Astro Boy (1980)

Astro Boy (鉄腕アトム Tetsuwan Atomu, lit. The Mighty Atom) is a remake of the original 1960's anime series of the same name, based on the manga by Osamu Tezuka.

Dubbing History
An English dub coordinated by Tezuka Productions and Nippon TV was produced in 1982. The dub was recorded using acting majors and graduate students out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison during August of 1982. According to voice actor Bob Gonzalez, he's unsure why they came to UW Wisconsin for dubbing, though surmises it's likely because of the relatively low flat fee they accepted to do the job.

The dub was lightly edited, cutting various scenes; most notably merging Episodes 1 and 2 together. According to Jay Rath, they had dubbed the first two episodes as an hour-long episode uncut, but apparently it was decided to cut it down. The dub aired in Australia from 1983 to 1998, though it had a very limited release in the U.S., where broadcasts were limited to syndication in a few markets.

An alternate dub was produced for Canadian audiences to fill the legal Canadian-content quota (a statute requiring Canadian TV Stations to air a certain amount of Canadian-made content. Anime dubbed in Canada counts). The dub was produced in 1985, and recorded at Cinélume in Toronto; featuring a then 12-year old Steven Bednarski as Astro Boy. The opening and ending themes recorded for the previous dub were still used, however.

While the Nippon dub featured light editing, the Canadian version was highly edited for violence, with entire sequences being re-edited. The edits are identical to the French dub, Astro le Petit Robot, which was also recorded in Montreal. With the exception of Astro and Atlas, most of the characters names were changed (Dr. Elefun was renamed "Professor Peabody", Uran was renamed "Sarah", etc.). The Canadian dub also featured a pre-title sequence which recapped Astro's origin, and an epilogue where Astro would give a brief report about each episode's adventure to a computer named Geronimo. Astro's report would always contain a minor error about the story, and a narrator would encourage the viewers to find Astro's mistake, and compare answers with their friends.

Canadian Dub
Early Canadian copyright laws did not require dub actors to be listed in credits, so the majority of the Canadian English cast is unknown. Bednarski's involvement was revealed by Bednarski himself on an Astro Boy fan forum.

Additional Voices

 * Janice Chaikelson
 * Adrian Knight
 * Walter Massey