Tetsujin 28-gō Gao! , the first new Tetsujin 28 anime in six years, will premiere on Fuji TV in April. The series of anime shorts, roughly five minutes in length, will focus on protagonist Shōtarō Kaneda's everyday life instead of focusing on battle scenes as previous Tetsujin 28 titles have done. The visuals of the title robot, its nemesis Black Ox, and other elements will have a pop-art style (pictured at right).

Producer Daisuke Hara said that even people who have not seen any Tetsujin 28 until now will enjoy this remake. He added that even though it is airing early in the morning, he thinks that families will enjoy it.

Tetsujin 28-gō Gao! will be the first anime based on the late Mitsuteru Yokoyama's 1956-66 manga since Yasuhiro Imagawa's 2007 Tetsujin 28-go: Hakuchū no Zangetsu film. The original story centered on Shōtarō, a boy who controlled a giant robot to fight evil. The manga inspired a 1960 live-action television series, the more well-known 1963-66 television anime series (adapted in English as Gigantor), several more television anime series (in 1980, 1992, and 2004), a 2005 live-action film, Mamoru Oshii's 28 1/2 Mōsō no Kyojin film of his 2008 Tetsujin 28 stage play, and several manga spinoffs or remakes.

The Japanese animation company Hikari Productions and the Hong Kong-based computer animation studio IMAGI produced a "T28" teaser video in 2009, before IMAGI stopped producing CG feature films. Hip hop music video director Bryan Barber planned to pitch a Gigantor film in 2011. The city of Kobe errected an 18-meter (59-feet) Tetsujin 28 statue at Yokoyama's birthplace.

The new series of anime shorts will air on Saturdays from 4:52 to 5:00 a.m., starting on April 6.

Source: Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web

Image © Hikari Productions, Fuji TV, Eiken