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I was reading about Tokyo Movie Shinsha's first TV work, BIG X, which was created by Osamu Tezuka (the only time TMS would animate his work).

Apparently, even though 59 episodes were made, only 21 of them survive. Copies of the rest are nowhere to be found.

The reason for this is because the show was made in black-and-white. It seems that there are quite a few B&W anime missing because of little value being seen when television went color. The 1966 "Osomatsu kun" series was lost for years until 16mm copies of the entire series was found in a warehouse. The complete series was put on DVD several years ago.

Does anyone know any examples of anime where some or all episodes are confirmed missing?

There was a thread on a show called Marco Polo no Boken awhile back that points out the master tapes for said show no longer exist.

In the video here on ANN of Mike Toole's Dubs that Time Forgot panel, he points out the wife of the producer of the show The Amazing 3 threw out the master reels, which are now in a New Jersey landfill somewhere.

For a more hopeful take, TRSI's story of how they came to be talk about how the original masters for Astroboy were all destroyed... and how the show was completely reassembled after a worldwide search for broadcast copies illegally kept by fans. (In fact, I seem to recall reading episode 34 is now only available in English, becuase the Japanese episode was pulled before airing.)

DuelLadyS wrote:

(In fact, I seem to recall reading episode 34 is now only available in English, becuase the Japanese episode was pulled before airing.)

Ah yes. Osamu Tezuka himself destroyed the print because he hated it (but not before a copy was sent to NBC for English dubbing).

A few years back the original Japanese copy of the episode was found in a warehouse.

Episode 34 was animated at Studio Zero and the quality...wasn't very good, hence Osamu hating it.

I know that quite a few (maybe even most) of the episodes of the original Astro Boy that weren't dubbed into English aren't known to exist in any form, since television stations in those days didn't make a habit of keeping original tape reels. I believe the same is true of the episodes of the original Tetsujin 28-Go that weren't used for Gigantor. It's the same situation as multiple episodes from the first few seasons of Doctor Who; the fan quest to try to track some of those down has been rather amazing.

Looking up, most of the black and white Astroboy survived in some form or another. The Japanese DVD boxsets that came out sometime ago only has three or so episodes omitted because a film print couldn't be found.

It's pretty clear, though, that shows that were made in black and white suffered the most.

It's my understanding that the Doctor Who episode were lost when the BBC's warehouse caught fire.

No, a lot of Doctor Who episodes were simply wiped or intentionally destroyed. For more information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_missing_episodes