Astro Boy (Mighty Atom Club)

Mighty Atom Club
Octber 1966

When Fuji Television first began broadcasting Astro Boy (1963-66) in January 1963, it was considered Japan’s first serial television animation. It was a huge hit and Osamu Tezuka decided to establish an Astro Boy fan club” within Mushi Productions to help build excitement for the show. So, beginning in August 1964, members began receiving a monthly publication known as Mighty Atom Club [鉄腕アトムクラブ].

Running alongside the primary serialization in the pages of Shonen [少年], Mighty Atom Club featured exclusive “members only” Astro Boy stories and other Mushi-related content that weren’t available to the general public.

However, although Osamu Tezuka wanted to write each of the stories himself, his punishing schedule simply didn’t allow it. So, while he did contribute several of the stories, he didn’t author all of them.

The first story to be “ghost written” was by Mushi staffer, Hideaki Kitano. Kitano first began working as one of Tezuka’s manga assistants before joining the animation arm of Mushi Productions.  His earliest known animation credit is for Astro Boy: Hero of the Universe, which was released in theatres in July 1964. His work first appears in the February 1965 issue of Mighty Atom Club – finishing off the three-part “Jungle Devil Boundry” story that Tezuka had started in the December 1964 issue. The story is labeled “Mushi Productions” with co-writing credits given to both Osamu Tezuka and Hideaki Kitano, thought it’s not known to what extent Tezuka was actually involved in the production. Did he frame the layout? Provide a rough draft? No one knows for sure. So, although the story features SOME of Tezuka’s work, it likely has not been re-printed in any “complete works” editions because of the need to make a choice between either reprinting the complete story, or including non-Tezuka (though very similar-looking) work.

This is also true for the story that introduced Astro Boy’s baby “brother” Ti-tan(ium). The April 1966 issue is credited solely to Osamu Tezuka, but the second part of the story that appears in the May 1966 issue is listed as an Osamu Tezuka “original story” with a Mushi Productions/Hideaki Kitano credit.

Other ghost writers appear in the magazine as well. The August 1966 issue features a manga adaptation of the animation episode “Dolphin Civilization” produced by Satoshi Inoue. Inoue is also listed in the Tezuka/Mushi/Inoue credits for the two-part “Astro vs. Cobalt” story that appears in the September-October 1966 issues. In the final issue of Mighty Atom Club, Another manga artist, Yutaka Ohno receives a similar credit for the untitled story featuring a girl robot named Elina.

For the sake of completion, even the non-Tezuka written Astro Boy stories are included in the publication list.

One of Osamu Tezuka’s most successful creations, Astro Boy has been featured in several publications.  The Astro Boy manga has also been serialized in the pages of Shonen as well as the Sankei Newspaper. It was also published in Second-Grader, as well as several one-shots and other specials.