Happy 40th Anniversary Gatchaman!

Hi all!

Today, October 1st, 2012, marks the 40th anniversary of the premiere of Gatchaman on Japanese TV. To celebrate the occasion, I've put together a selection of pictures that I thought you might enjoy seeing.

We start off with a smattering of early design drawings of Ken, Joe, and Jun. The Ken and Joe ones, in particular, show the development process they went through before reaching the final designs.















This is followed by two pages from the September, 1972 issue of Shogakukan Book. This spread is from a comic adaptation of the first Gatchaman story, "Gatchaman Versus Turtle King." Shokagukan actually did this same story many times over in different forms for the September issues of their various kids magazines published that month. Since each magazine was aimed at a different age group, the story had to be adapted in a manner appropriate for those different ages. Since these magazines were released in early September, several weeks before the series premiered on TV, these comics served as the introduction of Gatchaman to many Japanese children.



Since it was that same Turtle King story that launched the adventures of the Science Ninja Team, we'll take a closer look at some behind the scenes work on that particular episode.

First up are a pair of early publicity images for the series, both of which utilize an early design for Turtle King.





Then we get into a selection of model sheets from the episode. The first are designs for the Turtle King Commander. These designs were originally created to be Berg Katse's uniform, and his name appears on the model sheets, crossed out and with "Commander" written in next to it. In the Shogakukan comics mentioned above, Berg Katse is shown wearing this uniform, showing that the change was done too late to be reflected in those comics.









After those, we have several designs for Turtle King itself, as well as a sketch showing the scale between it and the God Phoenix and a color image drawing of Turtle King attacking.











We end the design portion of the images with a concept sketch for the Tornado Fighter and a color image drawing of the opening scene from the series, showing the lighthouse in the storm.





Then, to wrap things up, we have a series of color storyboards for the first episode. These storyboards were created by Art Director Mitsuki Nakamura to help establish the type of color palette the series would use.





























So, congratulations to Gatchaman on reaching this milestone! I hope you'll enjoy these images, and will spend a few moments thinking about the series that has meant so much to so many of us.

James

Wow, they are fantastic... but does anyone else think the Turtle King Commander has a vague resemblance to Gel Sadra?

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That is a wonderful retrospective of the episode that started it all (as well as character development overall).

Thank you for sharing your images with us, James, and I will echo CD in saying that it is great to see you here again.

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Thank you for sharing these wonderful bits of history...I love the vintage feel to them, all the handwork that went into putting a show together.

Truly amazing.

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Thanks for sharing Tatsunokofan! It is a fascinating process and to get a glimpse the behind-the-scenes is intriguing.

That very first picture of Ken ... wow ... he looks so young! (or maybe it's because now I'm so old!)

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Thanks James, and welcome back!

I'll agree with everyone else on the stripes in the Birdstyle, that would have been just too busy.

Ken's basic look doesn't appear to have changed too much from some of the early drawings of the series, as far as his face and hair go.

I think this is the first time I heard about those books. What a neat way to promote the series.

Thanks for sharing!

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But that means Ill be 40 this year too...

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