Lost media can tend to be a bit of a buzzword these days, losing a lot of its value, as well as the importance and understanding of the term. The Big X anime arriving officially in English just today- and for free on TMS’ YouTube channel that– offers a great opportunity to talk about the series, its importance, and how it managed to partially survive up until this point. Being the first of then Tokyo Movie’s (now TMS Entertainment) anime series, and being the first Tezuka adaptation to not come from Mushi Production, Big X has some rather large footprints left behind on the anime industry.
The easiest place to begin is certainly with the history of Tokyo Movie. Okay, so, maybe it’s a bit of a fib to talk about the Big X anime being the first Tezuka adaptation to not be adapted by Mushi production. It’s technically correct, but on the basis that Tezuka was credited as the original creator for only 3 anime prior to Big X releasing in 1964- only two if you count both Astro Boy entries under a single name. Regardless of the truth, it’s the only Tezuka anime that the studio ever worked on, as they quickly pivoted to a breadth of works from duo Fujio Fujiko, which would eventually include the wildly successful Doraemon. It’s almost impressively hard to understate the impact that Tokyo Movie had during this era of anime, really. Shouldering names like Lupin III, Attack No. 1, and even Moomin, the studio has an incredible history that makes it understandable as to why such little discussion is afforded to the incomplete availability of the Big X anime.
The real question about the nature of Big X though is how much of it remains accessible. While there is some discussion of the availability of certain episodes due to quality and storage, the majority agree on the fact that only episodes 1, 11, and 40 through 59 are properly accessible… until around 2016. At the time, a fansubber produced a hardcoded subtitle of what was initially claimed to be Big X episode 12. Later, it was determined to actually be episode 14 of the series, but a source for the episode was never explicitly confirmed by the uploader. Speculation due to the English title card (which differs from all original JP sources) places the episode as a piece of promotional content distributed to English speaking markets.
Additionally, there is partial and sequenced videos floating around on digital platforms that claim to be an amalgamation of Big X episodes 39 and 40, but no further proof or verification has been provided to confirm the existence of episode 39. The biggest detractors to the verity of the existence of episode 39 being 1) the 360p upload quality across 3 videos, supposedly combining episodes 39 and 40, and 2) the lack of confirmed content that exists in episode 40.
More interesting than potential recoveries however is literal recoveries, with an American saving the debut episode of Big X on a 16mm print. As mentioned nearly a decade ago now in an article from Cartoon Research, animation historian Jerry Beck came to be the owner of said 16mm print through a series of exchanges, and was planning on screening it at an Asifa meeting- where a TMS representative happened to be. Loaning out the print for the sake of a restoration, Beck is truly the only reason that TMS Entertainment was able to release the first episode of their very first anime in English- for the first time, if there weren’t enough firsts in there. It feels a little hard to understate the value of that, truly. It’s already rare to find lost media in the first place, so finding such a good quality print, and for the first episode at that, feels like nothing short of a miracle in the context of TMS’ history as a company.
Though its story is as limited as the number of episodes available for the Big X anime, its still a very unique and interesting bit of history that’s resurfaced now 60 years after it all originally began. Additionally, the majority of this post is a simple retelling of previously known information, provided through the Lost Media Wiki, Lost TV Anime from Cartoon Research, and some additional information from the Internet Archive. If anything, it’s more a conglomeration of information that I’ve found to be interesting from the community’s well spent years of searching for this black and white anime.
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