The Search for Phantaman

Know anything about "Phantoma, Warrior of Justice?" Contact me at: [email protected]

[thesearchforphantaman]

Do you know if anyone has contacted Nine Network Australia to find out if any of the English dub content might be stored somewhere?

I did, but it might be worth poking them again - perhaps something has been discovered!  I’ll see what I can do.

[thesearchforphantaman]

While the search for the original English Dub should continue. Do you think, with this recent attention brought to the series and its lore, there could be potential for an English Fan Sub/Dub? Maybe that's asking too much, but I would definitely like to enjoy the full series without a language barrier, if possible. And I'm sure many others that are now interested in this series would agree with that.

I doubt I’m the person to ask about that, since I’m hardly an official opinion on the matter!  But if there are any fandub projects out there who’re interested in picking up a really old anime from 1967, I’d be fascinated to see what they did with it.

[thesearchforphantaman]

Where can I buy phantaman series please

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.

Unfortunately, the English release is unavailable.

[thesearchforphantaman]

My dad HATED Phantoma.

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!

Thank you again for sharing this story!  Always a delight to see that folks out there still remember this silly old cartoon.

[thesearchforphantaman]

SUPER-COOL NEWS!

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!

Hi.  My name is Andy Shepherd and I saw your page/Tumblr post (Search for Phantaman) and thought I would share some things with you.

Ogon Batto (Golden Bat) was dubbed by Bill Ross and his wife Japanese wife, Michie, at Frontier Enterprises in Tokyo.  They rechristened the show ‘Fantoma’ for sales in the English speaking territories.  I think Ken Fujita hire them to do it.  More on Ken later.

Ross/Frontier was the go-to guy in Japan for a bit of comparatively inexpensive dubbing (when compared to Glen Glenn Sound, Titra, etc.) for Japanese media that was being distributed/shopped overseas.  Bill died a couple of years ago, but I and a few others (Steve Ryfle and August Ragone) corresponded with him via email and snail mail.  I spoke with him several times by phone over the course of a couple of years, and I have at least one taped phone conversation with him.

Frontier/Ross hired local expats and military personnel living/stationed in Japan in the 1960s.  The series, according the scant records Bill sent me copies of (which I cannot find at the moment), was titled “Fantoma” and the only English audio clip that has survived the decades bears this out.  Not sure where alternate spellings/names, Fantaman or Phataman, come from.  Maybe it was printed this way in the Aussie TV guides/promo material.  I’ll have to ask Kelly Patrick Lannan about that.  He’s in the weeds on the series and films shown only in Oz (i.e. The Samurai, Phantom Agents, Gazula, Space Ace, Fantoma, etc.).

Although, Ross never kept records of the people he hired to dub these things, he did recall a couple of names and those were enough to start the dominoes tumbling for me.  The narrator on the Fantoma ‘coming attractions’ audio clip is Burr Middleton, once known in the business as Burr Hoyle.  He’s an actor and announcer, and you can catch him eps of Matlock, Hunter, and such things.  During the 1960s, he was stationed in Japan (military, I think) and was hired by Ross for dubbing in Fantoma and Princess Knight (confirmed).  He also acted in the Bill Ross-co produced sino-American sci-fi movie, The Green Slime. [...]  But he confirmed for me his voice in the Fantoma clip.  He also voiced Duke Duralumon, the villain, in the little-known Princess Knight/Choppy and the Princess dub, which finally saw a release in the U.S. a few years back, after decades of legal issues and copyright mishandling.  I can try to ask Middleton who else worked on the Fantoma dub.  Maybe he’ll remember.

Also, you’ve got the two ‘K. Fujitas’ mixed up.  Yep, two.  Kiyoshi Fujita of Video Promotions was also known as K Fujita in the 1960s, but he shouldn’t be confused with the other and, I think, more important, K. Fujita of K. Fujita & Associates.  Kazuhiko (a.k.a. Ken, or just ‘K’) of K. Fujita & Associates was one of the first, if not the first, to have the idea of marketing Japanese movies and tv content outside of Japan.  For years, little more than an enigmatic name found only in the end credits of Speed Racer, Marine Boy, The Amazing 3, Star Blazers, etc., I hunted for years for him and finally my persistence paid off, found him semi-retired in Japan.  We became friendly and got his story.    

