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'Go Astro Boy Go!' Animated Series Premieres on October 3
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
TV Tokyo announced on Tuesday that it will premiere Planet Nemo and Tezuka Productions' Go Astro Boy Go! (Go! Go! Atom) animated series on October 3. The series is the first Astro Boy series targeted at preschool children. Romi Park will voice Astro Boy (Atom).
The series will launch TV Tokyo's new preschool-oriented timeslot "Preschool Time." The timeslot will run every Thursday from 5:55 p.m. to 6:25 p.m. Go Astro Boy Go! will air alongside the Egg Car series in the timeslot.
Planet Nemo describes the show:
The eco-systems of planet Earth are endangered. Lucky for us, a super-powered robot boy is flying to rescue! astro in on a mission to help anyone anywhere in the world with a problem involving natural phenomena. Go little Astro Boy ! GO !
Planet Nemo's official website lists that the series will be 52 episodes at 11 minutes each, but the company's Facebook page lists the series with 52 episodes at 13 minutes each.
The series is a separate production from Tezuka Productions, Caribara Animation, and Monaco's Shibuya Productions' in-development Astro Boy reboot project.
This is not the first time that Osamu Tezuka's 1952-1968 manga inspired overseas works. Hong Kong animation studio IMAGI produced the computer-animated film version of Astro Boy with distributor Summit Entertainment in 2009. A joint production between Tezuka Productions and Nigerian television station Chanel TV created a television animation project in early 2014.
In Japan, the manga inspired the country's first full-fledged half-hour television anime series in 1963, followed by a color television series in 1980 and a remake in 2003.
Warner Bros. subsidiary New Line Cinema is in talks to acquire Animal Logic Entertainment and Tezuka Productions' planned live-action Astro Boy film.
Tetsuro Kasahara's Atom The Beginning manga recently inspired a television anime adaptation that premiered in April 2017. Naoki Urasawa's Pluto manga, which re-imagines the world of Astro Boy and centers on a separate key character in the story, also has an anime adaptation in the works.
Sources: TV Tokyo, The Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web
