Boken Gabotenjima

Aired: 1967

A TV anime produced by TCJ Doga Center (now Eiken). Based on the manga by Yoshitake Suzuki (script) and Fumio Hisamatsu (art) serialized in Shogakukan's Weekly Shonen Sunday. Broadcast in 39 episodes on the TBS network from April 4 to December 26, 1967. Five children — Tomoru, Sabu, Igara, Tomomi, and Gari — are caught in a storm during a marine training cruise and drift onto the uninhabited South Pacific island 'Gabotenjima,' where cactus-like plants and animals coexist in a mysterious ecosystem. They engage in a survival adventure to stay alive. Structured as a children's-friendly adaptation of Jules Verne's Two Years' Vacation, each episode depicts encounters with the island's unknown flora and fauna and clever survival ingenuity. As a representative work of Eiken's founding era, it forms part of the realism lineage leading to later works such as Sasuke and Sabu and Ichi's Detective Stories. (C)Eiken