He first took sample footage of what was to become Astro Boy to shop around in the states and was pretty much laughed out of New York by the folks at NBC, ABC, Screen Gems, etc.  Until he later sold a b/w live action Samurai series to Mexico.  It was such an enormous success/ratings hit, south of the border, that the Americans were more ready to listen to him on his second pass.  However, when he returned again to the states to negotiate a sale for Astro Boy, he walked away from the puny deal at NBC Films.  Then, along comes Kiyoshi Fujita, of Video Promotions, apparently now negotiating on behalf of the Japanese producers/Mushi and accepts the same shitty NBC deal, or so I was told.  The Japanese needed whatever NBC offered in order to bankroll future projects.  I think Kiyoshi Fujita of Video Promotions may still be around.  I don’t know him and have never spoken with him.  Since Kiyoshi Fujita of Video Promotions had made the deal with NBC, he/they were well-positioned for the Kimba deal.  You can read most of this in Fred Ladd’s book.  Fred directed the dubs of both Astro Boy and Kimba for NBC Films, as you know.

The upshot is that Kiyoshi Fujita of Video Promotions, while he maybe still around, isn’t the K. Fujita of K. Fujita & Associates that sold Ogon Batto and the other anime and live action Japanese series in Australia.  It was Kazuhiko (or Ken as he liked to be called by his western friends) who did that.  Sadly, Ken passed in 2012.  Kiyoshi probably won’t be much help to you in your search.

Kelley Patrick Lannan and Glen Johnson in Australia have been poking around for years for surviving prints of some of these series, including Fantoma.  Kelley, if remember correctly, works in the TV industry, there, and he has his tentacles out, forever groping and prying to see if somewhere in Oz, somebody has 16mm prints of these series in storage, an attic, a basement.

Sometimes, all of the groping and prying by fans pays off.  Episodes of both b/w live action shows “The Samurai” and “Phantom Agents” were finally located and released on DVDs.  Unfortunately, the “Space Ace” and “Fantoma” dubs seem to more elusive.  When I asked him, Ken Fujita couldn’t remember the names of the producers he sold/licensed the properties to.  He’d thrown out 40 years of old paper work from his former companies, along with tons or original artwork and cels from his company’s (Japan Tele-Cartoons) production of “Marine Boy”.  I nearly had a heart attack when he told me that.  He simply had no idea anybody would be interested in having it, much less paying money to own it.

[...]

Starting in the mid-1990s, I decided that I hated reading misinformation/incorrect crediting in all of the animation reference books and articles about 8th Man and Princess Knight, and spent subsequent years researching Copri, Frontier, and Titra dubbing facilities.  There wasn’t much information out there at all.  I was starting from scratch.  I would get one half remembered name from somebody, which then led to another half remembered name from somebody else, and so on.  I finally got enough to put a picture together of the Miami dubbing outfit in the mid-1960s.

I’ve shared this information over the years with Fred Ladd, Dave Merrill, Glen Johnson, August Ragone, Chris Palmer, etc. and now it’s public information, which is good.  The Copri and Frontier folks, unlike the Titra dubbers (Pete Fernandez, Fred Ladd, Corrine Orr, Jack Grimes, Paulette Rubenstein, Earl Hammond, Jack Curtis, etc.) never got credit for their work because of how it was done (under the table to skirt the union rules and union pay scales in Florida for Copri) and in Japan, it just wasn’t thought important and seen as an added (unnecessary) cost (i.e. cast list/end titles).  Besides, the Florida and Japanese casts were local actors, school teachers, disc jockeys, moonlighting military personnel and their bored wives, etc.  Nobodies, really.  So, what did credits matter to them?  They got paid few shekels and had some fun.  End of story.

Many of the folks are gone, now.  I was lucky that I got to know and speak with many of them and get their stories for posterity.  I have a number of taped phone interviews, and still have some chapters of Pete’s unpublished auto-biography, hand typed, that he sent to me.  He was a real sweetheart, and he is missed.  I’ll what I can do about digitizing this stuff to post for everybody to enjoy.

In any case, I’ve written more than I intended.  Sorry.  I hope you find it some of it useful and if not, at least interesting.

It’s been years since I was actively researching.  Just got busy.  But I can try to reach out to Kelley Patrick and Glen to see if they’ve made any headway on the Fantoma and Space Ace hunt.

Regards,

Andrew Shepherd

What a surprise, right?  As you guys following this blog know, I spoke with Mr. Burr Middleton myself, and he confirmed for me that he voiced not only the Narrator for Phantoma but also Gabby, Dr. Zero, and the big golden skeleton himself!  (Though, granted, Phantoma didn’t exactly have a lot of dialogue in the series -- mostly laughing.)

As I mentioned to Mr. Shepherd in my response, I also discovered some Australian TV listings from the time, which is where the title “Phantaman” came from.  My post about that can be found here:

https://thesearchforphantaman.tumblr.com/post/143665817167

Regardless, this is such exciting news!!  Hopefully we’ll be able to continue the search from here.

