Terrahawks Historical Intro

(Original cel paintings of Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's that were printed as lithographs. These were sent to me by my contact to scan in, whereas I cleaned them and upscaled them to preserve their quality in 4k)

After nearly 3 years of corresponding with my private seller, they agreed over a zoom call to let me archive this official booklet that was used by staffers at MBS, Sunrise, and Tohokushinsha Film. Production on Terrahawks according to my source goes back way to 74', when Tadao Nagahama had the ideas for a story of a similar origin. He alongside Sunrise staffers played with the idea, but more or less, it was Tadao's direct inspiration for a story like so. They also state that the ethos of a series like Terrahawks bubbled back up among them in 76', though ultimately faded away.

In 1977, after the production of the Farewell to Yamato film, Tohokushinsha Film wanted to greenlight a brand new SF series that was to run tentatively from late 1977 until April of 1978 (April was mentioned directly to me, they were unclear as to what date would fall from 1977, but given series approximations, I'd say September-October for a show's 'season' ). Gerry Anderson, famous for his supermarination/puppet shows, wanted to break into the JP market with an anime as he was quite taken with the work he saw on Yamato. Farewell to Yamato would not have a public release until August 5th, 1978, but thanks to Tadao Nagahama (who according to my source was a close friend/fan of Gerry's), Gerry was exposed to elements of it. Given how famous Thunderbirds was in Japan, he wanted to proceed further, and more or less met a team of Yamato staffers as well as staffers from Sunrise & Tohokushinsha Film to proceed.

Gerry would be supervised by Aritsune Toyota and Arashi Ishizu, who had done extensive work on Yamato as a series years prior, on how to implement his story idea and work alongside Tadao Nagahama. My source stated that while staffers were extremely exhausted post Farewell to Yamato, that they were extremely interested in working with Gerry on a SF project, Tadao being the most excited of them all. My source would meet with Gerry several times during this, discuss ideas, and ultimately once they were all drafted, would help deduce which ones fit the mutual agenda of all staff that would be involved. Munehiro Minowa, who was the original character designer for Zero Tester (and later The Dagger of Kamui), was brought on to be the original designer for Terrahawks, but decided to step down due to personal reasons (of which my source did not stipulate out of privacy). Yoshikazu Yasuhiko would be tasked with character and mechanical design, and his ethos from working on Yamato is beautifully prevalent. 

In the end, the series was pitched to MBS (Mainichi Broadcasting System) in 1977, however due to a variety of time slot issues as well as interest surrounding the project, MBS decided ultimately that they did not need another SF show on their broadcasting schedule. The project was eventually shelved, and due to the IP having had come so far along, there were discrepancies between Tohokushinsha film producer Banjiro Uemura and Gerry Anderson. While it was discussed between me and my source, I was asked to not divulge any deeper details about the depth of their argument. All in all, Gerry would be allowed to use aspects of the Terrahawks IP for his own project whereas Banjiro would ultimately use aspects of it for future ventures as well; Gerry not only created the Terrahawks show in 1980, but ultimately decided to prey further on the IP with Thunderbirds 2086, which follows aspects of his own ideas for Terrahawks but uses licensed footage from Scientific Rescue Team Techo Voyager, with long time Yamato staffer Kazuhiko Udagawa coming on board as character designer.

In the future, aspects of Terrahawks would be reused in 77' as they were dashed about between several people and projects, mainly those working at Sunrise and Tohokushinsha. Brave Raideen, in its inception, features themes, as well as Yas' illustrations for the early Crusher Joe novels and even more famously, the inception of the earliest draft of Freedom Fighter Gunboy in 78', which would become Mobile Suit Gundam in 1979.

Aspects of this text had to be removed to preserve the identity of my source as well as due to legal concerns. There were several documents which came with this text that contain personal information and confidential information that was for internal use among the several studios that it was passed upon. In mid 1980, the text I own was passed along to Animage's typesetting staff for the Animage December Appendix: https://e-hentai.org/g/1881077/7523322018/, of which some of the type setting is directly borrowed for this text as a whole. Versus lithographed formatting, this booklet is completely xeroxed on fairly good stock paper. It was very old and damaged in many places, but through a lot of cleanup efforts, I was able to preserve at least 85% of the original quality. Some illustrations were in better shape than others, and some had to be touched up, but this is as close of an approximation to what it would have looked like nearly 40 years ago. This copy is not mine and will be returned to my source, so I will not have access to it once I've done what I've needed to do. 

All in all, about 15 pages are missing due to their confidential nature, and even after asking very politely with a language barrier involved, I was forbidden from doing so. While my source is understanding, they do not want their identity known or for any issues to arise naturally, and I can respect that 100%. Apects of this 'phantom work' are ever prevalent in Sunrise's late 70s-early 80s SF works, and I'm beyond elated to introduce this to the world. I thank all who had interest in this project early on as well as my source, of whom I am forever indebted to, for believing in me. 

Other information given to me from part of the manuscript. 

"新生命体一般人宇宙生物学者ドクターケランが割り出した直立歩行型の新生物人間の血液中の塩分の濃度と同し海水を探体にタンパク質とアミノ酸の合成から生まれた生命体に、アフリ力にすむ新種の白アリの転ズイから抽出したホルモンを加え創り出した生物である白アリの本続を受け継ぎ、すごい早さの世代交代と繁殖、進化を繰り返している"

Astrobiologist Dr. Guerlain created a bipedal human made of neoplasm. They were born from the synthesis of proteins and amino acids using seawater as a test subject, which gives them the same concentration of salt as in human blood. They are organisms created by adding hormones extracted from a new breed of termite that come from Afuri (the hill located on the eastern border of the Tanzawa Mountains/Kanagawa prefecture). Just like termites, they repeat generational changes, breeding habits, and evolve at a tremendous speed.

I have completed an English approximation of the JP text as some of the text within the manuscript was faded/gone and otherwise illegible. Some of the legible text had phrases I was unfamiliar with, but I've done my best to capture its energy.