Future Boy Conan


Future Boy Conan is a post-apocalyptic science fiction anime series, which premiered across Japan on the NHK General TV channel between April 4 and October 31, 1978 on the Tuesday 19:30-20:00 timeslot. The official English title used by Nippon Animation is Conan, The Boy in Future. It is an adaptation of Alexander Key's novel The Incredible Tide.
A spin-off series, Future Boy Conan II: Taiga Adventure, aired for 24 episodes on TBS from October 16, 1999 through April 1, 2000. None of the original main staff worked on this series. It has no relation in terms of story to the original whatsoever.

Story

Future Boy Conan

The story begins in July 2008, during a time when humankind is faced with the threat of extinction. A devastating war fought between two major nations, the United States and Russia, with ultra-magnetic weapons far greater than anything seen earlier brings about total chaos and destruction throughout the world, resulting in several earthquakes and tsunamis. The earth is thrown off its axis, its crust rocked by massive movements, and the five continents are torn completely apart and sink deep below the sea.
An attempt by a group of people to flee to outer space failed, with their spaceships being forced back to earth and vanishing, thus shattering their hopes. But one of the spaceships narrowly escaped destruction and crash landed on a small island which had miraculously survived the devastation. The crew members of the spaceship settled there, as if they were seeds sown on the island.
Amidst these survivors, a boy named Conan is born in October 2010, bringing a new ray of hope to the survivors. After several years, during which most of the other survivors had died and the only people left on the island were Conan and his grandfather, Conan meets a young girl named Lana, and their adventure begins. Between the different islands left in the world, including Industria, High Harbor, Remnant, and others, the young group of adventurers travel and conflict rises between good and evil people. Throughout the series a pure love story develops between Conan and Lana.

Taiga Adventure

The spin-off series centers around a boy named Taiga and his adventure in the world of magical artifacts known as OOPArts. The central OOPArt, known as Obats, is a giant living statue, and it is on its path to bring forth doom to the world as it collects other OOPArts and becomes more powerful.

Characters

Future Boy Conan

; Conan
; Lana
; Jimsy
; Lepka
; Dr. Briac Lao
; Monsley
; Dyce
; Luke
; Orlo
; Tera
; Grandpa
; Umasou

Taiga Adventure

; Taiga
; Tiana
; Gosh
; Obats

Production

Spanning a total of 26 episodes, the series was produced by Nippon Animation and featured the directorial debut of Hayao Miyazaki, who also contributed to character designs and storyboards. Other future prominent anime creators like Isao Takahata and Yoshiyuki Tomino also worked on the series.
Nippon Animation originally presented NHK with several proposals. At first a different story was favored, but eventually, The Incredible Tide novel was chosen.
There was a preparation time of three months for the layout. Six months passed between the start of the key animation work and the airing of the first episode. Although a stock of eight episodes was already produced by that time, the show still went behind schedule. According to Miyazaki it "took from ten days to two weeks to produce a single episode" and that if "NHK hadn't inserted a special program in there as a padding, it probably would have turned into a real wreck of a series. If we hadn't been working for NHK, we never could have pulled Conan off."
The staff was happy to work on a more upbeat story after 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother.
In a 1983 interview with Yōkō Tomizawa from Animage, Miyazaki stated that he only worked on the show under the condition that he was allowed to change the story. He disliked the pessimistic world view of the original story, feeling it was a reflection of Alexander Key's own fears and insecurities. He wanted a story aimed at children to be more optimistic, stating "ven if someone's lost all hope for the future, I think it is incredibly stupid to go around stressing this to children. Emphasize it to adults if you have to, but there's no need to do so to children. It would be better to simply not say anything at all."
Miyazaki further made an effort to distance himself from the notion of High Harbor representing North America and Industria representing the Soviet Union. In order to do this, he even considered making the setting more Japanese. For example, in his version of the story, the people of High Harbor would grow rice instead of wheat and eat using chopsticks. But this "would have led to all sorts of other problems", so he eventually dropped the idea.
One scene of Jimsy smoking cigarettes was removed by NHK before the airing of the episode. Miyazaki admitted that he put "way too much of own feelings into episode eight", specifically the underwater "kiss" scene. He had grown fonder of Lana by episode 5 and 6 and "realized that incorporated the exact same story line of a manga had created back in student days" to the point where even the shots were arranged in the same way.

Anime

Future Boy Conan first aired across Japan on the NHK TV network between April 4 and October 31, 1978, during the Tuesday, 7:30pm timeslot. It has been regularly broadcast across Japan on the anime satellite television network Animax, who have also later translated and dubbed the series into English for broadcast across its respective English-language networks in Southeast Asia and South Asia, under the title Conan, The Boy in Future.
The series was also translated into numerous other languages, including Chinese, French, Spanish, Italian, Catalan, Basque, Portuguese, Korean, Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic. It has been broadcast across Europe, Latin America, the Arab world and numerous other regions.

Staff

A video game version of the series by Telenet Japan was released in 1992 on NEC's PC Engine console. The game was released on the Super CD-ROM² format and was only available in Japan. In 1995, another game titled Conan: The Boy In Future, was exclusively released on the 3DO, and was developed by Bandai Visual and published by Emotion Digital Software. The game also is exclusive in Japan, and is extremely rare. In January 2011, NewGin announced a pachinko game titled Future Boy Conan: Love and Courage and Adventure based on the anime television series.
Another video game adaptation of the series was released for the PlayStation 2 home console in August 25, 2005, only in Japan.

Influences and reception

In a 1983 interview with Yōko Yomizawa, Hayao Miyazaki acknowledged that ratings for the show had not been very good, noting that episode twenty-five had received the highest rating at 14 percent.
In her 1999 book Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation, Helen McCarthy identifies Conan as a "seminal" work and recognizes themes and story elements in this production which Miyazaki would continue to explore throughout his career. McCarthy also notes continuity in the development of the characters and their plight throughout Miyazaki's work. She sees Lana and Conan as precedents for his later heroines and characters, and mentions, among others, Sheeta's rescue by Pazu, from Miyazaki's 1986 animated feature film Castle in the Sky, as an example.

Popularity in the Arab world

The show was very popular in the Arab world and still is today. The dubbing was performed by Arab Audio and Video Center, which was based in Kuwait. The cast included a number of Kuwaiti TV stars such as Jassim Al-Nabhan, Ali Al-Mufidi and others. Conan's name was changed to Adnan, Lana's was changed to Leena, and Jimsy's was changed to Abbisy so that they could have names similar to Arabic names. Unlike most Arabic dubs of anime, Future Boy Conan has retained most of its plot details without any altering.