A Gatchaman II Mystery Solved!

Hi all!

As some of you are aware, on today's date in 1979, Gatchaman II ran a rerun of Gatchaman II #28 instead of a the usual new episode of the series. Perhaps you wondered why they ran a rerun that week, the only time in the run of all three Gatchaman series that a rerun was aired instead of a new episode. Well, for many years now, I've wondered that same thing. Was the new episode not ready to air for some reason? Was there some major breaking news story that made Fuji TV decide to not to use a new episode? What was the reason?

Last month, I finally got an answer. You see, I finally managed to track down a copy of the Japanese edition of TV Guide for that week. Looking at the listing for Gatchaman on Sunday night, there it was listed, plain as day; "6:00 Gatchaman II 'Love Stolen by a Feather Shuriken' (Repeat)." So the rerun was something that was planned by Fuji TV, not something that came about at the last minute. Well, if it was planned, there had to be a reason. A look at the rest of the schedule for what else was airing at that time quickly revealed that reason; baseball. Specifically the Quarter Finals of the 61st National High School Baseball Championship, an all day event that aired on TV Asahi from 8am to 7pm, featuring four games between rival teams at Koshien Stadium. Fuji TV must have realized that they couldn't compete against the baseball games, so they opted instead to fill their network programming day with reruns, movies, and a golf tournament. Tatsunoko probably chose that particular episode because is was a standalone episode that didn't interfere with the ongoing story being told in the series at that point, falling between episode #'s 46 and 47.

That rerun is also why you will sometimes see claims that Gatchaman II ran for 53 episodes, when in fact it only ran 52 episodes. It just did so over 53 weeks, thanks to the lone rerun in the broadcast history of Gatchaman. And now you know why it happened!

James

Good detective work, James! <- (that's supposed to be a detective, not a flasher! LOL)

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That's very interesting, James! Thanks and so very well done in having come to this true and valid conclusion! So, Gatchaman was as important as baseball so much so that a new episode couldn't be missed when forgoing such a special live sporting event couldn't be probable!

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