(The article for 1963, the first year featured here at Golden-Ani, has been provided for us by Charles Dunbar, maintainer of the
Study of Anime blog. He can also be found on Twitter at @
Studyofanime. Part 1 of Charles's analysis covering 1963's two biggest shows,
Tetsuwan Atomu and
Tetsujin 28, can be read
here.)
Now while
Atom and
Tetsujin might have made the biggest splash in that first year of television anime, there was a third cybernetically-enhanced fellow who flew “under the radar,” so to speak. His name was "Eitoman" ("8 Man"), and while he is often forgotten in the modern era, he made a splash of his own that would be felt long after he vanished from the airwaves.
Created by Kazumasa Hirai and illustrated by Jirô Kuwata (who would eventually garner more fame as the Japanese adaptor of
Batman later in the decade),
Eitoman occupies the position of first cyborg hero in Japan. While Tezuka and Yokoyama were debating a future in which robots coexisted with humans, Hirai decided to take the more (arguably) “humanist” approach of creating a hero out of a murdered policeman. Saved from death by Professor Tani, felled cop Hachiro Azuma’s brain is transplanted into the 008 robot body, where he continues to fight crime and defend the weak against evil.
