Monday 23 June 2003
By eBroadcast Staff and agencies.

Much of the ground-breaking animation produced in Japan over the last forty years has had a timeless quality to it. Series like Astroboy and Robotech, though long gone from network TV, continue to sell t-shirts, collectibles, and other merchandise.

Astroboy is one of the oldest of the "classic" anime series, having been produced originally from 1963 to 1966. Tetsuwan Atomu, as it was called in Japan, was the creation of Dr. Osamu Tezuka, one of the creative shapers of modern anime and manga. The series was colorized, dubbed, and ported to the USA in Canada in the Eighties, becoming the favorite Saturday morning cartoon for a generation of children. Astroboy was light and humorous, but often featured intense, philosophical storylines and moral debates as is typical of Japanese animation. The series followed the life of a child robot created in the year 2003 (which was far into the future during the Sixties).

Variety magazine reports that America's Kids WB has ordered 26 episodes of an "updated" version of the series, to air during the 2003-2004 season. Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan and Tezuka Productions, Osamu Tezuka's company, will be producing the episodes. It's unclear whether it will be a new, cleaned-up dub, as the Eighties' series was, or an all-new series based on the original.

Update: Shortly after this article went online, I received an e-mail from a reader living in Japan. It turns out, there is an all-new Japanese Astroboy series that just began airing in that country.

"Two weeks (or so) ago one of the channels I get on my sattelite dish (Animax) started playing a new series of Astroboy cartoons. This is a 100% new series with updated animation, modern style etc. This might be the series that WB will be playing next year. If so, you're in for a treat because it looks awesome."

Sounds interesting, and it's great that Tezuka Productions is still making the new series!