Was I the only person opening this thread with the expectations of hearing about the Legend of Zelda?
With Link, indeed…
Yes. Yes, you are. ;j
No. I remember…a giant flying robot? And the little kid had a remote control doohickey to make him do what he wanted, right?
That is one of my earliest, earliest TV memories. Must be 1968 or so.
pugluvr, at the bottom of this page is a link to hear Gigantor’s kick-ass theme song:
The first half-hour TV anime, according to this site; it debuted in Japan in 1963. Stylistically, Tezuka’s influence is incredible. He isn’t called the “God of Manga” for nothing.
Not all the changes will be bad, though. I recently saw a few shots from a remake of Cyborg 009, which has an African character in it. You can imagine what he looked like back in the Sixties in Japan, a country notorious for its persistent use of racial caricatures in popular media. (BTW, how is it that Mr. Popo managed to make it into the American version of Dragonball?) His design was toned down for the remake, and he actually looks quite cool and tuff now. This is an example of political correctness in the original and intended sense, yay, and I’m glad to see Japanese animators are recognizing changing attitudes.
Personally, I welcome this current boom in retro anime. I’ve been a fan since I was a tyke in the early Seventies (Hawaii residents were lucky to have stuff like Captain Harlock direct from Japan, subtitled for local TV!), but my interest in the genre has waned because of the type of titles being groomed for import. There are too many magical cutes and girls with guns and giant robots and neko-people and gotta-catch-'em-alls and edgy sf dramas and fighting shows where the characters power up for three episodes before throwing a punch. I long for the sense of wonder and adventure of the old shows. (And if anyone accuses me of wallowing in nostalgia for a show I haven’t seen since diaperhood, please note that I watched my tape of the Astro Boy pilot episode just a few weeks ago. It’s every bit as charming as it was thirty years ago.)
Astro Boy!!! Yay!
I didn’t grow up with Gigantor, but I did watch Johnny Sako’s flying robot, as well as Ultraman & Speed Racer. I pray they don’t remake Speed Racer; it would be wrong on so many levels.
jack@ss, they already have remade Speed Racer. The original Japanese company, Tatsunoko, was behind it, no less, and Nickelodeon was broadcasting it this year.
It was cancelled in Japan during its original 1997 run. I wept. It was like watching the death of my favorite kitten.
Alright, admittedly it did suck. GOD, did it suck. The redesigns are butt-ugly, they turned it into another merchandising cartoon, Trixie was just another useless toon female, and that time-travel plotline made me… arrrrgh…
Sorry, I had to shove my head into the toaster oven to keep it from exploding.
As MineFujiko points out, it probably was the first. The other black-and-white proto-anime shows I remember from my youth were Prince Planet, and Tobor: The 8th Man.
Here’s a link to the site that Laughing Lagomorph’s Gigantor theme song link came from. It has good basic data on all of the early anime I remember, and lots that I never saw, for the edification of all those reading this link and scratching their heads.
MineFujiko’s posts seem to encompass pretty well the plusses and minuses of remaking this stuff. While it may be best to clean up some of the more blatantly racially offensive stuff, once the P.C. corps gets started, there’s the risk that little will be left standing. I have fond memories of the “Ajibaba” character from Prince Planet, for example, but I’m sure he’d take all kinds of flak today as a stereotype of both Arabs (though he was technically from another planet) and the elderly.
Bah, real TransFans have the original cartoons on DVD.
Preferably the collectors’ edition boxed sets. 
Like me. Yes, I got it in the collector’s DVD.
Eat yer heart out, stonebow!
Transformers are cool, but can’t compete with Astro!