Doraemon (1973 TV series)

Doraemon (ドラえもん) is the first anime TV series based on Fujiko F. Fujio's manga of the same name. It was produced by Nippon TeleMovie Productions. It aired from April 1, 1973, to September 30, 1973.

After the anime's original run ended, it reaired on multiple different stations until 1981 even while Shin-Ei Animation was producing a more successful second anime adaptation, which officially ended in 2005; it was in turn replaced by a third anime adaptation shortly after which continues to air to the present day.

Considered to be a piece of lost media due to its rarity and obscurity, many of the segments are completely missing. Of the 52 produced segments, only 19 of them and the pilot film are known to survive in their complete form, with 4 other segments surviving in a near complete state.

Cast and characters
The voice cast was determined in cooperation with Aoni Production and Theatre Echo.
 * Kōsei Tomita (episodes 1-13), Masako Nozawa (episodes 14-26) as Doraemon
 * Yoshiko Ohta as Nobita Nobi
 * Masako Ebisu as Shizuka Minamoto
 * Shun Yashiro as Suneo Honekawa
 * Kaneta Kimotsuki as Takeshi "Gian" Goda
 * Noriko Ohara as Tamako Nobi
 * Ichirō Murakoshi as Nobisuke Nobi
 * Kazue Takahashi, Toshiya Ueda as Mrs. Honekawa
 * Osamu Katou, Sanji Hase as Mr. Honekawa
 * Masashi Amenomori, Osamu Katou, as Mr. Ganari (Sensei)
 * Masayuki Tatekabe as Sasuke Goda
 * Keiko Yokoyama as Michiko Minamoto
 * Shinichi Kimotsuki as Yoshio Minamoto
 * Keiko Yamamoto, Sachiko Chijimatsu as Sewashi Nobi
 * Keiko Yokozawa as Mii-chan
 * Masako Nozawa as Botako
 * Junko Hori as Gachako
 * Noriko Tsukase as Damako
 * Rihoko Yoshida as Jamako

Production and broadcast
The series was broadcast between May 25 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 creator Fujiko F. Fujio. They initially approved of the show, but when they were shown the progress, they were apparently angered by the fact that they changed Nobita and Doraemon's personalities.

Many of the episodes produced for the series were either TV-exclusive episodes and subsequently never remade, or manga chapters which have since the 1973 series not been readapted to the anime.

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.

Due to its rarity and obscurity, it is nearly impossible to find info on this version of Doraemon. No episodes 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 opening and ending, however the footage is of very low quality (240p 193 kbit/s video, 128 kbit/s audio). Other footages currently available from this series are the aforementioned clip from said pornographic film above as well as the preview for episode 3.