Friday is Artificial Life Form Day No. 3

This week; Gigantor the Space Age Robot! Gigantor was one of the first Japanese Anime’s broadcast here in the United States. Along with Gigantor there was Astro Boy and Speed Racer. I never watched Astro Boy, for that matter I don’t even remember it being on but I did watch Gigantor and Speed Racer.

Gigantor was a giant robot over 50ft tall that was controlled by a young boy named Little Jimmy Sparks. Jimmy’s father originally created Gigantor to be a weapon but he was later reprogrammed to be a guardian of peace. Among other abilities Gigantor could fly from a rocket backpack, shoot beams from his fingertips and had incredible strength.

Gigantor and Jimmy would travel around the world battling evil doers where ever they were. He was possibly Japan’s first foray into gigantic robots. Although Gigantor was not sentient like some of the other famous robots he was just as important and quite often while watching as a kid you would know Gigantor would come and save the day, even though it was Little Jimmy Sparks actually doing the work. And as a kid you never pretended to be Jimmy, you pretended to be the 50+ foot tall robot. I mean come on now, which would you want to be?

While Gigantor might not be as popular or famous here in the United States as some other cartoons he is still pretty popular in Japan. In October of 2009 they built a life size statue of Gigantor in Kobe, Japan.

The statue is some 59ft tall and weighs over 50 tons. All I got to say is this thing is awesome looking and has given this geek a reason to want to go to Kobe, Japan someday. Pretty fricken' cool, right?

Next week we’re going to take a jump back to Hanna Barbera to take a look at another robot who was similar to Gigantor. We’ll look at Frankenstein Jr.

Stay tuned……