The New Adventures of Gigantor! Sure, this 1980 remake of
the popular 1963 boy-and-robot anime series (based on the Mitsuteru Yokoyama manga) didn’t make it to American TV until
thirteen years after its Japanese premiere, and even then it ran in a weird
time slot on a niche cable station best known for Twilight Zone marathons and
later, a series of deliberately inane made-for-TV monster epics. And yeah, most
anime fans ignored it; in 1993 they were binge-watching Ninja Scroll or Ranma ½
instead. Okay, so the company that released it has been bought and sold more
times than I can count and the licensing rights are probably entangled in an
unsolvable legal morass. But all these
caveats can’t erase 51 episodes of clean, colorful, very TMS,
very 1980s giant robot remake that doesn’t rest on its legacy, but instead
takes off running and never stops.
Part of a wave of color reboots that included Astro Boy and
Cyborg 009, 1980’s Tetsujin 28 series is
distinguished from the ’63-66 Tetsujin right from the show’s full title, which
is Taiyo no Shisha Tetsujin nijuhachi-go, or "Solar Messenger Tetsujin-28". Originally the ’80 Tetsujin series was going to be a sequel,
starring ’63 hero Shotaro’s son and featuring the first Tetsujin along with the
updated model. This storyline was abandoned for the 1980 show, but would
resurface in 1992’s Tetsujin-28 FX. Perhaps picking up on this fork not taken, original
60s Gigantor producer Fred Ladd brought over the 1980 Tetsujin series and merging
the past with the (1980) present was exactly what he did. These New Adventures Of Gigantor explicitly
link the new with the old, starting with a colorized clip of the ’63 series and
including needle drops of the original 60s theme song mixing incongruously with
the surprisingly jazzy Japanese soundtrack.
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| questing for cartoons |
Cable’s Sci-Fi Channel aired the show from Sept. ‘93 to June
1997 in a programming block known as "Cartoon Quest," remembered
today mostly for having embarrassingly cheesy bumper segments. Viewers who made
it past the bumpers were pleasantly entertained by the show's commitment to
world-threatening giant robot action, and frequent use of animators like
Yoshinori Kanada to liven things up in pursuit of said world-threatening giant
robot action. The show is just as emblematic of its time period as the original
black and white 60s series; while the 1963-66 show whizzed and bumped through
its sepia-toned adventures with a whimsical mania, the 1980 series is smooth,
colorful, well-designed, and filled with a sleek yet simple modernity that holds
up 35 years later. 
Jimmy Sparks (Shotaro
Kaneda), whose scientist father created 27 remote-controlled super robots along
with Dr. Bob Brilliant (Dr. Shikishima) until finding success with #28, now
looks a little less like a 50s advertising mascot and a little more like an
actual tween. He’s old enough to pilot a giant robot, but young enough to not
have to worry about pimples or embarrassing voice changes. His companion throughout the show is Dr.
Brillant’s daughter Bonnie (in Japan,
Makiko Shikishma), a new character created just for the 1980 series. As always, the forces of law and order are
represented by Inspector Blooper (Chief Ohtsuka) of the International Police, a
goofy, mustached policeman with a beautiful wife and an upcoming role in the
next TMS robot anime.
1980’s Gigantor launches from an underground hangar hidden
beneath a tennis court, a sports-related note that brings to mind both Mazinger
Z’s swimming pool egress and TMS’s
successful shojo sports series Aim For The Ace.
Jimmy’s natty blazer, tie, and short-shorts ensemble has been updated to
a more casual short-sleeve high-collared IP shirt over a T-shirt. Relax; he’s
still wearing shorts. And yes, Jimmy Sparks is still duly authorized to drive
and carry a firearm. Let’s face it, you’re trusting a 12 year old to control a
super robot capable of destroying cities; might as well let him drive.
As in the original, different criminal gangs dress up in
various uniforms and use super robots of varying types to carry out evil
schemes involving theft, destruction, war, and other bad things. Recurring villain Professor Murkybottom is
always after the secret of Gigantor’s solar energy converter, and even went as
far as to kill Jimmy Sparks’ father in search of it. However, it isn’t long before the show moves
beyond the original series’ 60s motif of evil villains, henchmen legions, and
secret Bond-villain lairs. We might love the kitschy, clunky charms of the black
and white show, but this version is a little more coherent.
