Tetsujin 28-go
Tetsujin 28-gō (鉄人28号 Tetsujin Nijūhachi-gō?, literally "Iron Man #28") is a 1956 manga written and illustrated by Mitsuteru Yokoyama, who also created Giant Robo. The series centred on the adventures of a young boy named Shotaro Kaneda, who controlled a giant robot named Tetsujin 28, built by his late father.
The manga was later adapted into four anime TV series. The first, in 1963, was the first Japanese anime series to feature a giant robot. The 1963 series was later released in America as Gigantor.[1] A live action motion picture with heavy use of computer generated graphics was produced in Japan in 2005.
Plot
During the final days of World War II, the Japanese military is secretly developing a superweapon intended to help save the Japanese Empire. After twenty-seven failed attempts, Dr. Kaneda completes a three-story high, remote-controlled robot. The robot is officially named Tetsujin 28-go. The war, however, is already over, and Dr. Kaneda dies of heart failure shortly after completing Tetsujin 28. Rather than becoming the military's key weapon, Tetsujin 28 is given to Dr. Kaneda's ten-year-old son, Shotaro. Under Shotaro's control, Tetsujin is put to work stopping criminals and enemy robots.
[edit]Characters
Shotaro Kaneda (金田 正太郎 Kaneda Shōtarō?): The ten-year-old son of Dr. Kaneda. He is Tetsujin's assigned controller, with a deep emotional attachment to the robot. Shotaro is a boy detective famous throughout Tokyo, and in the manga, 1963 series, and 2004 series, can be seen frequently driving a car.
Professor Shikishima (敷島 博士 Shikishima-hakase?): Dr. Kaneda's assistant, later Shotaro's mentor and guardian. He is caring and very dedicated to his work, but usually looks serious and deadpan. He is married, and has a son named Tetsuo.
Inspector Ootsuka (大塚 署長 Ōtsuka-shochou?): The Chief of Tokyo Police. He is warm in personality and very enthusiastic, which isn't to say he doesn't take his job seriously. He is very close to Shikishima and also takes care of Shotaro, even acting as a surrogate father in the 2004 series.
Kenji Murasame (村雨 健次 Murasame Kenji?): A former intelligence officer who begins to help Otsuka and Shotaro's work. His appearances in the 1960s and 2004 series are startkly different; he is immediately Shotaro's ally in the 1960s, but in the 2004 series, his brothers Ryuusaku and Tatsu are killed during Tetsujin's revival, causing him to seek revenge for several episodes. In the original manga, he and Ryuusaku are the leaders of a criminal organization.
Professor Shutain Franken (不乱拳酒多飲 博士 Furanken Shutain-hakase?): A reclusive mad scientist who created the robot Black Ox. He is calm and very knowledgeable, but unfortunately uses his talents to create dangerous robots. In the original version of the 1960s series, his name is Dr. Black Dog.
Superhuman Kelly (超人間 ケリー Chōningen Kerī?): An American man who volunteered himself to be turned into an android as part of a wartime experiment. As a result, his body is entirely robotic with the exception of his brain, and is often covered in bandages. In the 2004 series, he steals his brother Johnson's identity in order to kill the doctor that made him this way.
[edit]Publication
Tetsujin 28-go was serialized in Kobunsha's Shōnen Magazine from July 1956 to May 1966, for a total of 97 chapters. The series was collected into 12 tankōbon volumes, which are re-released every ten years.
[edit]Design
Yokoyama's Tetsujin, much like Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy, was influenced by the artist's wartime experiences. In Yokoyama's case, this was through the bombing of Kobe in World War II.[2]
As he had written in Ushio magazine in 1995, "When I was a fifth-grader, the war ended and I returned home from Tottori Prefecture, where I had been evacuated. The city of Kobe had been totally flattened, reduced to ashes. People said it was because of the B-29 bombers...as a child, I was astonished by their terrifying, destructive power." Another influence on Tetsujin's creation was the Vergeltungswaffen, a set of wonder weapons designed for long-range strategic bombing during World War II, and the idea that Nazi Germany possessed an "ace in the hole to reverse [its] waning fortunes".[3] The third work to inspire Yokoyama's creation was the 1931 film Frankenstein, which shaped Yokoyama's belief that the monster itself is neither good or evil.
[edit]Adaptations
[edit]1963 TV series
Main article: Gigantor
The 1963 TV incarnation of Tetsujin 28-go aired on Fuji TV from 20 October 1963 to 25 May 1966. The series initially ended with 84 episodes, but then returned for 13 more, for a total of 97 episodes. The series had mostly short plots that never took up more than three episodes, but was generally more light-hearted than the anime that would succeed it. Shotaro, Otsuka, Shikishima and Murasame functioned as a team in this version. Only 52 episodes were ever dubbed for the English broadcast.
[edit]1980 TV series
Main article: The New Adventures of Gigantor
The 1980-81 Shin Tetsujin 28-go (New Tetsujin 28) series was created with 51 color episodes based on a modernized take upon the original concept art. In 1993, Fred Ladd and the TMS animation studio converted the series into The New Adventures of Gigantor and had it broadcast on America's Sci-Fi Channel from September 9, 1993 to June 30, 1997.
[edit]Tetsujin 28 FX
Main article: Tetsujin 28 fx
Rather than a remake like the 1980 series, Tetsujin 28 FX was a sequel to the original series. The show follows Shotaro's son Masato, who controlled a new edition of Tetsujin and worked at a detective agency with other children. Among them were Shiori Nishina, granddaughter of Chief Otsuka. The Tetsujin FX (The Iron Hero 28 Future X) was controlled by a remote control gun, which had to be fired at the robot for it to take its commands. The series aired on Nihon TV from April 5, 1992 to March 30, 1993, totaling 47 episodes. It has been brought over to Latin America, but never released in English-speaking countries.
ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
