Here's Toei's answer to the American Saturday morning imports that were quite popular on Japanese television in the 1960s. You can see how how creator Yasuji Mori's character designs were clearly influenced by Ed Benedict, the designer on many early Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Despite the limited animation necessary for turning out episodes on a weekly basis, I'd say the actual style of the show's humor has more in common with classic American theatrical cartoons, albeit with a uniquely Japanese flavor added as well. There are some really great characters in this show, but my personal favorite is Professor Garigari's lead henchman Black (pictured above), who looks like an evil gangster cousin of Top Cat. There are lots of moments when this character steals the show, my favorite one in this episode is a purely visual gag at around the 14:30 mark where Black tries in vain to cover up the fact that their latest plan to get rid of Punch and his friends has failed yet again. I don't do quite as much video trading these days as I used to in the VHS era, but that doesn't mean I've given it up entirely. One thing I'd been trying to find for ages is those out of print Toei Monochro Kessakusen sets that were released in the 2000s. Each volume had four selected episodes of a rare black and white anime series that previously had been gathering dust in the Toei vaults. Some of these shows eventually got the full box set treatment, but as far as I know only those four random episodes of Hustle Punch have ever gotten any kind of home video release (unlike Rainbow Sentai Robin, which was available in its entirety on laserdisc.) I've been meaning to post some of my top anime wants on here for a while, and this seems like a good opportunity to do so. So here goes. First of all, does anyone out there have the DVD-Rs of B't X that were out out by Vortex Fansubs in the early 2000s? Vortex lost her scripts for the show in a computer crash, and she needs the next episode previews for volumes 4 and up. I've been remiss in not posting this request sooner, she asked me about it ages ago. Another show that I'm desperate to get my hands on is Osamu Tezuka's Big X (1964). Sadly not all of the episodes exist, but there's an out of print DVD set of the ones that do that goes for crazy money on Yahoo Auctions Japan. Are there any collectors out there who have this set? One particularly difficult show to find is the original 1965 black and white version of Obake no Q-Taro. It's never (to my knowledge) been released on laserdisc or DVD, but I think a few episodes may have come out on VHS at some point. Also it may have been rerun on Japanese cable TV in the 2000s. Does anyone out there have the laserdisc box set of Dr. Tezuka's Fushigi na Melmo? This was the last video release of this classic series with the original 1971 soundtrack. The DVDs, TV reruns and even the subtitled streaming episodes all feature the "Renewal Edition", a version made in the 2000s with new voice actors and music. It's a crying shame that there's currently no way to watch the original version with Reiko Muto as Melmo. I'll try to post more wants soonish (I have a pretty long list of them) but I might as well get this episode released because I could go on about my want list all day!