and screenwritten by Peter Fernandez, who would later go on to produce something called Speed Racer.

TCJ later changed its name to Eiken, and would later produce UFO Daiapollon and Cooking Papa. For some reason the show was revived by a different studio, Tokyo Movie Shinsha (TMS for short), at the time known for manga-based hits aimed at an older audience like Lupin III, Rose Of Versailles, and Aim For The Ace.

The new Tetsujin-28 series had a completely redesigned look; gone were the popeyed big-foot Tezuka style characters and the pot-bellied, charmingly clunky Tetsujin - instead we got slick 80s style super robots and a clean, high tech ultra scientific look, with appealing, international clear-line style character design.



The show would almost serve as a visual blueprint for TMS's next super robot series, the seminal God Mars, also based on a Mitsuteru Yokoyama manga. Script-wise the new Tetsujin series was an updating of the original 1963 show; young Shotaro Kaneda finds his departed father had secretly built a super robot that coincidentally can be controlled via joystick and voice commands. In the original, Tetsujin was built as a weapon for the Imperial Japanese Army; but in the 1980 version Shotaro's dad was preparing for attacks by space aliens. Shotaro's scientist friend Dr. Shikishima and policeman Inspector Ohtsuka return to assist in the battle against evil.



The 1980 series would prove popular in Japan and other worldwide markets, but in spite of America's fond memories of Gigantor, it would be 13 years before the show would be seen in the United States. Fred Ladd- producer of the original Gigantor, Astro Boy, Kimba The White Lion, and fresh off working on Sailor Moon for DIC- took the 1980 Tetsujin-28 and reconfigured it into "The New Adventures Of Gigantor".

The original calypso-beat Gigantor theme was pressed back into service, and a colorized sequence of the original show served as a segue into the new series, which was presented as a sequel. The show ran from September 1993 until January 1994 as part of a block of cartoon programming on the Sci-Fi Channel- not even half a year. It's a shame, because it's an appealing, fun show that quickly dispenses with the 'monster of the week' format. As the series progresses it moves into outer space with fleets of laser-blasting warships displaying both a Star Wars influence and the training TMS was getting in preparation for the galaxy-spanning adventures to come on God Mars.

Hopes of a DVD release are faint; Mr. Ladd reports that the home video rights were held by LIVE Entertainment Inc., which went under in the late 1990s. With the death of Tetsujin-28 creator Mitsuteru Yokoyama, the ownership of home video rights was made even less clear.

Still, we've seen releases of even more obscure series... I don't know that there's a lot of demand for The New Adventures Of Gigantor, but the show deserves more of a chance than four months of cable TV exposure.


Tetsujin-28 would of course go on to spawn the early 90s sequel Tetsujin-28FX (a sequel to the original Tetsujin-28, not the 1980 version), a live-action film with computer-generated giant robots smashing cities and each other, and a 2004 remake anime series that returned Tetsujin to its 50s postwar roots. Clearly the interest in bigger than big, stronger than stronger robots is still there, and they will always be ready to fight for right... against wrong.