is a Japanese anime television series based on Fujiko F. Fujio's manga of the same name and is the first adaptation in the media franchise. The series, produced by Nippon TeleMovie Productions, originally aired in Japan on NNS from April 1 to September 30, 1973.

Premise Doraemon follows the title character, a cat-like robot, who travels from the future to take care of a young child named Nobita and guide him on the right path for his future.

Cast and characters

The voice cast was chosen in cooperation with Aoni Production and Theater Echo. Kōsei Tomita (episodes 1–13), Masako Nozawa (episodes 14–26) as Doraemon Yoshiko Ōta as Nobita Nobi Masako Ebisu as Shizuka Minamoto Shun Yashiro as Suneo Honekawa Kaneta Kimotsuki as Takeshi "Gian" Gōda Noriko Ohara as Tamako Nobi Ichirō Murakoshi as Nobisuke Nobi Toshiya Ueda, Kazue Takahashi as Mrs. Honekawa Osamu Katō, Sanji Hase as Mr. Honekawa Masashi Amenomori, Osamu Katō, as Mr. Ganari (Teacher) Keiko Yamamoto as Sewashi Masako Nozawa, unknown as Botako Junko Hori as Gachako Noriko Tsukase as Debuko Rihoko Yoshida as Jamako

Production and broadcast

Development The origins of the first adaptation of Doraemon are thought to have been planned by Masami Niikura, then-president of Nippon Television. Hiroshi Igawa, the editor-in-chief of the manga Shogaku Ninensei, was approached by a producer from Nippon Television Network, who suggested manga such as Mother Star and Doraemon, the latter of which was subsequently picked.

Broadcast The series was originally broadcast between April 1 to September 30, 1973, on Nippon Television. 26 episodes, divided into 52 individual segments, were produced. A pilot film was produced in 1972 and shown to test audiences in January 1973. The audience included Doraemon creators Fujiko Fujio. They initially approved of the show, but when they were shown the progress, were apparently angered by the fact that they changed Nobita and Doraemon's personalities.

Many episodes produced were either TV-exclusive episodes and were subsequently never remade, or manga chapters which haven't been readapted for the later anime series.

The show was frequently rebroadcast throughout the 1970s. The station, Toyama Television, was the last to air the show, airing from July 3 to July 24, 1981, and briefly again in August of that year. The station aired the show in individual segments. On August 3, the publisher of the Doraemon manga requested the station to cease airing the show, to make sure the reputation of the more famous and longer-running 1979 series wasn't harmed, as well as to not confuse children watching between both versions. The animation crew of the show, Nippon TeleMovie Productions, went bankrupt in 1981. Before they went defunct, they attempted to cover the debt by selling off the masters of the 1973 series, the Japanese post-production company IMAGICA, discovered episodes 18 and 20 through 26 in their archive, as well as segments 5A, 10B and 12B.

In 2003, the production chief of the show, Hiroshi Shimozaki, now going under the name Masami Jun or "mcsammy", came forward with several episodes and rush reels (raw footage). He later uploaded low-quality versions of the intro and credits to his site on a members-only and password-protected page, however, a few minutes after the upload, he was told that the intro and credits were uploaded to Japanese anonymous board site 2channel. He immediately removed the video files from his site, but it was already too late. Many images of his episodes were uploaded to GeoCities. In the late 1990s, a person came forward with a VHS recording of the episode "Crazy Stomach Clock", dated from 1978. Audio clips from the episode were uploaded, but the site they were hosted on was removed. In 2015, a YouTube user discovered a clip playing on a television set in a Japanese pornographic film from the 1970s.

No episodes are known to exist online or on home media, besides an audio recording of the final episode. The only footage currently available is Jun's uploads of the show's opening and ending, however the footage is of very low quality (240p 193 kbit/s video, 128 kbit/s audio). Other footage currently available from this series are the aforementioned clip from said pornographic film above as well as the preview for episode 3.

Episodes

References

External links

Doraemon (1973 TV series) Design Works