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| beautiful but deadly Marana |
Gigantor faces Viking robots, Sphinx robots, space alien
monsters, evil arms dealers, and monster Mediterranean octopi. There’s an episode involving the Guinness Book
Of World Records, and a three-part Horror Thriller series involving robot
ghosts, vampires, and zombies. Yes, there is a Kung-Fu Robo. The beautiful robot designer Marana visits
from a different TMS show, maybe Cobra or
Cat’s Eye, and makes two appearances to disturb Jimmy’s tween hormones AND
use her super robot for crime. An amusement park roller
coaster turns into a giant robot and kidnaps children. A robot King Kong wreaks
havoc. The Jolly Roger pits his flying pirate ship against Gigantor. Murkybottom returns with a third, a fourth, a
fifth, even a sixth super robot. The evil
Doctor Doom hijacks bullet trains and threatens to send them into high-speed
head-on collisions. Professor Graybeard,
whom viewers of “Giant Robo” may recognize as a certain Dr. Franken Von Vogler,
creates Gigantor’s rival, the almost sentient Jackal (in Japan, “Black Ox”). Against these menaces Gigantor triumphs, usually using the Hammer Punch or his signature finishing move, the Flying Kick.
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| evil master of darkest space Modark |
Halfway through the run, the show takes a left turn into
outer space with the appearance of Modark, the alien overlord who is always
referred to as The Evil Master Of Darkest Space. When his UFOs invade Earth and capture Prof.
Murkybottom, an evil alliance is formed that will take our heroes into the
void, wrestling Gigantor out of its robot crime roots and placing it firmly
into Star Wars territory. Modark and Murkybottom together throw robots and
space monsters and a cameo by vintage Gigantor foe “Brainy The Robot With The
Dielectronic Brain” as Modarkian robot Antark against Sparks, Brilliant,
Interpolice, and the Earth Defense Forces. Transformed into a far-flung space
melodrama, the series pits Jimmy against Modark and forces Bonnie to cope with
strange new feelings for the space prince Coldark. This hesitant outer space
romance would blossom more fully in TMS’s
next robot series, another Yokoyama adaptation about a young man’s super robot
legacy, titled God Mars.
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| Bonnie's space boyfriend |
Like many anime shows neglected here, Tetsujin-28’s new
adventures would prove more popular in Europe (“Iron Man
28” in Spanish and “Super Robot 28” in Italy)
and in the Arabic-speaking world, under the title “Thunder Giant.” However, The
New Adventures Of Gigantor was a tough sell for the American mid 90s kidvid
market, being not kitschy or retro enough for baby-boomer appeal and not cutesy
enough for actual kids. Anime fans
accustomed to Robotech or Streamline’s more adult titles might have felt Gigantor
lacked a certain sophistication, and after 1990s icons like Sailor Moon and
Pokemon impacted North American popular culture, Jimmy Sparks and his space-age
robot would become a footnote. Contemporaneous anime fans eager for their
throwback Yokoyama robot anime would find that itch more than scratched with
the Giant Robo series of OVAs.
Neglected at its airing, the series has never been released
on home video in the United States,
and that’s a shame. It’s a solid show that deserved more attention than anime
fandom gave it at the time. Apart from the colorized 60s inserts, the
localization is well-done and unobtrusive; violent scenes that might have been
edited out a few years earlier are left intact. The competent and frequently
snappy dub includes longtime industry veteran Richard Epcar and avoids the
staccato Peter Fernandez direction of the original, in favor of more
naturalistic dialog. Mr. Ladd reports
that the home video rights were held by LIVE Entertainment Inc., a production
company formed out of the merger of home-video corporations Family Home
Entertainment and International Video Entertainment, all under the corporate
ownership of Carolco Pictures.
According to Wikipedia, Carolco sold its shares
in LIVE to Pioneer, which became Geneon, and which is now NBCUniversal
Entertainment Japan. This tangled web of corporate ownership presents myriad
complications to any potential English language release, the rights of which
may involve one Japanese corporation and a completely different Japanese
corporation both with a stake in an IP owned in part by the Mitsuteru Yokoyama estate. Merely locating watchable
episodes of The New Adventures Of Gigantor is a nostalgic exercise in fan networking,
a throwback to the tape-trading days of its original broadcast. If Let's Anime's referrals are any indication, the interest for this series is definitely out there.
Who knows whether we’ll ever see this show in North American
media again? Will it surface on a streaming video site, as its Japanese
iteration currently is? Will some forward-thinking exec cut some red tape and
release it on DVD? Perhaps Gigantor’s new
adventures remain buried beneath a tennis court, waiting only for someone to
take the remote controls in hand and command it to life.
Thanks to Fred Ladd and Daniel Vucci for their assistance.
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