Hailey out!

[keyblack-hl]

FOR THOSE OF YOU GUYS WHO CANNOT READ JAPANESE.

OK.

SO.  GUYS.

You know how I told you all how impossible it was to find Golden Bat DVDs in their original Japanese??   THE ENTIRE #GoldenBat #黄金バット SERIES was just uploaded to two Japanese anime streaming sites!  U-NEXT and Anime-Hodai (アニメ放題)!!

Both are paid services, and unfortunately neither seem to offer subtitles in English, but regardless, this is HUGE.  Seriously, Japanese DVDs are ridiculously expensive – moreso than the Italian DVDs that I own!

Happy 50th anniversary for your anime, you crazy skeleton!!  You deserve it!

[thesearchforphantaman]

While the search for the English version of the cartoon seems to have gone a bit flat, this is still exciting news for Golden Bat as a whole!!

[thesearchforphantaman]

Do you happen to know what Fantaman/Ogon Bat/etc was named over here for the English dub?

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.

Unfortunately the English dub of the show never made it outside of Australia, hence this whole search effort!  No known recordings of the show remain today, so if any still exist in secret, we’re trying to find them.

[thesearchforphantaman]

Sorry about the lack of updates!

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.

While the kamishibai version of the character is now in the public domain, the copyright for the 1966-and-onwards version of Golden Bat is still active, and I believe it is currently owned either by Toei or by Ltd. Anime International Company (AIC).  AIC was responsible for the trailer to the 2000 reboot that unfortunately never came to fruition.  This trailer was directed by Shinichi Watanabe.

[thesearchforphantaman]

Remember “New Golden Bat: Millennium?”

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?

I’ll keep you all posted on what else I can find.

[thesearchforphantaman]

Some disheartening news:

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.

Keep your fingers crossed, everyone!  We’re not done yet!

[thesearchforphantaman]

Just sent off an email enquiry to Video Promotions Incorporated!

It’s in Japanese, too.  (Thank you, based roommate.)  Here’s hoping we get a response!!

[thesearchforphantaman]

Discovery: K. Fujita & Associates, the company responsible for the distribution of Phantoma (unsure if the original JP version “Golden Bat” or the English version “Phantaman”), may in fact refer to Kiyoshi Fujita, head of the Video Promotion company.

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:

https://books.google.com/books?id=IKOfCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT97&lpg=PT97&dq=k+fujita+associates+japan&source=bl&ots=Ytc5NByC8i&sig=6HEH1QzqcmSihOgnZnLwkQOLAUs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjI2IuIzbnMAhVElR4KHbP7AUYQ6AEISTAF#v=onepage&q=k%20fujita%20associates%20japan&f=false

[thesearchforphantaman]

The Mission

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.

The quest for the hero of Atlantis continues!

[keyblack-hl]

Discovery:

On Monday, May 13, 1968, Phantaman aired at 5 PM in Victoria, Australia on GTV9.

On Thursday, June 6, 1968, Phantaman aired at 5 PM in Victoria, Australia on GTV9.

On Saturday, April 25, 1970, Phantaman aired at 7:30 AM in Adelaide, Australia on ADS7.

On Wednesday, August 30, 1972, Phantaman aired at 9:05 AM in Western Australia on STW9.

Information from the following sources

http://televisionau.com/classic-tv-guides

http://tvlistingsarchive.blogspot.com/2014/06/victoria-australia-thurs-june-6-1968.html

IDK if this is gonna help at all.  Just found it interesting, and it could help to narrow things down in the event that I’m able to do a more specific inquiry somewhere at some point.

[keyblack-hl]

The legendary Quest For Fantaman begins.

Oh, it’s been going now for… a few days, I guess.  Huh.  Feels like longer.

I’ve dug up a lot of info, but I haven’t yet gotten any closer to finding the English dub itself.  Hopefully putting feelers out all over the place will help, but aside from Mr. Burr Middleton (who provided the voice for Phantoma, Dr. Zero, Gabby, and the Narrator in the English dub) the hottest trails I could find still haven’t responded.  We’ll see how it goes.

[keyblack-hl]

Gather 'round, children, and let me tell you the story about how one blogger started posting about a funny vintage anime, and then ended up launching a massive in-depth search for the lost dub.

THE AMERICAN FORCES NETWORK JUST RESPONDED TO ME AND THEY’RE CC’ING A LOT OF PEOPLE

[keyblack-hl]

…I must have just sent, like… twenty, thirty emails to various film archive and research organizations, asking about Phantaman…

…

LET’S HOPE SOMEBODY RESPONDS.