Super Taromu

Astroboy-copycat you say? Well, there's more. Super Taromu was created in 1972 when Osamu Tezuka's studio Mushi Productions had financial difficulties and had to loose the copyrights of their characters. The President of Knack Productions, Kiyoshi Nishino had the same time an intention of "Super Taromu taking care of Astro Boy's dream", where he head for making a new commercially successful Astro Boy show. Due to Taromu's animation similarities with Chargeman Ken and Detective Boy Akira, "Chakenist's" have ridiculed Taromu as "poor man's Astro Boy". However, the BGM is completely different from Akira's BGM, which was diverted from the other existing Knack works. Since own themesongs and BGM were made for Taromu, it can be seen that it was produced with a higher budget than other works on the Anime Kingdom -DVD. Taku Sugiyama who participated in numerous Tezuka animations, such as Astro Boy, was in the Taromu's production staff. However, as a result of Sugiyama making this work without a compromise, the production period planned for one month spanned for two months, coming overbudgeted. Super Taromu was finished to a length of 23 minutes which for a pilot film is very unusual. Looking at Taromu's current length, it seems that Taromu was forcibly shrunk into about 10 minutes to make it a pilot film. This happened after the production staff alongside Sugiyama left Knack. It's unsure how serious Sugiyama was when making a 23-minute version of Taromu. Above all reasons, anyone didn't attach to this work as much to buy it, causing end to Knack's "cash flow". After this incident, Toei Animation's work Jetter Mars went through the same process as Taromu, but was aired on TV in 1977. Astro Boy returned into broadcasters as a re-animated version in 1980. Super Taromu was released for the public decades later, as a part of Anime Kingdom -DVD. Since similarities exist between Taromu's and Chargeman Ken's characters and their design, many have theorized Taromu been inspiration for Chargeman Ken! or even it's pilot episode.