Tatakae! Osper (partially found anime series based on manga; 1965-1967)

Title card for Tatakae! Osper

Status: Partially Found

Tatakae! Osper (戦え! オスパー) is a sci-fi manga series created by Yamano Koichi^[1] and Takashi Ina, later having an anime adaptation made by Koichi himself and the Nihon Hoso Eigasha (transl. Japanese Broadcasting Film). The anime series was broadcasted on the Japanese channel, Nippon TV, and aired from December 14th, 1965, up until October 31st, 1967, spanning 52 episodes in total and each episode ran for 30 minutes.^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6]

Plot

After a catastrophic event disintegrated their home continent, the citizens of Mu adjusted their ways of living as they continue to live their lives in the ocean, with cities covered in domes, and as years go by, many of its citizens learned and adapted psychic abilities. Osper, our main protagonist, is one of them.^[7]

In an annual battle between the nation's competition to determine which citizen is the best psychic of them all, Osper is in battle with a mean, evil-spirited boy named Drome. The battle went on and Osper won, but due to Drome's poor-sported attitude, he destroys the dome the city is enclosed upon. Osper was sent to hunt down Drome above the sea and in the cities on land where he meets a girl named Yumi Umizu. Learning that various crimes and problems in the cities above the sea were caused by Drome, Osper and Yumi tackle and resolve these issues to fight evil and Drome, with Drome fleeing away every time.^[7]^[6]

Cast

Keiko Yamato as Osper^[3]
Akira Okuhara as Robert^[3]
Iemasa Kayumi as Chief Kaizu^[3]
Megumi Tama as Yumi Kaizu^[3]
Ryo Abe as Drome^[3]

Availability

The series was broadcasted every Tuesday starting from December 1965 up until October 1967^[5] and was the very first anime broadcasted by Nippon TV.^[8]. Since it ended, there was no official home media release for the series and is rarely mentioned in newspapers and all of the 52 episodes are lost to time, much as any anime that had aired in the 1960s that was not properly archived. The only existing material of the series prior to 2022 was the opening credits of the show that was included in a compilation VHS tape of anime themes and an eight minute audio clip from the 40th episode of the series, Castle of Fear (恐怖の城), which was put on a sonosheet record. Both can easily be watched online.

Episode 7's (火の鳥) Mysterious Reappearance

On August 20th, 2022, Twitter user @video_vhs posted on their Twitter account about the sudden reappearance of a film strip of the 7th episode of the series, "Firebird/Phoenix (火の鳥)", in a Yahoo! auction. While the original link for the Yahoo! auction had not been given by the said user, they did however posted pictures that are contained and embedded in the auction. It is currently unknown who the auctioneer was and who had bought and won the auction, but this does give hope and confirmation that another episode is in possession of someone's, albeit the chance of it resurfacing again remains unlikely^[9].

Episode 41's (戦え！オスパー毒蛾の大群) Discovery

On August 2019, Kokuei, the parent company of the now dissolved Nihon Hoso Eigasha (the company which produced "Tatakae! Osper"), found a film strip whilst they were cleaning up a warehouse, that contained an episode of "Tatakae! Osper", albeit was in very poor condition and deteriorating. It is believed to be the 41st episode of the series, "Horde of Poisonous Moths (戦え！オスパー毒蛾の大群)" that had first aired on September 20th, 1966^[8]^[6]. A Kickstarter page was made on Campfire with an ambition to fund and restore the film, with the target goal of ¥550,000 (around $4,246.00). The Kickstarter was successful as it made double the target amount at ¥1,598,512 (around $12,340.00).^[6]

The deteriorated film was taken into consideration and was digitized^[10], and was screened at the Tokyo CineCenter in late 2022 at a limited time and audience. The episode was prohibited to be converted to any forms of media and is not showed to the general public, though supporters of the project are given a DVD release. In addition, two clips of the 41st episode was posted on the official Kokuei channel on YouTube to the people who supported the film's restoration project.^[6]^[8]. The episode is known to be 24 minutes long.

On the 17th of May, 2023, the 41st episode of the series suddenly appeared in full on YouTube, uploaded by a user named "kamoogy mckinnable", The user is suspected to be either one of the supporters who had been given a DVD by Kokuei upon the limited screening of the episode or that the episode had been leaked before May 17th on various Japanese video-sharing sites and message boards beforehand and had just been re-uploaded on YouTube by said user. It is also suspected that "kamoogy mckinnable" is a throwaway account that was only made for the episode to be uploaded specifically as no other videos had been posted on said account before the episode was uploaded. These suspicions however are nothing but just a mere speculation with no proof backing their claims. With this, this has been and probably the only episode that will ever resurface from the series.

Episode 9's (毒人間7号) & Episode 30's (黒い手) Partial Reappearance

On January 23rd & 27th, the audio of two sonosheet records containing a few minutes of audio from the 9th episode "Poison Man #7 (毒人間7号)" and the 30th episode of the series "Black Hands (黒い手)" was uploaded onto Youtube by a user named "simfan96", the user who uploaded the audio has also stated that they have another sonosheet containing audio from the 49th episode of the series "Dancing Devil (踊る魔神)" but has not uploaded it yet as of 4/29/2024. With the following discoveries as well as the discovery of episode 40 all the way back in 2016, there is a possibility of finding more audio from the series on sonosheets, albeit extremely unlikely.

Other Episodes

Sonosheets from the series are rare but have been some of the existing materials from this series and other animes from this time. Unfortunately, most video footage of the episodes itself is much more rarer and difficult to obtain due to its age and lack of any available archives. Aside from this sonosheets, as of June 2024, only 1 episode ever had only resurfaced and is available in full (episode 41).