The Search for Phantaman

You’ll need to do some trawling online for it - I managed to snag my copy of both the Italian and Japanese audio on one DVD set by doing some digging on eBay.  I think the Japanese version was just rereleased in the last few years, too, so you might look for that as well.

justdyingslowly submitted to thesearchforphantaman: 

This story goes nowhere - but I thought id share it anyway :) I was watching the couple of English subbed Ogon Bat episodes again when my dad walked in and said “…you can’t be serious… Not this shit again…”. I was confused - he had heard of it before? How could he possibly have heard of it before, wasn’t this only released in Japanese and Italian or something? He isn’t anime-savvy, he only really likes Ghibli and Lupin III. I looked it up and it turns out that there was an English dub played in Australia, but it was lost! I got pretty excited, my dad used to work in TV in the 60’s and 70’s, He often complained about having to put on air really old anime he considered rubbish like Kimba the White Lion. I asked him if he had put it to air. Unfortunately he didn’t, he worked at the ABC, not a commercial station. He knew the man who did though, they went to the same Rotary Club. I looked him up - but he died in the 2000’s. :( People who just put the shows to air probably wouldn’t have much good information on the shows themselves, but I was interested in what he would have remembered of it. He would have sat through a lot after all. I asked dad what he thought of the show, if he remembered anything specific about the voices or… anything. “It was TERRIBLE - just like that Marine Boy show. Fucking awful. No animation at all, just still pictures with flashing mouths… I never watched commercial stations anyway, too many ads.” After a moment he said “Actually it was probably a bit better than Marine Boy,” but that doesn’t mean much. He LOATHES Marine Boy. Its a useless story, but it was exciting for a little while to think that it really DID exist! And it still does, somewhere… Channel 9 (specifically their “9GO!” channel, I think) spends A LOT of its time replaying its old shows these days. Bewitched, I Dream of Genie, Marine Boy, The Mysterious Cities of Gold… I wonder if they still have Ogon Bat? I wonder if they would ever replay it again to fill in the time? I don’t know. I hope so. If it did I would be the first to piss my pants about it.

I’m glad you did!  Please give your father my regards -- the show is indeed something to behold; sort of a “love it or hate it” deal. There’s no denying it’s utterly ridiculous!

The missing English dub is actually the main reason this blog was created -- nobody can seem to find any episodes of it, aside from a small “on the next episode” clip narrated by Burr Middleton.  The English dub was known as “Phantaman,” which I would wager is where the other localizations got the name “Fantaman,” “Fantomas,” etcetera.

I am very curious about 9Go -- unfortunately, I’ve never been to Australia myself and am very unfamiliar with its broadcasting networks.  Perhaps it’s time I reached out to this specific one with a query!

Hey, guys!  It’s sure been a while since I posted here.  I’d thought the trail on this had all but dried up, but just the other day, out of the blue, I got a LENGTHY and super-detailed email from an individual named Andy Shepherd!

Mr. Shepherd has apparently been looking for Phantaman separately for quite some time, though fell out of it recently due to getting busy... go figure!  How cool is that, though?

I’ve included most of it here under the read-more label.  Have a look-see!

Look at the blog title, my friend!  “Ougon Batto” was localized in Australia as “Phantaman,” where--funny enough--the titular character didn’t actually go by that in the show.  Instead he was called “Phantoma, Warrior of Justice,” or just Phantoma for short.

I’m still over here chasing leads, and while I don’t have much to report right now, this hunt is far from over!

In lieu of a more substantial update, I figured I’d go ahead and share some fun little tidbits that I’ve found through my searching.  I’ve shared some of these before, but what the hey!

In the English dub of Golden Bat, known in Australia as “Phantaman”...

...the role of Dr. Steele was played by William Ross, owner of Frontier Enterprises at the time when the company was dubbing Phantaman

...Pat Kobayashi (AKA Patricia Elliott) seems to have played the role of Mary

...Gabby, the Narrator, Dr. Zero, and Phantoma were played by Burr Middleton

The English version of Phantaman simply used a chopped version of the Japanese theme song, rather than adapting it into English or using an instrumental version of it.

