Big X (partially found anime series; 1964-1965)

Anime's opening title.

Status: Partially Found

Big X (ビッグX Biggu Ekkusu) is an anime adaptation of the Osamu Tezuka manga series which aired on August 3, 1964 to September 27, 1965 in TBS with a total of 59 episodes were made. This is the first anime series to be produced by Tokyo Movie (TMS).

Plot

The plot focuses on a boy with a drug that can increase his body to that of a giant, a result of a failed experiment from the Nazis during World War II.

Status

Only episodes 1, 11, and 40-59 are known to survive. The discovery of the first episode is because a collector named Jerry Beck was discovered to owned a 16mm print. He announced he was showing the film at an Asifa meeting, but an executive from TMS came to the screening and forbade him from publicly showing the print. Jerry was informed that the series was lost, and was asked to loan the print back to the studio so that they can make a video transfer for their archive.

Episode 11 of the show was found in 2014 (but without the opening or ending sequences). It was then broadcast on the Animax Network as part of the TMS’s 50th-anniversary celebration.

Although episodes 5 and 30 were both aired around 1990 on NHK satellite television channels, they never surfaced again and were thus never included in home media releases. There is hope that home recordings of the time may resurface one day.

Episode 14 (previously thought to be episode 12) was released by a fansubber in 2016 with hardcoded subtitles and can be found fairly easily online (Although related content seems to have been removed from said fansubber website). The original material that served for this translation is unknown, but seems to be from a VHS source. The opening sequence has the title screen translated in English (rather than in Katakana) which may imply that the source was from oversea promotional material.

Videos

English subtitled of the first episode.

English subtitled of episode 11.