Mighty Atom (TV series)

Mighty Atom (鉄腕アトム, Testuwan Atomu) is a Japanese black-and-white Tokusatsu live action TV drama that aired on MBS from March 7, 1959 to May 28, 1960 for a total of 65 episodes split into five parts. It was produced for Mainichi Broadcasting System, sponsored by Lotte Corporation, by Matsuzaki Production, which was founded by Keiji Matsuzaki, who worked with Eiji Tsuburaya as a special effects director before the war and was a producer at Toho. It is the first adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's Mighty Atom (a.k.a. Astro Boy) manga comic book series and predates the 1963 Mighty Atom (Astro Boy) anime.^[1]

The plot of the TV series has less science fiction elements than the original, and is more in line with the detective hero stories of the time, with a focus on fighting gangsters.^[2] In the original, the story takes place in the 21st century, but according to Atom's dialogue in the final episode of Part 2, the historical background of this series is 1959, which is the same year as the broadcast. Although the series was popular for a year, Tezuka became dissatisfied with the live-action adaptation of his own manga, saying that it was too far removed from the image of the original work, and this became the driving force behind the production of the first Astro Boy anime a few years later. In addition, when Sōji Ushio approached Tezuka in 1965 to make a live-action version of Ambassador Magma, Tezuka initially suggested that he make a live-action version of Big X for this reason.^[3] However, the live-action adaptation of Ambassador Magma produced by P Productions was highly praised by Tezuka, and the bad impression of live-action adaptation was dispelled, and Tezuka himself considered producing a live-action version of Mighty Atom in 1972.

References[]

External links[]

• Mighty Atom at allcinema
• "Hey everyone, I'm Mighty Atom." (in Japanese)

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