The distributor of Phantaman into its English dub was K. Fujita & Associates, where the Mr. Fujita in question is Kazuhiko M. Fujita, largely responsible for bringing anime across the Pacific to other countries and languages.

Kazuhiko “Ken” Fujita, however, is not to be confused with Mr. Kiyoshi Fujita of “Video Promotions,” which still exists today!

Most of the actors on Phantaman were from the Far East Network, working as voice actors and dubbing artists during the time of their service.

The original kamishibai “Ougon Batto” was written by Ichiro Suzuki and illustrated by Takeo Nagamatsu.

Yeah, this one right here.  Just managed to find a bit of info on it that was previously nowhere to be found: this commercial trailer was directed by Shinichi Watanabe of Ltd. Anime International Company (known as AIC).

You may know Mr. Watanabe from various works, including Tenchi Muyo! GXP,  Lupin III: Da Capo of Love: Fujiko's Unlucky Days, Sket Dance, several Shin Megami Tensei titles, and many more.

While this is not all too informative with regards to the whereabouts of the English versions of the original Phantaman series, it’s fascinating nonetheless, considering the copyright for the 黄金バット franchise beyond just the original kamishibai is still active.

Could we be seeing a reboot, after all?

The National Library of Australia just messaged me back, saying they found nothing in any of over 1000 library databases spanning across Australia regarding Phantaman.  In addition, a search in the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia produced no results, either.

The extent of what the members of this library found were that the show aired in the mornings at 7:30 in 1970, which, while interesting and helpful in narrowing down the time period of the show’s airing in English, does not lead to many new directions.

However, I haven’t yet given up hope.  There are a few other people from whom I am still waiting to hear back who may yet be able to lead the search somewhere new.  Not to mention, I’ve managed to dig up far more information on this show on my own than the National Library of Australia did in all their databases, which means leads must exist outside of there.

This company is still active today.  I’ll keep everyone posted on what else I find.  This is a lead I’d previously considered dead, so it’s really exciting... :D

Source:

I’m sure some of you have been following the antics of #The Search for Phantaman here on Tumblr.  For those of you who are completely, utterly lost... please read on.

Recently, I discovered a very old cartoon from 1967 titled “Golden Bat (黄金 バット).”  It was translated and brought overseas to several countries, but as of today only certain versions of it still exist to common knowledge.  The Italian version, localized as “Fantaman,” has been posted to Youtube in its entirety.  The English version, however, localized as “Phantaman” (where the titular character’s name within the show was “Phantoma”) seems to have fallen into obscurity due to the fact that it was only ever broadcast in English in Australia starting in the year 1968 and was never released on VHS or DVD.

Because of the show’s age and the fact that no episodes have ever been shared online, it’s believed that nobody thought to record the episodes as they were airing on television.  There is, however, evidence that it did once exist in English, according to one very low-quality recording on Youtube, linked here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL_Jd9sKOww …and a web page dedicated to what information is still known about the show as it existed in English, linked here:

http://home.alphalink.com.au/~roglen/phantoma.htm

Basically, what I am doing is researching the circumstances of the show’s airing in English and trying to track down as much information about it as I can.  Pickings are slim when it comes to leads, however, so any little bit of information that I’m able to find is like a little sliver of gold (…en bat).

As of right now, I’ve contacted the US Library of Congress, the National Library of Australia, Mr. Burr Middleton (who provided the voice of the narrator on the show in English), Nine Entertainment (the company that owns the network on which Phantaman was originally broadcast in the sixties and seventies), Network Ten (another network that broadcast the cartoon in the sixties and seventies), and countless film preservation societies around the world.  I’m still looking for new leads at all times, so if anybody has any information they think may be helpful, please do contact me and let me know!  My contact information is available on this blog’s description.